Grow

And there will be other things. The map wearing out at the creases. The summer dying a quiet death, having had a quiet wet life. We are here. Still here, listening to Patti Smith who entirely miraculously comes to grace our tiny gig venue in our diminutive town next Saturday. And yes, we have tickets. We feel autumn's chill and complain, but autumn is my soul's home and my 50th year on this planet is approaching its end and all I can be is grateful grateful very grateful for 50. I am helped in so many ways by my fellow travellers, and lurch back and forth in my growing, but grow I do.

Who

Yup, the mundanity of existence, the wonderful terrible mundanity of tables and chairs, buses and trains, beds, baths, ovens, cats, pavements, postmen, shopping trolleys, gas bills. And this this this sense of curtains being slowly opened, slowly slowly, to let in the light and to reveal a whole world out there. This sense of waking up from a dream - a long long dream - still sleepy, still confused about which is the dream and which reality...

And one of the things that is woken up to is the possibility, the inevitability, the exigency even of loving myself the way I want to be loved. That this and only this will do. The dream of someone finally loving me completely, unconditionally, seamlessly, with consummate understanding, patience, skill, appreciation. Get it? Do you get it now? It's your job - it's you that's been appointed. Everyone else failed at the interview stage or certainly after the probation period. Only you stayed on, only you stuck it out, only you finally got the hang of the job, understood the requirements of the JD, and began to, as they say, deliver... And do you see now how peerlessly well-qualified you are for this position? No-one else knows you the way you do. No-one else has been here every step of the goddam journey, every faltering footstep, every impetuous leap, every shuffle in the dark. Been with you, seen it all, survived the blows, forgiven the eye-watering mistakes, accepted it all and still stayed on for more. Stayed on finally to start work on the real task of being your own unshakeable champion, undaunted supporter, generous appreciater, number one looker after, kindest companion, oldest lover, fondest friend, sweetest soulmate. Who else could possibly do it?

Knitted

For rr - knitted vegetables, a knitted bee skep, a knitted woman of leaves, knitted flowers at the Bankfield Museum in Halifax. (Photographs taken with my mobile phone so small and poor quality.)

Home

Sweet peas in a vase on the table, calla lily, orchid, basil, coriander in pots on the windowsill. Outside a jackdaw on the post office chimney, the bus rattling past. A book about insects, a book about bees, and L's knitting on the table, two diaries, a pair of binoculars, a phone. The bath water suddenly released and slooshing down the drain outside the open back door. I'm back from two days with my mother and trying to get grounded, and reconnect with home. Now I shall go and cook pasta with bacon, vegetables and cheese sauce, the ultimate comfort food.

Observations

On the last day of July

it is cold, the sky covered with white and grey cloud, the forecast for heavy rain this afternoon
the honeysuckle in the garden is blooming dark and pale pink, but sadly scentless
the sparrows are feeding their second brood inside the old burglar alarm bell on the wall just outside our bedroom
cows and calves in the fields around, all different shades and combinations of brown and cream, they stare as I walk past
the bees keep swarming and disappearing even when they have been artificially swarmed - full hive, empty hive, hunt the queen... all this I am learning from a distance, but L is now a fully fledged bee handler

August looms when everyone goes away, especially my therapist.

Days

There are days when there doesn't seem to be an inner structure holding it all together, nor a way to find one. When it all seems to have disintegrated, making any kind of approach to life uncertain at best. I think you could say I am slowly revisiting all those days. Some of them at moments of crisis, traumatic events, shocks, some of them the longer-term effects of those moments. Collapse, depression, grief. Also revisiting the inner world I inhabited when I had to know but not know devastating truths, the complicated and necessary strategies adopted to survive being lied to for a long time. Denial, dissociation, undoing, reaction formation. These the technical terms, for how we try not to know about what threatens our sense of safety, not to feel what seems unmanageable, how we make things just not have happened in our minds, and how we sometimes adopt the exact opposite attitude from the inwardly true but impossible-to-live-with one.

I truly believe that this process will help me to have more choice, to have a clearer sense of myself, my perceptions and feelings, to disentangle myself from the knots of futile repetition, to have more energy for now. Of course I do, I'm a therapist myself for god's sake. But at the moment I have at least one foot most of the time in various parts of the past, my heart is aching, I cry, rage, drink and mourn. My dearest wish is to be taken care of, my greatest challenge taking care of myself.

And the rain is back. Though it's a kinder rain. Not so cold, not so hard, not so relentless, and interspersed with sunshine sparkling the drops.

L has gone to see how the rain looks on Liverpool, and hopefully the sunlight too.

Short