Wouldn't It...

This sums up the value of the time spent on our vacation: we're willing to pack up our bags, skip town and busk by the streets for our supper.

Now that is time and money well spent indeed!

Loopsided

The mattress shifts just once when I turn my body.

The sound of pillowcase crunching happens only when I turn.

I can stretch my leg across the other end of the bed and there is nothing stopping it from going further.

10 days is long enough a time to get used to so many things, so many habits.

Oh dear.

End or Beginning?

Time flies as we sit here at Doha Airport, waiting for the final leg home.

A year of planning (and fretting), it comes down to this ~ a 6 hour transit?

I am holding on to what a passing stranger told me: You won't know, until you get home and go back to normal life.

Yesterday, by forgetting those words, I was ready to walk off La Rambla straight to the airport and catch the next flight home.

Today, I am wishing we are back on the terrace with peaches and wine.

Nope - I can't and I won't conclude. If this is the end or the beginning.

Point of No Return

With the parting words of "I will see you next in Dublin!", it is no past the point of no return.

I shall take a dose of my own medicine: It is an adventure.

Bittergourds

My aunt has a daily lunch of bittergourds, tidy and porridge. As she told me what she was having, all I could think of was 'Isn't life bitter enough?'

From inside the house, family laughter filters out to the garden. Why do they have so much to laugh about, while I have so much to vent?

I am tired. Really really tired. And I'm tired of being tired.

Both Sides Now

In between spending time with family and trying to organise my week, I am having to chase up on work, take calls and manage instructions.

In snatches of moments, I stop and wonder why is it all on me?! Why am I the only one working more than 1 job?

Perhaps a visitor said it most accurately: My dad is free. The house is free. It's transferred to Barbara.

Now if only someone else can see it both sides now.

Wearing Black

It is without a doubt that my favoured colour is black. Yet right now, I wish that my next reason to wear black did not exist.

My aunt is dying. Seriously. As in like a given number of days left.

It is such a stark reminder that we  are all grown now. No longer the young ones running rings around our parents and grandparents.

If there was anything that I could do, I would take this away from my cousins. Cos I know when it is my turn, I wouldn't want to walk it.

But there is nothing we can do except hold their hands and hold them up as we say goodbye.

New Boundaries

Every once in a while, you get to a point where you either charge forward or retreat, admitting defeat.

I've been letting the defeatus fear get to me. And when I finally let go and let it flow: new boundaries are found.

It's all looking up now... Which means I have to face more skeletons from the closet...

Give me courage and i'll walk it with you.. but let's for now just  try out Saturday dinners with the kids :)

Tv Off

I just had to make that first move and reconnect with Ben last night. Needless to say, the last few months has been everything but a smooth sail. 

Love can consign us to hell or to paradise,
but it always takes us somewhere.
We simply have to accept it,
because it is what nourishes our existence.
If we reject it, we die of hunger,
because we lack courage to stretch out a hand and
pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life.
We have to take love where we find it,
even if it means hours, days, weeks of
disappointments and sadness. 

I guess at the end of the day it comes down to this: I was never promised the world. And when faced with that choice then, I took it and ran. And I've been running with it since. - years later. Sure there are days when I question: Where is all this going to see me ending up at? And there are some days I am so confident of what I feel and what it is, it doesn't touch me one bit. 

Can I fault him when he has been nothing but clear and focused? Is it fair to go shouting "I've been giving and giving!" when he's never asked to receive?

It's simple but not perfect. Hasn't he said it a thousand times over, especially when he thinks I need to be reminded of it? And it has to be said - it must be working to some extent - it's soon coming 3 years on. (By golly, has it been that long?!)

I need to snap out of this emotional dip - it does no one any good. Instead of looking forward to my one day a month, I have been dreading it. Instead of smiling and laughing, I have been spoiling for fights. If I were in his shoes, I'd put off coming home - just so I don't get into any trouble that I don't think I should be in!

The hours of waiting have been
transformed into tension,
the tension has become fear,
and the fear makes you embarrassed about
showing affection.

There is always a solution to every problem. And some of them is as simple as not to not have the problem exist in the first instance. While some may say I'm living in the land of the-nile, there would also be some who may say - you've made your bed, now lie in it!

It's tough all around. And rough sometimes too. But I just have but to believe in it! And playing the same sad sobbing programme over and over again in my head is NOT the solution - it is THE problem. So I'm turning this emotional TV show off.

Life is too short. I am not wasting it.

Love doesn’t ask many questions, 

because if we stop to think we become fearful. 

It’s an inexplicable fear; 

it’s difficult even to describe it. 

Maybe it’s the fear of being scorned, 

of not being accepted, 

or of breaking the spell. 

It’s ridiculous, but that’s the way it is. 

That’s why you don’t ask - you act. 

As you’ve said many times, you have to take risks.

Instead, I shall live it.

Tennessee Lines

I didn't expect my first posting of the year to be one of this nature. A recounting of how I lost my first battle of the year with my demons.

When a call goes unanswered, a text unresponded to ... I go into this battle with my past.

I don't know why it's come back to haunt me. I truly don't. But if I don't get to the bottom of it, I know of only one path that it will lead to.

I feel stupid right now. Stupid and silly. And only that wee bit tall. And I grow smaller as the drums (literally) play back in my head.

Some folks are built for relationships. Some folks are not. Question: which folk do I belong to?

I need to cross my Tennessee line so that I can let go off my demons and start living without.

I'm so sorry I  doubted you (again!).

Roundabout

Here's another reason why: you go this roundabout way to tell me something, without quite saying it out loud in plain a-b-c.

Maybe one day i'll figure why is it that you do that.

And ok - shoe thrown.

Coincidence or Timing

I've just finished my new read. And the last few chapters were not quite how I expected them to be.

And while there are possibly many more nights to go in digesting it, one  thing is for sure: God speaks to us in the manner in which he knows us best able to receive.

For the whole year, my reading  list has been as strange as snow in May. But in this A-ha moment it has dawned on me that it has quite possibly been leading up to this book; training my mind to be  receptive to the obvious.

I want to be free.

I want to be free of the feelings of inadequity that I carry around me like an invisible  cloak. I want to be free of the anger rushes that creep up on me at every available opportunity.

I want to be free.

I will be freed.

I am free. Thank God for that.

I.Am.Free.

Permission to throw

I picked up Paulo Coelho's 'By the River Pieces I sat down and wept' again this evening.

It's a book about what it means to love, to trust, to surrender. But it appears I am merely skimming words tonight, even tho I'm a firm believer that books mirror what you think / feel.

Why do I say that? Cos I just went and asked what now seems to be an idiotic question. And the reply that followed may well have been a flying shoe.

What is it gonna take before I can believe what I cannot see?! Or rather what I cannot show...

That's twice  now and I know there cannot be a third. Even he can take only so much distrust. And we all know that the solution to quell that lies not in  what he can do. No one can give me what I cannot give myself.

And that right now feels downright shitty.

Vacay

I took my kids and folks down to Singapore for a quickie vacation.

These close family time tends to get to me cos it reminds me that time is a darn fluid thing. The hairs get whiter, the lines of thoughts get blurrer.

It is something beyond my control - I realise that now. The best I can do is make the most of it and just go with the flow - their flow.

I'm glad I see it now, sooner and not later.