The past...

They say the past is etched in stone, but it isn't. It's smoke trapped in a closed room, swirling, changing, buffeted by the passing of years and wishful thinking. But even though our perception of it changes, one thing remains constant: the past can never be completely erased. It lingers, like the scent of burning wood.

People tell you who they are but we ignore it...

… because we want them to be who we want them to be.

I myself am made entirely out of flaws...

...stitched together with good intentions.

Use of Weapons - Iain Banks

"Sometimes he felt as though every instant he spent with her was a precious capsule of sensation to be lovingly wrapped and carefully place somewhere inviolable, away from harm. But he only fully realised later; it wasn't something he was fully aware of at the time. At the time, it seemed to him that the only thing he was fully aware of, was her."

"At any time he could simply look at her and wrap his adoration for her around himself like a coat on a cold day, and see her life and body, moods and expressions and speech and movements as a whole enthral long field of study that he could emerge himself in, like a scholar finding his life's work"

"When he tried to tabulate his love, list all the things about her that drew him to her, he found himself starting at the larger facts- her beauty, her attitude to life, her creativity- but as he thought over the day that had just passed, or just watched her, he found individual gestures, single words, certain steps, a single movement of her eyes or a hand starting to claim equal attention. He would give up then, and console himself with something she'd said; that you could not love what you fully understood. Love, she maintained, was a process; not a state. Held still, it withered. He wasn't too sure about all that; he seemed to have found a calm serenity in himself he hadn't even known was there, thanks to her."

I'm always interested in the way people edit the details of their lives...

....the way they compress all the years into sentences.

It's a new year, and not too far away from being a year since my old life ended.

2017 was a year of lows, but also some important highs.

I'm in a new relationship with someone who seems to really love me (for who I really am) and appreciates being with me. I also love him very much. He is a good, kind person, and we have an amazing connection. We have had a very passionate 9 months together so far, where I've experienced amazing feelings and experiences I have never experienced before (and didn't even believe were possible or really existed!) It's a strange thought that I would have missed out on so much in my life had my current relationship (marriage) continued.

Still, there's a long way to go in rebuilding my life. Though I certainly feel I'm building it on stronger foundations than before, I'm still a long way from knowing what I'm doing with this whole life thing, and life is still very hard sometimes. I'm still living with my parents (though hopefully that will change soon), still adapting to a new job where I've had to start from scratch after building up a teaching career of seven years. My social life isn't what it used to be, and I often get lonely. The distance between myself and my new partner doesn't help with that (although hopefully that'll change soon too!) The divorce has also been very hard and still takes it's toll as it still isn't over. I get quite down. It seems to have been Winter forever and the evenings are dark. I wonder how and when life will get better.

But I've also discovered ways to improve my mood and continue to do so. Exercise turns out to be a wonder cure for a low mood that I can't believe I didn't discover until recently. It lifts my mood almost magically! Exercise is certainly my number one recommendation for feeling down.

There's other things I'm trying to fit into my routine, ideally every day, though it's not always possible. Altogether they really do help. They are:

Eating 3 meals a day
Omega 3 and magnesium supplements
Getting outdoors
Having social contact
Exercise

There are others I want to incorporate:

Meditation
Yoga
Healthy Eating
Gratitude
Journaling

though at the moment I cannot say I do them regularly or that they are part if my routine. I know that if I try hard to make them part of my routine they will no doubt really help me.

I'm also working on improving my self esteem as low self esteem has haunted me all my life, and has certainly contributed to a lot of my problems. It's slow and gradual improvement, but I am optimistic. The voice in my head is slowly changing and becoming kinder (to myself). I am learning that my opinions are just as valid as anyone else's. That I am equal to every body else. That who I am is ok, and enough, and I can be myself (I don't have to change who I am to "fit in".) I tell myself nice things about myself, I focus on my good points, and criticise myself less. I think my confidence is gradually increasing, but undoing 29 years of low self esteem will inevitably take time. It's exciting that I am finally discovering the tools and techniques to start improving my self esteem though, and I look forward to continuing the journey towards being confident in myself.

I will update again soon on how things are going. My next steps will hopefully be incorporating some meditation and yoga into my routine, as well as having more friends + social life and hobbies. I also want to focus on having a greater sense of 'purpose' in my life. Big goals! But I am determined to have a happy a life as I possibly can, especially after going through so much. I want to rebuild my life to be better than it ever was before!!

I've always wanted to grow spiritually. I wonder if what's happened to me is God's response. I've always read that everything is life is impermanent, and you can't find love and security outside of yourself. Yet still I guess I didn't believe it just because I'd read it. I thought I could find love and security, I thought I'd found a reliable, loving man who would be there, care and stand by me no matter what.

Then I woke up one morning and all of that was gone. My every day life as I'd known it was gone. My life was literally turned upside down. My cousin had died, my marriage over, and I was out of Loughborough, out of my home, away from my job and all the people I saw on a day to day basis, and back with my parents. 

It all turned out to be true. Everything is impermanent, and you can't rely on anything but yourself. My whole way of seeing life has been transformed forever, in a way that can never go back. My worst possible nightmare has taken place. I thought I would die. But I haven't, I'm still here. My heart has broken, my life as I knew it has fallen apart, but I'm still here. 

All I can do is take life day to day. Focus on small achievements and small every day pleasures that remind me that life still contains some happiness and is still worth living.

If I can find the strength to shower, brush my hair, put on a bit of make up, and get through the day, that's an achievement. If I eat and drink and look after myself, that's an achievement. I have small goals.

There are things in my life to be grateful for. Family, friends, pets. I have to focus on what I do have. Take one day at a time.

I'm getting over the emotional equivalent of a serious car crash. It's going to take me time and I have to give myself time to heal. It's 5 weeks so far, who knows how long it will take? Probably months, hopefully not years.

But I trust that there are lessons to be learned from this, and that there is a future out there for me. I will take my happiness on a much more day to day basis. I won't compare to others, I won't try to succeed or impress. I won't make big elaborate plans about my future. I'll just try to be happy day to day.

It takes two people to make a marriage work, I could not do it alone. I don't want to go into the details of the marriage, except to say I was not able to be myself, to be Rachael. I had to constantly mold myself into being the woman he wanted- which evidently was not me.

Now I have to learn to start again. Learn from my mistakes, and let this make me not break me. I need to find Rachael again.

I am not ashamed, because I trusted, and I tried my best, and I am now doing my best to be strong in the face of circumstances I never could have predicted.

"There is no perfection, only life." - Milan Kudera

Stanzas to Augusta

Though the day of my destiny's over,
  And the star of my fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
  The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
  It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit hath painted
  It never hath found but in thee.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

Lord Byron

Dedicated to my cousin, James (1989 - 2016)

Alain de Botton

“It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love

The Tree of Possibilities - we see life this way for a brief time only

"Your heels on the sidewalk make me think of the roads I never traveled, that stretch away like the boughs of a tree. You have reawakened the obsession of my early youth: I would imagine life before me like a tree. I used to call it the tree of possibilities. We see life like that way for only a brief time. Thereafter, it comes to look like a track laid out once and for all, a tunnel one can never get out of. Still, the old spectre of the tree stays with us in the form of an ineradicable nostalgia. You have made me remember that tree, and in return, I want to pass you it’s image, have you hear its enthralling murmur.” - Milan Kundera, Identity

If that high world

If that high world, which lies beyond
Our own, surviving Love endears;
If there the cherish'd heart be fond,
The eye the same, except in tears ---
How welcome those untrodden spheres !
How sweet this very hour to die !
To soar from earth and find all fears
Lost in thy light --- Eternity !
 
It must be so:  'tis not for self
That we so tremble on the brink;
And striving to o'erleap the gulf,
Yet cling to Being's severing link.
Oh !   in that future let us think
To hold each heart the heart that shares;
With them the immortal waters drink,
And soul in soul grow deathless their!

Lord Byron

I ask but to forget

"Oh Memory, torture me no more,
The present's all o'ercast;
My hopes of future bliss are o'er,
In mercy veil the past.
Why bring those images to view
I henceforth must resign ?
Ah ! why those happy hours renew,
That never can be mine?
Past pleasure doubles present pain,
To sorrow adds regret,
Regret and hope are both in vain,
I ask but to — forget."

Lord Byron

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

One of the most moving films I have ever seen. A reminder that life is short and impermanent. Here's a quote from it:

"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

Kierkegaard 2

“When the world commences its drastic ordeal, when the storms of life crush youth’s exuberant expectancy, when existence, which seemed so affectionate and gentle, changes into a pitiless proprietor who demands everything back, everything that it gave in such a way that it can take it back-then the believer most likely looks at himself and his life with sadness and pain, but he still says, “There is an expectancy that the whole world cannot take from me; it is the expectancy of faith, and this is victory. I am not deceived, since I did not believe that the world would keep the promise it seemed to be making to me, my expectancy was not in the world but in God.”

Kierkegaard

One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?

Brothers on a hotel bed

You may tire of me
As our December sun is setting
'Cos I'm not who I used to be.

No longer easy on the eyes
These wrinkles masterfully disguise
The youthful boy below.

Who turned your way and saw
Something he was not looking for,
Both a beginning, and an end.

Now he lives inside
Someone he does not recognise
When he catches his reflection by accident.

On the back of a motorbike
With your arms out-stretched trying to take flight
Leaving everything behind.
But even at our swiftest speed
We couldn't break from the concrete
In the city where we still reside.

And I have learned, that even landlocked lovers yearn
For the sea like navy men.

The Beauty of Romantic love

What makes romantic love beautiful? It is certainly not the emotion itself. No, romantic love is only considered beautiful if it arises in fortuitous circumstances. If the emotion of romantic love arises between two young people, both single, who then go on to get married, raise a family, and spend the rest of their lives together, then love is considered by all as a beautiful thing. But if two people fall in love in a situation which society deems "wrong" then the very same emotion is seen as anything but beautiful. Consider if the love of Romeo and Juliet would still be held up as one of the most beautiful ever told if Juliet was married with a child, or if Romeo had been ten years older than the fourteen year old Juliet? What then, do we find beautiful about love? Not the emotion of romantic love itself, but that vital and fortuitous combination of  romantic love, and favourable coincidence. The very same emotion  of love, then, can become either the pinacle of human beauty and happiness, or the depth of human despair and shame, depending entirely upon the circumstances under which it arises.

Take this Longing

Many men have loved the bells
you fastened to the rein,
and everyone who wanted you
they found what they will always want again.
Your beauty lost to you yourself
just as it was lost to them.

Oh take this longing from my tongue,
whatever useless things these hands have done.
Let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do for one you love.

Your body like a searchlight
my poverty revealed,
I would like to try your charity
until you cry, "Now you must try my greed."
And everything depends upon
how near you sleep to me

Just take this longing from my tongue
all the lonely things my hands have done.
Let me see your beauty broken down
like you would do for one your love.

Hungry as an archway
through which the troops have passed,
I stand in ruins behind you,
with your winter clothes, your broken sandal straps.
I love to see you naked over there
especially from the back.

Oh take this longing from my tongue,
all the useless things my hands have done,
untie for me your hired blue gown,
like you would do for one that you love.

You're faithful to the better man,
I'm afraid that he left.
So let me judge your love affair
in this very room where I have sentenced
mine to death.
I'll even wear these old laurel leaves
that he's shaken from his head.

Just take this longing from my tongue,
all the useless things my hands have done,
let me see your beauty broken down,
like you would do for one you love.
Like you would do for one you love.

The water still flows, the wind still blows, the fire still burns. And yet, everything has changed.