Day 40

Or maybe 41. Things got so good in fact that my little brothers said hey we’re going on a road trip for most of next week, you coming? And my boss said yeah go for it, I’ll take your Town Development meeting on Monday. And so I have spent the last two days running about and laughing on various beaches across the south coast.
I am past sadness, thank you, and feel like I might skip quickly through okayness and discover myself at really pretty awesome soon.
Thank you universe for so much sunshine, a crazy full pink moon over the cliffs tonight and hours and hours of laughing and singing with my brothers and a few amused and unsuspecting strangers.

Singing

Singing today. Along the canal. And grinning at the blackberries. And typing as I walk, check out the skills. Today we note a significant improvement on last week.  Due to a combination of things that are mostly Melksham Comic Con.

I said I’d help again this year, because it’s run by a group of seriously impressive volunteers and is simply one of the coolest events in Melksham.  But the week before I thought I’d better call the organisers and say do you know what, I can’t do this. I haven’t got enough smiles to be a helpful friendly member of your energetic inspiring team. I can maybe help with washing the dishes or something but please don’t make me have to talk to people.  It was obviously a bit late in the day for that sort of flakiness so I found my staff T shirt, ironed it dutifully and showed up at 630 am with the rest of them.

And had the most amazing weekend.

I can’t believe I had let myself forget that the secret to happiness is to forget about yourself and do stuff for other people. Within the first hour of setting up tables, sorting extensions and smiling at strangers I already felt better. By lunchtime, with the crowds of keen comic consumers- including

a collection of convincinly costumed super heroes, a hall full of fascinating and fantastic creative exhibitions, all managed magnificently by the excellent team of awesome people that I was lucky enough to be a part of, I was deeply inspired.

 

 

So much so that by midnight I was dancing and singing along to ‘The Whole of the Moon’ – complete with the requisit theatrical gestures – in a circle of fabulous people at the ‘silent’ disco in the Kings Arms.

And I was so happy.  Laughing at the ceiling happy. And massively grateful to the guys who sorted out such an inspired source of even more awesomeness in an already amazing weekend.

 

 

 

 

The Comic Convention was as ever, fantastic. The artists, events, presentations and panels were enjoyed by masses of happy people, from Melksham and way beyond, and the excited buzz in the hall reached all the way through town. But the extra incredibly special impact with an event like this is the amazing unbottleable sense of community that gets created when such a crowd of cool people come together. Thousands of hours were given over the last year by the team of volunteers who made it happen, a team I didn’t help nearly as much as I wanted to, but who were still so appreciative of my comparatively tiny contribution over the weekend, for which, in return, I received so much more than I ever could have expected.

 

 

 

 

I got my happiness back. I have bloody missed it.

 

 

 

 

Thank you so much

Getting Better

So it turns out, as I learn every time I reach some significant sadness, that there is quite an obvious way to snap out of it.

Recent misery has been, y’know, pretty overwhelming. Relentless. It occured to me on my walk this morning, as even my most powerful purposeful marching along the canal couldn’t shake it, that the force of the current unhappiness might have reached that bit of my heart where all the other bits of sadness had been carefully packed away, for the last four years in fact -that would make sense – and these dormant creatures of gloom had been woken up and were sleepily saying, ‘Oh we’re doing sadness? We’ve got tears? Me too! Me too! Let me get a piece of that shit!’  And they all clambered eagerly on the miserable, crowded, teardrenched bandwaggon of gloom. Which was getting heavy.

And so, along the muddy grit of the canal path this morning, I went back to meet them again, which is never much fun. (Thank you canal for being utterly deserted this morning.) It turned out to be a surprisingly helpful exercise because most of the gutwrenching pieces of sorrow are made up of the fierce and illogical emotions of a frightened abandoned little 6 year old. And once you start to ask that 6 year old what excatly she’s so sad about, she realises she doesn’t make any sense because mummy and daddy have come back now, little one, and she’s actually ok now.

Oh right.

And it was genuinely like that shaky breath a child makes when she’s finished crying. Which is accompanied by a hug and a smile through a bleary face full of snot and tears.

At which point I had fortunately arrived at the Tesco Metro in Bowerhill where I bought a mango smoothie and four chocolate pastries thank you very much. And by the time I got to work, sorted out my hair, put on my heels and did my makeup I felt like I had grown back up 30 years. Which was handy because I’m employed to do a job that a tantrummy 6 year old isn’t that good at.

And then, what a surprise, today was a good day.

Such that, by a random chain of events, I’m suddenly the photographer for a massive party at the Assembly Hall tonight, which I’m actually looking forward to.

I even dance round the office to these happy tunes. It’s Friday night isn’t it?

Ha. And it’s day 30.

 

Kubler Ross

Today we have tears just spilling out of my face at work. For no real reason, just dripping stupidly down my cheeks as I type emails. I was productive today as well. Got several tasks done and made smily smalltalk in between. But in the quiet pauses these tears just show up quite inconsiderately.

Such that I decided of course, I am a typical case study of Kubler Ross’s stages of grief, lets wiki that after work. And I consider that I haven’t reached ‘Anger’ yet so am I still in ‘Denial’? Or just skipped past Anger and gone straight to ‘Depression’. I spotted ‘Bargaining’ in my wholly altrusitic attempt to make things OK by still paying rent there which means I’m not such a bad person after all. Hmm right.

And then I think, no, grief is for people who have been wronged. I did the wronging. I left. I don’t even deserve grief.

I bought three new black tops today. There y’go, positive moves forward ey.

70 days

For reasons that make sense to my little brain, I give it seventy days. Ten weeks. Why not. Nothing like a deadline ey.

Notice, and appreciate, that I wrote nothing (OK very little) for the first four weeks of it, which have been predictably and drearily unhappy. Practical considerate me, choosing the quiet month of August to utterly ruin, with some vague notion that the sunshine would make it easier for us both to get through.

Stupid ploy that was, as sunshine only serves to remind you of the happy times you have chosen to be so utterly without.

But four weeks is enough of that shit. Time for the six positive weeks ahead, in which I shake off this cripplingly hideous sadness and start to sort my shit out. Please. And in which I use this space to chart my progress, as there had better bloody be some progress, and what better way than writing, as ever, to get me there.

Positives then, of the last few weeks, which were always going to be awful:

• An increased understanding and subsequent empathy for something that many other people are going through/been through/will go through.
• Permission to be really pretty shit at everything, from admin to smalltalk to remembering people’s birthdays (sorry).
• A newly discovered ability to compile a different outfit every day of entirely black clothes (yes it is a bit of a 13 year old phase but I feel refreshingly safe in the constancy and simplicity of black – as well as the fact that this thing is called grief, and deserves acknowledgement via the medium of mourning – and I’m totally staying here)
• A new living arrangement in which I get to walk 3 miles a day to work, along the early morning canal, complete with dewy spiderwebs, dopey swans and a heron
• Oh yes, loosing a stone, and fitting into clothes from 4 years ago (some of which were subsequently rescued from the)
• 12 bags of crap that got hauled to the charity shop when I moved out.
• The fact that my whole world of belongings now fits under the stairs at my parents’ house. Thank you parents.
• A perspective on things that makes what used to stress me out so liberatingly unimportant.
• And an appreciation, too late really, of how lucky I was to have such a really lovely source of happiness in my life. He was so lovely to me. Too lovely.

 

• And so now a decisive damned determination to go and create me some of that happiness on my own, with the end goal, if you could please remember it woman, of putting some happiness back into the world.

I used to do that. I did, right? I was bloody good at it. Could we get back to that please, and stop being such an exhausting helpless selfish source of sadness.

Ok then.

 

It’s that gloomy dark horrible space between work and the Town Council meeting on a Monday night. I always hate this time, alone in the office, playing songs to fill the silence that only make it worse, anxious about all the shit on the agenda, resentful to spend another evening here, lonely lonely lonely beyond belief. And this time, on this day, the grief decides it will choose this shitty time to descend, fully fledged, fully armed with heartbreaking tears and soul crushing sadness. I wondered where it was. It has been five, count them five whole days. and I kept my shit together, I even smiled and made polite conversation, but now, right before a fuck off Policy meeting, I lose my mind in sadness all over the office floor.
Fucking awful timing woman.
And I don’t deserve to ever get over it. I don’t deserve sympathy or concern or anyone’s thoughts. I have done this to myself and I have nowhere to direct my bitterly bitterly unhappy anguish other than at myself.
I document it as it fascinates me, that such an all consuming sense of awful can exist. I have been on the receiving end of shit many times. That is a whole nother world of sadness, more manageable in many ways as at least you can project it out, you have lovely tools like blame and resentment and anger that you can use to cope with the external thing that has hurt you. And then you have forgiveness, if you want it, that gets you over it. But when it is yourself to whom you direct it all, it is a very specifically filthy awful hideous mixture of really really bad feelings.
I have disliked myself before for reasons that others projected on to me. A long time ago. This one now is all me. I understand utter complete self loathing.
And the crazy thing is, people still love me, people still think I deserve happiness, peace, love. They are so wrong.

Happy

It was good. People were awesome. When it reached four o’clock and three thousand happy people had wandered off and the stalls were packing up and the staff were having a laugh, I sat down on the grass with my angel of a colleague Avril.

‘We did it.’

‘We bloody did.’

I  was about to cry as I told her how awesome she was,

and then stall holders started coming up to us with gifts.

‘Are you the main organisers?’

Avril and I looked at each other questioningly.

‘Yeah. Yeah we are actually.’

Do you want some quiche/jam/sausages/ale/bread/cake?

We piled up our goodies and sat on the grass laughing in relief and happiness that it was all over.

And for the first time in three years of food festivals, I was completely happy with it.

 

Day after Tomorrow

So here it is. This time last year I was crying in the office with overwhelm and anger about the food festival. This year I’m still not happy, as I stumble home late on a Friday night with still piles to do tomorrow, but it’s better.  Some wonderful people show up to help and my colleagues buy me cool drinks and ask what they can do next. It’s all lovely.  I wish I could get the photocopier to do staple fold though,  not looking forward to making five hundred programmes by hand.  In 48 hours it will be over and I will be drinking.  Thank you. 

21 Days of calm – week two

On Day 6 I had meetings till late followed by post meeting drinks till later so when I got home I collapsed to sleep on the sofa. No half hour of calm.  And the next morning I was ill. Proper poorly. Boss sent me home. Same on Friday. Not sure if lying in bed nearly crying with pain counts as calm, but there were several hours of that. 

Day 8 was a blur of headachy community events,  after which my head was spinning too much with all the stuff of the day to reach much calm and on day 9, Sunday, the panicky wake up bolt upright in fear began. Food fest in two weeks. Getting scared.

Today though, Day 10, finished a long heavy town development meeting, in which I was equally criticised and congratulated, thank you Councillors, I am home and should really sleep as I will be up in 6 hours. 

But I am just too happy. So peaceful. So calm. Had half an hour of really peaceful time just now, eyes closed, smiling at the silence. Feels like a warm flurry of something beautiful courses round my veins and it’s partly relief, partly gratitude,  and mostly just love.  

For everyone, for me, for no-one. 

Before each council meeting I sing a little song as I prepare my papers,  about how much I love the councillors,  love the agenda full of bus stops and dog mess, and love meetings late into the night.  Perhaps this time it actually worked and I convinced myself. 

Either way, can I keep this please. I need it till about the 16th. Cheers x

 

21 days of calm

It’s three weeks till the Melksham Food and Drink Festival. It is a great event. People like it. It’s nice. For the last two years it has been the most stressful element of my job and has been the cause of the highest concentration of swearing, seething and tears. To prevent a third year in a row of cripplingly unhappy anxiety and stress, I have decided to take a vacation. Every single day in the next 21, for at least half an hour.

To make sure that I keep to this, and because it might even be interesting, it will be documented here. Thus:

Day 0. Thursday 22 May. Polling Day.

Having arrived home at 9.15, I grabbed my polling card and a piece of toast, and marched across the park to my polling station. With that important democratic duty fulfilled, heading back through the park, I heard a mournful melencholy sound.

Meooooow. Meooooow. Meooooow.

It was constant, eerie, and a bit too rhythmical to be a cat. Looking around I saw a solitary figure on one of the swings in the gathering gloom. He or she was swinging high and fast and the swing was crying out across the park from its rusty hinges.

I stood at stared for a while. Do they need help? Are they ok? Are they crying? Are they high?

The person seemed fine, a little thoughtful maybe, and strangely beautiful as he or she swung, silhouetted, in front of the glowing red neon sign of the Odeon just behind.

And why not. This is our park, our council tax, as I am only to keenly aware, pays for those swings, these trees, this security light in my eyes, and, yes, this bench, thank you very much, which I sat down on.

It was partly out of solidarity for the lonely swinger, partly because it was a really peaceful cool evening, and partly because, after another long hectic day, I wanted to just sit still for a while.

And for the few minutes I sat there, I felt a deeply relaxing sense of calm settle in my bones. So peaceful. So beautiful. I thought of the significance of the people before me, the woman who had faught for my right to vote, of my fellow Trowbridge residents, going about their evenings in and around the park, the person who installed the bench and the fence and the swing and the lights, and this complete stranger swinging sonorously over there whose evening I was serendipitously sharing.

So I decided to do this every day, at least until the Food Festival, as I need to have regular reliable access to a place of calm, and what good timing, we have the neat three weeks to go. I could call it meditation, although it isn’t really, it’s just sitting still and disposing of each thought politely without dwelling or worrying about it, until no more thoughts come.

Day 1. Friday 23 May. Trowbridge.

Got up earlier, very keen, headed out all smug and pleased with myself to my bench before getting my bus, but it was raining so not such a success. Sat there with my umbrella and felt mostly cold and a little worried I would miss my bus. Wasn’t too bothered cos technically it was 22 days to go so I could start the next day.

Day 1 again. Saturday 24 May. Heathrow.

I had decided, just after midnight the day before, that I was going to surprise my brother from New Zealand when he landed at Heathrow. Dave thought this was a ridiculous badly planned expensive waste of time, but still mumbled ‘Have fun,’ from under the duvet as I kissed him goodbye at seven in the morning and ran across town to get my national express coach to Heathrow.

Having written out some lists, sent a few emails and designed a leaflet, my productive bus journey was nearing Newbury and it was time to get my first proper half hour of calm in.  I found the Amelie soundtrack and settled in to its beautiful chords. Bus journeys are even better than trains for this. So much longer, less stops, and the aloneness is much more complete.

The piano tunes accompanied the countryside as it sailed by, I was thinking of my brother who I hadn’t seen for a year and how strange it is that we had been 3 and 4 together, running round the woods, laughing, crying, playing, we inseperable smaller siblings, while the other two did grown up kids stuff. There was a plane in the sky flying parallel to the coach and I thought it might have my brother in it. This thought sent tears streaming down my face. Why so many tears, Miriam? I love my brother. So much. That’s all. It was new to cry about it though.

Day 2. Sunday 25 May. London.

This day had a train journey in it, but standing up cramped next to strangers. Not the best. It also had a huge amount of drinking, laughing, a bit of dancing (in Hyde Park) and some chips and ice cream. All three brothers together, very rare, I wasn’t going to miss that. I took a lot of pictures. By midnight we had laughed and cried and you-tubed ourselves to sleep in Vic’s flat, and I had not carved out my half hour. I thought maybe the half hour rule only needs to apply to busy days, and actually if you have laughed for most of a day that might serve as some sort of equivalent. I’ll make it up tomorrow, I thought.

Day 3. Bank Holiday Monday 26 May. Trowbridge Park.

The train journey home was full of work. And other people. At about nine, as it was getting dark, I went for a walk in the rain. The park was deserted. There’s the silver lining to rain. I wandered round a bit, then sat in the shelter of the bandstand. Really peaceful. Not a fabulous venue but dry and empty. I did my meditation technique where every person I care about gets a Buddhist blessing.

‘May love be with Dave. May peace be with Dave. May he always be happy, peaceful and prosperous. May no difficulties come to him and only good things come to him. May he always be happy, peaceful and prosperous.’

It takes half an hour to get through everyone. It is really lovely. At each person I see them smiling, happy, and also walking past me, so they are then gone from my mind. Once everyone, including people (and some buildings) that bother me, have walked on past, I am calm. So calm. And last of all, I do my own blessing. ‘May I always be happy, peaceful and prosperous.’

I believe there is some good energy this can generate. But more than that, it just fills my head and my heart with so much love for everyone. It cleans out my heart with love. I like it.

And full of all this peaceful love, I did a quick tidy up around the bandstand, which had clearly been the location for much snack and beer related socialising over the weekend.

Back home I discovered my camera is broken. My £300 camea which I hardly leave home without, which I use for community events, friends, family, work and art. It makes so many people happy as so many moments are captured. I just bought a new 32 Gig SD card for it.

And I am so sad. I am sorry to my camera that I haven’t taken care of it. I think I dropped it yesterday at the pub. I probably did.

And I think of the major community events coming up, the people I have reassured that I will be there to take pictures for them, the projects I have said I will help with, the value that I have assured for myself as the person who will capture it all for them….

I will have to let go. I will have to say no. Mayor’s portrait. Melksham In Bloom. Hospital. Queensway Event. Food Festival. Five things that I will suddenly be unable to photograph.

And as I search sadly for a silver lining to my broken camera, maybe that is it. I will have to say no and let someone else do it.

I have no choice but to let go. And of all the million things too much that I do, this one can go.

And I will be more calm.

 

 

 

 

So it seems, inevitably, that the workaholic has an odd relationship with the town she works for. I always feel uncomfortable in social or simply fun activities in Melksham.  Today, the sunniest loveliest most sociable Sunday so far, I walk past people in the park,  pub gardens, cafés, and feel utterly unbelonging. Till I get to the office,  plug my music in and open my emails.

Armed with a survey, some bunting or leaflets, I feel fine in town, I have a purpose and value.  On my own I feel like I have none.

And I stroll home sadly after another Sunday at the office and wonder what will snap me out of this unhelpful cycle.

Tuesday

How many hours of my life will be spent
In meetings discussing dog poo?
How many times will the grass-cutting woes
of Melksham folk bother me too?
How many pages of notes will I take
Of shit that I need to do?
The answer my friend
Is that there is no end.
The answer is that there is no end.

Back

Back at work after a week in another faraway beautiful world.

Today we had smiling in peaceful happiness, throwing away of cluttery things and happily ploughing calmly through emails, followed by sensible straightforward tackling of tasks, with a cupasoup, interrupted by an infuriating email that sent a serious rush of very fierce fury through my silent veins, resulting in some quiet steely resolve and an accomplishment of a careful and cautious plan. Then there was hunger, a sandwich, a wander through the town smiling, some really very lovely people at the hatch, more smiling, a small dance in fact, en route to the photocopier, a brief interlude of meaning of life chat at the tea corner, tears at a text from my sister as I typed back, ‘I miss you too.’ (God I really do), followed by an upping of the pace to prepare for the six o’clock meeting, during which the headache began and grew, amid more smiles, statistics, sarcastic comments about other councils and a swift succint conclusion before the seven o’clock meeting, which, having stood outside of, listened to a bit of, and decided to walk quiety back down stairs away from, carries on councilously upstairs while I get back to this rather high heap of tasks.

I always dread the first day back. This one was just fine. Perhaps I’ll spend a bit less of the second day back smiling quietly out the window.

Work Experience

I know this trick you play on me.
I know your clever game.
I know it is by evolutionary design
And you are not to blame
With your huge and ridiculously adorable eyes
And your delicate sweet baby smell
Every human hormonal response floods my veins
And I’m instantly under your spell.

Your miraculous little fingernails,
Your every perfect hair,
Each eyelash placed impeccably,
From under which you stare.
Oh my dear sweet lord you’re smiling at me
And I fall quite completely apart,
You have done to me the inevitable
And utterly melted my heart.

But then your perfect smile fades
And your quivering lip starts to shake
And you furrow your tiny baby brow
With the look of distress on your face.
I’ll do anything to stop your crying,
To make it all alright –
I can’t bear to see you so upset
And wailing at the night.
We’ve done feeding and burping and singing –
I wish I knew what was wrong –
We’ve bounced up and down the kitchen twelve times
In our Mumford and Sons singalong.

Then at the especially fast bit,
You whimper and sigh and I keep
Dancing slowly and steadily round until
You are beautifully peacefully asleep.

With your dreamy head happily nestling
In the soft warm embrace of my arm
I smile quietly at your beautiful face
And I’m helplessly lost in your charm.
I know its mostly oxytocin,
With some dopamine mixed in there too
That for a healthy protection of our species
I am compelled to take care of you.

I cynically try to dismiss it
As a cunning evolutionary ploy
That produces a need for attachment
When I cradle a baby boy.
But no science can fully explain this,
That tonight in this peaceful place
Something a little bit miraculous
Sends tears streaming down my face,
And maybe it’s the sheer power
Of mother nature’s art
But either way, as you snore in my arms
I love you with all my heart.

Area Board

It’s another exciting evening
At the Melksham Assembly Hall,
With paper cups half full of coffee
And some displays propped up by the wall.
With a smattering of us at each table
And a couple skulking at the back –
Our tables littered with leaflets, reports
And an 86 page agenda pack.
It will be a good couple of hours till
Each item’s sufficiently explored
In the comfortably numbing familiar embrace
Of the Melksham Area Board.

And they talk of conducting a survey
Of the businesses on Melksham High Street
And I want to shout, ‘We did one last year,
This piece of work is already complete!’
I’m baffled once more and frustrated
By the complex and messy array
of so many well meaning hard working groups
Who do the same things in just different ways.
Where’s the cooperation,
The joining up of these disparate dots?
We have a hundred different agendas,
Tangled up in the same hundred knots.
And it seems like at lots of these meetings
Duplication is fairly assured
And a few wheels get reinvented tonight,
At the Melksham Area Board.

Yes, the power point presentation,
With a thousand words on the screen:
‘Review of positive outcome delivery
For the stakeholders and community.
Sustainability going forward
With the aims and objectives met…’
He’s been going for twenty minutes
And I’ve no idea what he’s said.
It’s nearly nine o’clock now
As I quietly sneak out the door,
Leave them wrestling with the next 18 items
Of the Melksham Area Board.

With the rain in my eyes at the bus stop
I contemplate what I can write
In the report to go back to my council,
Highlighting the points from tonight:
Community safety initiatives,
The closing of recycling sites,
An item on dementia friendliness
And some awareness of cold calling crime…
Ah, the bus is refreshingly empty
And the peacefulness is my reward
For giving another long late night
To the Melksham Area Board.

But I’m troubled still by the big picture
What a perfect system this could be:
So many like minded good people
Devoted the community.
If Melksham Without Parish Council,
And the Town Council just down the road
Plus the Area Board and lovely MCAP
Shared our efforts to tackle the load,
We’d be singing off the same hymn sheet
In our unified efficiency
And the people would approve of their council tax
Being spent so judiciously.
But I’m tired now and my ambitious
Thoughts lapse and roll onto the floor
Ah well, I guess I’ll pick them up again
At the next Melksham Area Board.

Sunday night 3.20am

Solution turned out to be painting a hundred artificial flowers purple for an event this week.  My friend is organising a magic night.  I said ooh do you need flowers? And my purpose is clear now I have a project to fill my weekend and my living room floor. And my wide awake at three am thoughts.

Of all the addictive behaviours to be afflicted with,  at least workaholism is one of the useful ones.