Month: August 2013
I’m living on the edge
I’m living on the edge
I’ve heard people say ” I’m on the edge…” before, but I never really knew what it meant.
I do now.
I get to the end of the day and I am shattered, the sheer mental and physical energy that is required to stay away from the edge is unbelievable. I’m on the edge of collapsing in a heap every second. I’m on the edge of breaking down every second. I’m on the edge of just giving up all the time.
I know what it’s like to live on the edge now.
As you may know I’m in the process of moving house, that is stressful enough in itself but trying to arrange for three children to start GCSE, A-level and college courses at the same time, sort out buses to school, uniforms & college equipment is insane.
Coupled with the fact that we have other ‘things’ going on in life which I’m not able to talk about at the moment makes for a very stressful time.
I can feel that permanent burden almost physically resting on my head, the pressure is behind my eyes and manifests as a permanent headache.
Yes, I know what it’s like to live on the edge.
The toughest thing is doing all this alone, not alone in the sense that there is no one around me, but alone in the sense that I’m not complete without Claire. We faced these trials in life together, it was always ‘Mark and Claire’ – that was how we lived. My coping habits and strategies involve Claire and have been very well rehearsed over the last 22 years together and it takes more than three months to break these habits and install new strategies.
I feel like an amputee, like there’s a part of my body missing. I feel like I’m the world’s most accomplished drummer and I’ve just had my arm amputated.
================oh my god, I’ve just remembered Rick Allen from Def Leppard==============
So after some YouTube-ing I’ve just found this video and I’m crying at it…
I remember seeing a TV show years ago about Rick when he lost his arm, he didn’t know how he would ever complete his passion and play drums again, how could he, he only had one arm and who has ever heard of a one armed drummer?
But he decided that he’d do it, he redesigned the drum kit… Now I am no drummer, but from what I understand he redesigned it to use the upstroke of his knees which had never been done before. The result of that tweak to the drum kit was that he was now able to play things that no other drummer could… All with one arm.
The video above is only 30 seconds long, but I have now watched it six times.
It inspires me, it motivates me and I’m now really glad I wrote this blog post, because I was on the edge of not bothering.
Is it a dream?
Is it a dream?
It still feels like this is a dream, like its happening to someone else, almost a complete existential experience somewhat like those dreams where you think you are dreaming, but aren’t quite sure and then wake up with a start and are grateful that what you just experienced wasn’t actually the truth.
I’m still living in a vague hope that this is actually a dream, I’m sure it’s part of the coping process that my unconscious mind allows me to believe that I might wake up. So in that sense I’m grateful for the protection.
My biggest challenge at the moment is working out what I want from life again. When Claire was alive I knew exactly what I wanted, I knew how many days a week we wanted to work, I knew what we wanted to do with our time off, I knew where we wanted to live and to support all of that I knew how much revenue I needed to be generating from my business, how I would go about doing that and what the profit would be in order to support what we wanted to do. Oh yes, I knew what I wanted.
Take Claire out of the equation and the entire thing falls apart. Claire was the WHY in my life, which gave me a clear sense of the WHAT I needed to do, all I did then was work out the HOW. Take away the ‘why’ and suddenly there’s no reason for the ‘what’.
Whether this is the actual truth or not doesn’t matter, what matters is that it is my truth.
I’ve spoken to a good friend who is trained in the same coaching style as me, she wants some coaching too and so we have agreed to beat each other up, sorry I mean coach each other for a couple of days in October (thanks Emma).
I’m really looking forward to it, I’m apprehensive at the same time but I know I need to rebuild my future taking everything that was good and create a new life. At this moment in time I know that the beliefs I held to be true have been shattered and the things I valued in life have changed incomprehensibly, Emma you have an enormous task ahead of you as you put me back together!
On the one hand I want to keep that old goal, Claire and I had spent 22 years working on it, like an exquisite oil painting of our lives together. But on the other hand I’ve lost the artist that helped me paint that picture, however what I can do is look at that picture and take everything that was good about it and use that learning to paint a new one.
Press the button and change your plans
Press the button and change your plans
So many wonderful people have sent me messages recently, this one particularly got me thinking:
“One sermon I heard at church…you are really excited about your vacation to Italy, you plan, map out and are all set for a fantastic vacation. You board the plane with your plans, maps, highlighted spots to visit, etc. and you land in Holland. What happens then?…do you embrace the beauty of Holland and all that Holland has to offer or do you just focus on Italy and what your plans were?”
Claire and I really did have plans, we were going to each work two or three days a week and spend the rest of the time bimbling around in our camper van. When our youngest child was 18 Clare was also going to have a sabbatical, anyone that knew her knows that she could tell you exactly the number of years, months and days until that was. Claire TOLD me, yes TOLD me that she was going to have an entire year where she did no cooking, no cleaning and no looking after anyone else and that we would have to spend that year running around after her. Fair enough I suppose after all she had given up for her family.
From my perspective I have been ensuring that my business is mobile and can be run from anywhere in the country leaving us free to travel and me able to do a few hours of work each day from where ever we parked the campervan.
That plan went out of the window on 17th April this year.
There must be something in our human nature which upsets us if our carefully laid plans don’t work out. What happens if we board the plane to Italy and land in Holland?
I saw this video recently from Heineken, listen to the reasons people give for not being able to change their plans.
“There’s no way we can change these plans, this is a bachelor party”
“I’d have to go through security and get on a plane and then go back to my real life”
“I can’t cancel this trip because it’s for work”
I find it striking watching that video and seeing the similarities in my life at the moment. The anxiety about pressing the button, ‘I can’t do it, I’ve got plans‘ is exactly how I feel… ‘Claire can’t die now, we’ve got plans’
But the button has been pressed, someone pressed it for me and took the decision out of my hands, I’m in a destination that I’ve never even heard of let alone considered visiting, and so I guess it’s down to me to make the most of it, right?
Two Pictures
Two Pictures
life is a real battle at the moment. It seems as though every day has a series of hurdles to overcome and each day I feel like I’m running 100 m through the thickest treacle imaginable.
It seems as though the treacle just keeps getting thicker and thicker, it’s relentless and getting deeper everyday. Just a great big sea of treacle.
I wonder when it will end. I can see the treacle horizon but the sea just seems to go on and on. I remember discussing with Claire once the idea of going on a cruise, she wasn’t keen because she didn’t like the idea of not being able to see the land. She told me that she could imagine being out in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight, only the watery horizon to look at and when she thought of that she got a rising sense of panic.
That’s how I feel now.
If I could see an island in the distance then it would spur me on, I’d get a sense that the end was in sight and an idea of how much longer I needed to keep going for, but the way it is now I keep wading and it just keeps going.
I think what I’m looking for is an end to the pain of the way I feel now. I’m looking for the light at the end of the tunnel or a glimpse of an island of respite appearing on the treacle horizon, but I’m not sure that that is a particularly healthy viewpoint to have.
I want the way I feel to stop, but the way I feel is related to the loss and by its very nature that loss can never be regained.
It’s so easy to give loss a meaning that it doesn’t have. To give it attributes like treacle, like the sea, like a tunnel with no end. But that’s not true is it? That’s only the way I am choosing to view it.
So reflecting on this now I can choose to view it a different way so let’s try this, let me start writing this update again with a different analogy.
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Life is a real battle at the moment. It seems as though every day has a series of hurdles to overcome and each day is getting easier.
All I feel at the moment is a deep red mist of uncertainty. The redness is a deep blood red painted along the wall of the corridor next to me, but as I go through each day the deep red that seems so overbearing at the moment begins to fade.
Each day, with less red paint to put on the wall, the intensity gets less. I can see that overtime that deep blood red turns to a soft pink and if I look down the entire corridor, whilst the redness is always there, at the end of the corridor it fades to a gentle rose tinted white. The redness never goes but it turns from something overbearing into something that is actually quite beautiful.
I wonder if the memory of Clare which leaves me in so much pain at the moment can also be turned into something beautiful in the future?
I wonder…
Reasons and Excuses
Reasons and Excuses
Since Claire died I’ve been making more of an effort to keep fit and because I’m too tight to go to the gym I’ve taken up jogging. I hate it! Every step is hard work and I don’t get that ‘kick’ out of physical exercise that so many seem to report, I just find it a real chore but I know that it’s all down to me now to look after the kids and so I have to stay in as good a shape as possible.
Every time I go for a run I’m looking for an excuse not to go.
Every time I go for a run I find an excuse.
When I’m actually out there running the only thing I ever think about is Claire, she dominates my thoughts from the first step to the last which makes the whole jogging process even more painful – and I’m not really keen on putting myself through unnecessary pain. But last night I realised something for the first time.
Losing Claire is my reason to go jogging. Losing Claire is my excuse not to go jogging.
It it would be so easy to use this almost intollerable time as an excuse to not do anything. To lay down in the corner and not get up again. But if I change my viewpoint for a moment I can see that it’s actually a reason to go on.
=========OK, now I’m crying again – you have no idea how much therapy I get from writing this =========
Up until this very moment I thought I’d lost my reason for living, I thought I did everything for Claire and that with her gone I had no purpose. She was always my reason for working so hard, building the business and even getting up in the morning.
But I was using that reason as an excuse not to think about the future and what it holds.
But now I can see that reasons and excuses are so close to each other and all that is required is a slight change in viewpoint and I can see that she is still my reason. Up until this very second I have actively avoided thinking about the future, it was an excuse. So as I take a different viewpoint now I find that I can take the old reason and turn it into a new reason to rebuild, and that for me is life changing today!
Life as a Book
Life as a Book
“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
Alfred D’Souza
I read those words yesterday and they hit home, they hit home pretty hard.
I enjoyed lunch yesterday with a good friend (thanks Emma) and we were talking about the ‘when/then’ game. When the kids have left home then it would be better. When I’ve moved house then I can relax. When/then.
Claire and I used to joke that we would write a book called “It’ll be better when…” and then make jokes about all of the times that we had used that expression or heard other people use it, perhaps that’s a project of the future, but thinking about it now really does make me stop and consider things.
What has opened up for me now is a completely new chapter in my life, I thought I knew where the story was going until I turned the page on 17 April and the great author in the sky decided to take the story in a different direction. I can see now that those early chapters were leading me in a direction and I had made up my own ending, I was pinning all of my hopes on chapters I was yet to read, life was going to begin in those chapters.
But as I sit here writing this down I can see the entire book, it’s closed so I’ve no idea where the story goes, but I can see that this IS my life. It doesn’t begin over the page, it began at the beginning of the book and I’m in it now, this is it, these obstacles ARE my life.
There is a lot to be said for writing the end of the book ourselves and creating our future as we go, and there is also a lot to be said for reading the words of the page that we are on, reading them slowly, reading them with meaning and most of all enjoying them.
I’ve no idea what is over the page, at the moment I have no idea what the next paragraph says, but I do know that for the time being at least, I’m going to read those words very slowly.
Grief “i just sit”
Grief “i just sit”
[PostScript added after I wrote this, please bear in mind as you read: I’m not going to kill myself so don’t worry, it’s just better that I write down truthfully how I feel rather than try and hide it in the hope that it helps not only myself but other people in the same situation as me]
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This is a rather odd post and it comes as the result of checking the words that people type in Google when they end up on this website. It seems lots of people are typing Grief “i just sit” – and ending up on my site, of course I don’t know why they typed that but I know where they are coming from.
The temptation to just sit and do nothing often reaches the point of being unbearable. I often feel like one of those deep cave explorers, sitting on the edge of an enormous black chasm, dangling my feet in, looking down and wondering what it’s like down there in the depths. Except the depths of this chasm are the depths of depression… And it’s very black down there.
The grief can often hit me in waves and sometimes all I can do is just sit. But when I sit I know that my feet dangling on the edge of the chasm and I could easily fall in.
The strange thing is that I was always terrified of death, but now with Claire passing so early in life it seems that if she can do it then it can’t be that bad. Dying doesn’t seem so bad any more and just writing that down strikes me as being odd, but I don’t care. This change in the way I view dying could make it seem like an easy option, an easy way to get rid of the pain.
I’m not contemplating killing myself or anything like that all I’m saying is that I can now understand the full process that could lead to it.
So how do I get up when all I want to do is sit?
One of the most liberating concepts that I adopt is the idea of choice.
If I want to get extremely angry then I can, it’s a choice.
If I want to shout and bellow and curse then I can, it’s a choice.
If I want to feel successful then I can, it’s a choice.
If I want to feel happy then I can, it’s a choice.
Once we truly accept that the way we feel is always a choice then we can choose to wallow in our own sadness or depression for a bit, but I can also choose to step out that sadness and depression. It’s a choice.
Now it may not be an easy choice, we may not have access to all of the resources we need in order to make that choice at that given moment, but those resources are there buried within us-all we have to do is look hard enough.
So sometimes I choose to just sit, and then I choose to get back up again. It’s MY choice.
Which way to look – a bouncy existence
Which way to look – a bouncy existence
Sometimes it’s difficult to know which way to look.
Looking forwards is positive.
Looking forwards gives me the opportunity to create a brand-new future, to have complete control over what I do and to take things in a different direction.
Looking forwards is negative.
Looking forwards brings about a sense of anxiety and stress, how do I cope with everything that needs doing without Claire?
Looking backwards is positive.
Looking backwards gives me the opportunity to be thankful for the 28 years that Claire and I spent together, being married for 22 of them. Such happy memories.
Looking backwards is negative.
Looking backwards brings a sense of longing and reminds me of everything that I’ve lost.
And all that leads to a rather bouncy state of mind, bouncing backwards and forwards from positive to negative. The bouncing can happen quite quickly from the tiniest of triggers which can never be predetermined. The other day I was watching a TV programme, I can’t remember what it was but I can remember I was enjoying it. I felt positive. And then all of a sudden I realised that I could never enjoy a TV programme again and share that enjoyment with Claire. I felt negative.
I’m excited about moving house and looking forwards to a new life by the sea, I feel positive. Which reminds me of the life I’m leaving behind and everything that Claire knew, I feel negative.
This bouncing of emotions seems to be common amongst the grieving from what I can tell, which makes keeping up our relationships with friends and family pretty difficult at times. One minute I want to see people and the next minute I want to be alone – almost as capricious as the British weather, and certainly as unpredictable!
So if you know anyone that has recently lost someone close to them, bear with them. If they want to see you one-minute and don’t the next then it’s just them coming to terms with the loss.
I know that what I need to do is to make those positive views as bright and close and vivid as possible, all the while turning down those negative views to make them as dim, faraway and still as possible. If I change how I see those views of forwards and backwards and decide to make them bright or dim then I control how much of an impact they have. So whilst I can’t control the events themselves I can control their impact, and therein lies my little revelation for today…
Willing to Consider
Willing to Consider
You may remember me talking about an excellent book I’m reading called “Seven Choices”, it really is helping enormously. Up until Thursday of last week I was struggling with the concept of letting go. Why would I want to let go of something which was so perfect? The idea of letting go of the relationship that Claire and I had was not something I was even willing to consider, until I read the most recent chapter in Seven Choices.
I have realised that I don’t need to let go of anything at the moment, of course in time I need to readjust to a new way of life but all I need to do at the moment is to be willing to consider this new way of life. That’s the first step, just a willingness to consider things. The book also talks about incorporating my loss into this new life. That was also something I hadn’t considered before, I was just imagining that the past was the past, it was done with and we move on.
That was too painful to even consider and so the idea of working with the loss, incorporating the loss somehow into my life feels much more acceptable and doable. I can indeed be willing to consider a new way of life which incorporates the loss, that feels so much better than the idea of letting go.
Exactly what that means practically I’m not sure yet. My next step is to begin to work out what that new life will look like, and to take active steps towards achieving it. New routines and new plans will allow me to continue life and live it to its maximum, all the while incorporating the loss of Clare into it. Not ignoring the loss, but working with it. It won’t go away, how can it? It’s happened and that can’t be undone but I can forge a new life building the loss of Clare into it.
If I had to put some kind of scale to it with 0 being at the beginning of the process and 10 being complete, then I’d put myself at about 0.25 at the moment. I’ve just begun. The pain is still immensely raw. Every night, and I literally mean every night, I look to the empty side of the bed and am reminded of what I’ve lost. In fact I am reminded of what I’ve lost every waking second as I walk around this house.
But I am willing to consider the possibility of a new life. Just being willing is a start and something to build on, and build on it I shall.