05 Feb about today

This is a post about letting myself off the hook.

I nearly wrote it last weekend, but didn’t feel I had enough present life experience to call upon.

Yes, I hadn’t seen enough of my kids and felt guilty. Yes, the house was a tip with piles of papers and books and half read articles cluttering every available surface. Yes I was tired and hadn’t spoken to my husband for days.

And we knew it would be like this – me back at work full time for the first time in years. I had prepared myself for all these eventualities.

For forgetting actors names and making a fool of myself as I misunderstood some nuance of Shakespeare. I was okay with being rusty (or maybe just human) in all those ways.

But today I started free-falling. For an hour or so I existed only inside my head, with all the worries and anxieties I thought I was shot of. I examined every gurgle and creak of my body for the frailty I saw coming. My breath quickened. My heart began to race. I was not in the room anymore. I was only in my own body.

Trying desperately to focus, to engage with the text in front of me. To summon up the strength to offer a comment or a helpful word.

And then the spiralling… towards the edges of despair…

Will I ever be strong? Will my capacity ever increase? Will I ever learn how to in-a-moment silence the fears that creep in?

Just-when-you-think-you-are-safe…. Am I back here, battling for peace? Battling to stay in control?

Hoping against hope I am covering it up okay? That my colleagues don’t spot the freak in the room, who for-no-decernable-reason is losing the plot?

I come home and (after comforting children and finding a bloody school-trip-necessary Victorian costume for TOMORROW) I allow myself to fall apart a little bit. I hug my husband. I remind myself of a few truths.

1. I am loved.

2. I am human

3. It is okay.

4. I don’t need to be perfect, to be honest about my frailty IS strength.

5. There is grace for this.

6. Grace upon grace.

I exhale. I remember.

A year ago I didn’t have to confidence to work at all. I didn’t think I could do it. I had begun to see a future where I managed the minutae of my life to survive.

I have begun to see a new way. A life where adventure is possible. Where I can be courageous.

And as I write this down, I rehearse these truths.