About everything and nothing at all

I'm swimming around here in a sea of stuff. Not drowning. But alternately treading water and swimming hard. It's keeping me busy.

I had a dream on Sunday night in which I found myself newly alone again (some of these break up dreams are still so vivid and brutally painful) and I was very upset. I decided (in the dream) that I was so sad, I'd take a bath, which always soothes me. I ran the bath and lay back in the water, all the way back. As it closed over my head, everything went quiet, it was peaceful, and I thought that I might just let myself stay there and drown. Yes, I know it's extreme but it seemed a perfectly reasonable reaction, in that way that dream rationale can make the bizarre seem normal and anything feasible. I waited for the water to fill my lungs, I was convinced it was the thing to do. I felt calm. And then I realised that I could breathe underwater. Foiled. So I just lay there for a while, breathing underwater, enjoying the relief of a silent space, and cried. I was crying still when I woke up but the peacefulness was what stayed with me for a while, not the pain. This is progress.

My waking hours are not very peaceful right now. Work is horrid and horribly busy. So not loving it. I don't shy away from hard work but I do shy away from hard people. And I do shy away from hard people controlling my work in a compromising way - to balance their own inadequacies and to compensate for their incompetency. And just because they can. However, my options seem limited. For now. Do I continue to take on the challenge (I'm up to it but it's demoralising and tiring) or do I try to create new options? And, if the latter, where do I find the time to do so? Or do I wait for the Universe to reveal new doors as she usually does, at her own pace? All I know for sure is that change is coming. I feel it in my marrow.

And there's change brewing in other areas of my life too. The signs are there. At the moment it's mostly about a high level of discomfort with where I am rather than a clear idea of where I'm going, and the anxiety and frustration associated with that. For some reason, instead of just waiting patiently for the wheel to turn, as I know it will, or for the answers to float to the surface, I churn and mull and ponder and rail. I'm not good at waiting. Not good at all. And this has been going on for months. I'm struck by the fact that my time is finite and weeks, months, years are passing in a blur. I don't want to waste them. But I don't seem able to still the inner turmoil. Or to strike out in a new direction. Or to identify a new direction to strike out in. So I twirl. On the spot. Dizzy and tired. I said to a friend recently that it feels a bit like I've got myself into the spin cycle of a washing machine. It's not a comfortable place to be. All this thrashing around in a confined space is quite exhausting. I need open waters. Or a metaphorical bath.

It's not all there is. There are moments, whole days occasionally, of relative contentment. Moments of clarity. My natural optimism surfaces and I know it will all be okay. I'm excited by the prospect of change and the twirling seems like fun. But then the spin cycle kicks in again and that inner certainty explodes into a zillion tiny droplets. More questions than answers.

• What do I need?
• What do I want?
• Am I happy?
• Am I unhappy?
• Is happiness a realistic expectation?
• How far away is it?
• Where's the chocolate?
• How do I get there?
• Am I so busy worrying, seeking, looking beyond... that I'm missing the point?
• Shall I have some tea?
• Enough?
• How do I embrace enoughness* completely?
• Aren't those shoes pretty?!
• How do I establish and maintain integrity (my mission for the year) in every cell of my being?
• Why does everything move so quickly?
• Why does everything move so slowly?

I think my dream was suggesting that if I can find a quiet space in my head, I will find peace, those answers. Some answers, at least. And that maybe letting go and even being underwater isn't as fatal an outcome as I might imagine. That I can already breathe there... Perhaps? But it isn't as easy to convince my waking self.

So, in the meantime, I keep swimming.

*I'm reading an excellent book, recommended by my brother, who gets it. Enough by John Naish.

[Flickr credits here. How did I ever process things without Flickr talents to provide my soul's images, I wonder?]