reclaiming the space

for a while now i've had about six square meters of floor space in my room. double bed. laundry basket. wardrobes. bedside table. two huge rat cages. guitar in case. sad, sad, sad to have the guitar in it's case in the corner. it is a precious thing to me. today, it is coming out of storage and returning to where it has a right to be, posed on it's stand at the end of my bed looking beautiful and getting strummed whenever i have a chance.

i am reclaiming my space. how often do we do this? how often can you say that some expenditure of either energy, time, money or all three can regain something so precious as the space to openly display a beautiful instrument, or wonderful piece of art? i need this space. this is an entirely selfish act which although has benefited others (the two small ones who now have a bigger home), is entirely about me wanting my space back.

bad enough that i share my room with boyfriend, i need this little bit of space for me. my sewing machine has been relegated to under the desk to make way for desk space desperately needed for study, and i refuse to have both of these beautiful things in storage. so the guitar, my liberator, my escape, my musical flair is coming out of the closet.

but this little act set me thinking about all the other space that is cluttered by things that could be different in my life. could i clear mental space for things i'd rather have there? how many times in my life have i pushed dark thoughts away to reclaim the space in order to focus on the good things? i do it deliberately, and i do it often. i imagine a lot of women do. but we often ignore the physical space. as women, we are hoarders, we like things. all women i know, we like things. it's two, three carloads for all my possessions each time i move from house to house, and i have no idea how to minimise it. maybe this is what men mean when they say that it's a fight to live with women. we have so many things.

so much baggage. emotional, obviously, comes with the sex, but physical too. and i don't know why we carry it all around with us all the time. we can go on retreats to try and figure out how, long weekends spent in the woods talking about chakras and peace and female strength, but what happens when you walk back through the door of your bedroom and you're once again surrounded by all those things that remind you of why your space is not only yours?

Thanks x

it's all about the journey

it's all about the journey. the journey we begin on our first breath which doesn't end until the last. there are stops and starts and twisting winding impossible roads but for the most part we stay on course. we run off the road we all lose the road sometimes but we continue we keep on and you find the road again eventually. sometimes someone comes along and helps you find the road again. i have been lost. i have been lost many times along my twenty two year journey. i am hoping that this medium of self-communication may help me to find exactly where i am meant to be heading and exactly who is supposed to be with me.

i once heard an analogy of life about God which put it all in the perspective of a car journey. in short, it says that in order to live a life which is full and happy, you must allow God, or Jesus, or whichever deity is your preferred, to drive your life, and you must be willing to take a backseat. now in a way, i do believe this. although i don't believe in God, or not as someone who has control over my life in particular, i believe there must be a stage at which you allow somebody to take the wheel. allow somebody else to have control and allow yourself to recuperate in the back seat. i recently drove from Glasgow to London in a day, and trying to drive your own life all the time is much like that. it can be done but it's exhausting and hard. you end up taking your shoes off and smoking too much and feeling ever so slightly mad.

i don't know what the Plan is. if there's a Plan, nobody's looped me in on it yet. all i can hope is to continue the way i am going and see what happens. and hopefully, writing things down rather than trying to bottle them or have people etch them into my skin or battle them with drugs and alcohol, i can see them for the gravel that they really are and just take a stronger grip of the wheel and drop into a lower gear for a while.

my life is about to get very busy and very difficult, or so i've been told. but in order to follow one of many dreams, i must do my best. and my best is inside me somewhere just waiting to come out.

thanks.