Introspective today...............

Warning...this post is full of analogies,mixed metaphors and other such stuff, and I have no intention of changing them! 


This is the post I wrote on Monday but didn't hit publish then. So here we go .........

Pins and needles, skin crawling, wave after wave of weird sensations - none of them good. Gah. Mind over matter, Linds, get on with things. Go for a walk in your garden and examine seedlings or something. Breathe ....in through the nose and blow up the stomach and out through the mouth deflating stomach till it feels as if it is touching your spine.......in 2, 3, 4, 5 out 2, 3, 4, 5........

I can hear the pilates teacher, and Mrs Sternweiler echoing through my mind........

Hello.

It is Monday already. At 2am, I was lying in my bed, curled up in a nest. 5 down pillows in a U shape around me, on top of a feather mattress topper covered with a crisp white cotton sheet, and a soft down duvet covering me like a cloud. And the Happy Quilt. My nest. And  I thought just how wonderful it was to love the simple things in my life, like the nest. Warm. Soft. Safe.

It is a wonderful thing.

Feeling safe. I have just had an appointment via telephone with one of my consultants in Bath, and it was good to talk to her, and as I was talking, I thought of the wave analogy, you see. You know the one.....the seventh wave is always the biggest. 6 fairly uniform waves roll shore-wards, and then there is the 7th one, which is bigger, has the tendency to knock you off your feet.

Unless you are a surfer, of course. They wait for that wave and then they leap onto their surfboards and ride it in to the sandy beaches. If not, they wipe out spectacularly. But they are out there again, straight away, waiting for the big one to come in so they can have a wild ride. Surfing, unfortunately, is not one of my skills right now.

I just thought of that one now. After the conversation. It is very apt. A wild ride. See: My Life.

What I talked about on the phone though, was very different. Sometimes the 7th wave comes in, bigger than the preceding 6, but it doesn't stop. Like a tsunami, it keeps on going at that "big" level for what seems like forever, wiping away everything in its path.

And sometimes, life feels like that. For me right now, it means that I am feeling a little lost. Maybe adrift somewhere in the aftermath of the 7th huge wave which didn't stop.

Then, changing the scene entirely, I thought about my apple tree and pruning. You have to prune the apple tree. You need to choose the right time to do so, so you hack away all the long spindly branches which have reached out in all directions, and then that encourages new growth. New directions. New paths. Of course, if you are too vigorous with the hacking, you can kill the tree. Rose. Whatever it is you are pruning.

It is a fine line, the decision of where to hack/prune. And then you hold your breath, waiting for sign of the growth you hope will come. Or you mourn the loss.

So I have walked around my garden between writing the pruning bit and now. And I see the little tomato seedling. So tiny and fragile in the beaten up old greenhouse. But I know that if I look after it, it will grow, and this summer, it will provide a wonderful crop of tomatoes for me. Hope. That seedling means hope.

I see the tray of the Swiss type mix of flowers, and I look at the tiny spindly stems, and I KNOW that in a few months, they will delight my eyes, my senses, and bring beauty and colour into the garden. My life. Hope.

Trust.

Faith.

Joy.

It gives me joy to nurture those tiny spindly fragile seedlings, you see. Just as I nurtured my 3 tiny squalling babies until they grew into the wonderful adults they are now. I KNOW that the joy comes from the act of nurturing. I KNOW that the nurturing can hurt. I KNOW that the delight comes once they are grown. My children. My flowers. My crops. My delights.

But the pruning......it must hurt, don't you think? It hurts me. That wave must hurt too. The bobbing up and down, under. The struggle to breathe, to stay alive, despite the hurt. The determination to survive wherever it may toss you when it is done with the washing machine kind of cycle. The new direction you have to grow after the pruning. The new land you get to explore once you crawl up that strange beach.

Philosophical. That is what I am today. I do not like being confronted with what I feel, think, hide. Does anyone? I think not. The pruning process. The untangling of the dreams - think Christmas lights in a mess. And having to work out the "how we go from here" bit. Well. We go back out in the garden, look at the seeds, and let hope kindle in the heart, trust that the nurturing will be good enough, and wait. Wait for the time for new blossoms to unfold. Dreams to be realised. New paths to explore.

Now If I could just ditch the stick and go skipping over the hill like Julie Andrews or Pollyanna or The Wizard of Oz girl, all would be good. Hop skippety jump.

It is all about being seen. Really seen. Being heard. Really heard. Mattering. And having a support network of people who care enough to take the time to look beneath the surface and understand.

I am tired. So tired. These calls drain me totally. I am very good at taking a deep breath and plodding on. But when I am confronted with what I try to ignore, it makes me crumble. Pruning.? Perhaps. 7th wave? Possibly.

I don't have to like it.

I wonder where I will land this time.