In my heart of hearts, I believe that each of us lives according to our capacity in life. However relatively rosy our lives may appear to the next person or however privileged and elevated our position in society is perceived to be, when we as individuals are in the midst of it, we know when we have met our limit. Even if we have fame and fortune, when something breaks us, it breaks us. We are stripped down to our bare human frailty. The rest are peripherals. Mere stabilisers on a bike we never quite learn to ride perfectly. Sometimes, those wheels come off. Oops-a-daisy…
Words. Such potent things. And for that, I am truly grateful. Lemonade is not easy to make from lemons as we all know, and tonight, I met my match. It’s been getting progressively more difficult recently, to make that lemonade sweet enough to swallow. But then I remembered some words I had written over a decade ago. I searched for them in some old folders. A sample of twenty-two poems I had written during some of the darkest times in my life. Through those words I revisited my younger self. I was reminded of some of the reasons why I made a decision then, to keep trying to live. I felt as though I was fingering tiny precious gems I had rediscovered in a well worn silken pouch. I wrote those words a long time ago in my pain. I never dreamt that they would speak to me again through these mists of time…
And then the simple image below appeared in my malfunctioning WordPress reader. It was so poignant and apt. It was exactly how I envisaged my feelings to be. I felt so small in an overwhelming emptiness that was keeping me awake but wanted to be in a deep restful sleep in a beautiful peaceful nothingness all at once.
Life is still wobbly. But I think I can now catch forty winks to the soundtrack of birdsong at dawn. Thank you for reading and for being out there for me 🙂
Reblogged from Christophe Gowans:
26 July 2012
Today I took a picture of sleep.
this is lemonade 