Haunted.

Heads-up… this one is a little dark. I mention mortality, ageing, suffering and domestic abuse, but it does end with gratitude!

I went to pick up my laptop from an awkward angle - I’m lying on my bed - my hand seized with cramp. Welcome to the life of a menopausal old bat. I’m fine, the cramp was fleeting. Weird twinges are common nowadays. It’s just my body making sure I’m very clear about our trajectory down to hell.

I don’t believe in anything supernatural at all, but I do believe that heaven and hell are real. Because they are real… right here in this world, right now. Human and non-human creatures go through agonising suffering on this planet. Glimpses of that suffering creep into my mind too often. Specific details, horrible details threaten to emerge in my mind before I shut them down - I distract myself from those trains of thought for my own mental safety. I don’t know where the ideas come from. I ‘see’ events and actions that are far removed from me in time and space - they are not things I’ve ever experienced myself. I guess it’s just my overactive imagination. Or perhaps it’s a form of ‘waking dream’ that my mind uses to process things I hear about. I don’t know.

Of course heaven is here too. People fall in love, they have healthy babies, happy lives and live in peace. People travel to beautiful places, play wonderful music and create - or grow - heavenly foods. People work together to put humans on other worlds. Earth’s heaven and hell are entirely natural, not supernatural. It’s humans that make heaven or hell. It’s not angels and demons - and it’s not in some other dimension. So many times - and for such broken reasons, people make life hell for others, here.

Awareness of suffering pulls at my energy a lot of the time. I’ve spent my life exhausted. A big part of that - I now realise - is a tiredness, a deadness, that comes from not sharing my experience through art. I still vividly remember one day when I was 18 years old, going to the bathroom. I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and was shocked to see the young girl staring back at me. I felt 80 years old. I’ve never forgotten the jolt.

I’m now honouring my way of being, of experiencing the world. I’m beginning - just beginning, to let myself express all of it.

The difference between 18 year old me and 50-something me, is that now I don’t need to understand what’s going on with me to respect it. I just do. Oddly, I learned a lot from an unhealthy relationship. At the core of it was his consistent habit of questioning my feelings and needs. I played my part too, accommodating the narrative that I must be asking too much - that I was ‘trying to catch him out’ when he was just doing his best, just misunderstood. That narrative kept me stuck in a very lonely life for many years. During that time I discounted my needs, willing to question myself, to negate my emotions as much as he was. I’ve learned a lot since then.

I would have preferred to learn about myself in a happier way, to grow while being loved. But I’m grateful for what I learned. I’m also grateful that I was born in an era of information that helped me understand what was happening. I have so many advantages that my mother and grandmothers did not. I have an opportunity to teach my child a different way of knowing herself. I can equip her to face suffering. Because she will. She’ll also find her voice. She’ll learn to trust herself and to have her own back, even when - especially when - she inevitably makes mistakes. We can’t face the pain that haunts us, or hold compassion for a suffering world, if we don’t first learn compassion for ourselves.