Will to live...

Though I'm not anti-tea....there just really is nothing that can compare to the C word.

Coffee, really does make my world go round... Well mostly.

Sitting at 4pm on the stoep, with my phone, the retreating storm and a cup of coffee...blissed.

Also, this is the perfect place and setup to currently contemplate life... And how quickly these last few months of being jobless have flown by.
In the vortex of what unemployment brings...comes the "fateful" encounters that make me put my feet forward.
This weekend, for example, was depressingly useless for all the work put into it, but a meeting that might not have happened otherwise.
I'm back to taking charge.

Hmmmmmm.

Captain's log...

The two weeks leading up to 28 November 2013 cannot be forgotten, though I feel forgiveness has been seeping in... and my unwillingness to fight it off may very well be a good thing. More for myself and my soul than anything (or anyone) else.

Yup. Though I sit here, still jobless, broke and a little unsure of whether to step with my left or right foot next... somehow, the panic stricken persona that took me over so many months ago... has either become a sedated acceptor... or its left and the actual me of now is "in control"... ha.

For those of us who couldn't give a rat's ass about having "the other half"...as it were, I think feel about losing a job, the way some may react or feel to a relationship falling apart.
I thought I had grounding on which to stand, a routine of some kind and a road I was headed along. I liked who I was becoming... I was working on all of those little niggly things in my persona that I had to assume (as no one gives a fuck about being honest anymore) for myself were things that needed work.
Resentment, vengeance, selfpity, anger at non-living things.
Losing my job (or being retrenched, more correctly) somehow managed to shake the ground beneath me.
Nearly four months later and I'm still not 100% that everything I had invisioned for myself may still be what I will see happening for myself now.
Maybe I'm also putting up my own (albeit realistic) obstacles, but I am treading lightly right now. Grabbing out for another job that will make me feel like I have a "spot" from which to launch ME from. Again.

And no... this is not self pity and I don't feel sorry for myself anymore.
Maybe having the friends and family I have, has allowed me to enjoy the other things around being jobless... maybe.
I've gotten to spend Monday mornings, walking by the weir and having breakfast with beautiful, spiritual beings that I'm blessed enough to call my besties.
I've gotten to sit and watch funny Youtube clips with my stepmother when we're supposed to keep her office running midweek.
It's Friday afternoon, overcast and I've been able to sit and nibble on my lunch while posting this... my pony trying relentlessly to get my old horse to play, neighbours' lawnmowers filling the silence and this amazing sense of calm about everything. Even around the 6 jobs I've applied for over the last two days.
So no. Self pity has no home here right now... and I guess that's one step closer to finding out what road I'm going to beable to stumble on, jobless or not.

There's also been a lot of time for introspection in the last few months...
There are people that have been on my mind alot over the last 2 or so months. People I still love dearly and to my core, that are no longer in my life, that I don't miss anymore.
There are people that are bound to me by the invisible, that I have let go of my anger for... and that I find I cannot love.
I have even found the type of person I didn't like in myself... as having been mostly washed away.

Maybe these are the things that have needed to happen. For all I could possibly know and understand.

But, if only for the duty of paying my rent and feeding my beasts, I do hold onto the hope of finding a job... really really soon. But from which to base part of myself on... I'm not so sure anymore.

This will not be a short term observation...

Falling from the sky...

For all my dramatics.... And yes, self pity.
I do believe I sometimes climb out from that "servitude" to negativity and open my eyes to the greater stuff.

I feel warm and fluffy. Whether that's the extra fabric softener or the fact I'm sitting in the sun (with no sunscreen smeared on either) we will never know.

I feel a twang in the very core of my soul, like me and those I love are going to have some GOOD life changing moments in the next couple of months.

And I'll leave THAT to fate.

Lines...

Nearly 6 hours ago, I got woken up from trying to sleep off a killer migraine. And under an hour later we were standing in Casualties at the nearest private hospital, booking in the matriarch of our family.

At 77, and pretty much during the 31 years of my existence alone, 4 weeks ago was the first time seeing my Ouma helpless in a hospital bed because she was sick.
I don't even remember her even having enough of a flu to get her bedbound. (This might have to do with the combination of her boere attitude and old housewife remedies).
To see the Ouma of 21 grandkids (yes 21...not including the married on grandkids) and 18 great grandchildren....oh and 2 great great granchildren... Lying bedbound in a hospital bed and for the most part helpless...was a shock to the balance of our lives.

She can still put the fear of God in you with a slap on the back. Bake up a storm that would put modern mothers to shame and all intertwined with an independance that should be imbedded in every woman of today.

After being out of hospital for two weeks (after being IN hospital for two weeks) ...getting the call that she stopped breathing and your aunt and uncle battled for MINUTES to bring her back. Well.
The way my parents and I reacted was heading straight to her, loading her in the car...and driving her to the hospital.
We even stood outside in the hallways making jokes about her being in the maternity ward at 77.... Ahem.
But the seriousness was all too apparent when she got moved into ICU for observation.
Leaving the hospital...the sense was still there. But sitting in my driveway crying like a little girl, updating family for the last time tonight via Facebook... I have drawn a short straw on emotional stability.

The absolute fear of sleep hangs over this house... Fear that is irrational and emotionally unstable.
All wrapped in that dreaded hope that "nothing bad will happen"...

Sigh

Let's see what tomorrow brings?

Breathing...and alive

We live in a time where "bi polar" has become the "in" disorder to have. Head shrinks apparently diagnose every Willy and nilly with it.

Far removed from the Victorian /Elizabethan view of the mental illness once known as "manic depression"... Where sufferers were drugged into vegetative states and locked in asylums.

But to really KNOW you have it and to really SUFFER with this chemical imbalance is on a whole different page to society.
Hi-polar and (negative) uni-polar are not hip.....and certainly not cool.

To watch someone happily taking part in a social activity and then in a split second be irrationally angry/upset/sad about the tiniest of things....is no way to wish it on anyone.

It takes little or nothing for a downer to happen. And sometimes these downers last more than a few seconds....or hours....or days.
Medication often only lessens the chances or instances of these downers happening.
Medication often only makes this chemical imbalance "manageable". The real fight happens in your head...that fight with logic and the irrationality of the mood.

And though the fight can sometimes be won with positive triggers...good comfort food...chocolate.
It again is only all in aid of managing something that those who *don't* suffer with it.....are ignorant to.

Having something that will forever leave you wondering what it would be like "to be happy for no reason"....is no blessing.

Drugging up a sufferer will not make YOU more understanding of each mood swing...and less so of each downer.
And thinking you're a hip emo kid by saying you have bi-polar....makes you worse than any Elizabethan practitioner of magical medicines that thought he could cure anyone from this "desease" of the mind.

To those who suffer from bi-polar and uni-polar. To those who fight the downers. Fight the mood swings. Battle everyday....

My respect for you is endless.

Orange juice might be the only cure....

....or at least I could dream it.

Stress, stress, stress.
It's pretty much gotten to the point where I'm not even hiding it well. Everyone that has seene since yesterday is asking why I look so stressed... Not that I know what stress *looks* like
Sigh

Finding a short moment of calm in the biggest glass of ice cold orange juice I can find. And hopefully, this will wash away. At least a little.

Chai latte smoothies for lunch...

That blissful burn as the temperature reaches over 25℃ and the sky burns a light blue, aching for rain as badly as the dusty ground...
It's Spring...

With it comes this wave of uncertainty about me.
As out of our control as economic stability, and to a certain extent, work stability can be... There's a security to knowing what and how many worries I have RIGHT now.

But at the same time...there's an urge in me to take (that aged cliche) "a leap of faith"... And yet a part of me also keeps looking to the failure of those that did... And it all screeches to a halt right there.

No amount of encouragment can seem to get me unstuck.
Sigh.

It's probably a self belief problem...but also that surety issue in the current state of economic affairs we find ourselves in.
How ironic.