Sometimes they are indivisible to me. Both are spurred by fear. Fear of failure mostly, of not being good enough. When I am in the process of doing them, it is better, though only marginally. Stepping out is the worst, then the judgement comes. I see everything that I do through the eyes of the child I once was. Stumbling, fumbling and failing to make sense of what was going on around me. Or at least that is how it felt, and still does, to a certain extent. Can I do this, really?
I had two – flu and pneumonia. I thought I’d be untouched. I wasn’t. They’ve felled me. I tried to walk and to do my usual yoga, but to no avail. I will also try to do some work, or at least begin. There’s power in the beginning of something, Goethe wrote. Amen to that.
He read out John Harris’ article on Liverpool’s homeless to me as I made supper. It stood me still. Each month so many people, even those in work are just ten pounds or so away from losing the roof over their heads. It’s heartbreaking. I know that fear. It stays with you. Always. There must be more that can be done. We are a wealthy nation, why must so many of its citizens go without shelter, safety and food? Why?
It takes him over. He cannot contain it. It must out. And it did. Yesterday. He told her that as a result he was in the dog house. He wasn’t. I understood. Totally. It’s harder when his rage is directed at me. Then the forgiving takes longer. Not yesterday. I saw it clearly. And it’s ok.
It’s a contentious subject for some. I became too strident. She took offence. I didn’t mean her to. I apologised, and I think she understood. But her talk had unsettled me. I’ve never known the right course of action. Perhaps there is no such thing. It’s an emotional thing, our relationship with food and eating. Well, it certainly is for me. I want to understand, my relationship in particular and to do better by my body. For, all too often, it doesn’t seem to like the decisions I make on its behalf. Do better, Ellen. Do better.
It’s coming. I feel it in the flat more than outside. A beginning of the nipping, sometimes biting of my toes, and the ends of my fingers feeling cold and often numb. He reads out the sunrise times up until the end of December when it is nearly 8.30 am. Shall we survive it? It’s a closing in. And I don’t want to go out into it. That dark. That full dark.
It skins me. I am stripped bare by these public engagements. They are small things but, as far I am concerned, loaded with judgement. I know that I don’t see clearly, that my response is a long ago one, remembered and forever saved as a default position. Nevertheless, it is excruciating.
I judge myself harshly. I try not to do the same with others. I know I do though. I hear it inside my head. Endeavouring always to attempt to see the world from their point of view, such judgement is, in time, ameloriated. We do we do it? Is it a form of self-bolstering? I don’t know. It’s a learnt behaviour certainly. Just be kind. That’s all. Just kind. Be kind to your own kind. Which, by the way, is everyone. Humankind be kind. That’s all.
I wept for them yesterday. Though all the time knowing that I was also weeping for myself and the grief I feel at having to live in a world were such suffering is experienced by so many. And not knowing what to do about it. She wrote of a man who’d lost all his family and how he just kept walking around the rubble in circles. Around and around, circling the ground. I cannot watch such scenes, reading about them is bad enough. And yet, we must know. We cannot hide from it. Ever.
He writes of our need to ‘fix’ the space – to control it, to impose order on it, to find a safe place within it. He is right. It takes me back. And I miss it.