My weekly ritual for looking at the week that was.

I had an accident last Tuesday, on my way to the day j-o-b.
I was on my bike, and I lost balance.
I landed face first on the pavement.
Ouch.

I was taken to A&E, had stitches on my nose and got a whole lot of dental work. More dental work will be needed, and in the meantime, I can only eat mushy food. Fun times. (not actually fun)

It’s been a rollercoaster, to say the least.

Let’s swing. I mean, let’s log.

• Stuff. All the stuff. Mountains of stuff. Every “story” about myself got triggered by this accident. Ranging from “Now I’ll look hideous and will never find my Soulmate”, to “the Universe sure hates me, I mean, come on”. Seriously. Come on, Universe! Weren’t things hard enough?

• And at the same time… Quiet. Yes. I could actually feel these stories popping up in my consciousness and failing to stick around. None of them felt “true”. So, in a strange way, stories such as “the Universe hates me” didn’t actually stay in my head for long. For a while, I was “storyless”. I remain a bit like that still. All my knowledge indicates that this is a good thing.

• Fear. So-much-fear. Above all, the fear that things will forever be this hard, and I will forever inhabit this “bottomless pit” of Doom and “Never Brightness”.

• Grief. Sadness. Pain. Despair. All the feelings showing up.

• Gratitude. Oh, yes. I am grateful. This accident has made me notice gratitude. To the women at the corner shop who took care of me as my nose bled and who called the ambulance (may they enjoy the chocolates I gave them today). Grateful to my friend, who stopped her day to come with me to the A&E, who left the hospital to get me soup, who gave me her hot tea/drink, which I had while in the ambulance (it was amazing). Grateful to my other friend, as I pretty much showed up unexpectedly at her house, and she made me banana smoothie and comforted me. Grateful to everyone who as nice to me throughout this tragedy. This week I cried from either people showing me love and caring or from remembering that there is no Soulmate to show me love and caring. Either way, there were tears (not great with a hurty nose)

• This is another kind of gratitude. It’s more like “small miracles”, and it’s inspired by this post from Havi, which I thankfully remembered throughout this week. It was a miracle that I had the accident just outside the corner shop, just in front of passers by. It was a miracle that I didn’t hurt my eyes at all, nor my glasses. Nor my neck or head. Or that I didn’t break my nose. The cream they gave me in A&E proved kinda miraculous, as my skin recovers without leaving scars. It was a miracle that I had just that morning made a huge batch of lentil soup, which sustained me for the following days. Grace, or miracles, doesn’t mean “bad things don’t happen”; it means astonishing things happen even when tragedy strikes.

• I’m also grateful for this superpower of “Bullshit Burning”. For real, this accident seems to have made me bolder. I no longer care about things I used to care about. I call BS on my old stories. I don’t “fight them”, they just vanish; it’s not an angry fire, but rather a cool, clear dissolving of BS. So here I am, emboldened, and not caring about wanting what I want, unapologetically. BRING IT!

• My fairy lights stopped working! My precious fairy lights, which I’ve had since 2009, which have lit up my bedrooms ever since, decided that this week, of all weeks, should be the week to stop working! Why, Universe, seriously now!

Moments of Insight

It’s not possible to condense my insights this week in words, but I do want to say something.

First, holly crap, I’ve made a ton of progress! I’m an actually functioning human being, who is actively learning and growing IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRAGEDY. This would have been unthinkable a while ago, when I was so caught in depression that I couldn’t function at all if anything remotely unpleasant happened to me.

Second: the way I get to function and grow in the middle of this tragedy is by allowing myself to feel really, really “low”. I turn widdershins, forever and ever. I allow myself to mope, to cry, to feel sorry for myself, to not want to get out of bed. All of it. Going as low as I need to and want to.
Then, I’m done much faster, and I bounce back up. But only then.

Intentional Thoughts to Play With

I will explain what these are one day.

For now, here they are: this week I played with these thoughts, “played” being the key operative word here.

“This accident is going to make me more beautiful (and I don’t even need to know how, though Imo says that every crisis makes me more beautiful, so I will trust him)”

“Trust that this may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to me (even though I wouldn’t have chosen it in a chinchillion light years)”.

Things of Considerable Worth (Un-missables!)

• Charles Eisenstein. “Pain: A Call for Attention”

“Ironically, in avoiding or suppressing negativity in an attempt to heal some part of our lives, we avoid a crucial key to healing. We ignore the so-called negative emotions, and the umbra of pain that surrounds them, at our peril. They too exist for a purpose; they are gifts that can bring us toward wholeness. Real negativity would be to reject these gifts, and instead to persist in a fight against what is.”

• Charles Eisenstein. “Invisible Paths”.

“As the age turns, millions of people are pioneering a transition from the old world to the new. It is a journey fraught with peril and hardship and breathtaking discovery, a journey irreducibly unique for each
of us.”

A week full of hard. Here’s to learning and growing.

Note: I don’t really now how to ask for help, but I suppose I will learn through action. I am asking for help, in whichever form you feel moved to give it. And if the way you want to help is by wishing me good health, then please do. Thanks.