Splintered Reflections

Shut your eyes.

Imagine your darkest time in life.  The time when you felt truly alone, utterly hopeless.  Finished.

These are times we all have, some of us are in the midst of them now, whilst others are flying high, loving life.  One of the certainties in life is that, when we find ourselves in these lulls, these depressions, these “black spells”, it is easy to feel that there is absolutely no way out.

Now this is going to sound a little defeatist.  I don’t mean it to sound that way.  However, I am starting to recognise that there is never really a “way out”.  There is never really a truly “happy ending”.  There is time, that wonderful healer, and acceptance.  Life will always throw ridiculous curveballs at us.  Happiness, contentment, call it what you will, can only be attained in accepting our situation and making the best of it.  Attitude is everything.

I wrote a poem today, entitled A Time of Darkness.  It was hard to write, as it was about one of the darkest, loneliest times in my life; perhaps the time in my life when I can truly say that I felt closer to suicide than I have ever felt.  (Luckily, I never “ventured” down that road.  Firstly, I had an electric oven, secondly, my husband had packed all the razors and taken them on a little holiday to Antarctica, thirdly I could never collect enough pills together to do anything more than threaten a serious headache…..I was always guzzling them to dull my hangovers and running out of the bloody things.)

What I find so amazing is that I had thought that this really low period in my life was a distant memory.  I felt I had come SO far!  However, just writing a few words about it all made it all come flooding back, quite literally, as if it were yesterday.

And the fact that these memories are still so fresh in my mind, makes me appreciate how we never really, truly leave the vulnerable parts of ourselves behind.  They are ever-present, ever-real, and as completely necessary to our existence as our beating hearts!

I cried when I wrote my poem, because I felt like I was writing about a previous life; the “Old Jane”.

I want to thank my beautiful man, Jason, and my lovely, crazy kiddies for ensuring that these days, I don’t ever find myself feeling this way.  Loneliness seems to be a thing of the past.

But I also want to acknowledge someone else.  I also want to say something to the “Old Jane”:

You are not alone.  You are strong.  You will survive.  All your gifts are to come.  Endure the darkness, as the beautiful light coming to you is truly worth the wait…