Early days

I moved to a new country on Wednesday. It is now Saturday, and I have spent the last two days cleaning my house, stocking up my cupboards at Costco, befriending the kitten (including believing I had lost the kitten out of a window, crying in the garden thinking I would be dumped for being a negligent girlfriend, finding said kitten inside the house after all - hiding in the recliner), and attempting to get my head around the gargantuan to-do list. It's early days in the New Life.

I have also succeeded in eating badly, sleeping badly, overreacting, panicking, and my personal favourite: sitting in a stupor.

Cowboy is hiding from me this morning, while I scowl at the computer. Who knew it would be so difficult to find affordable, relatively nice furniture in an actual shop where I could go in and just get the furniture? I didn't realise how important it would be to me to have furniture. I've been living out of a suitcase for weeks now. It was fine while I was waiting to move, but now I'm here, I want to plunge some roots down and feel like I have a home.

It's becoming an ordeal. If I could hide from myself, I would.

On the flip side, things that I thought would be horrible, terrible, insurmountable issues as part of the move have turned out to be nothings, and the relief is overwhelming.

Yesterday I played with the horses in the rain, and began to see how good life is going to be. If I could only get some furniture...

On climbing back on.

"Get straight back on!" my instructor would shrill, marching over to wherever I was picking myself up out of the dirt. "Up you get! Get back on!"

That's the first rule that I remember learning about horses, apart from never using a mane comb on the tail. If you come off, get straight back on.

It's decent enough advice, and intended to stop setbacks from sticking long enough to become issues and obstacles. See that crappy thing that just happened? You can get over it and move on and still have a great time, and that crappy thing becomes a great big nothing.

It's been a strange time in life lately, and I fell off this blog. I fell off normal life. I fell into being somebody else for a little while, and realised it was no fun. Worst of all, I climbed off my horse. I climbed off, voluntarily, intentionally. Even though I landed on my feet like a regular dismount, I might as well have thrown myself face first into the dirt. My demons cackled with glee.

See these crappy things that happened? They're huge and terrible and your life is over and you'll never be happy again. You are a great big nothing.

It spiralled. I watched myself behave in a way that I hated. I listened to myself say things to Cowboy that were unfathomably horrible. I felt myself sliding like a poisoned body into a murky swamp, completely apathetic to stop it from happening.

It wasn't quite what I wanted, given that I was making plans for my whole future at the time, and a murky swamp wasn't what I really had in mind.

Shut up, the demons said. What you want doesn't matter. You'll never get it. You're going to fail at everything you ever do, you'll lose everything you've ever had, and you'll never have anything again.

And then I finally saw the sunshine. I saw this Sunshine:



I sat in the saddle in tears, about to climb off again (throw myself metaphorically face first in the metaphorical dirt). I had a violent meltdown. I was on the verge of quitting - quitting everything. I'd just go back to bed and never get up again.

Cowboy gripped my knee as I went to dismount, holding me still. He was unusually forceful. He almost shook me.

"Stay on the horse," he said. I fought him feebly for a moment. He said it again, slower, more urgently. "Stay. On. The horse."

"I can't," I protested, sobbing. "I'm just not in the right mood." I'll never be in the right mood again. Everything is worthless and useless and my life is already over.

"She doesn't care," he said. "Go ride." He let go of us, and chased Sunshine off into the middle of the arena.

I sat there as she walked about, looking for a spot where she might be allowed to stop. I didn't even pick up the reins. I watched her look back at me first with one brown eye, and then the other. She listened to me as I tried to catch my breath between the tears. She heaved a big sigh, and stepped onwards across the sand.

I finally came out of the haze. I emerged, squinting, from the toxic fog where the demons muttered at me, and I noticed the way she moved beneath me. I noticed her gentle, deliberate footfalls, and her patient breath. When we finally stopped, I felt her big heart pumping.

We had a big breakthrough that day. I say "we" did. I mean me. She has life all figured out already. I needed to hear it from her. She turned her head a little, looked up at me on her back. I like to think she was saying "Hey, human, what's the big deal? I've got this."

She became a safe place. That's an amusing notion, given that just a few weeks earlier I had been frightened to be on her back. Now, I will climb on her fresh from the field, and we put the world to rights.

Except now I am back in England, thousands of miles from her, and looking into the fog once more. In searching for another safe place, I'm climbing back on to the blog. Let's ride.

Pushing forward

Last night a friend of mine posted a link to this video on Facebook. It was about 1am and I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd watch the video, turn everything off and then go to sleep.



Suffice to say, I watched the video, cried, and then couldn't sleep. I'm excessively emotional these days. Sam Berns sadly died just a few days ago, just 17 years old, but that's not why I was emotional. What struck me was his uplifting positivity and perseverance.

Those of us lucky enough to live in relatively wealthy and developed countries are privy to a very safe, comfortable lifestyle. We are rarely hungry or thirsty, we have warm beds to sleep in, stylish clothes, and if we have a headache, we can take one of any number of painkillers to get rid of whatever is challenging us. We face so few real challenges that when something difficult does come into our lives, we flail about in panic, wondering how on earth we will cope.

The human body is extraordinarily resilient. Even with Progeria, Sam's body endured 17 happy years and allowed him to achieve some of his ambitions. Whilst he may appear slender and fragile, his skull protected his brain through the years to produce this intelligent, thoughtful and inspiring young man, who wants to show other people how to be happy. It's ironic that we so often look up to people who appear to have 'difficult' lives for advice on how to be more content with our own. Sam is firm on the point that he has a very happy life. Is that despite the challenges he lives with? Or do the hurdles give him perspective on what is important in life? Maybe we would thrive a little more with a few more sticky situations to battle through.

I loved him most of all for his words on pushing forwards. I am often guilty of lingering over the past, or dragging it along with me, or looking back at it and sighing. Challenge can stall us in life, surround us and make us come to a standstill, as if we can do nothing until the challenge has somehow disappeared again. Sam encourages us to push forward, move on through it all, to not be embodied by the obstacles in our lives.

I'm adding it to my resolutions for the year. I'm going forwards this year, not back.

The Small Cry

I have just come home from the trip taking Cowboy to the airport for his flight home. The airport run is always difficult for me. I usually battle to stay chipper and cheerful whilst the tears rise in my throat.

This time was made worse by the fact that the norovirus struck me last night, and I had next to no sleep all night, had to run up and down to the bathroom several times to be sick, and today I am shivery and aching and the thought of food makes me feel faint.

My dad offered to drive us to the airport, and I slouched on the back seat of the car while Cowboy sat in the front, and I managed to hold it all together until we had to walk in to the terminal and find his check in desk. Mostly, that was because I was concentrating so hard on not feeling like I was about to die that I didn't have brain-space to consider crying.

We don't do long, drawn-out goodbyes. Once I'd got him safely checked in and his bag dropped off, all he had to left to do was get through security. A quick kiss, a hug, and he said "See you later." I forced a smile and said "Yep. See you soon." Then I babbled about letting me know when he lands, and have a safe journey, none of which were things I needed to say. They were just an attempt to prolong his being here.

It's been a lame ten days on paper: both of us were ill more than once, and to compound matters, our plan to have a romantic get-away and make up for er... "lost time" was scuppered by a very unglamorous affliction that struck me, and we were limited to cuddling. Only very little cuddling occurred, because either he or I were contagious, and neither of us can sleep well if we're cuddling. The weather was miserable, and Christmas wasn't as glittery and fabulous as we had imagined.

It made no difference to me. I loved him being here. I don't love that he has gone again. As I always do after leaving him at the airport, or him leaving me at the airport, I have a small cry. It's about the only way to deal with it.