A Resting Place

So I am here. After many months of wrangling, worrying and wondering if it would ever happen I have finally moved house. The last three and a half months have been nothing but activity – from the basic but gargantuan task of packing up a four bedroom house, to the endless legal appointments, and the downsizing. I have held sales, sold things on ebay and given away whatever was left to friends and charity.

Moving in was equally exciting, physically exhausting but positive. I could go and buy a new kettle or choose pictures for the walls. I laid awake some nights full of equal parts excitement and worry – one minute I would imagine the deal falling through at the last minute and the next I would think of where I would put my writing bureau. I didn’t have a full night’s sleep in the final week and the worry stopped me doing the basic things that help me stay balanced physically and mentally. I simply didn’t have time to walk the dog, or eat properly or get my prescription in on time. There were nights I went without the right tablets so popped up like an excited meerkat at 3am. Other nights I couldn’t get to sleep till I took diazepam and then felt groggy and out of touch all the next morning. Every nerve in my body was on tenterhooks and I kept saying to myself ‘when I get in the new house..’ after listing everything I needed to do better. I was hard on myself of course because I always am. Really I was only doing my best.

Then I got here and it was like a weight lifted from my shoulders. Of course lack of sleep and over excitement meant I broke my fingers dropping a picture in the first ten minutes I was there. It is quiet here. Not literally as quiet as my old house where I had no neighbours but there is a tangible calm. It is like going to Cornwall where the pace of life seems slower. Coming home is like going on holiday. It has changed some of my habits too. Instead of switching on TV at any old time and watching any rubbish that’s on, I think more about what I want to watch and only switch it on then. I listen to more radio and music, because I am cosier and in a much smaller house so a CD on in the sitting room is easily heard when I’m in the bath. I didn’t put a TV in my bedroom and I have internet access upstairs so when I am watching TV I really watch it, instead of watching with one eye and playing Bejewelled Blitz with the other. I think I have been working on overload for so long it was no wonder I recently relapsed in the spectacular way I did. Yes, sometimes these things just happen, but other times it is easy to see where I have made life difficult for myself. This time the divorce, the house move and all of those things were unavoidable, but the way I dealt with them wasn’t always helping. It is often easier to overload the brain with technology and sound rather than listen to your thoughts. It is hard to motivate yourself to cook good healthy meals for one or to get up and exercise every day.

I am hoping the quiet and shelter of my new home will be beneficial to me physically and mentally. It will give me the space to get over the changes in my life, but also foster a new way of living my life. Just so my friends don’t think I’m getting too zen and out of character I am having the excitement of New York City for a week’s holiday. Well, you can’t be quiet all the time can you?

Letting Go With Grace

Letting Go Of Things Not Meant For You

Today on Facebook I saw a great quote from Buddha about the three things that matter most in life and it fit into some things I’d been thinking about. It instantly moves you beyond the petty day to day struggles of life and the things you want for yourself, towards a more simple way of living. It matters only how much you love, how gently you live and (the one that clearly resonated with me) how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

It has been almost a year since my marriage broke up and I am now divorced. I have moved and am now settling into my new home and getting used to living alone – well as alone as you can feel with two cats, a dog and a tortoise. I have started to like my own company and look forward to getting home and creating my own space. This has been the longest period of living alone I have had in my whole life, maybe because I never gave myself chance to get used to it before and learn to value the quiet. I now have a craving for the peace of mind only silence can bring and often sit reading in the quiet, with no internet, no TV and no radio. The only sounds come from outside and there is the constant gentle sound of the bamboo wind chime or when really windy the Tibetan bell that hangs in the garden. I always needed sound before, perhaps to reassure myself that someone was out there, but now I don’t need that noise to feel comfortable.

Moving in to a quiet village with a meditation garden next door has also made me aware that I only follow one of Buddha’s edicts. I do love a great deal and never seem to be able to curb this side of my nature, even where it might seem against my best interest. I have taken huge risks in life in the name of love and sometimes they have paid off. Other times this ability to love has led me down difficult paths and into rash decisions. This is where Buddha’s other edicts come into effect.

I realised I don’t live gently. A new neighbour mentioned how the meditation garden seemed to have a gentling effect on the whole village, but I have had to start thinking about how I affect the garden. During moving in I have been a little like a bull in a china shop! On the first day, in a state of over-excitement, I tried to put up a huge print I’d had framed over the bath. There had been two nails already put into the wall and instead of checking them I rushed straight into hanging the print, when the nail snapped and my finger got trapped between the bathroom taps and the frame. I saved the enamel taps but definitely did not save my finger and spent the day in A and E. A few days later I banged the same finger, pulling bubble wrap off a picture and flinging my arm against a book case. I had legs covered in bruises from banging around and over working and then I shut my fingers in the dustbin as I put the lid down. I swore, loudly and was then horrified as I realised I was just over the hedge from people trying to meditate. No amount of concentration or mindfulness could have blanked out the bang I just made or the loud exclamation of ‘buggery bollocks’ that followed. I realised I was rushing into everything and getting completely exhausted and over-stressed, and for no good reason. It made me aware that I was living loudly, rashly and stressfully, not gently at all.

Yet, it was the third statement that really spoke to me; gracefully letting go of things not meant for me. It has been very hard for me to learn to let go in life. I hold onto things and internalise them. I have been surprised when living quietly in my own space, how much my thoughts have ranged through recent losses of my marriage, the home I’d lived in for 3 years, my friend and at Christmas my cat. The thoughts also ranged over past losses too; the miscarriages of my three children and breakdown of my first marriage, the loss of my second husband Jez six years ago and many other long term losses that maybe I hadn’t had the private space or quiet to deal with fully. Also being alone, by its very nature reminds me of those other times I was alone and brings up old memories. I also had to face the fact that I have now been married three times, which for reasons to do with my own moral code and my religious upbringing, makes me feel quite ashamed. I find myself embarrassed about saying it to people and never imagined myself being the person who is multiply married. Despite becoming a widow after my second marriage, clearly just one of those things that happen in life, I have to face the fact that I have made bad choices and wonder why that happened.  It is not possible for me to leave this issue unexamined, because I truly believe if you don’t analyse and work something out, you are bound to repeat those mistakes or patterns.

Not recognising things not meant for me has been a pattern in my life. A friend once said to me ‘every one can’t be THE one’ and I know rationally that’s right, but as a person of the age where I don’t want to date just for the sake of dating, I have never bothered starting with someone unless I felt it had potential. Spending time dating people who I have never met before seems like a terrible waste of my time – I’d rather be at a good film or play, or read a good book. I don’t believe in the no sex before marriage rule I’d grown up with, but think somewhere along the way I decided to invert the advice; instead of not having sex until I was married, I decided to marry everyone I had sex with!! With both my failed relationships there were red flags clear to all except me and only now I can see them, with hindsight. The problem is I couldn’t let go of these things. I kept working at it because I was determined that it would work, because so much of my love had gone into it. I also worked hard on myself because I am stubborn and don’t like something to beat me, but also because I always assumed it was my fault. Now I know it isn’t always my fault, but then what follows is a difficult realisation; if I continue to let someone treat me badly, and also go ahead and marry them or stay married to them, I do become partly to blame.

I have to start recognising those things that are not for me; things that might damage me or make me unhappy in the long term. This is a learning process but I understand that this letting go can take two forms; letting go completely of things that are harmful, but also letting go of the hurt, the blame, the anger and the guilt. To truly let go with grace instead of having to be dragged out kicking and screaming at everyone in my path. I am starting to recognise what is not good for me and what my boundaries are and I am starting to learn more forgiveness too. I am not entering into any sort of dating game, but it is learning to take forward and develop as I meet new people throughout my new life. Wish me luck.