cybermule | (no subject)

random thoughts relating to my life
This evening I was surreptitiously hosing my garden. I'm not sure if we have a hosepipe ban - probably not - but using a hose is always something I feel vaguely guilty about. That's by the by - my thoughts were going back to my childhood, playing in the garden in summer while my dad would tease us with the hose, and we'd "accidentally" get soaked. I thought that maybe the saddest thing I could think of was a garden like that, that once had been loved and enjoyed, but had been neglected and forgotten, buried under the weight of weeds and family strife. It made me sad- and always did - how my parents house, shop and garden, all three sources of light and joy, slowly degenerated as they slid into alcoholism. The pretty things were neither looked at or used, and everything slowly crumbled into decay. I recently read Great Expectations, and the image of Miss Haversham's preserved and dusty grandeur hit quite sharp and painful into my heart.

I can resolve to never let my life go down this route - I don't believe that effort only serves to maintain the position you've got - but I think there is a deeper problem. All my life, I've been gripped with a terrible horror of losing things, of not appreciating things properly. I've always been hideously concious of mortality, particularly that of loved ones or treasured moments, and deal very badly with change. I guess it's quite sad - what should have been a drive to appreciate life turned into a lonely, slightly gothic burden for a grown-up little girl.

The note to myself here is firstly to try to shed bits of that burden as I go forward in life, and secondly to start a photo-documentary of my childhood haunts and happinesses.

On the steps of recovery
I'm still pondering on this one. I riffled through the pages of a book on ACOA, but felt bad that I hadn't been so terribly abused as the people there. That last sentence came out strange, but basically I felt like a bit of a fraud. I also had a think about steps, and I think that before my dad died I'd graduated onto the second step. I'd acknowledged that my life was in a tailspin, and I'd made steps to deal with that. I was reconciled with not seeing my family any more - I loved them, but their burden on me was unacceptable. And I had actively started seeking for some sort of greater power in life. I was happy and hopeful and positive for the first time since I was a very small child. But my dad's death has made me regress, I think. Sometimes I wonder if I could have changed things by sticking around, and whether the price I paid for happiness was too high. So I think that maybe I've taken a step or two back, onto the border of the two steps.

The note here is to phone Al-Anon and try to find a local meeting. This makes me scared and guilty.

And finally, the to-do list. I've done a lot of good things since I last did this, and I'm not going to rigidly do a list of things I'm pleased with. But I am going to recycle old points from my list into a new one: