Author: Ellen Bell

I’m a short fuse at the moment. I’m tired. Dog-tired. There isn’t enough rest to be had, switching off. It makes me ratty, irritable. He bears the brunt, bless him. Yesterday it was all those packages. I’m so lucky. I have so much. There is no lack of food, comfort, warmth and so on to be had. But sometimes it all comes at once and there’s all that packaging to deal with. Mountains of it sometimes for so few things. I throw a wobbly and unsettle myself even more. Oh, give me a peaceful mind and body and a trusting soul. I’ve so much to wrestle with still and there’s always this doubt that I will be found out….. All I can do is try. And I do, I promise.

I kept waking up – 10pm then 12 am and so on, thinking that I’d missed my alarm or slept through it. It’s anxiety, of course. I’ve still so much to do and chasing and grabbing at time is essential. Or at least, that is how it seems. I cram so much in each day and at the end of each one I don’t feel I’ve achieved much. He would say that it’s not just about achieving, that it should involve just being too. He is right. He is wiser than me. And I love him for it.

Fear makes me scratchy, irritable, tetchy and generally cross. I can feel the frown on my face and it’s not a pretty sight. It’s usually something to do with work. Something I’ve yet to resolve. It’s an uncomfortable place to be in. And I take it out on him too often. He is forbearing, mostly. I just need to be here at my desk facing it, working through it. And all the other stuff makes me resentful – those domestic things that I want done but get in the way. They don’t of course, it’s just my mood that is imposing a grey, heavy kind of obligation onto them. Buck up, Ellen. Look outwards. Relish the intellectual puzzle of it. You will solve it. You always do.

I could just rush it and get straight to work, or as many people appear to do, not bother at all, grab a piece of toast and head to my desk. I don’t. We don’t. I, we, take time over it. There’s music from Radio 3, he does a quick weather report, then reads the online papers, I read my book and we eat. I go back and forth during it. All those pees I must do and there’s his bed to make. Today was a philosophy seminar in response to my nascent grappling with Derrida, Satre et al. We talked of Foucault and the Post Structuralists and Tallcot Parsons and the Structuralists. He becomes a teacher and I a pupil. Gobby, mind.

No moon this morning. I missed it.

He bought me a new wall clock for my studio. I’d love to feel able to buy a classic designer one but perhaps it would look out of place among the IKEA tat that fills this white space. It’s OK, I’ve made other choices. And this one, though inexpensive has a nice pale green around its rim and a gentle, comforting tick. I am so lucky compared to many. So lucky. We talked about the twelve people who drowned trying to make the crossing across the Channel. And our government want to send such wretches to Rwanda, and after such travails. It sickens me.

Is it a full moon tonight or the next night? It’s hard to say. Some say (courtesy of Google) that is the 25th April others that it is the 23rd, today. Its appearance explains my unsettledness. The tension in my back and my neck. It stirs things up. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but at the moment I want peace. I need to concentrate. There are so many new things to adjust to, to learn and meet. I must be brave. Must.

Rush, rush, rushing. Time slips through my fingers. Is it that my lists are too long, or is it that I am getting slower at accomplishing the crossing off of things on them? There is no time to do all that I wish, have or need to do. It makes for a rich life, but only when I can find the time to sit and appreciate it. This isn’t a mindful way. I know this. But there are these demands that things are done. And of course there’s my fear, always there, of failure, of not understanding, or of how to do so many new things. I want to walk for longer in the mornings, I miss it. I do walk but I have to curtail it to fit all the other things in. It is my fault. I need to take stock and sit in the sun a while.

She died last Thursday. I didn’t know. She called to tell me. She was inconsolable, not just about the death, her death, but her life as a whole. It’s been so difficult, she said. She died from a fall. She was in so much pain, she said, I think she just gave up. She was in her eighties. I understand. She gave me shelter. She gave me a small sense of belonging. I needed both these things at the time. She was seductive. A force. A power. An iconoclast. She took one over. She took me over. I needed it then. I shall think of her. Of you. Rest in peace.

Numbers are significant for me. I count things. It’s a superstitious thing. A preparation thing. A rationalising of chaos. Today is a 5 day. The number 5 is a scratchy, metallic kind of day for me, or at least it can be. Hard, sometimes, they are also portentious days, things happen. 7 days are kinder, warmer, more loving. They are my favourites, though more the 7 days than the 5s. It’s a silliness, really. I know this, or at least my rational self does. What harm does it do?

I have sciatica. Again. I try to accept it, as I try to accept most of the things that I cannot change or do anything about (such as the newly-arrived splat of seagull guano that has run down two flights of windows). I walk with it and through it. But at the moment it is not shifting. It tightens the back of my thighs and my buttocks. I just keep moving. That is all I can do. Plus, I am dog-tired after a long day yesterday. A rewarding one, but long. Today will be another such. And I long to sleep.