Day

of days

Thursday. A day of days, I have one half of the French door open, pinned back by a creaking hook because the temperature outside is lighter. There is some blue above me with billowy clouds and for the first time my washing is out on the line. Yes there is a definite feel of Spring in the air today. There have been other, earlier sunny times this year,  but not like this. A huge bee buzzes and butts the glass, Iris leaves spear sharply up and spike through the earth and grape hyacinth run the length of the wall bobbing their beautiful blue heads in a faint breeze. Primrose, Tulips and Daffodils mix with purple Hellebores. The thrum and thrust of life emerging is optimistic and helps me to feel more sure of my way. Something is turning.

The moon must be in some weird point of transition because I’ve been conscious of a serious downturn in mood these past couple of days. I blame the moon because I can find no other plausible reason for the unusually dark thinking (I never can) and in the past I would have muted hormones and menstrual cycles as the provocateurs but now…. who knows. Moon and tides are taking my thoughts back and forth over shifting sands. Unstable. Uncertain. I am conscious enough these days to know it’s happening and stand back as an observer, bear witness to the pain and turmoil being generated. All memory is dark, ugly, grim and I am the central figure. I use every tool in my armoury to unseat the bad and replace with the good. Current belief recommends sitting with the darkness, facing out the terrors. I’ve done this before and know there’s value in it.  That was then and this is now, I’m tired of trying. I tell myself it will last only for a few days. Bear with it. Use gratitude platitudes to drown out the noise of old memory. I do not like how I remember myself. Or events. I read beautiful pieces of writing which sear my mind and heart with their poetic rhythms. Word songs moving straight to cells and settling in my bloodstream, medicine for what I don’t know, but I do know I swallow them whole, they are needed and in vast quantity. I read beautiful words and question why I write… when there are so many whose skill on the page outstrips anything I might produce. Then I’m reminded of something another writer coined, I write to ‘clean my mind’. ‘Tilling the soil’ and emptying out what is found and needs to surface. Thank you @poetrytoday (Maya C Popa).

Outside is inviting and I don boots, apron and old gardening gloves. There is much to do and I make a start in the stumpery by the shepherd’s hut. It’s left pretty much to go it’s own way, but the holly tree has dropped a multitude of leaves over Winter and they lie, skeleton-like, covering the damp tree bark. I gather and pull, tidy, clip and dib to put in some hyacinth bulbs I’d stored in the cupboard under the stairs. I think they have been there a long time, maybe too long, I found them while looking for something else. I plant them anyway in the dark earth hole I’ve made. Everything looks better, literally and I continue with it, getting into hard corners, barbed and catching on rogue branches and spiky twigs. Crouched and folded double behind shrubs and the old tree stump to clear out rotting debris and reveal beautiful black soil. The smell is wonderful. This kind of ‘tilling’ renders my mind without thought and I work my way round the garden. Next under the pergola where the honeysuckle grows more lush than I’ve ever seen it. The Wisteria is bare, a tangle of stems and strong twisted branches which drop their pale lilac racemes in Spring and Summer. Then to the table garden  where we eat in full sun at lunchtimes (when we have sun). This is the UK after all, but our garden is south facing and harvests the sun as it travels round to sink in the west.  This glorious spot has been rather neglected and is in a sorry state. It will take more than a tidy to sort it, but I make a start and can see what must come next, tasks for another day and maybe also an expensive trip to the garden centre.

It has started to spit rain. The washing must come in and quickly. I whip it off the line and into the basket. It’s almost dry. From my armchair I can see the improvement in the garden. I’m satisfied. There is dirt beneath my nails despite the gloves. The glass of the window has strings of water pearls that are really pretty and already I feel muscles complain about my few hours of labouring in the garden. Perhaps a bath with Wiberg’s pine essence later.  Not surprisingly my mood has changed. I’m pleasantly tired, my mind feels softer. As though ground has been broken and loosened. There has been a mind cleaning too in the garden. My gratitude is real.

I’ve often used tasks to subvert these dark days. Letter writing. Gardening. Baking. Walking. Cooking. It doesn’t always work, but today, for the moment, it has and I can approach the rest of this day with a fresh, plump heart, not the shrivelled beast I started with. I’m reconciled to recognising my ‘ok-ness’ now…..which was impossible this morning. What has changed? Who felt what? And that is precisely how fragile a human can be, I speak for many I think. I know this happens at a certain point in the month for me, not triggered by any unpleasant event or challenging life experience. In simply waking up I know immediately that things are bad. It’s that time again. It doesn’t last long, a few days at most, and those days are not lost. Experience has taught me how to navigate the turbid state of my mind. Sometimes I cannot find my way and the darkness is truly, madly, deeply awful. It is at these times I can only allow the savagery to work it’s way out because in 24 hours I know I will feel completely different, but God help the poor soul who crosses me in transit. I’ve made a friend of my enemy, but can easily make enemies of my friends.

We could  label this as a sort of depression, but that’s a generic term and doesn’t nearly cover the depth of bitterness held in the cup I carry. I do think it’s connected with the lunar cycle and whatever hormonal cycle I have left as a post menopausal woman. Perhaps I’m deficient in a specific mineral or vitamin? I’ve researched diverse routes to a solution over many years and each time arrive at the same answer - which always lies with myself. I’m the answer to me.

There is a sense of achievement not despair today. Please don’t feel sad. I put this down with a pragmatic approach. I look at the now very wet garden and see good work. I look at myself and see good work. I hope if you’ve read this and see something you also know up close and personal, that it may have helped to realise too, that under the radar, we are many. You are not alone. There’s always a way to come through, bear it out and rise like a phoenix from the ashes to splendid awesomeness again. We are shiny people too. Trust me I know, till the next time.

A

ps. The Slightly Foxed gift in the picture is a Mother’s Day present from my children. It’s the ‘real readers quarterly’ and I feel like a child who has become member to a fabulous club. Did you make up clubs with your pals when you were a kid? With codes, passwords and badges….? I can highly recommend investigating this wonderful group and signing up. Feeds a passion. Feeling better.