Hiatus

It's been a while. No apologies. I needed the break. I needed to think. I needed to work out a few things.

I'm not going to beat about the bush. 2015 so far, can go on record as being one of the toughest years yet - in so many ways, shapes and forms I can't even recount. 2015 can simply go bite me! I've been spending some time down here in the pit entertaining some very dark thoughts. Not that they were the reasons I stopped writing...but they have contributed. Writing became too much of a minefield to negotiate as I tried to balance between being authentic me and writing so as not to upset people's apple carts.

In the end I realised that apple carts were going to be upset no matter how hard I tried not to upset them...so I stopped writing.

I stopped doing a lot of things.

Right now I'm not in a very good place at all. The world has become too big, too scary, too much. Over the past couple of days I have had to take things moment by moment. It's some advice one of my kids offered the other morning. She said, "Mama, sometimes when the world gets too big I tell myself, "Right now, my only responsibility on this earth is to put on this shoe." So I concentrate on putting on my shoe. Then I move to the next thing."

So, I've tried that. Over the past 24 hours it's gotten down to, "Ok, right now, my only responsibility on this earth is to take the next breath."

That's anxiety for you. It's a bitch.

I've been battling it all my life.

Those who know me see me as this able, capable feisty woman who seems to have everything in hand, despite life tossing her some curve-balls. That, folks, is a learned behavior. Keep on moving. In the words of Dory:

It got to the point where even though my body could, my mind couldn't.

These days I'm learning to take things one at a time. I've not participated in things I've signed up for (and paid a fair amount of money for - hello Tough Mudder!) but instead I've listened to my body and mind and worked out what I am capable of doing at a particular moment. It may mean saying no to things such as Tough Mudder and yes to Park Run. It may mean saying no to going to a party and yes to sitting in the audience of a theatre production my daughter is involved in. It may mean that instead of going to church I go to a Butoh workshop and dance some of the darker feelings out.

I'm learning that I need to be kind to myself, not to expect such a high standard of myself and most importantly, not to beat myself up for mistakes I made decades ago. Forty eight year old me needs to cut eighteen year old me some slack. She and I need to sit in a room together and have a healing hug. God knows how much that eighteen year old needed a hug back then! Come to think of it, 48 year old me could do with a hug right back. Yeah...I think that's what she and I will do. Sit and hug.

For the first time in my entire life I am living on my own. For the first time ever I am no ones daughter, no ones sister, no ones mother, no ones wife. I am faced with being just me. It's been a rough, scary few months as I've battled this awful feeling of being totally alone, not quite knowing who I am and where to from here. Much of my identity has been shaped by fulfilling a role. Now those roles no longer need filling I'm left with this question of what makes me me?

I'm not quite sure yet.