(or at least up to the start of March 2023)

I am often called Cal. Short for Calamity.  

I believe I am writing this just to me, to make order of the disorder around me and us all right now.   However, I may equally be writing this directly to you. 

You will only know for sure if you carry on reading and find you can pick yourself out in a crowd, so to speak.

Or possibly my subconscious has taken over this process and is writing for all of us. 

Unlikely, but always best to explore all options, I find.

….

At this point in space and time, I seem to be ticking an awful lot of the ‘boxes de jour’.   You know what I mean, I’m sure – the sort of topics that scream from the headlines of tabloid papers, and as the majority of those tend to be on the political Right, you can imagine that very few of the headlines appear to be complimentary.

As the Browning sonnet goes, “Let me count the ways”, or rather, tick them off.  May as well lay the cards on the table straight from the get-go (what the hell is a “get go”?).

I either am, have, have been or probably will be:

• Menopausal
• A “Fifty something” leaving the workplace through long term sickness
• Mental health issues
• Bulimic (Past Tense)
• Alcoholic (You are never not one, once you are one, even when you are not… if you see what I mean)
• Insomniac (a childhood legacy)
• Incontinent .. occasionally – (a menopausal legacy)
• Divorced (three ticks for that option, please, plus a Gold Star from the Masochists Playbook school of Erroneous Thinking)
• Tenuous links with the reality that surrounds me /us (If that isn’t a tick box option, it should be)
• Mad Cat Lady tendencies
• “Trussed” up by the interest rates, so have to sell my home whether working or not.

On the upside, I have been remarkably fortunate in many ways, which is why I am still here.   I have an adult daughter who amazes and delights me.  Until fairly recently, I have held full time work since I was seventeen, did business and finance qualifications in evening classes in my mid twenties, and kept a roof over our heads, come hell and highwater (or hellish compromise).  

Despite divorces, I have never taken advantage of anyone, spouse or otherwise, and I left only with what I brought to the table.  Life was something I had to learn by myself; my daughter a fabulous teacher.

There will no doubt be more revelations, but as these days the menopause memory-fog oft descends these will probably take me by as much surprise as they do you.

Briefly, several months ago I reached a low ebb on such a scale that the outlook for my future seemed grim.  It still took me a couple of months beyond that point before I reached out for professional counselling. 

With the help of my therapist, I am on the first rung of a life-long ladder negotiating a whole new way of thinking, and in turn, living.  A very big part of this is practicing being as true and as honest to myself, as genuine as I can be, and a measure of that is by sharing the experiences.

Each day I seem to discover something new about myself, by dint of questioning all the jumble in my mind. All those negative thought processes that had dogged me for years before taking a baseball (rounders!) bat to the back of my knees last summer and bringing me to the floor.

So here I am, with my work and my home ‘world’ completely turning on its head – no clairvoyancy is required to predict a, shall we say, interesting next 12 months (and beyond – but hopefully not to infinity because I don’t travel well).     

For me, the best way for me to process and analyse information is to write it down.  It will, I hope, also be a useful aide memoire when, as I often find myself doing,  I brush over all that happens along the way to get from point A to point B.  By writing it down, I can then reflect on, or at least not ignore, the journey at my leisure  whenever I need to see how far I have travelled.

A difficult childhood left repercussions and ripples throughout my adult life.   I used to think it was just “me”, but by sharing a little of my story I have encountered a deeper honesty in others, and similar strands of storylines in many of their tales.

So there you are.  I am the personification of what a lot of the smoke-screening media have a crack at in order to focus our sights on anything other than what is happening in the big picture.

As I mentioned, I certainly tick a lot of the Topic boxes  – but I am more.

I write to try and understand me, but also a big part of it is to entertain myself.  To amuse myself.  To laugh out loud at my sheer silliness and to actually learn to like who I am.  I was going to say “actually learn to like who I am becoming”.  However, both prior statements are slightly inaccurate.

What I should say is  – I am learning to actually like, love and nurture the younger me, the one left behind when she was a young teenager and who is now returning home.

Enough of the intro.  Hi, it is a pleasure unknown as yet to meet you.

…………………

So in the blink of an eye, I find myself no longer in the 9 to 5 brigade after thirty five years of service in one manner or another.  I am not working due to my mental health issues, and  I am currently existing on the largesse of the state and loans from family whilst selling my lovely home. I cannot make the monthly payments.   I adore my little home but I know selling up is what a lot of people are having to do right now – and it is the only option I have. I’ve had some months of no buyer interest which allowed be to go through the grieving process.  Acceptance, and all that jazz, is where I am at the moment.

Sober mornings are still a revelation.  I have been more on than off the wagon for the past 12 months.  I keep reminding myself that the Booze Gremlins are always circling, waiting for me to fall off again so that they can trap me in that restricted and absent little World of theirs.

I have a cat.  She is a 14-year-old Rescue with her own stories.  She appraises me,  in her luxurious black fur coat and with golden green eyes, and seems to accept that I am a necessary evil. She has very recently taken to exploring the nooks and crannies that until recently she had merely observed with an aloof manner, from a distance.

It’s Monday morning.   I virtually bound from my bed – unheard of under the old regime – and stumble towards the bathroom, then soon after towards the kitchen.  It’s an oak coloured kitchen with black worksurfaces.    I put the kettle to boil and go towards the black fridge, only to let out a very high pitch squeak! Above the fridge, in the shadows beneath an overhanging wall cupboard, a pair of golden orbs suddenly appear and stare directly at me.  From this Witch’s familiar in my abode,  a discontented meow emanates.   Recovering my wits, I give her a good talking to. Obviously.    Right, now to coffee.

I sit outside on the decking, avoiding splinters as best I can, and start to contemplate my day, coffee and cigarette in hand (yes, I’m a smoker too – perhaps I should add that to my tick list).  No longer rushing about to get to an office, no longer frantically checking any emails I hadn’t already dealt with over the weekend, no gut -wrenching despondency at the thought of this unending cycle of work, sleep, repeat. 

In the first couple of months, I was so busy staying sober and trying not to totally freak out with the ongoing depression, intense anxiety and feelings of guilt that “I should be doing something”, the days seemed to merge.  To enable me just to survive manage this, I have since tried to keep my world very small and simple.  I allocate a couple of “grown-up” tasks for each day, written on a list and carefully followed.  The last February onwards has been spent white-emulsioning walls in my home, making it hopefully more appealing to a potential purchaser.  That was the last of the ‘really big tasks’, along with filling skips with eleven years’ worth of things that are no longer needed. 

Now I can’t make up my mind…. Shall I write some more, or perhaps do some artwork.  Do I get the sewing machine out and continue practicing my newest hobby, making cloth dolls. Or perhaps should I work on a piece of furniture, creating something new and fresh out of something that was overfamiliar.   These are precisely the sort of thing my teenage self would have aspired to.  These desires were put aside as the whims of a child for over thirty-five years. I was instead a seventeen year old wife, mortgage payer and worker, then a twenty year old mother, and subsequently a whole lot of things I would rather not have been

A lovely friend recommended an amazing therapist, who has helped seed the thoughts of a more optimistic and creative future.   

More by accidental chance than through any steering on my behalf it turns out that it is the one that I actually live now.

Who knew? 

A further word about my therapist.  As well as all the above, the therapist has given me one huge thing that is helping me move forward rapidly.  The feeling of being properly believed.  I can’t put into words exactly how much that mattered to the very core of me and who I am, (or am not).

The home must go, but it has served me well and given me wonderful times as I renovated it over the years.

The daughter is an adult with a career and life of her own, and with a life mate to help her. They’re a couple of my favourite humans.

The job, or jobs.  Something I will no doubt need to return to in some form or another in the future, but not until everything else had found a way of coming together.  I have no doubt that it will all work out in its own good time.