Chronicles. Part I don't know.

I am low. And I have been bypassing. Using distraction and "Positive Thinking" to avoid pain. Gripped by fear. Fear of feeling. Feeling the loss. The change. I have so much beauty in my life. So much happiness. So much to be grateful for. So much that I am grateful for. And because of that I have been denying the other feelings. Ignoring them, hoping that they would see the error of their ways and disappear. But they have not. And the longer I hold onto happiness as a shield, the weaker my grip becomes. And now they are right here, surrounding me. Threatening to pull me under if I don't correctly deal with them. I know I have to turn. I know I have to face them. I know that my Sadness Dragon is simply trying to remind me that we can be friends, in the only way he knows how. And yet fear grips me. I don't want to be focussing on what I've lost. I want to be focussing on what I have. And yet I know the only way to see clearly what I have, is to go into, and through, what I have lost.

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing......Only I will remain. 

(Dune.)

There’s a phoenix on the horizon,

And she’s heading my way.

But the mirror tells me nothing,

And everything is grey.

(Me)

See then I have a tiny conversation with Liam and the happiness bounces forward with a big shiny Helloooo! And the sadness stands in the corner kicking its heels, waiting … And I feel myself glancing back at it, and my heart sinks knowing I have to go and see it, and the joy from a moment earlier diminishes. And I feel ashamed. Ashamed that I can't hold onto a moment's joy without letting the sadness of yesterday get in the way. But and, it is also the sadness of today. Because it is here, today.

I am very aware that, had I taken a different fork, in ten days time, or thereabouts, I would be giving birth. Life would be utterly different. Unrecognisably different to how it is, here today. Somewhere, some theories postulate, I am living that life. I catch glimpses of it when I sleep, when I dream. I catch glimpses of a daughter at 2, 3, 7 years old. Running, laughing, tantruming. Sunshine and rain. Times of energy and times of exhaustion. She has plaits and she is a girl. She is a woman and I am older. I have lived that lifetime in an instant. And the old woman in me grieves for the loss of that lifetime. She is near death. And yet she is on the verge of life. On the 17^th of July it will be time to let go. Time to leave that lifetime in that lifetime. Let memories lie where they fall.

And so I am sad. Crumpled in. Weary. Another wave to ride. To take me closer to the shore of this sea of grief. I promised I would never regret my decisions. And I do not still. I am stronger for the responsibility of my decisions. It does not make me a bad mother: being a good mother to myself.

So we are at the bottom of that particular well of sadness, and what can we see? We see that we can stay here, but that it won't change anything. We see that we wrote a promise on the wall the last time we were here, and that to honour that promise we need to be let this be, and move forward. We see honour in the way we have behaved, the way we have chosen. And shame, that most heaviest of rocks, falls away. A breath. The sunlight. A head above water.

Trust.

Everything is as it should be.

July 7th 2012. 3.29pm.