Looking outwards

Walking on the beach today, it suddenly started pissing down and I had to hunker under a rocky outcrop to keep my camera dry.

I didn't realise until I got home and looked at my photos but it seems I was not alone...
You can see it too, right...?


I've felt unsettled and restless the last few days - with sprinklings of unwelcome and unintentional maudlin. I have been fighting it and looking for happy, for lightness and for positive. Sometimes you want to go with it and go through it, and sometimes you know it's not useful. Well, that's how I feel anyway. Sometimes I feel darkness is something to travel through in order to reach the light and other times I just need to reach for the light switch.
I'm definitely in a "where's the light switch?" mood currently.

Last night, in bed, I made the mistake of reading blipfoto entries from a year ago when I was struggling with ill health and other kinds of hell, and after that I couldn't sleep. I felt so troubled and low!

Today my head is in a different place: I'm not where I was a year ago. I'm not where I was 5 years ago... I'm in here and now, and very much today. I've had a weekend thinking about the 5th anniversary of my dad's death and how the anniversary always comes within 24 hours of Tess's birthday, and I've realised I can't cope with the 2 things being together on the calendar. The juxtaposition of the powerful painful memories and the important, living, loved one have been doing my head in, and I know without too much consideration that Tess who is real and here and young and needy deserves the attention at this time. My mother sees the anniversary of Dad's death as the same day as Tess's birthday because he died in the small hours of the following morning. She didn't even wish Tess a happy birthday this year. There's no way in the world my father would ever have wanted to dominate/hijack her birthday - especially not with darkness and sadness. From now on I will think of him when I think of him, I will celebrate his birthday and miss him Father's Day but I won't force immensely traumatic memories on a time which should be focussed on my child - who needs happiness and celebration on HER special day.

I am glad that the weekend is over but I am ready to do things differently next year.