#25.21 - Back on track: literally

Yesterday I couldn't sleep. It was the moon probably. Or just so many things on my mind. Trying to gain focus again and again and again. slipping and falling slipping and missing, like a climber on a frozen waterfall. I don't do well with cold places either. Or things that require upper body strength. I am just worn out of trying and trying and trying. 

At 1 am I ended up tidying the cupboards while listening to a podcast of someone asking why the death rate amongst the elderly has increased so much since the vaccine has been given. Looking at charts. I tidied for around an hour, the spice cupboard, the fridge, the pantry. Taking and cleaning things out. I have no more appetite. That's when I know I'm not feeling great. I just don't want to eat. Maybe this will last for a few days. It won't hurt me not eating a few days. 

Then feeling better, like I had achieved something, I went back to bed and wrote in my journal where I write what I REALLY think and feel. And after some scribbling, I wrote this:

Well first I wrote how much I hated myself, there I admitted it. And I wrote a whole list of other things - shadow stuff - and then I looked at the list and I felt better. Because facing the shadow is the worst and best thing you can do because once you do it, you realise that it's not so bad. No one died, literally. No one. And then I wrote the following.

1. I am glad I did not take part in the neoliberal destruction of our environment - o.e. stayed in my life in Singapore, ended up being some pseudo person in the civil service or in PR, and just enjoyed being some kind of person of note in Singapore. It was have not only been too easy, it would have been wrong. And the past thirty years have shown me that. I am glad I didn't take part in the neoliberal destruction of the environment.

2. I'm glad that I looked after my sons - I chose that over pursuing a career. I decided to not go head to head with Peter over who looked after whom which I did for a short while when I was in my early 30s, and just spent that time I could have with them looking after them.

3. I'm glad that I did not stay in the house with Peter since September. I just couldn't have done it any other way any more. When I went back to the house I felt a sense of being smothered. I am so glad I left. From the small things like using the toilet to cleaning the house to having to put up with his hypocrisy - when I think about it, I feel dizzy with nausea. 

So I am glad for the choices I have made. I did try my best. I was not perfect. I made choices which may have been wrong but have always gone with my conscience. And for that I must suffer. I will bear the consequence.

The world today is in such a huge mess that not one single person can rectify it. We have to do it altogether. We have to do it for ourselves. Yesterday wrote about how planets affect each other - stars affect each other and in so doing they affect us. Everything in the universe is placed just so. It is incomprehensible why we are where we are - but we just are. We are here. And in so many ways that must be enough for us. We cannot look beyond the veil. We cannot understand or even see the mind of God. The one question will have to be left dangling - forever.

And the mystery will not be the answer, but WHY we ask the question. What makes us want to do this? Like why do we have the capacity to suffer? Why do we have the capacity to ask these questions?

It has been days since I've been able to write like this. I realise - I used to think - that writing like this was an automatic thing for me. But I now realise that it is not - it is not an automatic thing. It requires effort and some skill - and it is not easy to place one word before the other and have it make some sense. Over the past month or so I have been feeling a strange gloaming which has been like a fog. This morning I had a serious hot flush - which made me think either panic attack, which I have never had, or hormones, which I believe there are none left in me any longer.

So what was it?

It is now 7.30 am. I have prised a few hundred words from my brain. Four days of not writing. It has felt a lot longer than four days. What will the world make of this time? All these words just disappearing when a server shuts down one day. When, not if. When. 

I must stop brooding so deeply. Go for my run and then start the day. It felt good yesterday sorting things, cleaning things, getting things in order. It felt good. After my run - school. I feel an awful tedium when it comes to school. February is going to be a hard month. We must find reasons to keep going. Reasons to keep the faith. Running is one of the things which helps. I remember the first time I realised this. I thought to myself I cannot but keep going, one foot in front of the other. I have no choice. The future is pulling me ahead. I can only say yes or no to it. We have no choice. We are prisoners of the future. In that there is only one things we can be sure about - the sun will rise and we will have no choice but to face its coming, once again.