On a dull October afternoon

Today is one of those grey, dreary days. It's foggy and dark outside and inside my head. I'm that 'patient etherised upon a table'. I'm not really here, not anywhere. Feel little of anything,  maybe a little sad at some things, mostly disconnected from everything. I am exhausted easily by little things - showering, eating,  playing with my son. The effort involved in getting through the day is unreasonably high. I was ready to go back to the unchallenging comfort of bed after making my son breakfast.

Today is also one of those days where I can watch the tide flow and not drown in it. I'm learning to stand by the water, still,  and let the tide wash my feet. I'm learning to not rush into every emotion I feel, flailing in the rising waters and not being able to see past it. (A metaphor I was instructed in at the Priory, where I spent some time recovering from my breakdown.) It has been dark and dreary for a few days but it will pass. I have faith.

Am I happy? I keep asking myself this, as an index to decide which direction I should take, what choices I should make. When I asked myself this over the past few years, the answer was always shaky. I was happy momentarily a lot when I did some things but I always felt fearful of those things ending. I used to fear waking up in the morning to go to work, fear returning home from anywhere, fear looking in the mirror. I used to fear meeting people. I felt afraid and anxious, always. Nowadays when I ask myself 'am I happy?' I notice that the answer is more certainly, more regularly 'yes'. I am more at peace with myself. I am still trying to work out all the tags and labels that make me, but it's a great ride, this exploring of me. I like who I am more now. I have surprised myself. I am not at all unfulfilled as a stay at home mother, in fact I have never felt more creative, more enlightened, more content. I have very little money and I find it liberating. It's so much easier to say no to the pressures of a consumerist culture's recognisable traps when you just don't have the enabling agent! I have freed myself from relationships that were meaningless and bound simply in expectations and pretensions. I have detached myself from relationships which I am still duty bound to, but which provide no joy, no nourishment. I have found poetry in my child's voice. I have found stronger reaffirmation of my faith than in any time spent amongst the loudly faithful.

So today when I'm in that familiar displaced, dislocated fog, I have just stopped struggling and let it have its run. This too shall pass. It will be a brighter day soon. I am this displaced self and much more. I am ok with who I am.

So today I smile at the black dog and tell it to stick around and watch as I make Halloween craft with my son and some cakes for a friend's birthday. The bats, spiders and bugs are really taking shape (note you unforgiving school teachers who wrote off my art skills). The cakes look messy, have to wait to taste them. The black dog is still sulking in the background but I'll probably go for a walk in the awful weather if he gets too unpleasant. My grey fog can meet the grey fog outside; I can stay busy with the special madness that muddy puddles excite in a toddler.