Impossible to bear

(Pic of my daughter on holiday, just because I love the ‘fuck you’ attitude married with angel wings.)

I crave freedom but also love and connection and this makes life impossible to bear.

My children are all home and we have gone from a quiet spacious house to one with five adults and all the associated mess, late nights and rows about who has left their plates on the side and where the fuck is the TV remote control?

I want summer to be over and term time to begin again, but I will also miss the hustle and bustle and will want it to be holiday time again as soon as the first 6.45am alarm goes off in September.

I want to receive a stream of invitations for social activities and I want everyone to just leave me alone in solitude.

I love being in the company of my husband (he is my favourite person in the world) and I can’t wait for him to go on his week-long triathlon adventure to France and I can have the bed to myself and eat bad food.

I love the summer but damn I can’t wait for the crisp autumn mornings.

I love my dog and our walks together and a part of me I’m ashamed of looks forward to the days when I’ll be free of the daily obligation.

I’m looking forward to going to Germany at the weekend and as soon as I get on the plane, I’ll be looking forward to coming home.

I’m always wanting the other.

I’m always wanting what I’m doing right now to end.

There is an idea of utter freedom, once I’m done with this thing.

An illusion, but one of those very real looking ones.

Except when I paint. Or when I write. Those are the times all else falls away and it’s just me and page, me and the canvas, bouncing off each other, right here, right now. This, to my mind, is the joy in doing what lights me up for as much of the day as I can.

Doing it.

Not thinking about doing it, which is when the doubt and vulnerability kick in and I want more people to see and buy my art, and more readers of my words and what will they think and on and on.

There’s a hundred-piece orchestra in my head, so much noise in there; the idea of this makes me laugh. All of us humans with a hundred-piece orchestra in our heads. Getting the next thing complete so the players can fall silent and we can be in bliss.

And somehow, for the first time in my life, rather than trying to fix this, or have an insight about the nature of hundred-piece orchestras, or meditate, I find myself shrugging my shoulders and being content to carry on just as I am.

And so it is.

Even with life being impossible to bear.

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