Life is like a slingshot
I think it's over, for now. The red mist has lifted and I'm giving up.
Today.
Something happened.
I felt a physical shift in my body.
If you've kept up with my recent posts, you'll know I’ve been in a pretty hopeless place. And I know some of you have noticed - thank you for that. I’m rubbish at talking about this stuff, except with my hubby.
To the outside world, my feelings come out as rants or, as my husband can attest, a torrent of f-bombs.
Poor bloke. I swear the fact he is going slightly deaf is because I’m constantly bending his ear about some personal dilemma or existential crisis!
This week, however, there has been a noticeable shift. The anger, resentment, and desperation for control lifted. Maybe it’s coming off HRT, allowing my body to recalibrate.
But honestly, I think it’s because I finally gave up.
As I looked middle age directly in the eye, it felt like my dreams had become distant and unobtainable. I was quietly desperate for perfection - in a rush to fix my life, body, work, art, and space.
This need for control kicked off a wave of decluttering that felt almost obsessive. I was a woman possessed. But as I freed up my physical space, something unexpected happened. The mental pressure lifted, too.
You see, there was nothing to fix. My life is perfect as it is - perfectly messed up, perfectly wonderful, perfectly confusing, and perfectly imperfect.
And control? It’s a complete illusion.
🪨 Life is like a slingshot
Life is like a slingshot - we’re released and flung out into the world with no control over where we land.
As
saidControl, especially at scale, is an illusion. Fighting against this, trying to manufacture a level of certainty that can never be found, is an exercise in futility. The more we seek control, the more we build our lives around something that can never be had, the more we suffer. By our own hands.
’The 3 delusions of becoming’
Allowing this letting go, with no expectation of where to land, is a feeling I’ve never experienced before. Even while I was studying to be a mindfulness teacher and meditating for hours every day.
Nope. This is something that I released in the cold light of day, oh, and those 3am wakings with just the silence, a pen, and journal in my hands.
Letting go and and saying out loud I’m not world-class, not popular, not ‘smashing it’. I’m just me - some days a total frickin fruitcake, other days a miserable cow with ‘leave me the fuck alone’ stamped across my forehead.
Admitting I’m not good enough? Well, it’s strangely wonderful.
🌫️ The fog clears and serendipity appears
I can’t promise this liberation of feeling will last. I’ve enough miles on the clock to know that old feelings of anger and frustration like to visit sporadically. Like old friends who show up unannounced and give me a well-timed kick up the arse. Painful in the moment, but always for a good reason.
Serendipity plays its part too. This week, I came across the words of another woman who helped me make peace. She’ll probably never know it, but her words were the lifeline I needed.
summed up not just what I’ve felt the past few weeks, but practically my whole life:I feel like so much of my life is spent waiting for my mind to stop its paralyzing death-spiral of why-can’t-I-work-like-other-people. And then the fog clears and I can work again and write again and it all seems so easy. Until it doesn’t. And then I panic again that I’ll be stuck in the nothingness forever while everyone rushes past me.
I’ve gathered and treasured so many amazing tools and tricks and life-rafts that have helped me navigate and keep going, but sometimes…
Sometimes I just wish there was a cure. A way to trade the unpredictable “IT’S-ALL-OR-NOTHING-AND-NEVER-ANYTHING-IN-BETWEEN” workings of my brain to something that I could depend on every single day.
Sometimes my mind is a sharp knife. Sometimes it’s an empty amusement park. Sometimes it’s a compost heap of garbage where unexpected things grow… Things that may be poisonous. Things that may be magical. Things that may be both….
But what I do know is that the things that make me broken make me who I am, and it gives me a perspective like no one else in the world. And the same thing applies to you, my friend.
The wonder and terror of a mind that doesn’t work like everyone else’s
So there you have it. The fog has cleared and it feels good. I’ll hold this realisation and this feeling lightly. Appreciate it for a while.
I wonder…do you consider yourself the controller or liberator of your life?
Have you been able to accept and let go, especially in your midlife and more?
Stay creative, my friends,
👩🏻🎨 Something I made
I’m focused on my plan now and busy building a catalogue of images; I’m now adding sealife. Here’s the first in the collection…a jellyfish aka Florun Animalium: Scyphozoa.
📷 And finally…the week in 3
From clutter…
…to artistic calm
To another Goodbye and family photo, as Jake heads to Uni
Which three photos from your camera roll best capture your week?
Share them here on the chat thread
