30.3.2020      Get Fit


I'm feeling really lonely down here without Christ.

I don't think i'm gonna find happiness in this lifetime. My dreams are too close to pipe dreams now i realise. I dream about living in the sunshine, having a Christian husband, and counselling children, while living a get fit lifestyle outdoors.

Absolutely none of that is achievable here. 

There are no handsome young, or even eligible old Christian men for miles around. The weather is constantly cold and hostile. Even if the sun glimmers through the clouds for a few hours, i still go out and find myself surprised later on that i've caught a chill. Because it's deceptive. Everything is so cold. I think you need an element of separation to be able to counsel. See, Moses went through the wilderness for 40 years after fleeing Egypt. The only way he was able to lead the people through the wilderness for another 40 years was by coming away from it, to re-enter it a conqueror. You can't re-enter a battlefield that has been personal to you, no matter how you may be able to identify with recent victims and have their solutions - unless you have conquered that battle already for yourself. It's like an addict still struggling to get clean, leading alcoholics anonymous, or a gambler who is still weak to it, going to stand outside casinos to offer flyers with helpline info. It's the same reason doctors always live in big houses far away from the disease they are attempting to heal. You need to be disconnected from the poison you are neutralising. But i'm not neutral to the things that trigger my issues here. How can i help a child like some sorted human when this place brings out the worst in me? I know noones life is perfect when they're helping others, but all i'm saying is... this idea that i'm gonna be a counsellor with the degree i'm studying... i can begin to imagine how traumatising it's going to be for me to deliver that help, when i have no other outlet or input that fulfils or nourishes my own inner person here. I'd be swamped by the mire i'd be trying to treat.

I'm being quite clear about this. I had some epiphanies this last 24 hours that have once again brought me right back round to the same pit stop that i keep denying to myself is my real hope and desire. 

I've always wanted to dance. I dream that i'm dancing sometimes. I dance less and less than i ever did, but if you had seen me when i was younger, even 10 years ago you would have thought i was a fairie or a floating ballerina. This cold, subduing place is taking the inner flame of mine and just reducing it to the pilot light alone. I'll carry that pilot light to my death or rapture, and it wont go out. But i don't kindle like i used to. Because this environment has taken the tinder and firewood away from my light.

I am not completely void of stimulus. I fight for it. I make conscious decisions to do things that are good for me. But i saw a video today of a tortoise that was kept in someones fridge for 4 months and taken out at the end of its hibernation. This little thing woke up perfectly happy with a heat lamp, but there's no chance this thing was going to be active in that box with holes in it, until the hands reached in and changed it's situation. I don't feel like i can get out this box.

Epiphany 1 i had was last night. It was a lockdown bonfire in my back garden. I'd faced one of my worst fears (kidding), which was to go up this hideously unsafe ladder into our attic and pull out masses of cardboard i'd stored up there for whatever purpose it could be useful for later. It was a bright idea that passed an evening. I drank sangria and watched the fire roar bigger and bigger, until the flames tried to scorch me unexpectedly at one point. It just hit me... the heat. It was SO hot. And i loved it. My skin and eyes hurt later but i loved it so much it's like it took me back to that summer in Tunisia (in 2004?). And it took me back to every other country i've been to that the sun beat down on me in. That unforgiving lashing heat that i just live for. For just a few seconds i felt like i was home. And something in my little heart felt broken when that sweet reminder of freedom was taken away from me, and i was returned to a cold March night in Scotland.

You don't forget something like that, like a haunting tune you haven't heard since your childhood- that throws you back into your size 10 playshoes in that memorable room. Or a perfume that newly lingers from somewhere untraceable and you know exactly the last time you smelled it so you have to step away to recompose yourself. Or step closer in. 

The next epiphany, or perhaps this was the 1st, shall i call the first one the second? I was told a couple of days ago by my friend that she had not paid up the holiday i had given money to her for. We were supposed to go together as part of a large group, but the others cancelled with news of the virus. I was reluctantly talked into this holiday in the first place, and though it was going to be in a pretty location, it didn't feel like it was going to brilliantly work for me. Learning that it was essentially cancelled, and i was reduced only to the holiday i had booked previous to it - the most beautiful 4-5* all inclusive hotel in a hidden paradise, complete with a top rated kids club, spa, water park and private beach area with bar... it all became so much more important to make sure that dream would come true. I've put so much money towards it, when i've hardly been able to live recently, and my last payment is tomorrow. To see it completely paid for, like the golden ticket (to a charlie bucket) becoming fully mine is going to send me ecstatic. Even if it all gets cancelled come the day... the idea is... i have a hope... a dream... of going somewhere where i can swim in mineral waters surrounded by hanging plants, and walk along shores unrestrained. And that dream alone is a golden ticket. I can't imagine how blessed i will be if i actually get the real thing.

Can you see how much escape from this place tastes like salt and light to me? Maybe it's all just a reflection of how little i belong on Earth in general. It's so hard to judge. Could i be happy in another country? Or would i be jinxed there like i have been here? I have not been happy so far. It's easy to be honest about that if i absolutely reflect. Very easy. I don't know how other people make happy of their lives. Are they just content people inside? Or are they in situations that can much more easily bear than i can mine? If you rationalise that they are simply just content, it's probably the damned vitamin D they're getting that's giving them the disposition in the first place, putting them back in check mate at an unfair advantage - they don't win for being better. I see photos often on my facebook, of hotspots in America that my christian friends live in and go to. I see lakes, forests, oceans, gardens, sunsets, birds and those fancyyy restaurants. I've been over there enough to know what the high life looks like there. 

I remember this one time i went to a church in Mississippi for sunday worship. The amount of young people there, young godly guys interested in me after my being there for only five minutes. I laughed and they loved whenever i spoke. I kept it in, but something in me realised just how rich a land it is for women there. They don't know their own blessings. When i later in the year posted about the ache of a failed relationship on my facebook, some really stupid woman who shall remain nameless, turned on me to have a huge go at me PUBLICLY, over my unwise decisions in not choosing to date christian men. I felt like slapping her. As far as i could see she was one of the most ignorant and difficult women i'd met face to face and yet she had this man giving her all the love. Once again i kept it inside but i knew that if a visage like her could get such a phenomenal man i could do. I was just rooted in the wrong soil. I was disgusted at her and to this day i cannot forgive her vast selfish ignorance for thinking she had something right in her that i didn't. She was 10 times the mess i was. I don't claim to be all good. But hell. 

Someone take me out while i'm still in flower. And plant me somewhere decent, PLEASE. I have had enough of spending decades talking myself out of what i have known to be true since my early teens. I used to look up at the planes overhead (imagine living right next to an airport and being forced to watch them fly right above you every day), and literally beg out loud "GET ME OUT". I did it for years, until i .. i think i just numbed. 

I think humans are surprisingly resilient, and given enough time, no matter how awful a previous trauma, the soul can flourish in a marvellous, almost miraculous way if given the right bonding agent to heal. There will always be a part of you that remembers, and is changed forever, just as Frodo acknowledges in the end of the trilogy of LOTR. You are forever haunted by that memory. The tune, the smell, the familiar sensation. Yet it can be your gold. A force of absolute strength in you. When you have been broken to the point that you cannot be broken any more, your core is known to you wherever you go after, like a voice of reason in a material, fleeting world. I don't know if any of you understand that. I get it. I wrote it. I'll never be able to go even into the heart of my paradise now without wearing a garment of sobriety and Wensday Adams stare. The garment might look white, but the eyes are dark saucers.

I have said to God that in heaven i might need to live for 1000 or 2000 years in a place of solitude away from the party. Just to cope with what i've been through down here. I'm just being honest. They say everything will be erased when i get there. All the pain. But isn't that most of who i am now? If He erases that, i don't know who or what will be left. I carry it like the norm. It sits on me like armour, very well balanced, like a ledgers set of books. Pain becomes knowledge, and if i remove that, all of this writing wont exist. It will be someone else. Probably someone nicer, sweeter, and more innocent and starry eyed. But not the girl i know. I confuse myself trying to understand this.

I'm trying to think what the last epiphany was. I think it was Prince Harry's announcement on the news today that he and Meghan are moving to California. Well what a roll of the eyes. Some people when they irritate me it's a visceral reaction. This young man has had the absolute life. He's lived in palaces all over the country. He has had the honour and privilege to serve his country under the best education and direction. He feels satisfaction that he has earned his way and yet has seen wonders. Sure he has known tragedy, but it doesn't remove that he can now enjoy the best of any world he wishes to step into. He has moved to Canada to enjoy life, and now wants to take it up a notch and live in arguably the worlds happiest location bubble. Here's me saying "oh you don't know the other side of it, there is so much poverty and vice", and "it's going to see so much strife when Cali falls into the sea as prophecies have forewarned concerning the megaquake". I have all the evidence to tell myself that i don't want what He has. But i want the English palace. Gardens of vast lawns stretching onto horizons with rows of the finest variety of trees making it all look so fairytale-esque. I want to sip tea from a china cup, it's me. It's what i do here, in this house. I don't like mugs. I think they're horrible things. It's all wrong. I'm in the wrong place. I want to fly out to where the sea hits onto wonderful white sand. Where trees are SO green. Bright green like almost neon with colour. 

Am i thinking the grass is greener on the other side? I know a guy who lived in Chicago for years. He had such a good sense of humour. He was so funny and intelligent and charismatic. A year ago he finished up training in the marines and went out to Cali, and he said he will NEVER go back. His whole countenance has been brought to life. His vibrancy has found it's home. He has a stunning girlfriend, and he smiles ALL the time. He's the proof that sometimes reality is sweeter than you convincing yourself it isn't. I'm so happy for him. But i cried so hard when i saw his photos. I felt left behind. You could say i smelled the perfume. I saw the sun and his smile the golden ticket was his. I remember having so many vivid dreams after that which i tried to explain to him but he didn't grasp. Never mind.

At least i'm safe, right? I have a roof over my head. I have food. It's not great but it's there. I know we're in a lock down and there are people who have lost their whole livelihoods, so i'm not the only person being shaken by what's going on. But still, if ever it felt like i was having epiphanies, its now. 

I should be thin and slender again. I should have the sun on me. I should be listening and dancing to music. I should be eating bright fruits and helping people. But i can't do that here. I'm on antibiotics and i have a heated blanket under my feet because my bones were so cold they were aching and feeling fluish. God, have i got some years on the clock? Are You coming back now for us? Or do i have some more years?

Cos, if you're coming now i'll just do up mums house however i can in the mean time, and bunker down with her and the little one to keep safe, watching for You. But if i have some more years, i don't want to be sitting in this room, wondering where i'm going, still studying this degree, wondering if i'm meant to be doing it at all, or if im about to embarrass myself by finishing it and going into ANOTHER one instead of finding work. I don't know where i'm going or what i'm doing. And i haven't done for a long time, because all the while i just know i'm in the entirely wrong place.

I keep telling myself every day that it's just because i'm not in heaven, and that i'll feel home soon. But truly. I see those images, those postcard pictures, and i know deep down in myself, that it could work out, if i get out.

Still i'm numb, joints and pilot light are blue. Just about still going till the person who has me in the box lifts me out.

I don't think i can do it alone. I love heat but i don't want to out the frying pan into the actual fire. I can't afford to lose the little security i have. It's the only thing i have. 

I'm sorry i ranted so long. 

I just had to talk to someone. About my dreams of sunshine. And my real smile.

xx