It is when I am working, that is, when I am in the work that I feel the least stress and anxiety. I am at it. I am doing what I am supposed to be doing and things, though not always being solved, are being dealt with. It is when I am outside of this architecture of productivity that I flail. Like yesterday and like the other weekend mornings when domestic travail insists on precedence.
Learning to yield to what is lifelong. I have moments of it. Moments that are easier when one is away from the humdrum of the everyday. And yet, this is the true arena in which to learn it. Here, plodding along day-by-day, writing. It is without glory, or much intrinsic reward, just a little peace, sometimes at the end of it. A sleep, earned.
I written about the notes before, the post-it notes that he leaves on the stairs for me to find in the wee small hours when I am awake (and invariably fretting) and he is asleep. They are mini pep-talks, expressions of love and a snapshot of the weather. I love them. They are my solace in those dark, solitary hours. I use post-its too, for those thoughts that come post-writing. Yellow squares. Just like in his old office. Yellow squares everywhere.
I wake with voices in my head. Conversations. An unknown dialogue, often with which I have no involvement. What is it I am hearing? They are not distressing to me. Mostly, at the least the ones that I remember, they are inconsequential. A nothing.
I wake already worrying. Oh, about all and nothing. I want to be safe while knowing that life, the universe, cannot offer that and that all I can do is live this moment, this step, this breath. That is the key, just that, that small act of acceptance of my own vulnerability. And know it, own it, hold it, close.
It comes like a hard thing. It takes over my breath, my joy and my hope. I know that it is not real. And that any harm it threatens is illusory. And yet. And yet it assails me. As it did this morning. In those wee small hours.
I’ve always fretted. And my whole body feels it. Mostly it is about not being good enough, of falling short. And yet, as I try to remind myself daily, if not hourly, death will take me soon, so take James Taylor and ‘just enjoy the ride’. After all, you’ve nothing to lose.
There is no real escape. This is what I have chosen, my life, my work and the set of circumstances with which I must live. I can pretend that getting in a car and driving somewhere away from my domestic circumstances will make it all different. It doesn’t. And then there is the return, that slow picking-up where I left it all. That’s the worst of it.
It has been going awry for some days now, ever since I couldn’t log in to LBU’s site and the technician got me to change the browser. I don’t like it. It is unfamiliar and keeps sending me to places and uploading stuff I do not want. I know that, in the whole scheme of things and the horrors that are going on in the skies, it is nothing, but it unsettles me when I need not to be so. And today is a supervision.
So many of my dreams involve walking. Not surprising really, considering how much I do of it in my waking hours. Mostly the environments are urban, sometimes at night, sometimes in the day. Last night, I had to go back. Firstly because I had left my handbag behind. I was stressed. But returning to what I think was a restaurant, it had been found and put in a cupboard. I watched as she got it out for me, out of a cupboard that was chockfull of stuff. Then I was going back again, back to a house where there was washing machine full of clothes that I had no time to wash. All so banal, but at the time it was significant. The going back certainly is, was. Where was I going back to, and what was I trying to refind? Will the next few dreams begin to make sense of this for me? Shall I ask them?