My New Life begins

Day 1

I have chosen today – it starts here. My New Life. The old one was taking me nowhere, which for a long time was the direction I was quite happy to go. It’s not that I feel ready – I most assuredly don’t – but that I have waited long enough. My New Life should contain health, success and happiness, by which you can conclude that I feel ill, unsuccessful and bored. “Don’t we all, sometimes!” I hear you ask, and you’d be right, but with nineteen years of chronic physical and mental ill-health behind me, ‘ill, unsuccessful and bored’ was the definition of the good days. Desperate, suicidal and exhausted to the point of immobility were the usual characteristics. But now, as they say, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and so today I start My New Life.

Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach, and those who lay on the sofa all day like I do, make lists.

Practical To Do List

• Make a shopping list and buy food. It’s got to be healthy because when you’re in my position food is one of the few things you can really enjoy, and this is not the time to drop standards. It also has to be cheap because we are on the dole. I can manage the planning and the shopping, but when it comes to the cooking I often don’t have the energy to move – so RESOLUTION NUMBER 1 is to cook what I have planned.
• Clean out the Guinea Pigs. Barry, Roger and Sandra need this and the compost heap (which is actually a festering, fly-infested, slimy mass) needs it too. I have a completely unfounded belief that the muck accruing in the compost bin will become fulsome, dark, rich, nutrient-releasing mulch by the time it is full, just because I am being good and eco-friendly and filling it up rather than adding another black plastic sack to a landfill. Every time I lift the lid the evidence would suggest that I am creating something that men in orange boiler suits and masks will have to remove. RESOLUTION NUMBER 2 is to carry on regardless and live in happy, smug denial about this.
• Do the ironing and finish the laundry bits that Steve always leaves unfinished (which are always mine). I quite like the washing because machines do it for you and all you have to do is press the odd button and refrain from kicking it when you press the wrong one. Ironing on the other hand – what a waste of my life that is. An iron is not a machine that does it for you, it is one of those gadgets that fool us into thinking they make our life easier. I shall watch ‘The Wire’ while I iron – the TV is a machine that genuinely makes your life easier AND you only have to press a button.
• I need to do one thing today that is about creating My New Life to be healthy, successful and happy. Where do I start? I shall clear my desk ready to re-paint the blue picture of ‘I am Red’, the children’s book I am conceiving. This is of course, intended to be a worldwide hit, translated into fifty languages and a staple of every infant and nursery school in the known world, but it can’t be any of those things if I don’t actually finish it. So……… this is the big one – RESOLUTION NUMBER 3 ………(deep breath) ……… is to finish the book by Christmas.
• Oh my God.

Day 2

What a brilliant day. I have just finished RESOLUTION NUMBER 2 and the Munchkins are in a clean cage. I just love my guinea Pigs as they are grandchildren substitutes and I am one of those people who were born broody.

It started when I was four and my sister was brought home, just one day old - my mother on a stretcher having discharged herself early, holding the tiny bundle with the livid red forceps marks still keen on her neck. My sister Caron stole my heart completely, and I sat on the top stair desperately seeking every opportunity to sneak into the room to gaze at her. Constantly chased out by the midwife who wanted mother and ‘baby’ to rest, I remember a seething resentment and hatred of the woman, and an even more dogged determination to get in to be beside MY BABY. I always thought of her that way – she was mine – and when nineteen years later I had my first real child, my lovely son Joe, I knew the feelings coursing through my soul were just a re-run of that first, initial bursting forth of pure, maternal love.

And so now, Fidget the cat, Barry and Sandra, my guinea girls, and Roger, my handsome but impotent (neutered) guinea fella, fill the gap.

I also managed to construct the food list and to clear my desk. Needless to say, the ironing went untouched – big surprise. I might force myself to do that tomorrow as a way to get out of cleaning the bathrooms or hoovering the stairs, which are almost as bad but you don’t get to watch ‘The Wire’ whilst doing them.

I am surprised at how much I prevaricated about cleaning my desk. There is definite trepidation about setting out on a new work course. A clear desk means I have no excuses, and though I am not a lazy person, I do currently have chronic fatigue syndrome among other things, and so commitment is something I have learnt to have rather a flexible attitude about, in order not to be crushed by a constant sense of failure. Before I was ill I could decide I wanted to do something and then I would just do it. Since I became ill, I’ve been lucky if I can manage two things I said I’d do per year. Not a great record. And so I find myself a little paralysed with the anticipation of taking on something that needs to be followed through, and even baby steps are loaded with import. But this is My New Life, and so I must find ways around this if I am to succeed in creating something different from the last nineteen.

It is, however, a brilliant day and this is because I am on my own in the house at last. Sam is at college and Steve, my other half, has started his psycho-babbler course today. It’s only one day a week, but, OH, I feel free. I got so excited when I awoke that I immediately tried to squash it with feelings of guilt about looking forward to Steve not being there but it just wouldn’t work. It’s not about Steve – it’s about being alone – about having my own space.

As a child I was a latchkey kid. My mum was a teacher at a school further away, so my brother and I would meander home any way we chose from our respective schools, playing with friends in the back alleys and walking them to their houses first. Sometimes going in to see their pet rabbits or ferrets, and playing on the swings, before trotting up the side alley to the house and letting ourselves in through the back door. The silence of the house was calm and safe. I would make myself toast, trying not to singe all the hairs of the back of my hand as I lit the grill. I remember being very frightened of that but the toast was worth it. And then it was all MY TIME. When mum came home later, in a cloud of exhausted recrimination and blame, the yelling would start and the peace and calm scurried away until the next day. So yes, I like a quiet, empty house – it is a treasure to be savoured.

I believe that what you can visualise, you can create, and I am nothing if not a very visual person. I am going to my lovely clean desk to make an inspiration book, filled with pictures of all the things that are going to characterise My New Life. I can look at it every day to keep myself on track, and add to it if my direction changes. Is this more prevarication? No, I don’t think so, actually – I think we should all take stock from time to time, and I find it easier to be specific if I have something concrete that I can see in front of me, rather than an easily forgotten wish list at the back of my mind. So, RESOLUTION NUMBER 4, is to compile an inspiration scrap-book.

Day 3

What a wash out. The annoying thing about Chronic Fatigue is the friends it likes to have around for company sometimes. That brittle bitch Insomnia turned up last night, knocking on my door after three and a half hours sleep and only leaving at seven thirty so I could doze for half an hour before Steve got up. Hauled myself around the house in an aching, spaced-out daze, unable to do anything very much and just nodding vacant agreements to anything Steve said. Lovely man had the sense to buy me cheer-you-up orange lollies. I ate two, straight off.

We have friends of our own that pay us surprise visits – Serendipity dropped in yesterday. When Steve signed up for his Psychobabbler course six months ago, he had no idea how he was going to fit this in around work, as it would mean having to take off every Thursday. He just knew that somehow he would find a way, and that he had put off doing this for far too long. He’d supported me doing my Art course for two years, and now it was his time. At 58 he couldn’t put off changing his life forever, not with his heart condition and all. So, with no current job, and the knowledge that contracts for three/four days a week are more than slim on the ground, he put his faith in the Universe To Provide, and tootled along to his first day. All was going along nicely, lots of sitting on floor cushions sharing and doing bonding exercises, when the centre manager called him aside and told him he had no place reserved as he hadn’t paid. Well he had, of course, and he had to show them on their own computer before they accepted it. This still left a problem as he was one too many people, so they offered him a place on another course, same thing, slightly further away, but on a SATURDAY!!! Brilliant! Perfect! Now he can apply for a much wider range of jobs with no restrictions and no drop in salary. Yeehar!

Day 4

Life is so much nicer when you’ve had some sleep. RESOLUTION NUMBER 4, the inspiration scrapbook is coming along nicely. I am writing “Thank You in Advance For..” on all the pages, because the best way to get the Universe To Provide is to visualise yourself as already receiving and beam with gratitude. That old song ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ is truer than you think. I might even get to the ironing today.

The pages I have completed in my scrapbook feature the clothes I want to get. As a child I had play clothes for everyday wear, and clothes ‘for best’ that you wore to Sunday School and such like. The play clothes were practical, always second-hand, and therefore, never chosen with me in mind. They were hand-me-downs from my numerous and lovely cousins, or job lots gleaned from jumble sales. I still love charity shops and vintage clothes to this day - I am less familiar, however, with the concept of going out and buying new things that suit me and fit me and don’t need altering or upgrading in some way. My wardrobe resembles a nest built in a hurry with anything that came to hand. In My New Life, I aim to be closer to the Bower Bird than the Cuckoo (who doesn’t build a nest at all), and choose beautiful, colourful, gorgeous clothes, with exquisite taste and forethought. I will have garments that suit me and fit me and go with other things in my wardrobe, and make getting dressed in the mornings when Insomnia has visited, and her mate Fibromyalgia has punched me in the back and all down my legs, a treat and a pleasure.

Of course, we need an income first.