A couple of weeks ago I needed to write this down so I didn’t forget.  You see, over the past few months my life has changed, well my outlook, so much, that I can’t risk losing what I’ve learnt.  But best laid plans and all that…it’s as I sit here on a ‘notsospeedyshuttle’ with blue neon lights and bouzouki music assaulting my ears (think pimped up ambulance for holiday makers), that I feel that it’s all the more important to contemplate the positive and embrace the beauty of life.

And no, my sharings have nothing to do with hot Greek islands.

So what mice upon a dark January day I collapsed and fell out of life.  It had been building for a while.  They’d been a desolate numbness about me which grew into a kind of claustrophobia; choking me.  I felt that life was grey and I was being smothered by the fog.  I craved the outside.  And no, not the world exactly (I couldn’t be around noise and people. This is something I’ve just had to endure to get me onto the pimped hellios ride).  Instead I felt an overpowering urge to lose myself in nature.  It turned out that being on the beach with the RDog began to heal my tattered and anxious soul.

The world can be a unfriendly place.  It’s hostile environment creating sheer drops and impassable rocky climbs to make it feel like you’re often pissing in the wind.  The weather (temperature, colour of the sky, rain wind speed…), the actual day (Saturday afternoon to Sunday night I felt perpetually sick.  Monday’s I couldn’t raise a smile) and the time (it’s too early, it’s too late. I want my duvet wrapped round me like a sausage roll always) would send me into panic and despair at many a point.  All spiralling the excuses of why I shouldn’t do something as easy as enjoying my world.

That’s right, all the shitty crap that I was going through meant that I couldn’t raise a genuine smile or warmth within my heart.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am no cold hearted bitch, it was just that it felt dead inside for me.  The Fear being that if I felt happy or excited that some evil force would whip away my happiness with another hand.  For some reason I never felt I deserved happiness.

So where is happiness when you look for it?

I’ll tell you where – it’s everywhere.

Years ago I read The Color Purple.  Way before Whoopi immortalised Celie, I was struck with her ‘God is everywhere’ epiphany. The reasoning that he is in every flower, blade of grass, the sky etc. was the basis of her religious rhetoric, has stuck with me ever since.  And whilst I waited for my soul to regenerate and heal (it takes time, like growing a tree) I began to not only notice stuff around me but I felt it cocooning me in a gossamer of silk.  I became a chrysalis.  And like my premature Auntie B covered in cotton wool and lotion, seventy two years ago (my nana thought it was the scrumped apples and she didn’t know babies came from ‘there’), I grew stronger every day.

I marvelled at the beauty which surrounds us.  Obviously, I can’t see everything clearly (there’s five senses you know) but on a good day I notice the sheer brilliance of Mother Nature and how she created birds – the aerodynamics are miraculous wonders of evolution.  On many an inclement day I scan the empty horizon and see nothing but sea, sand and sky.  Miles and miles of an ever-changing landscape (daily) which reveals secrets of the sea and its precarious nature and force; showing us mere mortals how insignificant we are.

It’s like I’m Lady Macbeth’s alter ego.  Whereas she channels the devil, I have unwittingly absorbed something heavenly (I’ve purged the poison).

Claptrap you think?

Well, maybe I do sound a bit airy fairy.  And maybe you sense I’m going to start walking barefoot and extolling the virtues of free love (no, but I have bought some insense to charge different energies in my house).  But becoming a butterfly gives you wings (as does a Jagerbomb and then some).  It means I can not only see the world in all its technicolour but feel it too.  I’m learning to fill up my soul with happiness and close up the veins and arteries which absorb the poison of life’s negativity (drains we call them).

To say I’ve been tested over the past three weeks is an understatement.  Returning to work and a busy house has meant I’ve had to take deep breaths and remind myself what I’ve learnt (also the incense and some yoga has helped) And whilst packing all the bloody house and a kitchen sink, in readiness for our summer adventure, I’ve reflected upon my happiness.

We are tested.  It’s how we learn to roll with it…

The packing has been shite.

The day has been long (I’m still on pimp my ride).

The airport terrifying at times (including the airport being lit by emergency lighting with wires hanging from the ceiling).

Plus, having to find our ride in a dangerously busy (buses, buses moving everywhere!) and dark pick up point.

Do I care? No, I’m thinking about how lucky I am to be here.  And not just in the physical sense too.

I’m learning not to sweat it (fingers crossed for air con)