A JOURNAL

Intro

It occured to me that time and time again, when there seemed to be no way forward, there it was; a surprise and an old friend at the same time; hope, a speckle of light coming from an entirely new direction. Nudging me forward, no matter what.
Often I found that golden nugget while I was writing about my experience, and more and more I felt drawn to share that with other people.
Below are pieces that I felt ready to let go out into the world and have a life of their own.

January 2017
Birds in the middle of their song

There’s something very old underneath all of this. Layers of strange, misremembered history rise and stand next to pieces of today. Parts of buildings, red burgundy bricks, creamy stripes lined along the streets. The mist keeps the freshly risen sun away, holds along edges and corners, allowing us to see only the necessary space we are in. The rest of the world disappeared, exists only in our imagination, behind the walls of old and new, intended and forgotten, built and left to fall.

Dark and shielded windows, nothing moves but a steam coming out of a pipe. Time stopped, gaps between buildings invite us to see that layer in between, the ever- changing essence of this city. Old is gone but new hasn’t come to take its place yet, this place is laying in the strange borderlands of in between.

Long alleys of trees and streetlamps bathing everything in orange haze.
Pots of life / light underneath are moving fast towards their goals,
known or hidden in layers of uncertainty and half-promised dreams
The bus stops, and I cross the road, suddenly aware of the emptiness of the street
apart from traffic there are no people around. Windows are as guards on a watch.
The street is really silent and cold, crisp, emptied out of what makes it in a daytime.
London has gone to sleep, the Unlondon awakes.

Small batches of light bring to life pieces of the street, like in a theater set, when you move your look from one scene to another, they appear from nowhere, and when the scene is finished disappear into darkness again. You move your eye from one to another as a scene flicks to a scene in a drama. Trees along the road have lost almost all of their leaves, it’s the middle of winter.

Have the birds forgotten how a morning sky looks like, have they been fouled by what’s been left from darkness by those millions of light bulbs, burning, silently, away the night?

The space opens
is it enought there for you
In a glimpse of greenblue
Shimmering light on a sail
of a building site
Your heart beats
And just every third beat
Is yours

Birds in the middle of their song
like coming from another world, not this one dark and lit by streetlamps
But the birds keep singing their songs, careless, of how mysterious they make this place.
They sing in the middle of the night. The morning is yet to come.

With the issue of my love and soul
I have nothing else to say
I’m not suppossed to speak of it
I’m not supposed to mark
Where I am

I am lost
So lost in this World

I have almost forgotten
That the world i have lost
Is in me

Epilogue

All of these streets, those images
They are reminders
Of where I am, of how cold it can feel and yet one can see so much light and beauty
That it warms everything

That it makes you see
The walls falling

Even
These walls
These cold walls
Even those reminders
Of what it takes to protect one’s heart

It’s like climbing a mountain of bricks
Stumbling, trembling, finding your strength
So you can climb another one
The next day

Until there will be no left
And then the spring will slowly come

19. 11. 2024
River

Have I always had the need to feel like I’m in a dialogue with somebody? Is it because my need for conversation; being heard and being spoken to; is not being met right now? Is it because I’m not engaging with anyone from within a relationship framework, so the bundle of needs that would be hopefully met in that framework is let loose, clinging to the activity I engage in the most; thinking?

Filling in the ‘empty’ space; offering some comfort in the distorted mirror that an imaginary conversation gives. It’s not that I’m mad; no. It’s more like I have an idea and I imagine who’d I want to share it with; in my head; the outlines of our next conversation; and then look forward to talking to that person.

Freedom is daunting because it requires an admission that a mistake could be made. Can I cling to my perfectionism and be free? Can I not be free and yet make no ‘mistakes’? – Freedom comes with a side of responsibility and conscience, and unless it does it will always turn to an excess, a hedonism of sorts. Can I accept that I really don’t know what is right/good, wrong/bad most of the time? That sometimes a curse has indeed been a blessing, and no one can know until the story unfolds further. Why then bother with getting upset? Why blame and reduce oneself; constrain and reject when more often than not I carry little responsibility for what’s coming my way. I take responsibility and credit for my own actions; don’t get me wrong; but that’s precisely why it’s important to distinguish between owning one’s actions and feeling responsible for ‘what is unfolding’, for life itself.

I imagine it as sailing down a river, wide but with a current. To an extent I see and sense what’s coming my way; and I engage with the flowing water, act and react to it in that moment. I own my actions there and then; I am the movement, the response. And I can learn to respond to that river so my sailing is better, more harmonious, more in tune.

But my job is not to analyse or to fully understand what’s coming my way, what’s behind the bend. And so I can’t be made to feel responsible; I could not have ever been responsible for the river itself.

And to come back to where I started, inadvertently, it is a dialogue between me and the river. I am engaging with the world, with life; it is a magical to and fro not unlike the imaginary world I believed in when I was a child.

So perhaps I’ve felt lonely because I placed my connection with life on the altar of ‘being in a relationship’ with another person. That whenever this loneliness manifests as a metaphor, for me as an inability to feel hungry nor satisfyingly full, it is a way of control; of mimicking the flow of knowing what to do and to an extent ‘trusting the process’. The perfectionism has always been based on fear, that if I really do what I want, I won’t be acceptable. Establishing ‘safe routes’ of what to do; how to respond is like pressing a button on a machine; emotional response, thought reaction and then, a behaviour as a result; only cementing what didn’t serve in the first place.

What a dark place to inhabit. How unnecessary too. And what’s most pressing; I know I’m not the parent I want to be when operating from that place.

When I look through my three notebooks I filled in the past 15 months, since opening up to meeting new people, the times I had been unhappy about, or without a connection to someone have been the most fruitful. I put it down to that there’s a part of me that feels somewhat heard and reassured when in a ‘relationship’, engaged in a continuos dialogue, however imperfect that may be. And only when I separate emotionally from anybody else but my center this voice reappeared and found its way out here, between the lines.

What I am getting to, I think, is that I am my own best partner. First partner, so to speak, before anybody else. And for sure, I am crystal-clear on what each connection has taught me; and I feel grateful for the memories and experiences I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

But from where I am today I don’t long to ‘get myself out there’; to meet, yet another, ‘the One’, nor do I spend any portion of my waking time portraying myself alongside a potential ‘Other’. That’s brand new for me, because for as long as I can remember, as soon as I’d leave a relationship, the hope and vision for ‘the One’ re-emerged. But not this time. Sure, there will be hiccups and bumps along the road, as it can feel lonely and sad and anger-inducing and I may not always want to acknowledge that. But I am certain that my life would not be ‘better’ or more ‘valuable’ if I just met ‘the right person’. Maybe one day, maybe soon, maybe never; but I know that now there are other things that are calling me.

22. 6. 2024
Waiting for me

I think I need to write to reorganise and bring forth something inner that I am not able to do otherwise. My writing comes out of necessity; to take the threads of my experience and weave them into the tapestry of my story. It allows me to see things from a different perspective; it lets me lean onto my own words as if spoken by a trusted friend. I can let out any thoughts or feelings that I haven’t got a space for in my day-to-day life. I can shine light on ‘other’ voices within me, ones that may have been confided in an exile for a while. I can see how their absence; the negative space they left behind may have slowed the growth of other parts; and instead allowed things that shouldn’t have been there in the first place to take root.

When not saying what‘s on one’s mind; I think the thought goes, I just don’t say it = nothing happens that way. Well, not quite. Nothing happens – really what that should be is ‘I won’t be confronted or what I think won’t be questioned. But what does happen, is that, over time, that choice of silence creates invisible pathways, dried riverbeds, with space that is not occupied by my own voice, as it rightly should. More often than not, the other person then claims the territory. Maybe it is somewhat more natural, spilling over, rather than maintaining a vacuous space created by somebody else’s withdrawn and withheld words.

Maybe that’s what therapists, partners and good friends are for; to sense those dried riverbeds and to stubbornly sit on their banks, until the tears and words that were stuffed somewhere on the inside can fill up those rivers again.

It makes me smile, because I can see that the riverbeds, paths, left long ago by words unsaid do not fit the words that need to spill out today. Oh, what a ride! Overfilling, buzzing, nourishing the cracked earth; healing what was untended; abandoning those arms that are not in the right place anymore; rushing; forging new ways through land and forests bringing water and food to the vital force inside. x

7. 1. 2024
Double-edged sword

Since becoming a parent, any insight about my childhood comes as a double-edged sword; you pass your hand gently actross one blade, gently, only re-experiencing the pain at the fringes; remembering the deep, shadowy never-ending valleys of loneliness and pain and the clumsy, heavy-handed ways of coping with it all. As soon as I pan across that blade, reach its tip, now my hand traces it downward on the other side bringing to mind a scene from yesterday. R. racing down the hallway; me trying to peacefully bring him to senses and slow him down. When it all fails I just shout. Usually that doesn‘t work; this time it seemed to stop him in his tracks; and really bring him to senses. As in a flick of a switch; he matures, even brightens up; behaves well and is being very helpful; very in charge of himself and seemingly of the situation too. Seems almost relieved. Now I worry, that he learnt to take on the responsibility for my emotions similarly as I did with my mum. I worry that his sudden ‚awakening‘ is actually bad and signals that he saw I lost it and he became the adult. In which doing abandoning his true feelings in that moment and wrongly assuming the role of the ‘stronger’ one.

Now seeing the words on the page in front of me I don‘t think it is necessarily the only explanation. It could have also been that being ‚calm‘ and trying to be rational and gently explaining ‚why‘ he needs to calm down send him only the messages of what I tried to maintain emotionally - calm; peace; nothing‘s wrong and therefore carry on. But when I embraced the actual emotion; anger; (even if it was a sudden, out-of-proportion, quilt-tripping me kind of embrace) he got the message straight away, ok, not good, mum‘s mad, better behave now.

But we have both made a big progress, me and R. too. We had a great morning today, we cleaned his room together, he and I cooperated well, we didn‘t wind each other up. Does it sound like I‘m a child too? Well, these are the words that came to my mind first, so I believe them being an honest and truthful reflection of what is happening between us.

Maybe there are parts of me that never had proper parenting; and that made me develop strange behaviours trying to avoid them up until now. Oh, but it shouldn‘t be that way; you shouldn‘t only become an adult with your child, that places too big a burden on him! Oh, sorry, I just let my judgemental voice take the steering wheel.

- No, I don‘t know, I don‘t think so. Let me explain - this is my life.

- Yes? So What?

- Well, let me finish, and as such, I carve a unique story from the first cells that divided in my mother‘s uterus - to the very next word I will write on this page -

- Well , it is not entirely unique, and some of it is pretty-

- Predictable?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- So?

- Let me finish.

- ...

- These are painful things to realise. These are painful, and most of it scary, because I feel the weight of responsibility, the pressure of having children and them taking everything I do and say for real. It shaping them; whether I want it to or not. So despite all those realisations being double-edged swords - well, better them being double-edged swords for me, now here, f*cking up and working on and creating my own story. Than my children having to face them one day, mid-way of what they thought was their story, only to discover it was just passed down onto them.

Better me, now; rewritting it and finding out what has been beneath all of this. What were the desires, that lead me to have children? What were the needs that made me marry their father? What is beneath them? Can I rewrite my book so it is the actual story of what happened? Of who I am and who can I be? And to get to that; of who I was back then?

And can I do it in all honesty? Is there something wrong in admitting that I wasn‘t ready nor wanted to be a mother at the time? But that motherhood was planted as a part of ‚the inevitable‘ narrative in my head. When met with a man who seemed to tick all the boxes laid down by my invisible grandmother and mother in my head, it all came into being as if by no partaking on my side.

Most of the time I am not a motherly mum. I don‘t get it. I don‘t know how to engage. Not always, but often enough to know this maybe wasn‘t for me. Could I give my children away? No. Is the immediate answer; so immediate that it feels like a delicately decorated fan, held closely to a truth I shouldn‘t be seeing; specifically I can feel others not wanting me, as a mother, to see. But I want to uncover it, for it seems too big a deal to ignore. If ever my children will read this, please know I love you. You are worthy of love, attention, affection, home, friends; everything you need in this life. These thoughts have nothing to do with you, and with the splendid miracles you both are. They are purely the musings of a 28 year old girl, a woman, that became mother as if it was a given, automatic thing, that had to happen at one point or another. Forgive me, if any of this is difficult, come and talk to me instead. Otherwise, let me carry on.

Would I give my children away?

Yes, I would. If I knew they were better off - having a happier, more stable home; with more affection and care; with more ‚domesticity‘, more ‚normality‘, I would say yes. If I could let them go to someone and not worry about being an immoral creature, I would. But is my fear of being judged the only thing that keeps me from leaving my children?

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No it isn‘t. And in fact I don‘t think that that was a big revelation after all anyway. Hand on heart - who doesn‘t experience doubts as a parent? Who doesn‘t need to confront ghosts and emptinesses of their own childhood? Everybody, to an extent. Do I offer my children a loving home? Yes. Stable? Yes, stable in that that my presence is the constant, that despite feeling like I‘m barely coping sometimes, I am the safe harbour that is home to them. Warm, cosy, not traditional, but mine, and theirs home? Yes. Which parent, if they are entirely honest wouldn‘t give their children away - if they knew that they would be better cared for? More loved? Their needs better fullfilled? Happier; even if it meant with somebody else? I would.

But I also know that there isn‘t anyone offering this right now - until then, I think I am a pretty good option.

And I love them. Not motherly-ly enough, goes through my head - but hey, f*ck that. I wasn‘t maybe ‚meant to‘ be a mother. But at least I am willing to admit it, even embrace it and make sure I offer them the best I as me can offer, not I as a pretend-to-be mum. That is what differs me from my mother, grand-mother and great-grand-mother too. We all carried the burden as children as a matter-of-fact that has had to happen - but I will not let my children go on carrying this debt. x