A bit of mind over matter

Have recently had some rough days, and someone I love is having a rough day today, so it got me thinking about the mysterious workings of the human mind, and the beauty and simplicity of it's purpose.

When we are born our primary objective is survival, so our mind's job is to collect information to ensure that. Consequently, the first beliefs we programme into our brains are about how the world works on a very basic level - water is wet, food is good etc., before moving on to discover how more complex things like gravity work - when Daddy throws me in the air I come back down, and when I drop my toy out the buggy (a lot) he picks it up again.

Once we've figured out how the world operates in relation to us, we move on to seeing how we operate in relation to the world and the people in it - we like being held by granny who smells of biscuits, but not by mad Uncle Kevin who reeks of beer and tips us upside down just after feeding.

All the time we are building a road-map to guide us through life, and as all of this is just our assessment of what we experience, it is our belief-system that subsequently holds all this valuable information.

So far, so good.

But then things start to get a bit more complex as our ability to interact becomes more sophisticated and our understanding of language starts to develop. We get introduced to abstract concepts such as good, naughty, nice, nasty, love, rejection, loss and fear, and it is the job of our minds to catalogue this data into our belief-systems in a way that protects us, ensures our survival, and allows us to flourish in the situation we find ourselves in.

But our minds are very young. Big snag, that. We are still gathering data, and reasoning is still way ahead in the future.

So we do what we're programmed to do - we assimilate the information into our beliefs the best way we can, and hold it as true for the rest of our lives. Then, every time that we experience something of a similar nature, our minds rifle through the rule books, and come up with what they believe to be facts about how the world works, who we are in relation to it, and how we must behave in order to survive the situation in the best way possible.

Simples.

But let's just go back to that snag for a moment.

Very often our beliefs about these concepts are based on little or no adequate information, and a complete inability to process and reason out said data even if we had it - we are far too young and inexperienced. So we end up making sweeping judgements as that is all we are capable of.

That is great if you are in a wonderful, loving, nurturing situation for the majority of the time - your judgements are likely to be that the world is basically a safe place, that people are kind and have your best interests at heart, and that you are a fine individual, just as you are.

But none of us get that all the time. It just isn't possible.

As very young children we don't know that Dad is withdrawn because he's worried about losing his job or that Mum is grumpy because she has a migraine coming on and we are teething and screaming the house down. We just feel the loss of their love and attention, and attribute it to something arbitrary but relevant to our experience - I cried and mum put me down and left the room, ergo, crying is bad and I am less lovable when I show that emotion.

We carry these beliefs for the whole of our lives - it's what we're programmed to do. After all, what good is a road-map that you forget halfway through your journey.

So as adults, we end up in painful situations where these old beliefs come rushing to the fore and whisper 'helpful' advice at the back of our minds - ie; don't get too happy, you'll become complacent and remember what happened last time! Far better to be watchful for the difficulties that you know lie ahead, then you won't be disappointed and side-swiped by them. Stay safe, stay contained, don't let yourself go. Blah, blah blah.

You all know what I'm talking about. You've all heard that insidious little voice at one time or another.

For those who had less than adequate parenting the voice may shout 'You're worthless, unlovable, never amount to anything, a complete failure' etc. But it's all the same thing - a mind that is trying to find the best way to help you live your life as successfully as possible.

Maybe once upon a time, believing in your own wonderfulness was so discouraged or rejected that showing it - or even knowing it - became a painful place that your mind wanted to navigate you away from.

That is sad.

But what about now?

Have those beliefs become the things that are hampering you instead?

You have reasoning powers now that your young mind did not. You can choose some new beliefs that are verifiably true, wise, constructive and kind. You can root out those that crush your spirit and limit your life and tell yourself the truth about them.

I don't know why my mother chose to tell me I was a failure and a constant disappointment to her, but my adult brain knows that that says more about her than it does about me. I am none of those things though for a long time I let myself believe that I was.

I am actually a fine individual. I suspect you are too.

Don't let yourself follow a mis-leading road-map just because your mind is a perfect, extraordinary, amazing tool that once had the wrong information.

Making efforts

As the weather starts to improve and the first tentative shoots appear in my garden, so, too, are the first moments of energy I've experienced this year starting to arrive. At last, some small sense of momentum.

As always, after a period of insubstantial ability, my mind has turned towards the negative, albeit unconsciously. Insidious thoughts of incapability, and mistrust in my body have crept in, almost unnoticed.

When my world becomes small because of physical limitations, I have noticed that my mind does likewise - a coping strategy, I understand - lower ones expectations so that disappointment and dissatisfaction are kept in abeyance, and acceptance and tranquility see one through.

But then the thoughts, the lowered standards, remain, undercutting me at times that could be so much more productive.

And so this week, I have been making efforts.

Tried to start on the house cleaning that has been shelved while under the cosh of illness, and got as far as washing one window before retiring, defeated and exhausted. So called in a cleaner. Simples.

Lovely woman, she arrived confident, reassuring and remarkably like the energiser bunny. Four hours later she left, slightly desperate, deflated, and pathetically grateful when I said we could leave some bits for next week. I think I broke her.

Nonetheless, I turned the thought "I'll never get this house clean" into "I can find a way". As for my lovely cleaner - well I was just an opportunity-rich life experience for her. Ta-dah! See, don't even have to feel guilty.

Next on the agenda is to get painting again. Time to turn "I've lost all my inspiration and everything I do is twee, dead and commercial" thoughts into something that serves me better.

"I am limitless in my potential" might be a nice start.

"I can enjoy the exploration process, which will ultimately be rewarding and fruitful" wouldn't hurt either.

I know patience is a virtue, and I certainly get to be virtuous a lot, but so is perseverance. For me to pull myself out of the dreadful physical inertia that dogs me, perseverance is more my friend.

And after all, once something is a habit, it is no longer an effort, it is just what you do.

I know it won't be plain sailing - nothing with Chronic Fatigue ever is - but being scared of feeling worse doesn't get me very far.

So - off to paint bad paintings so that the good ones can start to emerge.

The past is not always another country

I have been avalanched.

The past has stormed all my barricades like some mighty tsunami, sweeping me off my feet and leaving me flailing and helpless seeming.

I have been pulled down by it's undertow, fingers peeled from their grasp on the present, and hurled back onto the shore of my childhood, breathless and choking.

After all the work I have done I had thought these things dealt with, believed myself able to sail above them now, secure in the present, and moving forward. Not a lie, but not the truth either, it would seem.

I have a friend - HAD a friend - someone I loved dearly , and felt secure in their regard, happy in their presence. But what I really had was an opportunity, a gift, another chance at redemption from the past, disguised as a warm and welcoming then cold and condemning woman.

Her regard for me vanished a year ago, it seems, but she disguised this for many months, trying to cool things off but not knowing how. Icy comments leaked out from her frustrated resentment, until finally things came to a head, and the whole list of my transgressions came pouring out.

The shock was immense, the sense of betrayal, shattering, and the feeling of loss, palpable.

But this was not the thing.

The past had roared up from its proper place and engulfed me. There I was, back home, six, seven, eight years old, listening to Mum rant at me. Her words as inaccurate a description of the truth of me as me ex friend's. In later years, her version of me so honed from repeated practice that I was all but invisible, the consequences to my imagined crimes now included physical violence on top of the daily sneering, belittling and blaming for every negative emotion she experienced.

After the deluge, I avoided my ex friend for as long as I could - why, after all, would I want to put myself back into that situation, willingly go through all that again? I had progressed far enough from my childhood self to know, finally, that I was worth more. And besides, she had clearly stated she wanted nothing more to do with me.

But avoidance is a fear-based fiend, however, and keeps you victim to the past. So, No. Not for me, not any more. I cannot exorcise past demons by ignoring them, and I cannot move on, unencumbered by unhealed experiences, without facing them head-on.

So I have seen her twice since then, encouraged and supported by real friends, and it has been excruciating both times. And this is OK, because I recognise that it will take time for me to learn how to deal with people like that without disintegrating inside. I am strong. This can be done.

And then - the second wave.

My husband Steve, surely my greatest teacher, produces another opportunity-rich experience, and more past turbulence seeps over and beneath me. My balance lost, I crumble.

The sorrow of unknown memory rips out from my heart and cascades down my cheeks. The pain still buried in my DNA, passed cell to cell with each renewal, surfaces, my body acting in unison with my heart, but my mind flounders.

I catch it, pull it up, expose it.

And there it is.

I am five and I still need my mother, but she is gone now. She no longer sees me. She no longer likes me. I am the 'bad girl'. I am not her Bev. I am allowed no mistakes, no chances to learn. Now everything I do has to be perfect first time. And even when it is, she doesn't see, finding instead something else to criticise me for, finding fault with me to explain the way she feels inside.

I never sit on her lap again. I am never held by her. When I fall and cry I encounter impatience at my clumsiness. There are no kind words. Waking in the night from a bad dream, I see her standing furious in the doorway, arms folded, ready to shout. I am five. I still need my mother but she is gone and she never comes back.

There was no reconciliation at her deathbed, no apology for the past. No explanation or chance of understanding and forgiveness. Her feelings towards me endured to the end.

And so I have no faith that love lost, diminished, diverted, or derailed will come back. Coldness and distance are self-propagating in the world of my past, and I have no belief in my ability to evoke anything else.

Poor Steve. What a burden to carry.

I let the tears fall, the pain be acknowledged, the un-met need at last given voice. I hug my five year old self. I am a mother myself now. I know how to love. I can love myself in her place.

My sorrow becomes compassion and finally the flood waters begin to retreat, my tears having strangely cancelled them out, and the present is almost back in line with clock and calender.

There is still more work to do, more loss to be acknowledged and let go of, more understanding to be reached, but there is time for all of that.

They say the past is another country, somewhere we visit from time to time, but I am not so sure.

I once tripped on a stone and ripped out my big toenail. It took nine months to grow back. If I touch my toenail just there, at the tip, I am touching last July. My hair is two years old at the ends, and parts of my bone are now nearly seven years old.

The past is in every cell of my body. It is part of every part of me.

I cannot escape it, nor do I want to try. I can choose whether to carry it as a burden, weighing me down and limiting my present, or see it as the atoms of my life-blood, an integral part of my identity, a rich, pulsing experience that can carry me forward on its tide.

I choose freedom, I choose healing, I choose growth, I choose life.

There's no turning back now ...

Yesterday I posted, by hand, my application to University. I am fifty-two years old - clearly a late developer or a truly great procrastinator. Probably both.

I am quaking in my boots at the thought of what the next four to seven years will bring. Would I have felt the same making this step in my late teens? Of course not. I'm not sure I had the common sense or life experience to be as scared as I am today.

And I really am scared in case they don't want me. I don't know how I'd handle that - it seemed so unthinkable when I first hatched this plan. In my head the problem was about my readiness for them, not vice verse.

But honestly, until I have a piece of paper in my hand confirming my place in September, there is a small corner of my stomach that will never digest food properly again, its sole function now being to churn continually.

At eighteen I would have had that extraordinary brash confidence of youth, and assumed that nothing was as bad as living at home with my parents. I'm sure I thought that one day I would go to Uni, then another day I would leave, educated and ready to take on the world - I doubt I even considered what occurred in between. I think a hazy notion of freedom is the most that intruded on my consciousness.

Now, of course, I'm only too aware from doing my Foundation Course, how much it could take to get from fresher's forms to flinging a mortar board in the air.

So I'm really, really, REALLY scared in case they DO want me.

Because then I will have several years of total honesty, vulnerability, and putting myself completely on the line. If I am to have any integrity in my work it has to be a product of turning myself inside out. There is no room for cowardice or, frankly, what is the point of going?

I don't need a degree to set me on a career path. I need all those moments in the classroom, and the hours strung out over homework, all the input from tutors, and the examples of my classmates. I need the disasters even more than the breakthroughs, for one seldom comes without the other.

I'm aware it may not be fun.

I don't think it's supposed to be fun.

But I will feel more alive in every second of it than I have for most of the last fifty years. Even now, just typing this, I feel a vibration deep in my chest cavity, as if some long forgotten thing is suddenly singing.

In today's society, there is much talk of reaching one's full potential, while at the same time acknowledging that the brain is so underused that it is impossible to do so. But there is a space - between living a 'good enough' life and becoming that sci-fi super being - where one can genuinely find oneself.

It can be a place of peace and contentment and joy, but, as any athlete knows, it is also a place of stretching to the limit, pushing and reaching and achieving something previously unknown to you. A place of such focus, that it calls forth everything within you and brings it to bear, leaving you exhausted but complete.

That is where writing takes me.

That is where painting takes me.

I meet myself coming the other way and am strengthened and renewed by the process.

And, frequently, exhausted.

And so I am utterly scared of embarking on such a journey and, at the same time, terrified of being denied the opportunity to do so.

In four to seven years, I hope at least to make more sense.

It's have-a-go day

Right. Step one for applying to uni is to get my old tutor to review my work, my statement and my portfolio. Sorted - happening on Monday.
Then send in the application and cross my fingers.
What if they don't want me?
What if they don't even want to interview me?
Aaaaargh! Can't think like that.
Quick - divert, divert, do something pro-active.

Bought this book to aid my journey - The Creative Writing Coursebook. It is both terribly good and utterly terrifying. Have been doing the exercises and will try this one now.

Deconstructing Beds... by Alison Fell.

Write 100 words prose description of a bed you slept in as a child. It needn't be perfect Virginia Woolf-type prose, as it is only raw material, but write in sentences rather than note form, as the verbs will be important later.

Right, here goes then.

My bed was the bottom bunk in a room shared with my elder brother. I liked the enclosed space of being on the bottom - rather like I imagined a four-poster bed would feel, and besides, I was scared of falling out of the top as I had seen Adrian do. Next to my pillow hung a curtain that covered an alcove housing an old harmonium. The curtain had strange, abstract patterns on it, and each night I would stare at the blocks of bold colour and imagine myself and the bed shrinking down, down, down, until my bed was the size of one of the blocks. Then the air currents would carry my tiny bed drifting up towards the ceiling. I was always asleep before I reached the top, the weightless sensation lulling me unconscious, and the patterns seeming to pass below me like vast, multi-coloured elevators.

Right, that's more than 100 words but I reckon that's OK.
Next step.

Write another 100 words on the bed you currently occupy, what's in it, what surrounds it, what do you do in it, etc.

Well now, some of that is none of your business, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

My bed is a king size over soft yummy monster that takes up almost the whole room. This is fine because we have a dressing room elsewhere, so sleeping in and 'sleeping with' are really the only things that need to happen in this room. I made the headboard and covered it myself with a scrap of William Morris fabric bequeathed by Joe's granny. I have lots of extra pillows, feather of course. I know they don't hold their shape as well as sponge, but when did life become too short for plumping? My cat sleeps all day on my bed so there is always a warm patch waiting for me, which is a shame because I like it cold.

Ouch! Just went to bathroom to fill up my glass of water and got a static shock off the tap because I have been on the laptop. S'not fair.

Write a final 100 words on a fantasy bed, a bed where money is no object, a bed that can be made of anything you like.

I used to dream of a bed made of hot air when I was a child. Strong jets of warmth held you up about a foot above the surface, and massaged you like a jacuzzi while you slept. This is no longer my fantasy. I don't want warm air anywhere near my face. I want an open window and a soft breeze permanently billowing the gauze curtains that drape near the head of my extra-large bed. There is room for the cat and a dog at the bottom, miles from my feet. The view of the Mediterranean/Adriatic/Aegean/Pacific (I don't care which), shimmering violet in the dawn light and framed by the forest/mountains/bougainvillea etc., makes this my favourite place to be. The pillow cases stay air-conditioner chilled all night, and the patchwork quilt was made by Kaffe Fassett last time he dropped by, but most importantly, in this bed, no one ever, ever snores - least of all me.

Now print this out and cut it all up into small words and phrases. Make sure you separate cliches like 'book' and 'shelves' or 'chest' and 'drawers. Spread them all out and PLAY. See what short sentences you can assemble without worrying about meaning or narrative. Be intuitive. Keep normal syntax as your only guiding rule. Keep an open mind and allow themes to emerge. If you can, use all the words.

Ok, now I've spent about an hour (should take two) and used half the words (should use more) but this is what I've come up with so far.

My cat, my favourite coloured monster,
chilled, unconscious, sleeping in a scrap of patchwork, snores.
Strange - all day I like the sensation, while you, below me,
seeming made of shrinking forest feel always abstract.
Stay.
I was strong, rather like feather mountains,
my bed a warm fantasy,
drifting permanently on the hot, night air.
In this room I want a child,
bequeathed by an all night billowing, plumping, down, down, down,
in a bed of weightless sponge.
My want colours the whole room violet.
A soft harmonium gauze dressing the bed,
and the patterns that covered it - blocks of Bougainvillea - the only shared thing.
When I was sleeping with my pillow,
housing the cat, Adrian, and enclosed,
I imagined my tiny room become too lulling,
and jets of scared shame the size of space, of being, framed my view.
I held you, waiting so cold, like a king on my bed.
When did life, like vast Adriatic elevators
carry my feet towards the curtain, the open window, out of my self.
Always asleep, of course,
I made the bed before I reached the fine, four surface.
You, like me, had to pass the time on it.


Well that's my stab at it - why don't you have a go?

"Update, update, read all about it ...."

Hello?

Sorry, it's me here...

Yes I know it's been over two years but there are reasons. Maybe not good ones, but reasons nonetheless.

But I'm back, so where were we? Oh yes - trying to create a New Life!

So - how's that working for me?

Pretty good, as it turns out. To be fair, it still looks just like the old life - still ill (thank the peri-menopause for knocking me back five years in my recovery) but, oh, the light at the end of the tunnel is beaming down in all its radiant fullness and I am beaming back.

For instance, I sold four paintings in the summer - big, expensive ones at that - AND got a commission. All in the space of four weeks. Made well over a grand. Yay!

Now I'm not a simpleton - I know that £1200 for two or three months work is pretty pants by today's standards, BUT it is tangible proof that my paintings have value to total strangers - and these people are even willing to part with large sums of dosh to acquire them.

This is validating, edifying, and encouraging to me, and we can all do with a bit of that sometimes.

My lovely hubby Steve finally has a job, which also means that the financial dung heap we were living in is now merely a 'learning experience' fading into memory.

And please don't think me callous but my son has left home, and this has brought about the biggest positive change of all.

Allow me to explain - I ran away from home at 18 going on 12, to escape the life dictated by my parents with many threats and far too little bribery, and eloped to London with a boyfriend, a suitcase and two pounds in my pocket. Seven years later, I managed to get away from the surprisingly abusive and domineering boyfriend, but by then I was a single parent.

Fast-forward to last summer and I'm helping Sam to pack for Uni in Bournemouth. I'm tearful for me and excited for him - thrilled about the opportunities and challenges he is going to face, and wondering how much of a gap his beautiful, sunny energy is going to leave at home.

For the first time, it is just me and his father. Alone. Together. A couple. In the same house, but not as parents anymore.

We seem to have done it backwards because now we are finally having 'our time'.

I am a little scared.

Then Steve's new job takes him away for a few nights at a time, so I am truly alone for the first time in my whole life. I've been alone before, but only as an interlude, a small interruption of my wifely/motherly routine.


This is different.This life stretches out before me as a blank canvas beckoning. There are no calls upon me - I can fill the time entirely as I wish, so I use it to begin discovering myself anew.


It is heady and glorious. I revel in it. I am sickeningly lazy, followed by bursts of ridiculous activity at unaccountable hours of the day and night. I sing Karaoke until two in the morning. I lay in the bath until noon. I eat nothing but battered onion rings for lunch. I drink a whole bottle of Mojitos. I enjoy being me.

I notice that my life suddenly IS new - unprecedented, unexplainable, unexpected.

My husband and I find a new contentment and calm between us. We laugh a lot more. We have far fewer worries. It feels like none at all.

I am fifty-two. It took this long.

Louise Bourgeois said "I have been to hell and back , and let me tell you - it was wonderful"

I know what she means. My 'hell' has made this all the sweeter.

I am still ill. My feet twinge with pain at every step. But I dance on them anyway.