Good Grief 182

When I saw this spider struggling I was reminded of Robert the Bruce. All this unsettlement seems to have rocked the unsteady boat and I feel myself slipping back. It is making me irritable and a bit belligerent and despondent about having to try and clamber back/out, yet again. It is tedious.
I ended up having a spat about our faded empirical arrogance today but it wasn't really about that. I just wanted a fight, I think. Wanted to engage with the anger because it is 'better' and has more life force about it than the grief, depression and despair.
I will never win the audition for Pollyanna and I find optimism irritating, a bit like hope, it can all end up being a bit of a bump as you hit the ground hard, and often.
I don't mind uncomfortable in some ways. At least you know you are engaged with life at some level. In some respects I am finding this interesting- we are, indeed, in interesting times and this may be one of those seismic shifts where new order emerges.
However, I do believe it will come with much pain and have a negative impact on things I value. I would love to believe there is a Phoenix also waiting for the auditions, but like I said, I am no Pollyanna.

I would add that this reminds me a lot of the period after a death. People say things like, 'life goes on, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' and find solace in other things and getting on with daily routines. Of course, what else is there to do at such times, and some kind of normality can be steadying. But I always remember that period, and watching the world carry on, and thinking, 'but don't you realise, it has utterly and irrevocably changed?'. However, then, it had only changed for me.

Having slept (a little ) on it I woke to a further sense, or at least, a slightly clearer sense  of how this feels. How it has resonated, or rippled, through me in ways that feel familiar .. and deadening
It is at its core, the aloneness.
I woke this morning to that feeling that I know - I miss another beating heart. It is such a familiar feeling, not just from the loss of my husband but one that feels as though it ripples back through my life, forever.
It is that sense that connectedness is hard and, for me, ironically, very British Rail - it needs to be the right kind of connectedness on the line, meaningful in ways that I understand and feel, otherwise I feel more alienated and more isolated, alone.


Alone is a feeling that is so familiar I don't mind too much really. When I come back to it, I just tend to think, 'it is how it is, how it has mostly been, what a fool you are to think, or feel, it might ever be different'.
Alone doesn't worry me, my default state probably prefers it. Perhaps we all just need to get used to it. Trying to be otherwise is probably ignoring what Basil Fawlty would call 'the bleeding obvious'. We are an island - we are separate. We are individuals, we are ultimately alone.
The trouble is, I still want to beliefve in John Donne ... somewhere, in the depths ... as I watch the dead stone sink from the surface into the deeper darker depths ..... I want to believe there is something more and that there is another beating heart.