Which leads me to my next point. Today is also the funeral of a dear friend, one of many funerals around this time.
We seem to be having a death of someone important every other day at the moment, on the way here I was talking to a friend whose father died last week. I have not seen him for ages now will never see him again. That sounded a bit dull, sorry. The father in question was just epic when my Mother died around 12 years ago, she had been given a year to live and “popped her clogs” six months early, something I am silently grateful for as I was loosing my mind as time went by.
I had only just worked out how to say hello to her and now I was preparing to say goodbye, I spent the first 6 months chatting to her like I’d never chatted before, I managed to stop trying to prove myself to her (not that she ever asked for this in any way) I cut out showing off and painting a picture of this epic life that both she and I knew did not exist. More on this later.
The last few months have been the most difficult I have had for since her death in 2001,
which is mad becuase in both work and home life I am surrounded by some of the best people on the planet, I also have an amazing therapist that I see every week – I am finally getting to know who I am, learning to like myself and address issues that I have sat on for years.Going for a blood test is easy, looking at yourself is hard, in fact it is agony but certainly worth the effort – As cliche as it is to use a sporting analogy I have to, I have run marathons and know the pain and glory involved it often hurts mentally more than physically for me, the fear of giving up, not making it or having to drop out is huge. I once ran the Dublin marathon with a huge hangover and got my best time ever (not some thing I’d recommend at all) why I had to keep going was the shame of not doing it. That shame is often self imposed and leads to destruction, in this case not being able to walk for a few days. Or the same journey in a different context and marathon is starting having decided that I’ll finish and to keep the same pace all the way round, as you will have guessed this works significantly better.
The loss of so many people in the last few weeks made me seperate the drama from real issues, I could not work out what was going on with my life, my head felt like a disgusting soup that people kept adding to without telling me. Of course this is in my head, I have a great life and epic people around me, but everyday I was exhausted, confused and stopped. I have always had a deep conviction that life is urgent, people and conversations are more important than television, shit food and shopping malls. The roller coaster of the last year had taken it’s toll on me and those close to me more than I’d like to admit to myself – let alone other people.
This week has snapped me into focus, I could not get up this morning and made myself, Saturday I woke up with the most huge-est feeling of dread but was out the door with my son as soon as we could to go swimming with “The Godfather” and “the twins” – then everything was brilliant.
These sudden attacks of “dread” are the drama I talk about, I know they are complete bollox – even when they are happening – yet the “effort” to overcome them is huge, it is both rewarding and exhausting to beat one.
Over the last few months I have been writing but not really publishing, the guilt alone is killing me. The first thing I am going to do is press publish and get on with it.
Tomorrow – that will happen again, then suddenly I’ll be back to being a blogger again.
Thanks for reading
