and then there was gratitude

This morning I sat under the shade of a guava tree on a granite rock, the rock was still cool from the night but the day was warming up around me as I rested. I wondered how old the rock was and from there I turned to thinking of my own age ~ I shall turn 36 this year. I wondered if you could select days or moments quite consciously  to remember, if you can I have selected this morning to remember and store as a treasure. This morning I knew peace and simplicity, I felt my body holding my soul and had gratitude that I am still young and strong. Not the strength of your twenties where nothing hurts and you take your youth and physical resilience for granted, but the sort of gratitude you have when some days you glimpse age and frailty in the pain in your back or the stiffness in your joints when you rise after sitting wrapping Christmas presents.

I sat this morning and thought this is a good age and a good time, I love a good man and am loved in return. I have seen enough to know fools gold from that which is real.  It is an age where if you are lucky you are still comfortably nestled between your parents and your children. I am still a student but I have also become a teacher.  Much like my body, which wasn’t what it was but has endured and strengthened so to has my mind, although I still have much to learn, I have some things of value to pass along – this is a good age and this morning was a good day.

let loose the dogs of war

I have been looking for a home for my anger, at times like these I first try to really understand what the word means – the dictionary is a great source of comfort for me, it is the beginning of my process to rationalize my emotions, to understand.

Anger – apparently comes from the old Norse word Angr which meant grief. Already I am able to peel back a layer, but just as my mind shifts and I glimpse the pain, the grief beneath a wave of rage washes over and the hurt is again hidden.

I like it best this way on my more mortal days, the days where I have no desire to occupy the moral high ground. I do not want to feel the hurt and the pain. I can deal better with the anger I try to convince myself that the antidote will be vengeance. That then the scales will be equal, that this is fair and righteous.

Like many of us, I expect that I can live with this far more comfortably than I can sit with pain and hurt – You see I don’t know where to put those feelings, do you keep them by you like doting companions, life long mates, do they leave one day of there own accord, do they fade like ghosts each day paler and less acute to the senses or do they visit you unexpectedly like flamboyant relatives, coming through the door of your mind refusing to be ignored as loud and present as they day they first were felt?

I don’t know where hurt lives, I never made a place in my mind or my soul where such a feeling can sit. But rage and anger the sting of a great betrayal, those things I know what to do with. Like a chained and savage dog I can feed them daily a diet of  indignation, I can tend the wound to keep it raw and open and I can watch the dog of my anger grow from a pup to a snarling dog of hatred and vengeance until one day it snaps the chain that has held it in the yard of my mind. I can see the dog loosed  tearing chunks from the very next person. And here is the conundrum ~ this dog, it has a life of its own. I cannot seem to drive it to the source of my pain. To the person that I hold responsible the one that hurt me in the first instance .

The dog of my rage cannot be tamed, I have tried, he does not come when I call him to heal, once the chain is snapped the rage will run its course and the truth the real unadulterated truth I don’t feel any better – only tired, exhausted even, whipped out enough to move on, to let go.

So here’s the thing maybe I can let go before……maybe  

Sunny Side UP

Then there are days that are good ~ not because of any spectacular happening but because you take stock of your life and gratitude washes over you, and you think just maybe I am on track after all.

The children didn’t fight with each other, the man you love held you, the roses are blooming, there was a late afternoon thunderstorm and I lay on my bed looking out of the windows watching the rain.

Because of this I am able to shelve all the things that will have to be dealt with that I am not looking forward to ~ I have learnt a new skill! I have discovered that you really can put things aside for a day or a weekend, I can acknowledge their existence and say today you don’t get any head space because today I have other things to do and other things to think about and in due course you will get your turn, you will have my attention when it is appropriate but for now you shall not hang over me like the Sword of Damocles.

I have also learnt a new game to paly with myself ~ I choose three “happy” words like Rejoice, Delight, Glorious, Bliss, Joy, Untroubled, Content ~

and during the course of my day I slip them into the conversations I have,  it reminds me of what is good and to talk about it. It is truly amazing how if you determinedly steer your conversations toward a topic where you might be able to use a word like Jubilant where the path your interactions will take you, how the people you speak to will respond in kind.

This much I know is true – people wound swop, if you talk about some dreadful experience the person you are talking to is socially conditioned to respond in kind, they will dredge their memory if necessary to produce and match you an oranges of oranges tale of woe. The same is true of  pleasure, joy and happiness. 

Redemption Song

How do you loose faith? In god or people in science or medicine. You feel let down …betrayed, an expectation that you think is reasonable goes unfulfilled. It’s a this very moment that I little piece of you breaks, it will never return, never grow back – it is gone. You have lost faith. Not all of it, but some. You cant measure the loss you can only feel it.

I knew a woman, her husband was a serial philanderer, years and affairs and yet more years and more women, had left her bitter, dark and cold. I didn’t understand her then but I do now.

Years and years of lies, broken promises, hope shattered again and again – she lost her faith, in her husband, in other woman, in the men that lied for him, in herself for hoping and believing, she stopped believing in happiness. Her heart was broken open and all that was good seemed to have spilled out to be replaced by a bitterness. “ I was a good loving caring wife and mother I should have been rewarded with a measure of happiness – I was rewarded with pain and lies therefore belief in a value system that punishes the good and rewards the wicked means there is no “true” measure of people and reward – there is nothing to believe in.

I know a couple that lost a son, they were broken hearted and could not find their God in this new son-less world, its been 12 years and they still cannot find their god anymore than they can find their son.  The years have slipped by one after the other marked only by the days that bring more pain… birthdays, deathdays, Christmas. Their faith forever shattered. “We were good simple people our son was the light of our lives if there was a god he would not take our son from us ergo there cannot be a god”

And me how and what faith have I lost..? some days people, the people I have loved that have lied that have betrayed me with duplicity ~ that somehow believed that the love I had for them was not one of acceptance and perhaps they were right because here we stand –estranged angry bitter. And as my mind swirls around remembering, seeing as if for the first time the lies the tricks, the accusations and the denials, I wonder again and again what did you want me for? I thought we were friends, comrades, compatriots, but you knew the truth – so set me free once and for all tell me what it was..Did I protect you? Give you money? Act as a cover? Of what use was I to you? Did it not exhaust you keeping up with the double dealing, remembering the falsehoods as they accumulated? Did you live in fear of what people would tell me? You need not have I always believed you, but then you knew I would.

The anger, the resentment the rage I carry – its not just for you but is for me also. My naivety, my willingness to believe every word you fed me – all evidence to the contrary. For you this is what I resent – you took away my choice. My choice to stay or to leave. You were people I trusted, people I loved in all of this I have lost some faith in humanity and this I grieve.

Is their salvation for any of us? Can we find again that which we have lost?

For the bitter and broken woman is it the love of a good man or perhaps the oblivion of the bottle ? For the lost couple will they see god again in the lives of their grandchildren or only when death calls to them?

And foe me where is my salvation ~ in the love of the others, in the kind gentle healing hands of friends in learning to see what healthy relationships are. In each day spent in truth and honesty. These things are like the waves of the ocean washing away the hurt, cleansing that which has been soiled and returning the sands of my soul to the sate of faith.

The lesson ~ We can all loose our faith and we can have it returned to us, as death is balanced by life, as betrayal is forgotten in the face undying loyalty, as lies turn to ash in the light of truth. If we have to courage to allow the healing, the courage to love again, the courage to believe and the faith to trust.

Things That I learnt in 2011

CODA – I learnt that I was a not anonymous co-dependent, through peer counseling and regular weekly meetings I have discovered a great deal about myself, and my behavior. I am now able to recognize the difference between healthy and unhealthy interactions with people and relationships.

I discovered Pinterest (www,pinterest.com) and am now an avid “pinner” all the images, quotes, pictures, ideas – everything I see and love on the internet  are no longer in jumbled folders on my computer, but are collected and pinned on my boards.

I learnt the difference between anxiety and excitement

I learnt when tested I really do value loyalty and friendship over money – and I liked myself for that.

I learned that life happens around you more than it happens to you and that you can respond as you choose – I re-affirmed for myself that doing or saying nothing is as much a powerful choice as wadding in guns blazing.

I made some new friends and let go of some old ones and was pleased with the acquisition and ok with the loss.

I accepted the seasons of living and allowed change

I learnt that sometimes it is not best for me to be in control!

When someone dear told me that the most important thing was to be around good people – I heard them, they said it didn’t matter so much how rich. how beautiful, how smart or how witty, that without being good people at the base of it all none of the other qualities were worth anything.

I learnt that few things give me as much pleasure as watching other people do what they want while allowing the people around them to enjoy the same freedom.

I learnt that the difference between good people and sociopaths can simply be the absence of compassion. That compassion is as vital and ingredient to a person as cocoa is to good chocolate

I practiced learning through pleasure and not only pain.

I rediscovered the depth of my love for BBC period drama’s

I learnt that being self indulgent can include taking great care of your mind and body  and that you are in-fact indulging the needs and wants of the self with the odd vitamin pill or walk  .

I discovered Italy and it was worth waiting for. Italy and the company of good woman can heal anything.

I experienced the love of a good man and saw not only myself but my children blossom beneath the warmth and light of his love. I saw to that he to was happy and healthy with me, that my love for him was healing and restorative.

I learnt to put down the things in my life that have been complicated and draining and although I know that this maybe an ongoing – for the moment I know simplicity, and stretches of serenity.

I have turned again to the making of bread, and know that this has been a constant in my life for as long as I can remember. That it grounds me and makes me feel whole. That I still find yeast to be as magical as I always did but that now with greater maturity I understand its nature and am not afraid of it, that I know it will work and how it will work