I’ve been looking at old posts, including those saved in drafts, when I came across this interesting little number:

Fuck it,

I tried to conform

But I can’t,

I tried to fit in,

tried to win,

play the game....

but I can’t…

There are a lot of cant’s in there, and I have no idea how I had arrived at “fuck it” , but I can feel the frustration, and I wonder as I read it if my frustrations were more with myself than anything else… another draft post contains these thoughts:

I am pondering a quote shared by a friend, from John O’ Donahue’s amazing book Eternal Echoes:

Give yourself time to make a prayer that will become the prayer of your soul. Listen to the voices of longing in your soul. Listen to your hungers. Give attention to the unexpected that lives around the rim of your life. Listen to your memory and to the inrush of your future, to the voices of those near you and those you have lost. Out of all of that attention to your soul, make a prayer that is big enough for your wild soul, yet tender enough for your shy and awkward vulnerability; that has enough healing to gain the ointment of divine forgiveness for your wounds; enough truth and vigour to challenge your blindness and complacency; enough graciousness and vision to mirror your immortal beauty. Write a prayer that is worthy of the destiny to which you have been called.

The sub-title to Eternal Echoes is: -“exploring our hunger to belong”, in many ways echoing the often shared quote from St Augustine:

You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our heat is restless until it finds its rest in you.

I wonder looking back at these two posts if my frustration was an expectation, entirely unreasonably that I would hit the ground running, know what I was doing and even be doing something. Odd because I know that I am someone who needs time to adjust and to reflect and to re-orientate, and as Brueggemann so helpfully reminds us in his work Psalms of Life and Faith, re-orientation needs time, including time to grieve, and of course that the need to re-orientate flows from being disorientated in the first place! Amazon helpfully reminds me I have purchased this book 3 times, I only have one copy now so must have thought it worth giving away, which means it made an impact on me!

So, I am looking back at the things that have disorientated me, and moving home is certainly one, and while my children have been away from home for a long time now, 15 years at the last count, a whirlwind of other changes have meant that empty nest syndrome has taken a while to catch up with me! Again, the loss of my mum, moving, and moving again, divorce, coming out and more have all had impacts, resulted in grieving ( some of which is not finished, and may never be) . So maybe I did need to shout “fuck it” at something, a venting of feelings and thoughts bottled up, and a verbal equivalent of throwing rocks into the sea, something I find very therapeutic, and a joy that being by the sea offers!

I wonder too what I thought I needed to conform to, I know the desire to fit in and to blend into the background is as much a part of my nature as dying my hair pink and wearing bright colours, both of which are masks of a sort, though masks that are becoming more authentically me as I learn to live from the core of who I am rather than trying to be what others want.

Queer Eye has just released a new season, and I binged it, it is therapy too, the central message of the programme, is you are enough, it is okay to be you, and you should be celebrated. You have a unique and God-given gift, claim it live it!

Slowly, slowly I am finding that possible, but also noting when it is too challenging and allowing myself to have downtime, days when I stay home and read a book, days when re-orientating involves doing the laundry or a bit of housework, or days, when like today I take time to take stock, regroup and recharge! Tomorrow I will be back out there, but this I know wherever I am I am held in the love that will not let me go, and wants me to grow!

As for winning, in the piece at the top, I reckon it is overrated!