Recovery
It has taken me longer than usual to recover from the school term. Today I felt half way human. It usually takes me about two days to feel human, this time, a little longer. There was the trip to the Causeway in between which was great. The truth is that I just can't seem to get it together to do the things I had planned to do at all.
Like properly clean the house.
I have however spent a lot of time watching Netflix. I am beginning to think that maybe this may have something to do with the state I am in. Netflix addiction. Which apparently is a thing.
Also the truth is that I feel a teensy bit directionless. Apart from the usual day to day school things which is of course very directed... but in general, I feel quite confused with the way the world is now. I really need to get back to my routine before I left for Rome. I think I may also be recovering from Rome.
Anyways....
Direction in life.
I am a little bit afraid because of the changes which will happen when Oisin takes his first step into the wider world. He isn't going very far, but it is still a big step and I am a little afraid. I wonder what the future holds for him. I went through the same thing after I left JC - although really, my life has always been planned out. I think to myself that I have lived a truly fearless life, but the truth is that I have gone from one island to the next. OK, it is not the SAME island, but I have always chosen the safe option. I know people think this is weird, but it is true. I have followed my heart, my own path, whatever it is you want to call it, but it has always been, in its own way conventional, often filled with status - even if it is slightly outside the status quo kinda status.
It has been university, job, marriage, family and new job. For the past fifteen years the focus has been solely on the boys. Everything I have done I have done for them, and everything else has taken a huge backseat to them. Motherhood though has meant that I have made enormous sacrifices - personal sacrifices. Time, energy, everything really. And now, this is slowly coming to an end. Perhaps this is what is making me feel uneasy. Also six years of being a Steiner teacher has just gone suddenly. When I first started in Class One, it seemed like a very long road ahead of me - now a curve in the road is signaled up ahead and I cannot see beyond it. For the first time in my life it feels like I am not quite sure what the future holds for me. It is making me anxious in my own way. It is interesting isn't it, how time suddenly catches up with you? One minute every step of your life is charted and mapped and the next... you aren't sure what's coming up.
So I think... wow. The future.
The thing is that there is also the small matter of my parents getting older. I think that is one of the many things they never tell you about life - or maybe they DO tell you but you only listen when you are facing it yourself. The pathos of being the next in line - of being the elder. Of being on the front line where you start to take all the decisions, all the responsibilities - and you feel singularly unprepared. It is like when you have children, you never real how TIRED you are going to be. I think that is also cycling away in the background. A tremendous step change in our lives. It is really awful. I can't seem to find any positives in this transition at all.
When I think of my relationship with my mom and dad, I regret in a way I only very recently realised how much they loved me. Only VERY recently. It wasn't as if I didn't know previously, but I didn't really pay any attention to it. It was only when I was really in pain that I saw how much they would do for me. And I was utterly humbled by it. When I think of parents, when I think of how a child would react to the passing of an aged parent... what would they feel?
If they were close to them, like I am with my parents, such sorrow and gratitude. If I wasn't close to them, then - what? A non response? What about if I hated them? Then relief to be free from a burden? How is the passing of a parent in anyway positive? And yet, YET... somehow, we are to dredge up something good from it? Many of my friends have lost one, if not, both parents. I dread to think of the emptiness it leaves. It isn't like the birth of a child, which was probably my last truly momentous event in my life - the death of a parent... the death of a friend. Could it be that from around now that the sorrows in our lives will outweigh our joys and that when it finally comes round for our turn to shake off the mortal coil that we will be glad to leave?
Death is now a reality in my life, in a way in which it has never been. Always around the corner that my life will be touched by it somehow increases in its probability each day in which I live.
And yet, my life is amazing. Why do I bother myself with such dark thoughts? Somewhere I know there is the creature which will crawl out oozing from the slime. Somewhere in the depths of the lake below.
I am comforted that I am not going to be truly alone in that I have my family - my own family, I have good good friends. I have things which I have done with my life. Even if all the world were to disappear and I be placed alone in a box, I have luminous memories - of places seen and love had. It is a foolish fear, a phantom fear, which will only be banished by being placed in the maelstrom, and I don't want to be placed there, and yet there is certainly where I will be at some stage in my life. It is a terror which I cannot contemplate, even now as I write it, it feels like I can't quite believe it... even though, truthfully I contemplate death everyday.
I see now that it does not matter if you contemplate it everyday - the only thing good about contemplating death everyday is that should you look back you are less likely to regret as you would have done all the things you wanted to do. It does not detract from the horror of death at all. Or the pain of it. In the end... in the end death is that final wrenching and nothing will numb its sting.
It seems idiotic writing this when there is a lot of housework to be done.
Hmmm....
Still though, when I think of the many things which I have done and can do, I am brightened by it. I can do many wonderful things. Play the piano, sew, cook, garden, draw, teach, felt, blacksmith - I know that I can turn my hand to many things. I have my health. I have a home I can call my own. There are many incredible things which I can be grateful for. It feels like I suppose there is a marshaling in of a new era in my life. Things cannot go on as they have done - emotionally, mentally... I need to revise is it really business as usual or am I to prepare for a new time coming?
I think I need to go away and think about all this. It is time for me to reevaluate what is going to happen - indeed who I really am. And I can't do this on the blog. It will have to be a pen and paper job. Whatever happens though, I will have to continue going forward. It will be about the direction I take over the next ten or fifteen years.
It has just occurred to me that I have asked for a boring life from the universe about five years ago and this was given to me. Give me this to rest in, I asked. I just want a life without incidents, a life where I just stamp the books and go home. And that was given to me. I was able to REST - I know that I have complained about being tired all the time, but I was able to rest with the routine, with the regularity of the day to day. Of the stability. I asked the universe for it and it was given to me. For five years I lived my life very unlike the life which I had led previously. I just played the score on the sheets and kept time to the music. As best I could. And this was great because I was doing a job I loved and which was challenging enough. I had the family. I went for my holidays in Singapore - I was allowed to have long ones with spend as much time as I could with my family there and they spent loads of time here too, in the house they had bought. These last few years have been precious good peaceful ones. To live life so placidly. I remember saying this to Jo - four years ago, outside the school - I said to her, I have asked the universe to give me a boring life. She replied with a laugh, that is what we all should be asking for.
I think that what is happening is that in my gut I know that a huge change is coming and that my time of rest is up. I asked for it, and it was given. Five years was given. And I am grateful. I am deeply deeply grateful. Now it is time to take the sword in my hand, or the rake or the cultivator, whatever it is, and get back into the fray once again. The dramas will not be of my making, that I also know. But I will have to be an actor in it. And life is telling me now, the future hurtling towards me is now saying, get ready, get ready. The storm is coming. Get ready for it.
Nothing stays the same. Change is the only thing we can count on. I love writing. I love writing because it gives me the ability to think things through. It feels right now this. And I must go away and think about how I am to live.
But just right now, as I am about to depart, it is raining, of course. Peter, Oisin and I are in the conservatory and Ghin is playing Ark in the living room. It is warm and cosy inside here and Peter and Oisin and laughing about some instructions that Oisin has sent to Peter about printing out testpapers. There are birds feeding outside on the feeders and Katie Mehlua is playing over the speakers. It is one of those happy afternoons. Yes, I am grateful.
Like properly clean the house.
I have however spent a lot of time watching Netflix. I am beginning to think that maybe this may have something to do with the state I am in. Netflix addiction. Which apparently is a thing.
Also the truth is that I feel a teensy bit directionless. Apart from the usual day to day school things which is of course very directed... but in general, I feel quite confused with the way the world is now. I really need to get back to my routine before I left for Rome. I think I may also be recovering from Rome.
Anyways....
Direction in life.
I am a little bit afraid because of the changes which will happen when Oisin takes his first step into the wider world. He isn't going very far, but it is still a big step and I am a little afraid. I wonder what the future holds for him. I went through the same thing after I left JC - although really, my life has always been planned out. I think to myself that I have lived a truly fearless life, but the truth is that I have gone from one island to the next. OK, it is not the SAME island, but I have always chosen the safe option. I know people think this is weird, but it is true. I have followed my heart, my own path, whatever it is you want to call it, but it has always been, in its own way conventional, often filled with status - even if it is slightly outside the status quo kinda status.
It has been university, job, marriage, family and new job. For the past fifteen years the focus has been solely on the boys. Everything I have done I have done for them, and everything else has taken a huge backseat to them. Motherhood though has meant that I have made enormous sacrifices - personal sacrifices. Time, energy, everything really. And now, this is slowly coming to an end. Perhaps this is what is making me feel uneasy. Also six years of being a Steiner teacher has just gone suddenly. When I first started in Class One, it seemed like a very long road ahead of me - now a curve in the road is signaled up ahead and I cannot see beyond it. For the first time in my life it feels like I am not quite sure what the future holds for me. It is making me anxious in my own way. It is interesting isn't it, how time suddenly catches up with you? One minute every step of your life is charted and mapped and the next... you aren't sure what's coming up.
So I think... wow. The future.
The thing is that there is also the small matter of my parents getting older. I think that is one of the many things they never tell you about life - or maybe they DO tell you but you only listen when you are facing it yourself. The pathos of being the next in line - of being the elder. Of being on the front line where you start to take all the decisions, all the responsibilities - and you feel singularly unprepared. It is like when you have children, you never real how TIRED you are going to be. I think that is also cycling away in the background. A tremendous step change in our lives. It is really awful. I can't seem to find any positives in this transition at all.
When I think of my relationship with my mom and dad, I regret in a way I only very recently realised how much they loved me. Only VERY recently. It wasn't as if I didn't know previously, but I didn't really pay any attention to it. It was only when I was really in pain that I saw how much they would do for me. And I was utterly humbled by it. When I think of parents, when I think of how a child would react to the passing of an aged parent... what would they feel?
If they were close to them, like I am with my parents, such sorrow and gratitude. If I wasn't close to them, then - what? A non response? What about if I hated them? Then relief to be free from a burden? How is the passing of a parent in anyway positive? And yet, YET... somehow, we are to dredge up something good from it? Many of my friends have lost one, if not, both parents. I dread to think of the emptiness it leaves. It isn't like the birth of a child, which was probably my last truly momentous event in my life - the death of a parent... the death of a friend. Could it be that from around now that the sorrows in our lives will outweigh our joys and that when it finally comes round for our turn to shake off the mortal coil that we will be glad to leave?
Death is now a reality in my life, in a way in which it has never been. Always around the corner that my life will be touched by it somehow increases in its probability each day in which I live.
And yet, my life is amazing. Why do I bother myself with such dark thoughts? Somewhere I know there is the creature which will crawl out oozing from the slime. Somewhere in the depths of the lake below.
I am comforted that I am not going to be truly alone in that I have my family - my own family, I have good good friends. I have things which I have done with my life. Even if all the world were to disappear and I be placed alone in a box, I have luminous memories - of places seen and love had. It is a foolish fear, a phantom fear, which will only be banished by being placed in the maelstrom, and I don't want to be placed there, and yet there is certainly where I will be at some stage in my life. It is a terror which I cannot contemplate, even now as I write it, it feels like I can't quite believe it... even though, truthfully I contemplate death everyday.
I see now that it does not matter if you contemplate it everyday - the only thing good about contemplating death everyday is that should you look back you are less likely to regret as you would have done all the things you wanted to do. It does not detract from the horror of death at all. Or the pain of it. In the end... in the end death is that final wrenching and nothing will numb its sting.
It seems idiotic writing this when there is a lot of housework to be done.
Hmmm....
Still though, when I think of the many things which I have done and can do, I am brightened by it. I can do many wonderful things. Play the piano, sew, cook, garden, draw, teach, felt, blacksmith - I know that I can turn my hand to many things. I have my health. I have a home I can call my own. There are many incredible things which I can be grateful for. It feels like I suppose there is a marshaling in of a new era in my life. Things cannot go on as they have done - emotionally, mentally... I need to revise is it really business as usual or am I to prepare for a new time coming?
I think I need to go away and think about all this. It is time for me to reevaluate what is going to happen - indeed who I really am. And I can't do this on the blog. It will have to be a pen and paper job. Whatever happens though, I will have to continue going forward. It will be about the direction I take over the next ten or fifteen years.
It has just occurred to me that I have asked for a boring life from the universe about five years ago and this was given to me. Give me this to rest in, I asked. I just want a life without incidents, a life where I just stamp the books and go home. And that was given to me. I was able to REST - I know that I have complained about being tired all the time, but I was able to rest with the routine, with the regularity of the day to day. Of the stability. I asked the universe for it and it was given to me. For five years I lived my life very unlike the life which I had led previously. I just played the score on the sheets and kept time to the music. As best I could. And this was great because I was doing a job I loved and which was challenging enough. I had the family. I went for my holidays in Singapore - I was allowed to have long ones with spend as much time as I could with my family there and they spent loads of time here too, in the house they had bought. These last few years have been precious good peaceful ones. To live life so placidly. I remember saying this to Jo - four years ago, outside the school - I said to her, I have asked the universe to give me a boring life. She replied with a laugh, that is what we all should be asking for.
I think that what is happening is that in my gut I know that a huge change is coming and that my time of rest is up. I asked for it, and it was given. Five years was given. And I am grateful. I am deeply deeply grateful. Now it is time to take the sword in my hand, or the rake or the cultivator, whatever it is, and get back into the fray once again. The dramas will not be of my making, that I also know. But I will have to be an actor in it. And life is telling me now, the future hurtling towards me is now saying, get ready, get ready. The storm is coming. Get ready for it.
Nothing stays the same. Change is the only thing we can count on. I love writing. I love writing because it gives me the ability to think things through. It feels right now this. And I must go away and think about how I am to live.
But just right now, as I am about to depart, it is raining, of course. Peter, Oisin and I are in the conservatory and Ghin is playing Ark in the living room. It is warm and cosy inside here and Peter and Oisin and laughing about some instructions that Oisin has sent to Peter about printing out testpapers. There are birds feeding outside on the feeders and Katie Mehlua is playing over the speakers. It is one of those happy afternoons. Yes, I am grateful.
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