Fran Macilvey's Blog, page 66

Menopausal Mama

When I was a child I confidently declared that I would marry the man of my dreams. These things would happen easily and tidily to order: fall in love, marry, have kids, peacefully grow old and journey in bliss towards the bright light of old age, with heaven waiting at the end of the tunnel. All little girls paint this kind of picture as they compare notes, asking, “How many kids will you have?”

The story turned out less organised. Not many boys were interested in me during my teens and twenties. Their eyes were all over other longer-limbed beauties with looks that would make them quite at home in a Hollywood movie, strolling nonchalantly across the deck of some hundred-metre pleasure cruiser. When I lifted my eyes from my books and found true love, I was into my thirties, trying to hold down a crummy job, clinging to the wreckage of my independent, lonely life.

Luckily, Eddie came to me single and unburdened by heavy personal belongings. Still we put off marrying: life was fine, so why change it? And babies? What about them? Even after we married, they were something that came later and most probably to other people, not to me: not to an undomesticated, complicated woman with a disability, whose only physical blessings were dark hair and good teeth. Not until I was peering over the horizon towards the big Four Oh, were we blessed with a child. We spent ages calculating: “Do you REALISE that when she is twenty-one I will be almost sixty? If she waits ‘til our age to have kids, we will be too doddery to babysit.” The sums made me both wistful and rather grateful.

I flung myself into motherhood. One drawback of being an older mum is that doting grandmas and grandpas are rather rare. Not being blessed with lots of family around, I had little choice but to immerse myself in the practicalities. One of these was breastfeeding. If my daughter ever reads this she will blush, but the point is that nature’s nurture acts as a natural contraceptive. An older woman might watch out for irregular or non-existent periods signalling early menopause, but patchy periods at this time could equally have been caused by breastfeeding so when nothing started happening every month I rather carelessly ignored it. At the other extreme, I was too tired to care that bleeding for six weeks was unusual, a hint that my body clock was erratic. When my bleeding stopped for good, I was just forty-two. At first, I was simply so grateful not to be haemorrhaging blood down the toilet. Then, when the hot flushes and waking at four am became a regular feature, I reluctantly conceded that I was menopausal. And I had a three-year-old to look after.

For a day or two, I railed against Fate. Menopause was supposed to fill the gap, the space of quiet after the kids have grown tall and gone off to broaden their minds or to set up home in the Urals. Menopause happened to youthful-looking women in their mid-fifties, not to careworn hags just after being forty. Where was the justice in discovering that I was quite a good mummy BUT I couldn’t contemplate having any more kids, sorry about that?

Ever the realist, I made the best of my shameful situation. Feeling ancient before my time, I dropped, “Of course, when you are menopausal, as I am…” into conversations, just to test the reactions of my friends. No-one fainted, or gave any sign of being surprised, but then, I probably looked older than my age: knackered from lack of sleep and chasing a breezy pre-schooler, my baggy tops and dark elasticated trousers splotched with cheesy mashed potatoes and toilet training traumas.

Loving and caring for children is exhausting, and often there is no-one to turn to. The loss of workplace networks, the loss of status, of income, and the isolation of being the main or sole carer for many hours at a time, are just some of the burdens of modern motherhood. I could have found childcare and gone back to work – in theory – but on top of everything else, menopause flicked a switch in my internal systems and changed everything around just enough to be a total nuisance. Sleep was a piecemeal affair and my energy and emotions swung about. Night sweats, hot flushes and the loss of my appetites didn’t bother me, but the pain did. Suddenly my right foot could not take my weight and it sang with nerve-juddering agony almost continuously. If I wanted to stay awake during the day, popping pain relief pills didn’t work.

No-one wants to be seen crawling around on their knees when their neighbour pops in for a chat. Even for a mother with mobility issues, this just wasn’t the example I was hoping to set my daughter. Crawling, rocking and howling in agony were what she should have been doing, not me. She watched as I wept. A useless visit to an orthopaedic surgeon gave me the shot of indignation I needed to go on a quest for a pain-free life. It helped to galvanise me, when I realised that no-one knew me better than I did.

Looking back, I can see how lucky I was. Timing is everything, and when Seline started weaning and demanding lots to eat, that was when the pain in my joints really kicked in. From first noticing that sugar gave me mood swings, I began to re-educate myself about eating healthily, not just once and a while when I was feeling virtuous, but all the time. Having responsibilities forced me to grow up. I also pondered the whole subject of ageing, reading books which offered plenty of food for thought. Bathroom cosmetics were in at the start of my campaign. Squinting down the long list of ingredients written in tiny writing  on a bottle of frothy shampoo, I discovered a skin irritant….that got me thinking.

Since menopause, there are foods I avoid, because eating them makes my body hurt like hell. I used to enjoy them anytime, anywhere, but they now go on the rampage through my system and cause acute pain or coughing, wheezing and general discomfort. I have arthritis all over my joints and live with knowing that “someone like me” is often confined to a wheelchair by the age of forty. So taking care with what I eat is a small price to pay.

Whenever I feel deprived and wish I could have that double choc-chip burger with chips and salsa which everyone else is chomping with such relish, I take the plunge and eat some. What the hell – it can’t hurt, can it? If the answer is OUCH – YES IT CAN, I nod and sigh. The pain and irritation convince me, once again, that I am not “making it up”. If I wait a day or two, the pain leaves.

Tea and coffee, sugar, milk, beef, potatoes, tomatoes and a few other bruisers are all rare visitors to my plate. I count that a small price to pay for being able to walk with my daughter, live independently and sleep well without taking medication.

Psoriasis – Can We Heal It? Part 2

A number of avenues I have found very helpful in managing psoriasis and associated conditions, you may wish to explore. What I write is only the result of using myself as a test case, a body on which experiments have taken place. Nothing too painful, though, only taking care with what I eat.

As we get older, our bodies become less able to handle the abuse doled out in our earlier years and increasingly sensitive to irritants. We can consider experimenting by cutting out foodstuffs we suspect may be at the root of our concerns.

Most obvious among the foods that irritate and inflame my body’s reactions, is cows’ milk. Yes, I know that milk and milk products have been part of the western human diet for millennia, probably because during the last ice age, all other food sources were buried under several dozen metres of ice. If we had not adapted to drinking milk from our herds of animals we would have starved. However, many westerners struggle to digest milk, and if this is you, perhaps you might consider whether it has any part to play in chronic discomfort. There are four parts of milk that can potentially be challenging for a body to deal with: the calcium, the sugar (lactose/lactase), the proteins (caseins) and the fat.

I first suspecting that milk might be a problem for me because I had three midnight visits to the hospital in agonizing pain. Kidney stones, linked to un-metabolised calcium were found to be the trigger, and it was very easy to remember that, the evening before, I had been drinking milk or eating rice pudding. I began to notice how metabolism changes as we age, making foodstuffs that have previously only caused minor ailments, increasingly difficult to deal with, especially after menopause. All milk products, including yogurt, cheese, butter, ice-cream, milk chocolate, baked goods and biscuits are on the “suspect” list. Yogurt is slightly less difficult than the others, because it contains live microbial cultures which help with its digestion, but even so, I include it on my list of suspects. Milk powder and milk proteins are often added to breakfast cereals, muesli and to fruit bars, so get used to checking packaging. Look at the list of ingredients on that packet of “Oxo” cubes you have flung into the shopping trolley.

If you don’t mind experimenting, I suggest that you eliminate these from your diet for a minimum of two weeks, though a month is more conclusive. If you notice that your knees don’t ache so much, that your skin is less itchy and that you have stopped wheezing, this is the best evidence that, somewhere in your life, you have collected an intolerance to dairy products, and that your body is relieved, now that they are disappearing. During the month, you may wish to experiment with dairy alternatives, such as soya or rice milk, and take a vitamin supplement or a drink with added calcium. After a month, a few cautious mouthfuls of your favourite ice-cream should cause no backlash, but I find it prudent not to have more than one taste in every twenty-four hours or so, as the effects tend to accumulate, and suspect foods need time to clear out of my system.

I need not worry too much about the sceptics who say, “How are you going to get all the calcium you need, though, without your cows’ milk?” and who peer at you over their cups of coffee. I take a calcium supplement, or gather calcium from green leafy vegetables, sesame seeds and bony sardines. In late middle age, the emphasis shifts to retaining what calcium we have, rather than trying to endlessly absorb new calcium. Looking for foods that are alkaline in nature, rather than acidic, will help the body to retain calcium: if the body is too acidic, it “borrows” calcium from our bones to neutralise acid effects.

For this reason, it helps to eliminate or drastically reduce our intake of foods which are overly acidic. Refined foodstuffs such as white sugar, white flour and white fat, are top of the list, as well as tea and coffee. Caffeine adds acid to the body, and the fact that you add cream and sugar do not help. Writers and nutritionists are coming to an understanding that the residue of cows’ milk is itself acidic. So drinking a quart of milk may actually make decalcification worse.

Other foods that you might wish to investigate for their inflaming effects include foods from the deadly nightshade family, among which are potatoes, paprika, tomatoes and bell peppers. I limit my portions of these to about two per week and I have learned that the toxicity in these foods tends to lessen with time, so eating mature potatoes rather than new ones, is helpful.

Learning to manage psoriasis is a life-long concern, but when our strategies succeed, we free ourselves to live without chronic irritation and discomfort. The first step is to notice how the foods we eat affect our health, and to decide that we cannot always expect others to help us, when we ignore the most basic rules of healthy eating. Our bodies work well for us for many years, and we can help them by being considerate and careful feeders, only eating what we know will help us to health.

Psoriasis – can we heal it?

A snippet of advice in a women’s magazine about treatments for psoriasis, clearly suggested that, for anyone unlucky enough to suffer its daily irritations, there was really nothing to be done. We had best slap on the calamine lotion and other soothing unguents and try to forget about it.

I don’t, however, agree that there is nothing we can do to help ourselves. I am a woman, a wife and mother. I have no medical qualifications and I am not a chemist or a qualified scientific anybody. But I do have an enquiring mind, and in recent years I have managed to find ways to manage the psoriasis which has affected me all my life. While not deeply serious, it caused me irritation and constant discomfort for over thirty-five years.

When I was small, my mother slapped on smelly shampoos and kept my hair short. In the heat where I grew up, I tried to keep cool. For years, I endured itching and darkened patches over my shoulders and warm, moist places. I recall being treated with strong chemicals by a local nurse who came every evening for about ten days and slapped cool stuff on my back, which I had to leave on overnight and shower away the next morning. At the time, I thought that was a price well worth paying for a bit of calm. And for years, I bought Terbinafine Hydrochloride (“Lamasil”) first on prescription, and then finally over the counter, in near-industrial quantities. Only the tiny tube gave any hint that the cream I smeared on for relief might not be all that beneficial in the long term. But it worked, for a while.

In that time, I usually itched, I scratched, and my body felt edgy and uncomfortable. Not just my back, my head and all the obviously affected areas, but my hands, my body and my legs. They felt alive with nerve endings, never deeply relaxed.

A body that has psoriasis is, in my experience, susceptible to a number of other irritations, including rhinitis, hay fever, colds, constant coughing, blocked sinuses, weeping eyes, sore or red skin, rashes, psoriatic arthritis, some forms of rheumatism, bronchial complaints and sore joints. This is not only my experience, but an understanding of connectedness that I have gathered from years of speaking to others about their strange cough or their chesty complaints.

For many years I had a hacking cough that came, and stayed for weeks. Once, while I had a small active daughter to care for, I was ill for over three months while my husband had to go out to work. I hardly ate and could keep no food down. I coughed until I made myself sick, and I was deeply worried about weight loss, and at one point, about actually dying. I could feel myself almost floating off to some place where the torture would finally stop. My downstairs neighbour said she could hear me coughing all night. I wept from frustration, from tiredness. And for all that time, I thought it was inevitable, that there was nothing I could do. The wheezing just continued, relentless and debilitating.

If any of this sounds familiar, I invite you to read tomorrow’s instalment, but take what I write with a tad of thoughtfulness for your own very personal bodily traits. There is no substitute for personal experience, and for the resonance of another piece of the jigsaw slotting into place. Not everyone will understand why a discovery means so much to you, but some of us will: you will find connections with like-minded others that vindicate your very personal researches. (To be continued)

A Life of Compromise

Despite all the fancy words, labels and categories, it seems that no-one really understands cerebral palsy, though its effects show up in many different ways. None is predictable, linear or without added complications which in themselves can be unexpected and disabling.

For example, I can get myself a short distance from A to B on a good day, provided I am used to the terrain and provided there is not too much wind or rain about, both of which are hard to predict. Why, you might ask, does weather make such a difference? Well, where I live, gusts of wind could easily blow me over, which is obvious enough. So to help steady myself, I walk with an elbow crutch. Otherwise, I wobble and fall over at the drop of a hat. Indeed it is a miracle that, thus far, I have not been run over by a bus. My angels are kept very active ensuring I come to no harm.

The rain, which is a frequent visitor in these parts, makes the rubber stopper at the end of my walking aid slip and slide, so that a wet pavement becomes rather like an ice-rink. In the rain, using my walking aid is, all of a sudden, an unexpected and major problem. Falling full length with an arm outstretched may look elegant but it is painful, an agony hardly deserved because I happened to lean on an elbow crutch on a wet patch at precisely the wrong moment. At times, a walking aid is a real liability. But the alternatives are not attractive either. I don’t wish to remain cloistered indoors whenever there is rain, and why should I? I have to get a life, or so David Cameron and George Osborne keep telling me.

Because I keep trying, because I am as stubborn as an ox, and because I have learned not to cry too loudly when I fall and bang my hip – God, the agony! – I do have a life, which I have hewn from the unrelenting cliff-face of trial, error, compromise and heartache. I try to take the best from being the unusual one who takes twenty minutes instead of five, to walk to the bus-stop. I put a brave face on chronic arthritis, the debilitating pain that invades me when I eat too many potatoes, drink orange juice or eat cheese two days in a row. I have learned to enjoy drinking barley coffee instead of the real McCoy and feign disinterest in patisserie because both of these reduce me to a screaming wreck. I go swimming to keep fit and I walk as much as I can, precisely so that I may counter accusations that I am a beneficiary of a benefits system that perpetuates laziness and complacency.

Now the new PIP assessments have arrived, asking a series of questions which require me to demonstrate exactly what I can and cannot do. That varies, but, for the sake of argument, and assuming that the questions are fair and can be answered easily, does staggering dangerously count as walking? How do I prove that my whole life is a tightrope, that whatever I physically achieve is the outcome of painful deliberation? More fundamentally, why should I have to lay open the embarrassing compromises of my life to public scrutiny? Do we motivate disabled people by demoralising them? By asking about toileting needs and whether we can stand or walk? These are precisely the wrong sorts of tests to be setting, if we want to encourage our differently-abled citizens to leave their homes and join the wider community. Questions about night-time supervision, medication and whether someone is socially isolated enough by their disability to qualify to receive certain state benefits, are at best sensitive issues, and at worst, likely to send vulnerable claimants down the last road to hell. How many claimants, on being reassessed, will feel so put down that they attempt suicide, rather than face the continual stigma of being told, “We saw you going to put out the rubbish, so obviously, you can manage.”

If a citizen is bequeathed a life-altering condition which is not in dispute; and where it is clear that this condition leads to increased costs not encountered by able-bodied contemporaries, the increased costs of living with disability are the only legitimate concern of government charged with administering any benefit which is avowedly in place to cushion the blow of financial inequality. If the intention of the new Personal Independence Payment is to enable and empower independence, then why does someone who can manage his or her condition to enable their independence find themselves penalised?

Since the harshness of the current descriptors suggests that a successful award depends on complete incapacity of one sort or another, clearly the intention is not to motivate or empower, or even to compensate for financial burdens, but to save money by reducing the number of claimants to those the State decides are profoundly incapacitated and least likely to achieve independent living. The severity of the new assessment works to reinforce a stereotype that a recipient of this state largesse is irretrievably pitiable. What a shame, then, that it is called Personal Independence Payment. Clearly, it is nothing of the kind.

Faith

I wonder why it has taken me so long to notice that, in order to be anything approaching serene, I need to remember the value of faith, as well as application. Indeed, I have plenty of evidence to show me that Life has already worked itself out far better than I ever managed when I insisted on doggedly working with my efforts alone.

A leap of faith is all I need; that trust in divine timing which sees all, knows all and understands all, even though there is nothing tangible to grip, except, perhaps, noticing the miracle that is life itself. Faith comes first to shake the mountains, after which the results, the fruits of our belief can be seen. But since faith is invisible, ineffable, unlike an apple that we may collect off a tree and eat, it is hard to remember the power it conceals.

Behind and beneath everything is the embracing light of Life which holds and nourishes us all. Our fearful voices act like shadows, blocking our connection with that love and light; and when we can release or calm our fears, thoughts, notions of judgement and our opinions, the light can come closer.

If, in that state of open relaxation we go beyond or step outside what is usual, it becomes easier and more obvious to allow gentle refreshment to breathe over our hearts and clear out our lives. In such a state of allowing, miracles happen.

Career for a collapsing woman (2)

It is simply thrilling, having a writing career which seems set to unfold in gentle ripples around me. It seems quite astonishing that I, of all people, should be able to say, with truth as well as conviction, “I am a writer” and be able to point to some evidence of success in that line.

Ahead of publication in less than three weeks, I feel so happy, very excited, more than a little scared and plagued with self-doubt: The changeable moods that flood through me are disorientating, yet I rediscover every day the power of relaxing and letting go. I may as well relax, wait and see what happens after “Trapped” is published. In some ways, the hard bits have already been done, since writing my magnum opus has been rather like having an operation on my heart without the benefit of anaesthetic. I have to trust that it will all work out well.

The audio script for ‘Trapped’ is also more or less sorted, ready for reading, ready for whenever I am told the studio is ready for me. If I had a retentive kind of mind, I would have the text word-perfect by now, and could recite it without the script at all. The words and the sentiments, the voices, are as familiar to me as vanilla ice-cream; so of course I want to read it. But it is so very intimate, in parts, so very private, that I occasionally feel as if the whole world will witness my humiliation and my pain. Reading a paper book is usually a private affair, but if I am also speaking aloud, I feel as if I am handing myself and all my intimate secrets over on very public plate. Does that feel humiliating? Yes, occasionally, and I don’t know why.

I am aware that ‘exposure’ and ‘humiliation’ narratives are only one side of the coin, the other side perhaps etched with ‘candour’, ‘bravery’ or ‘sharing’.  Nevertheless, from a place of relative calm, I observe a bewildering array of emotions, spilled like pins from a sewing box, which threaten to pierce my peace of mind at every hand and turn. Sometimes, caught unaware, it feels as if an unknown person is standing outside the room flicking the light switch on and off, on and off, just for fun. Should I get bereavement counselling for my poor old life?

What most readers may notice goes beyond the shame. Perhaps, reading aloud now will help me to have another period of coming to terms. I intend to give a reading to be proud of.

Career for a collapsing woman?

When I was a growing girl, a fifteen-year-old with sleepy eyes and squint legs, my mother would occasionally throw me this comfort, “Well, at least you are not black!” I wondered….what would she have said if I had piped up, “Well, Mum, I have a new girlfriend….Meet Amanda…” Not just female and disabled, but from an ethnic minority and a lesbian: that would have been a challenge!

Actually, being female and disabled was quite enough of a challenge, as it turned out. For one thing, my choice of careers has been entirely restricted, not just by my intellectual bent – I can’t understand algebra, I’m squeamish at the dissection table and have no memory for chemistry or physics – but by my physical bents as well: not being able to stand up straight, balance, or carry trays actually cuts down my choices considerably.

From a deep desire to be taken seriously, I opted to study law at Aberdeen University and remember thinking, as all starry-eyed first-year students do, that now – at last – I might do something worthwhile. In those first weeks and months, as our tutors commended our intelligence in starting studies for our grand vocation, gradually the blinkers came off. It was a long, painful journey towards the realisation that while academics were gently introducing us to grand theories, the money making went on, the men were vastly superior, and opinionated women were only tolerated up to a point. Sexism in the 1990’s was still alive and kicking, but because lawyers generally had it quite good, the women were allowed on board the ship, so long as they worked hard and looked pretty.

When I came along, no-one knew what to do with me: I was not pretty in the conventional sense, but rather – get this – “strangely beautiful” according to my opinionated older sister. Oh, God, no! What I would have given – my right arm, my last Rolo – just to be an ordinary piece of okay-ish totty. It was more a case of, watch out for me tottering, and if I happen to fall in your lap, I hope you won’t be too offended. I was always extremely careful to fall as gracefully as possible, and in the split second after I tripped and before I fell, I would arrange my features in a smile, and hope that they would agree, landing in a lap was infinitely more elegant than collapsing on the floor. Other legal eagles don’t have to worry about such trivia.

I wear sensible shoes with no heel and I am grateful that I can still walk. I have grown into the habit of wearing sensible clothes too, as the short-backed, busty and bright polyester-cotton blouses which hang in the women’s section of the clothing stores look like a painful mistake, draped over my muscly shoulders – all that heaving myself around in infancy – and across my flat, boyish chest. I experimented once, wearing a “feminine” blouse in a shade of yellow that my boss spent the day sniggering at, pointedly calling me “daffodil”. That was the end of my dalliance with femininity. His mockery wounded me. Checking in the mirror later that evening, I had to agree that the high collar, the blown out sleeves and the flared waist did look very like my favourite flower. What a shame that, since he disliked it

so much, I hadn’t the courage to unbutton it slowly, remove it and ask, “So, what would you like me to do with this?” That would have gone down well, if I had happened to land in his lap.

Ice, Colds and Vitamin D

The cold season seems to be waning. The snowdrops crept under my radar this year and the daffodils are almost open.  We have been so lucky through this winter: No floods, no ice or snow.

Daughter has had a cough, and in a fit of cross independence, insists she does not have a cough! Wonderful: she is learning about positive thinking, I assume.

Husband has a snuffle and a habitually gloomy expression, a frown that hints at unhealthy preoccupation with the impossible demands of his job. It does not help him when I ask him to cheer up, but I do miss the sweetness of his smile, which has been away for too long.

I ingest multi vits, calcium, special fish oil, vitamin B6, magnesium and vitamin D, as well as large quantities of a particularly nauseating green powder called barley grass, which keeps me healthy, but is particularly difficult to stomach before breakfast. To stay well, pain free and relatively optimistic, this does work. My arthritis is under control, and the latest round of swimming and exercise which complements my healthy lifestyle choices seems to have helped reduce the pain in my right knee so that today, I can use stairs without hobbling one step at a time. I hope that the relief of taking movement for granted will never leave me.

I have to stay healthy, warm and watered, cannot afford to become ill or ‘immune depressed’ just now, because I have still to hear about the audio recording of my book and when that might be happening. Meantime, I have to stay focussed, confident and upbeat. The sunshine vitamins that take up so much room in my kitchen cupboards help greatly, when faced with Great Silence.

Trapped: My Life With Cerebral Palsy is released three weeks today, on 4th March 2014. An exciting, thrilling prospect. What has been a dream for so many years is on the cusp of realisation. What a miracle.

http://www.amazon.com/Trapped-My-Life-Cerebral-Palsy-ebook/dp/B00I2G71GK/ref=sr_sp-atf_image_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392122704&sr=8-1&keywords=fran+macilvey+trapped

In Defence of Escapism

Darcy sat gazing out of the window, marvelling at the frosted snowflakes gently blowing out of the sky. Outside, the world was wrapped in a fresh mantle of clean, cold snow. Ensconced in the warmth of the café, gently cradling a piping hot chocolate, she could dream of Jamie, savouring the taste of her double chocolate, almond and cranberry muffin with frosted pink rose scented glaze…..

I have read a lot of chic lit – that brand of rather uniquely sexist literature that fascionistas decry because they say it only appeals to the lazy instincts of womankind. Woman meets man, loses man, finds him again; or woman loses man, finds herself, finds a better man; we are prone to scoffing at such easy, soft options for reading, as if by not reading Proust, or the latest discoveries unearthed within the pages of ‘Archaeology Now’, we are letting down the side, betraying the freedoms for which our older sisters and mothers fought so hard.

But what if the lot of women is already hard? What if the first thing woman does when she rises at seven, is to put away the laundry, open the curtains and make the beds? What if, when she reaches the kitchen and is within hailing distance of her breakfast, the first thing she sees is the pile of unwashed dishes in the sink? There is not much room there, for escapism, and precious little to look forward to, unless, of course, she is that delightful fiction of mankind, the woman who enjoys cleaning and clearing, and finds daily menus a delightful challenge. Sometimes, I would like to feel like that, but mostly, I fail miserably.

There are times when our daily worries and preoccupations become a bit heavy, like a bit of homemade wholemeal (try saying that in a hurry) bread that stubbornly refuses to rise. There are times when futility stands her ground and mocks. And there are times when sheer loneliness can become a bit overpowering. Held down by such feelings, chic lit, gentle escapism, and happy fluffy dreams are a vital escape, allowing the mind to lift, and then find solutions, strength and new resolve. If Alice in her cupcake shop can tell the CEO of a large multi-national corporation that she is not interested in promotion, then I can find the steely resolve I need, too, to withstand long periods of soul destroying silence, failures in communication and the demands that everyone makes on my time.

And if I am thinking nice thoughts about cuddly people, there is just a chance that, in that gentle breathing space, creative solutions will have a chance to find me. Yes, I deserve to be creative, to dream and to have fun. If the best place for that is between the pages of a too-big book, then so be it.

Sailing

After days of feeling lost and confused, I feel calm again, becalmed, like the sailing ship whose canvas sails hang lose and limp. At least, this particular maelstrom of emotion seems to be off my chest and away. That has got to be good.

I’m still puzzled, though. I thought that writing about everything over many years would have sorted out all of the grief and confusion into manageable piles. Some piles might prove useful enough to be sorted, folded away differently and kept, but most – warped, and therefore useless – could be released with a grateful sigh of relief. I thought that by now, time and writing it all out, would have offered consolations for the lost opportunities and the wasted anger with which my early life seems to have been littered.

Celebrating my progress with a bottle of bubbly seems premature, as, with strange misgivings, I observe new developments dropping at my feet previously unseen perspectives; which, while useful for growing, maturation and understanding are sometimes as welcome as a dead mouse brought in by a cat. Faced with the prospect of reading aloud, new sorrows punch at my gut, catch me unawares and knock me sideways. Strange, to feel so strongly about something I can’t even begin to articulate.

To feelings that cannot be expressed, perhaps the best practical action is to take one small step at a time. Or sail away to something enjoyable meantime; until the worry quits or the reasons lose their edge. Or get lost in the reading. It is fascinating to observe how many different versions of meaning can be produced in words with an intonation change, a lift or an emphasis in this place or that. As each reading brings different suggestions, I suspect that I shall just have to become absorbed in what I am reading, rather than think about what it might mean…just enjoy listening to the shape of the words, the way they can be cast on the water, as I sail off with them into the sunset.