I’ve been having a lot of epiphanies lately
Those moments when life shifts completely
Doors open into rooms you didn’t even know were there
Hadn’t considered
Things so shockingly mind bending that they rattle
And discombobulate
Family things
Inner things
Outer things
It’s like a constant vibration is on the roll within and without at the moment
In the moment
It always has been this way with me, only lately
It’s happening faster and faster because I’m not blocking or stopping
Instead I’m absorbing accepting and gathering speed
This vibration is hitting my foundations where I believed them to be most solid
Showing me that in this world
Nothing is solid and most certainly – nothing is certain
But our brain likes things neat and tidy, packed in boxes, labelled and ordered and steady and sure
We like to rest our minds on stable reasonable logical flat surfaces
The trouble is when it suddenly comes to light that everything we thought is
Wrong
Or
Different
Well, it knocks a leg out from beneath our nice flat surface
Thoughts begin to slide sideways
Chaos creeps in and sits merrily on our sliding table,
Swings a pointed foot and grins
I don’t like this discomforting visit anymore than anyone else
My brain abhors having nowhere to compose itself and instead moves about like a rattled chook
It tries to sit but cannot find a comfortable, solid perch around which to wrap its claws
Ruffled feathers; shake them out, stalk restlessly around the pen inside my head, inside my hand
It’s time like this where I am glad I’m a writer
That I have this tool that can map and chart and move around paper until my mind can absorb the change
Absorb the chaos
And make sense of it again
It saws off the other legs, it builds and chocks and glues and sets things to right
In a new paradigm
Yes, it looks different
I look different
But my surfaces eventually smooth
My feathers lay flat
And my brain chook is happy again
Cluck!
A new reality has emerged
And it has been accepted and absorbed into the present
But what would I do if I didn’t write?
Would I just ignore the truth?
Would I smack up against it like a wall that had appeared out of nowhere that now cut off the path to the comfortable room I used to inhabit?
Would I cease to grow?
Too uncomfortable
Not worth the effort?
The thought scares me
Anything less then growth is atrophy
And atrophy leads to a long stultifying smothered walk to death
Some hasten it, welcome it,
With all the things they use to block the discomfort of growth
Over consumption of
Drugs
Alcohol
Food
Drive too fast
Think too little
Because it is uncomfortable
Instead I write
Figure
Determine
Accept
And find the doorways into new realities
Life is exciting
It is meant to be
And I prefer the term exciting
To
Scared to death 😊

*top photo – Cunnamulla toilet block. It bought back so many memories. Mum teaching a tiny me to lay toilet paper sheets just so, around the seat so I didn’t catch germs.
*NB yelling viciously at me, holding a piece of glass to my neck – the angry stitches from the busted lip I had given her two days earlier in our fight at the red hills, skin bulging and swollen around the black sutures
Her spittle landing on my face
The stucco render digging sharply into my back where she pushed me up against the wall
Bravado becoming tired exhaustion as I considered glumly that bullies always win and she was going to cut my face
So I give in
Then being saved by an older girl from across the road
The bile I called relief but was instead an interior vomit, sick at my own capitulation
The bullying would now continue
Because I had not maintained the fight and courage
Caving to the discomfort of turning into a new me that wouldn’t put up with it
Growth is painful but capitulation is worse
You can stand up to yourself and the internal voice that bullies
Or fall in the path of everyone else
I know what’s easier and I’ll take on myself in a fight anytime now
After my own internal storms, anyone else’s opinions …
Are just so easy to deal with – nobody is as hard on themselves as I am
And nobody loves themselves as much as I do either these days
Because I’m finally making that scared little kid proud
And that alone is worth the discomfort of growth