A Healing From Home

I so nearly closed this blog down for good, a little birdie told me not to.

It wasn’t that I hate writing, quite the contrary, it’s just that time wasn’t something that I had an abundance of. In order to succeed I had to focus my writing on what I needed to write, not what I wanted to write. I’m starting to think the two cross over.

“I think it helps you” Matt says. So here I am, being helped.

Maybe a part of me didn’t like how my blog portrayed me or the people I loved. Maybe I knew that nobody really cares about my story, but then, don’t we all have a story to tell? The more I told myself that my story didn’t really matter, the more I found myself itching to share it. So I will, but my plan and domain have been cancelled now. Now I’ll share my story for free.

Yesterday I visited my mother and brother, a catch-up Mum said she needed. I was admittedly hesitant because of the low mood over the family at the moment, but I went anyway. Whilst I was down there I was determined to show my mother what good love felt like. I am her flesh and blood and if I know how I think then, well, I can hazard a guess at how she might be thinking, too.

“Come here, you” I say as she leans into me for a hug, “I get the feeling you’ve been keeping it all inside a little bit?”. She nods and laughs.

“How did you know?” she asks.

“Because I’m like you, and if I’m like you and you’re like me then I can probably tell what you’re thinking. You’re putting on a brave face but really… you ain’t feeling too brave”. Again she laughs, again she cries. She spends much of the evening relaxing, just holding my hand. It feels right and good somehow; she was there for Nan, now I’m there for her.

Ronan is there too and… I don’t say that there is a thing between Ronan and I, but there is something. Ronan knows what I do and I feel like, because of that, we see one another in a slightly different light now. I know he’s at least aware of my movements – I yawn, Ronan yawns, hmm…

A beard suits him, I can’t unthink that. It makes him look more… sophisticated?

We talk pancakes.

“And you?” he asks of me and my filling preference, My pancake filling preference, for the record.

i instinctively gasp before I can answer.

It’s something about the way he says “and you?” that feels so… pointed. I feel exposed, like nothing but the truth right here is acceptable. He knows my true submissive nature and now I feel he treats me as such. More annoyingly perhaps, I let him.

Dinner is a chicken stew with dumplings and, save for a little more salt and pepper (I do like to season a stew again before I eat), it’s very flavourful. Mum is surprised that I clear the abundance of veggies in it, I’m confused.

“It’s got swede in it” she says, I smile.

“So has a Cornish pasty but I eat those without complaint?” I reply, there’s giggles around the table.

I don’t mind swede, I just don’t like roasted swede. It’s not the vegetable, it’s how it’s prepared: garden peas or mushy peas, raw tomatoes or cooked tomatoes, corn on the cob or popped corn, I could go on.

I’m pleased to learn that Mum has calmed things down, she has ‘pulled her horns in’ as she tells me. I’m proud of her, recognising areas that were maybe causing her some trouble and changing her approach. I can’t help feel that I influenced that somehow, though I do feel guilty for some of the things I’ve said about her. Hence, I thought writing maybe wasn’t so good for me.

My brother shows me the painting that he’s working on and I’m impressed, the level of detail is crazy. He then lists a lot of the added details he plans to add and and I feel overwhelmed, what about just adding one or two things?

I try for some tactful diplomacy.

“I really like the sea monster painting you did, in fact it might even be my favourite piece. I feel like, maybe when you’re a bit calmer and more focused, you produce some of your better work?” I say.

“Sometimes he needs the emotion to paint” Mum says. It becomes too clear to me then why my brother perhaps struggles to sell his artwork – the anger conveys.

This morning I receive a message from Mum, with a link to a dog video. At the end of the video the dog hods up a piece of paper to remind the viewer that they are beautiful and worthy. I feel moved to tears – has my message sunk in?

“You were going on yesterday about self-worth” she says, “I thought you would like this.”

Oh yes, now I remember why I get frustrated sometimes.