September

 September 1, 2020

 

I arrived on the birthday in a more celebratory mood. The angst and sadness I felt the previous Sunday largely gone after contemplation and charting of the first six decades of my life. 

 

It was a busy week, but I had hours for reflection built into the days. I plotted my life chart, discovering when the important influences of my life began and how they flowed. I saw the shadow times and the highs. I saw that it was not just what happened and what I did that was important, but who I did it with was even more significant. I included in my chart the people who were part of my life in its different phases. An amazing tapestry and deeper musings emerged…

 

Starting with the mum, who never understood me and with whom I had a tempestuous relationship until the 40’s. She was twenty when she birthed me had much of her own life to explore as I went into my teenage rebellious years. The dad who I lost when I was ten but who lived within me as the template for living outside people’s expectations and defining my life on my own terms, whose spirit showed up to guide me during my darkest hours. The brother I adored but who betrayed us, and who I don’t see anymore. The little sister who I ignored when she was a child, but who is now a unique bestie.

 

Shy and with undefined self-esteem, and poor social skills, I had few friends in school — few more in University. The deepest, the most authentic, the most challenging and nourishing friendships I formed were in the late 30’s and 40’s and 50's. Strong connections that distance and time cannot weaken.  

 

It was one of these that wrote to me after feeling the sadness in my last blog. She said, I wish you could see yourself the way others see you. You have done much. Most significant for me is your inner work which then manifests in whatever you do, work, karate, writing, volunteering. One gets richer with the other and there is nothing ever static in your life. 

 

I was feeling stagnant, and I needed to hear that. It reminded me of Hafiz’s quote: ‘I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.’

We all have moments when we can’t see our own light and need others to help us see ourselves.

 

Other friends echoed and shared how they saw my last decade in private messages or comments on fb. Some told me of the way I had influenced or supported them in their lives. Particularly moving was a call from a friend who I had sat and listened to for hours, accompanied him to clinics and other places he needed to be, during the most difficult time of his life. He reminded me of a day he had arrived at my home completely lost and we had sat by the sea and drunk two bottles of wine. 

 

I am grateful to those in my life who have sustained me in small or huge ways, but even more so to those who have leaned on me for support and allowed me to be a makeshift guardian angel in their lives. I once had a dream where a voice said to me, ‘If you are lucky you will be sent an angel, but if you are luckier you will get to be an angel.’ My spouse and daughter are those who have been both to me – my angels and people who helped me to learn to be one myself. 

 

These reminders collectively turned me towards a celebratory mood for the sixtieth. 

But a few days later, today, I am leaden, grappling once again with difficult bodily sensations and emotional states, after being let down once more by the bank. I feel like a plant whose sap has drained out, I feel like my oesophagus and trachea have been clamped tight, I feel like a grate has been run over the delicate skin of my chest and left me burning. It is September and processes and requests initiated on June 11^th are still being ignored or answered by, ‘wait till tomorrow.’ The frustration and humiliation of being at the mercy of completely incompetent and uncaring individuals has returned. I slip into the state of feeling, What’s the point of doing anything. Nothing ever works. 

Standstill. I feel at a standstill externally and internally.

 

A part of me knows that there is more to life. That the next decade might be one of much transformation. But I am here at this moment.