I Want to be Happy

A big statement, that one, and one I’m sure most people aim for. As I have previously talked about, the pursuit of happiness is an oxymoron in such a way that as long as you are pursuing happiness, you can never really find it because it is necessarily kept at arm’s length. The same goes for the title of this blog post: I want to be happy – it is oxymoronic. While I want it, I am implying that I am not, and by saying that I am not, I am implying that I intend to be and am pursuing it.
To be fair, who doesn’t want to be happy? Let’s leave the semi-philosophical, semi-semantic debate behind us for a while, and consider what happy is and what what we intend to do with it. Indeed, reaching the state of “happy” must imply some kind of change. A change of situation, a change of mind, a change of heart. The question is, though, if the basic fundamentals of our characters change or if it is outward change that drives us forward toward the elusive goal that is happiness.

I got to thinking the other day, while reading over all of my post-hospital posts, about the nature of change and if we as a species are even capable of it. A sentence I’ve heard so many times is “You cannot change anyone apart from yourself” and I couldn’t help but wonder – is that really true? I believe it is.

I agree that an effort spent on trying to change someone else is an effort wasted. It is not only a waste of your time, it is a waste of theirs. If you cannot accept someone as they are, you should move along. Right? Well, I don’t think it’s that simple. Say you started a relationship with someone fairly young, and as the years pass, you develop different interests and points of view. You spend a lot of time in frustration trying to get the other person to see things your way or you sacrifice a lot of your time and personality to comply with their interests. And suddenly, it all becomes terribly maddening and all the effort doesn’t pay off, because no one is really happy while trying to be like someone else, or when trying to exist for someone else. But does that mean you give up the other person, just for being different? How does that fit in the middle of the age of tolerance that we pretend to find ourselves in (you know, the age of war on terrorism, religious fundamentalism and continuing racism and ignorance)? You do not simply cash in a person for being different from you, and you cannot, and should not, change for someone else. So, no, we don’t move along just like that, we look inward and focus on ourselves.

Peace, love and happiness

So, when does change happen? Does it happen?

I remember when I got out of hospital how optimistic and serene I was. I was thankful for life and appreciated everything so much more. Then what happened? I got into pretty much the same routine I was so familiar with. Overworking myself, not paying enough attention to my most basic needs, constantly trying to please others, yet needing desperately to have things go my way. In other words, I didn’t change one bit. Was that moment of euphoria post-hospital simply due to my brain having been deprived of carbohydrates – indeed, deprived of food – for too long and simply incapable of a proper, comprehensive thought? Or is my psychological make-up just simply set as it is and nothing will rock that boat?

Both explanations are likely, in my opinion. At the end of the day, I did not change, my situation changed, and I adapted. The survival mechanism needed to get through a month-long stint in a hospital was, in my case, a different look on life, a form of contentment that allowed me to survive. So that is a part of my psychological make-up – a fantastic capacity to adapt. Not change.

Due to the nature of my condition, I live a normal life while in remission. I therefore do not have the constant reminder of my illness that many other chronic patients have. Feeling normal physically leads to my feeling normal mentally (or, as normal as can be expected – I do experience bouts of frustration and “why me” syndrome every now and again), so, in principle, I haven’t changed at all. My outlook on life is the same, my goals the same, my ethics the same. The only thing that has changed is that I’m in remission now and have healed – I have new cells instead of the ruined ones. Otherwise, I am the same.

It is perhaps a depressing thought, that change is a rare occurrence. But perhaps it is the one constant we as humans need. After all, we are animals of habit and routine – one of the first things I learned as a new mother, for example, was the importance of a routine for an infant. But the fact that we can adapt to the most severe situations should be encouraging. Should we wake up tomorrow to another economic melt-down we can find serenity in the thought that we can – and will – adapt. Ironically, it is one of the constants of life.  But I doubt that we ever really fundamentally change.

Perhaps I should remind myself of that after ten years, and see if there’s any truth in this theory. I know my former therapist, for example, would disagree. For now, however, I am convinced that I am who I am and will continue to be, even though some thinking processes and opinions could potentially change. And there is certain comfort in that, after all.

I am who I am.

Standing out by being yourself

Cold Heart

It‘s cold out there.  Even when the rays of the sun so diligently shine and dance and skip through the blond strands of hair bobbing along the beach with their children owners, it is constantly and perpetually cold out there.

Compassion is a commodity now. I‘ll trade you compassion for your ability to get the hell out of my way on the streets. I‘ll give you help in exchange for your service. I‘ll scratch your back if you will scratch mine, massage it and wrap it in cotton wool.

Maybe it is because we live so far up north. Cold country, cold heart.

Regardless, it‘s cold out there.

This morning, while trudging through 40 cm of snow, I looked around at the soft landscape and blurred borders created by tiny, frosted crystals, and wondered whether this softness I could see would somehow be transferred to human contact. To my great pleasure, I was not wrong to hope. After having tried – and failed – to reverse my car out of its space in the parking lot, I received help from my other half and our neighbour, whom we have never even seen before. My heart warmed a little – you might even say it was toasty warm. Until I got out onto the main road, that is. There, the rules of the wilderness apply. There, speed limit is not something you stay within, it is something you reach, and woe be brought on those who dare stay well within it. Driving my three-year-old to day care, I tried my very best to be extra safe out there in the wild west, because ice and snow are treacherous travel partners. Needless to say, within five minutes I had a queue of impatient cowboys lining up behind me, sounding their horns; their war-cries. You might think I was just slow. I‘d prefer that you‘d think I was just being safe.

Cold country, cold heart.

In the pale and pastel sun, the children keep dancing on the beach. Their little toes are dipped into cold waves breaking on cold sand, while their cold parents lick cold ice-cream and look out to the cold horizon with ice-blue eyes.

Will we ever be warm?

Happy Christmas – My Personal Reflection on the Meaning of Christmas

This is a genuine wish for a truly happy Christmas, from someone who opted out of the national church in Iceland earlier this month. I am somewhat adrift in personal beliefs, and go between agnosticism and atheism. Why? you may wonder. Well, we have sadly had so many scandals concerning priests and other officials of the church being found guilty of sexual abuse that I just cannot justify my tax money going to that establishment anymore. However, I respect anyone who needs and wants the Church. I just do not.

Belief is a strange thing. I have tried to make myself believe in a higher being, but I am too rational to be able to surrender myself to such an entity. In many ways, I envy people who can – mostly, I envy the hope they have for an afterlife. However, I feel empowered knowing that I am in charge of my own fate, and the decisions I make affect my life according to what I choose.

My personal beliefs aside, I still feel it’s appropriate to wish everyone Happy Christmas. I don’t feel any need to write Xmas instead of Christmas – who knows, maybe someone called Christ lived once, and in any case, it’s a cultural necessity at this point, and I will never want to remove that dimension from my life.

Whether you believe in something or not, may you have a truly enjoyable holiday season – happy festival of lights and love, whether you celebrate it as Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule or anything else that brings people together in peace and love.

The Characteristics of a Nation

Culture is a fascinating concept. It is studied, described and taught in most of the western world. We learn about it in elementary school, in secondary school and even in university. There is ample research out there that aims to provide insight into diverse, foreign cultures and it is enough to flick on the telly during prime time to realise that the culture we are exposed to isn‘t even necessarily our own – be that good or bad.

When it comes to our own culture, whether it is western, eastern, north-western or what have you, people are often fantastically near-sighted. It even often takes moving out of a country to understand or even appreciate cultural aspects of one‘s home nation that are perhaps – how to put this delicately – a little less than desirable.

However, there is one sure-fire way to understand, at a glance, the basic make-up of a host-nation‘s culture. It is not by going to the next public library and pour over academic research, or by sitting at a down-town café, or by going to live in a mud hut. No, sir. It is much closer, and much simpler than that.

I‘m talking about traffic.

You can analyse the basic characteristics of a nation simply by looking at the way they behave in your regular, run-of-the-mill car/bike/walking traffic. Are drivers conscious of each other? What are the basic principles that govern driver behaviour? Confused? Let me elaborate:In Iceland, there seems to be a single principle, then further subcategorised, that governs all driver behaviour: I HAVE TO BE FIRST! Icelandic drivers seem to have been brought up on the notion that their tax money somehow automatically grants them priviledges on the road. They paid, ergo, they should come before all others. It‘s a classic instance of the otherwise common selfishness-syndrome so common in Iceland and which almost single-handedly led to the banking collapse. I‘m dead serious.

Laid-back or Alpha Dog?
If I compare this insanity to Denmark, where I lived for a number of years, the difference is obvious. Danes are calm and perhaps a little distant in traffic (apart from the black sheep, most of whom drive BMW‘s and overtake all arse). Danes know how to merge without causing other drivers to have strokes from frustration, and they don‘t suffer from the pathological need to be ahead of everyone else. They even understand that when you drive during rush hour, it will be SLOW and take TIME. They also understand the difference between lanes – if you‘re on the far-right, you‘re the slowest. Icelanders don‘t drive like that. In Reykjavik, the infrastructure is so haphazard that if you don‘t select your lane according to your destination, you will have big trouble when you find that you need to switch lanes. Because no one will let you. It is their lane, after all. They were there first.

The laid-back atmosphere from Denmark is but a distant memory up here. The fight that breaks out on the tiny motorways in Reykjavik city every day is bloody and dirty. Drivers in general don‘t seem to know where to find their indicator lights, and generally rush madly across lanes with complete disregard of their fellow drivers, in search for the best spot:  the alpha-dog position at the head of the pack.  No one knows what anyone else is doing or about to do, but that doesn‘t mean that anyone slows down at all – oh dear God no. In fact, many seem to speed up. Heaven forbid drivers catch that red light and let other potential alpha-winners ahead of them. After all, who paid for the road??

The amount of fuckwittage that foregoes on the roads almost increases when driving conditions are bad. Just yesterday I was driving into town and had a prime example of a fuckwit behind me. He drove with his high headlights switched on, and about five inches away from my car. When it‘s snowy and slippery outside like it is now, I avoid breaking with the foot break at all cost. I drive a stick, so I use my gears to slow down. The only sensible way, really. The down-side to this otherwise genius plan is that when you break with your gears, the break lights don‘t flash. Stupid bugger behind me got dangerously close every time I slowed down, because he clearly didn‘t employ his brain to understand that when you slow down from a high speed with your breaks, you can spin – ergo, you use gears. You‘d think that after about 4 km he‘d have figured out my MO. But no – he had the fantastically bad sense to stick to my tail like gum to hair.  If I had hit a particularly slippery patch, or needed to actually break (or sneeze – or anything) he would have hit my tail and that would be that. Insurance and injury, ripe for picking.

The Big Car Syndrome Taken to the Next Level
Iceland may be the only country in the world where it seems to be perfectly acceptable to drive stupidly large jeeps all year round – mostly distant cousins of SUV‘s that have been modified to handle extreme driving conditions up in the mountains. And somehow, many seem to think that this kind of car is appropriate in city traffic. So, you would think that these darling owners would know how to maneuvre their vehicles and even try to set an example for the rest of us mere mortals who drive normal cars. You might even wish that in difficult conditions, like have been in Reykjavik city for the last few weeks, you would feel safer in the traffic, knowing that there are hundreds of drivers out there with specially modified cars, indicating that they know how to drive in snow and sleet. Fat bloody chance. I feel like I‘m in mortal danger most of the time. Coming down a ramp that merges into a main road is like fighting for your life. No one lets you onto the lane  – because, don‘t forget, it‘s THEIR lane. Never mind whether there  is space behind them or not, you will be left on the merging lane, pulled over, cursing every driver around into oblivion.

Many jeep owners also seem to have skipped class when they were due to learn how to take right hand turns.  It is frighteningly common how many of them seem just to skate through the turn without looking at anyone or anything at all. In Icelandic, we call it „hreppstjórabeygja“, which roughly translated could be something like „a sherriff‘s turn“, indicating the complete disregard Mr jeep driver has for other drivers.  If the lane onto which they are aiming (albeit poorly) is not separated from the next lane going in the opposite direction, you‘ll find jeep drivers happily doing a diogonal skid instead of an acctual turn onto the right lane, most often crossing the lane in the opposite direction. If you‘re not careful, you could get pounded on the nose by a jeep driver who forgot to learn how to turn his wheel properly.

Parking and Recreation
Parking problems are quite common in this small country. It‘s a peculiar problem to have, however, and more people seem to have recognised this, since a popular website that displays stupid things other people do has dedicated an entire category to bad parking in Iceland. I applaud them. Before I dive into bitter descriptions of parking gone bad, you must understand one thing. Icelanders don‘t walk anywhere if they can avoid it. The weather here is shitty for the better part of the year, so we are all brought up to drive to our desired location and try to get a parking space as close to – if not practically inside – the place we are visiting as humanly possible. You can observe this tendency with devastating clarity during Christmas if you go to shopping malls (heaven help you). Everyone always tries their luck at the spaces closest to the entrances and naturally, traffic props build up. No one seems to have the fantasy to try and park furthest away and do a little walking, probably saving time in the end. No sir. It‘s our prerogative, our birth right, to not have to walk outside and be exposed to the dangers of fresh air and kinetic energy. If this mentality doesn‘t change soon I‘ll write to the minister for health and demand automated wheelchairs for everyone. We don‘t seem to want our legs, anyway.

So, you‘ll always see a couple of idiots who park illegally close to where they‘re going. Up on sidewalks is very common – it seems logical: we know that no one walks, and so sidewalks should be shanghaied by drivers and made into annexed parking lots. Right?? Wrong. Try walking from the parking spot you so diligently acquired, a little way away from the door, and find it blocked by some idiot driver who couldn‘t be arsed to wet the soles of his shoes. Not my favourite kind of fuckwittage.

The Wheels on the Bus Just Don‘t Exist
All of this would be nicely solved if Reykjavik had a proper public transport system where ordinary people could go to work or the shops or on visits via the bus. But the Reykjavik bus system is frighteningly under-funded and buses run approximately every 20 or 30 minutes from 6 in the morning and sometimes stop as early as 10 in the evening. The routes are both few and  illogical, and should you be so unlucky to need to change routes  you can happily add about 40 minutes to your journey. When they solve this, and when they invest in education and anger management for mature drivers, we‘ll possibly have a driving culture to be proud of and that doesn‘t directly reflect the sort of criminal behaviour that bankrupted this country three years ago. But until then… I recommend buckling up, saying prayers to any and every diety you feel comfortable with, and … hope for the best.

Blank

I’m put together in such a way that I always have to have the answer, or the solution, or the answer and solution to everyone’s problems, questions and dilemmas, including my own. It’s not a great existence. It tends to put my mind in overdrive, trying to make sure that my nearest and dearest are acting responsibly and not spiraling into some pit of deadlines missed and hours not worked. So, to counter this, I spent hours in therapy this summer trying to get my head around the concept that it’s OK to say “I don’t know”, or “figure it out yourself” sometimes, aiming to get rid of the stress in my life. And I get beyond stressed when things don’t go according to plan, especially when it’s my plan and others than myself mess it up. Did I hear someone say “control freak”? You wouldn’t be far off the mark.  Yet, however much I loath this state of mind, somehow the message of my otherwise genius therapy sessions seemed to have gotten lost somewhere along the way when I moved back to my home country this autumn. But never fear, revival attempts are underway.

In therapy, those few times when I allowed myself to be really vulnerable and honest, I often couldn’t produce answers to questions I was being asked. And I felt truly rotten about it, and of course, my state of vulnerability evaporated quickly and I again morphed into the stressed-out-mother-of-one-and-a-half that carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. Whenever I would express this frustration of drawing blanks, as we called it, my therapist would look at me almost in exasperation and make yet another effort to try and make me see that not knowing is OK. Coming up short is fine. Drawing blanks is only human.

This state of being blank is why I didn’t write a thing on here for over a year. I was blank, and couldn’t face sharing that vulnerable state with anyone, not even myself. So the only writing I did for this entire year was journal writing – personal, intimate, clumsy, hurried and honest writing that wasn’t appropriate to share with anyone. I was never able to let the outside world see that I don’t have the answers to everything. I can’t come up with solutions to all of everyone’s problems. It was the mark of failure to me. I had wrapped myself up tightly in the persona I’ve created to protect the core of myself – a feisty drama queen who is always on top of everything and never steps away from the straight and narrow line she has drawn in front of herself.

That’s not who I really am.

I need practice in being vulnerable and soft, while still allowing my drama queen to play her role on appropriate scenes.

I’m slowly realising that blank isn’t bad. Blank is a perfectly justifiable state. It’s the state I’m in now.

So instead of apologizing for not being more inspired, I’m going to celebrate that I can finally share that I DON’T KNOW.And it’s beautiful.

Inspiration

I have a clear meaning in my head for this text. However, since I admire Roland Barthes’ school of thought, I will metaphorically kill the Author to make room for the Reader and his interpretations. I hope you enjoy. If you want to know what my interpretation of this text is, drop me a line. If you want to share your own, please do so. I would be honoured to hear any and every possible meaning that this hurried, rushed, inspired and uncensored work could create in the world.

She was standing on the beach. She smelled the salty, frothing water lulling at her tired feet and felt the coarse sand beneath her toes. She drew a deep, relaxing breath and took in the fresh, tangy air that blew her hair around her face. She whipped her head back and a strand of stray hair nestled in between her parted lips. She slowly raised one battered arm and tucked her hair behind her ears, while the wind playfully reached out and pulled the strand up and away, trying to drag it to the infinite loop of moving air.

Anna inhaled and closed her eyes.

She felt she had walked for hours, under the merciless sun, through the rough undergrowth, away from the unyielding landscape of the place she used to know and love; the place she used to call home. Without exhaling, she extended one leg gracefully and slowly lowered her foot into the water. The calm exterior of the ocean and the scorching sun left her foot submerged in the kind of warmth that only water can produce; a warmth that enters your very core and heals you from within.

Anna exhaled and opened her eyes.

She looked out over the ocean stretching out before her; endless and unknown – exciting yet terrifying.

She did not know what she would find on the other side, or even if there was another side. She just knew that there was no way back from where she was standing. There was only the way forward.

The salty smell made her feel more alert. She walked onwards, the downy, tickling ocean floor gently massaging the soles of her feet. On and on she walked. Finally, when the water was waist-high and her wet clothes clung to her as if they did not want to let her go, she stopped and looked up into the calm morning sky. All she knew, all she cared about, was that there was only the present. There was only forward. The past was over and here future awaited her with open arms.

Anna swam.

With each stroke she registered a different sense – the smell changed from salty to an overbearing, heady, sweet aroma. Her eyes registered the entire spectrum of the rainbow breaking through the fizzy waves. She tasted the sea on her lips and felt the water move every hair on her body in a constant rhythm; backwards and forwards. Every stroke filled her with fresh hope and the certainty that what she was moving towards was better than what she was leaving behind.

There must have been something in the water. After hours, Anna was still steadily swimming. She was not hungry and not thirsty and not tired. She was just content within her own mind and her own body, constantly moving forward. Yes, there must have been something in the water. There was something other-worldly about this place. The sun was still directly overhead – time seemed to move according to different principles in this mysterious ocean. Anna had a glint in her eye – a ray of hope and faith that kept her moving steadily forward.

Finally, after what might have been a lifetime, Anna felt land when her hip bones stroked the rising floor of the ocean. The sand on this end was not downy and caressing as it had been on the other, but smooth and unyielding as glass. Anna stopped swimming and knelt on the strangely hard, dark-grey substance and blinked furiously, not knowing what to expect. At first, she saw nothing but light. But after a while, when her eyes had adjusted to the brightness, she saw that she was standing on the brink of a landscape so intensely different from anything she had experienced that she could do nothing but stand still and gasp. In the horizon, purple mountains held up the sky. The sun clung to the mountain tops, producing the most intense symphony of colours that playfully skipped across the sky, wrapping the purple mountains in a golden glow that can only be seen at sunrise on a crispy day. The air was fresh and cool and she registered several different scents around her; from close by she registered the earthy smell of moist, fertile dirt and a dewy field of grass. She was certain that a little further away she would find a lake surrounded by shrubs and birch trees and pine trees, and that somewhere, the mossy undergrowth of a forest would provide a warm relief for her bare feet. She drew even breaths and ascended towards the tall, wizened grass that took over from the dark, strange sandy beach she was on. Once she reached the apex, she looked around again and was filled with hope. This elven, mysterious land was where her future was.

She had made her own luck.

The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Mythical Passtimes

As far as I can tell, happiness is on top of almost everyone’s to-do list. We all want it, this elusive feeling of being perfectly content with our lot, and we often set it as our main goal in life. It’s right up there with the “I want to get married, live in a house, have healthy kids and a handful of cars” clause that seems to be put in every “what do you want to be when you grow up” essay that we spend our lives honing to perfection.

Most of us actively work towards happiness by setting goals for ourselves. We think that once we buy that house, we will be happy. Or once we get that dream job. Or once we have two cars, instead of one. Once we’ve accumulated more stuff, or reached our career goals, we think that happiness will appear as if by magic, because we’ve worked for it. But is it so? I think not. And I think most will agree with me.

This leads to the imperative question – what is happiness? Is it even definable?

It takes courage to be happy

 

As far as I can tell, happiness is a feeling of not wanting anything. When you feel so at peace with yourself and your surroundings, your life choices and your accomplishments that you require nothing else; you can just draw your breaths steadily and calmly without feeling regret, or anger, or bitterness.

It seems to me that we actively work against our own happiness by constantly setting goals and setting up multi-hued milestones along our life path that we simply must reach before we can consider ourselves in the vicinity of happy. It’s oxymoronic, really. We will never be happy while we work towards being happy. We will only be happy when we figure out how to let go of this goal labelled “happiness”.

Happiness is not a house or a car or having a healthy child or a dream job, the perfect husband or the perfect cocktail dress. Happiness should and must always come from within. It is the feeling of not wanting anything. Once we can understand how perfectly blissful it is to be alive we an appreciate it for what it is.

For me, happiness is the “joye de vivre”, this feeling of never wanting to let life go. To look out the window and see nothing but possibilities and laughter and good times with other people. And even better, to get out from behind the window and spend time exploring possibilities, laughing, and having a good time with other people. It’s as simple as that.

My words of wisdom, therefore, are these: Stop looking for happiness. It may already have found you.

 

Lastly, here is my list of other mythical passtimes to think about (not to be taken too seriously):

- saving lots and lots of money. Save a little less, travel a little more…

- Retail therapy. You only really feel better for about fifteen minutes. Then you think about how much money you spent. Guilt trip…

- Binge drinking. How can it be fun if you don’t remember it?

-Blogging about happiness instead of going out and doing happy things. Because a life spent behind a computer screen isn’t a life worth talking about, right?

 

 

A Lesson

In the darkness of the room, I wait. I wait for what seems to be hours, but is truly only a few breaths. I wait for peace. Some kind of peace, any kind of peace. Peace of mind, peace of body, peace of mind and body. A rested soul.

I find nothing.

I listen to the clock. I sense time differently, as if every ticking second passing signifies a little time lost that will never come back. I want time to move forward, yet I cannot bear to see the hands of the clock move, as they are a constant reminder of the life I’m being denied. An existence of dichotomies. I yearn to leave, but it frightens me, so I cannot go. I cannot move, but it hurts not to. I want life, yet it is uncertain what life is for me.

The shapeless, white gown defines my existence now. Every day, I feel the shell I keep under there grow weaker and thinner and less powerful. Each day, a little something of me is lost. The medication befuddles my brain and scrambles my senses. I feel more, yet less. The little I am allowed to consume tastes revolting, yet my body craves it desperately. I am swollen yet strangely hollow. I am not me. I have been reduced to a shell. A case around a wilted soul.

The fight is yet to come. This first battle has been rough and bloody, without a doubt. I have wanted to throw down my banner and call in my cavalry in defeat, time and time again over the last few days. But somewhere in me there is a general who refuses to give up, even when the battle seems lost. I am thankful for this general. He is the essence of me, he is keeping me alive, forcing my will to his, refusing to admit defeat.

I will not be defeated. Through my blackest hour, through the darkest maze of human suffering, I will not give up. Life is too precious.

—

When time started to move normally again, I often thought back to the hours spent in this limbo. What did they mean? One answer kept presenting itself to me, over and over. It means that I am lucky. It means that every day is important and should be used wisely. It means that life can change as fast as the hands of the clock.

Time means something to me now. It is the most valuable possession I have. This I have learnt.

A good lesson.

When Life is on Hold

I have roughed it for the last few weeks. You might say that I hit rock bottom and then dug a hole, where I found myself sinking, slowly yet surely, down to the underbelly of human existence.

In a shapeless white gown with a bag of goo attached to me I slumbered upon a hospital bed – not here, not there, not anywhere; trying desperately to access my own head.

For weeks I couldn’t read. For weeks I couldn’t write. For weeks I could not do anything but stare at the wall, feeling a little like Gilman in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. But at least she could create through her pain, where I could barely exist through mine.

As much as I would have liked to, I can’t say that I have spent the last few weeks thinking. You see, brain activity is pretty minimal when deprived of nutrition and hopped up on steroids to boot.

But this last week, I have been coming back. The light is seeping in to my head again. I can read now. I can almost write now. And best of all, I can live now.

Every day I think about how lucky I am. Yes, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness, and yes, it will be a life-long task, and yes, it did not look very good there for a while, but today I consider myself the luckiest person alive, and I’m happier than I have been in years. I know it’s a cliché, and once I quit the steroids, I hope I can write something more original and moving than this, but it is really like my life has started again and I’ve been given a second chance to really live, stress-free, and live my life for me.

Life is ours to use, not to squander. Life is ours to enjoy, not to throw away for meaningless things. Work a little less, play a little more and you will find yourself a happier person with less crap to tidy up at the end of the day.

There is beauty everywhere. In every breath there is beauty. In every person there is beauty. We are all linked and other people are what makes life worth living. We all matter in our own way and we all should make the most of life as possible.

I look forward to every day now. I look forward to the little things I master every day. Every day I can do something that I couldn’t the day before and I feel like a winner every morning. Just walking up a flight of stairs unaided is a huge thing for me. A week ago I couldn’t do that. Holding my daughter is another win. Cooking, yet another. This feeling of accomplishment is the most important part of my recovery. I feel useful again; I am no longer the walking dead, but a part of the living again.

It’s like I’ve been rebooted. I’m defragmenting my mind and resetting my body. It will be a long task, but hopefully the fruits of my labours will be worth it.

When I can write again, you will be the first to know. I aim to do much more of it in the future.

Writing is an inseparable part of me. I need it like air.

Soon. See you soon.

Í tengslum við líkamann

Hvar ertu?

Þetta er oft fyrsta spurningin sem þú færð í eyrun þegar einhver hringir í farsímann hjá þér. Viðmælandinn vill fyrst af öllu vita hvar þú ert.

Þetta hljómar eins og ósköp einföld spurning – ég er í Kringlunni; ég er í Köben; ég er á klósettinu … en er svarið virkilega svona einfalt?

Hvar er hið eiginlega sjálf? Ertu bara á bakvið augun, inni í hausnum á þér, eða ertu viðstaddur í öllum líkamanum?

Ég finn það oft hjá sjálfri mér að ég missi öll tengsl við líkamann á mér í daglegu amstri. Ég eyði miklum tíma sitjandi fyrir framan bækur og það er eins og allt sjálfið sogist inn í þær heilastöðvar sem eru virkar í því að reyna að ákveða hvort póst-strúktúralismi sé málið þegar lesnar eru 19. aldar hryllingssögur.

Svo fer ég á kóræfingu, eða dansæfingu, eða í ræktina, eða eitthvað – eitthvað sem krefst þess að ég noti líkamann -og eins og hendi sé veifað er eins og ég sé ég sjálf alveg frá efsta hári og niður í litlu tá. Þegar ég kem svo heim eftir slík afrek er ég yfirleitt hoppandi og skoppandi af gleði. Tilviljun? Ég held ekki.

Ég fór að hugsa um þetta um daginn – hugsa, alveg föst uppi í heilabúinu – og komst að þeirri niðurstöðu að ástæðan fyrir því að ég elska að syngja í kór, elska að dansa og elska að hamast er sú að þá dýpkast öll tilveran mín og fer einhvern veginn á hærra plan. Í staðinn fyrir að vera bara ’til’ inni í haus á bakvið augu er ég orðin til út um allt. Hver einasta fruma andar í takt og ég þarf að einbeita mér að því að standa rétt, anda rétt, og staðsetja ýmis líffæri á rétta staði til að búa til fallegt hljóð, eða fallega hreyfingu, eða hlaupa rosalega langt og lengi. Hausinn stöðvar mig ekki lengur, er ekki lengur einangraður, heldur er í samhljómi við afganginn af mér.

Kannast þú við að missa tökin á einhverju? Þekkir þú það að vera kannski leið/ur og ósjálfrátt tegja þig í súkkulaði/snakk/bjór/sígarettur/debetkortið og láta hausinn gjörsamlega ráða ferðinni? Sjálfið á bakvið augun segir manni að fá sér eitt í viðbót, en líkaminn er kannski í öflugum mótmælum – og við tökum ekki einu sinni eftir því.

Hefur einhver gúffað í sig heilu stöðuvötnunum af óþverramat og uppgötva svo korteri seinna að maginn er gjörsamlega í kleinu? Hugurinn hefur tekið yfirhöndina, aftengst líkamanum og látið eins og allt sé í himnalagi í sjálfsblekkingu á stærð við Alpana.

Ég lendi of oft í þessu. Ég gleymi of oft að tengja mig við líkamann, alveg niður í litlu tá, og virkilega finna hvernig það er að vera til. Er hægt að kenna streitufylltum hversdegi um þetta? Eða er þetta samfélagsleg þróun sem hefur undið upp á sig yfir langt tímabil?

Mér finnst þetta dálítið áhugaverð pæling. Ef sjálfið er eingöngu til staðar á bakvið augun og inni í heila þá er ekkert skrýtið að við séum úr öllu líkamlegu jafnvægi lon og don. Við erum kannski búin að gleyma hvernig á að hlusta á ‘okkur’.

Það væri kannski bara fín æfing að leggjast út á tún í góðu/vondu/æðislegu/skelfilegu veðri og finna virkilega hvað gengur á. Ekki bara nota hausinn, sem segir ‘vá hvað það er gott/vont/æðislegt/skelfilegt veður úti’, heldur virkilega finna hvernig sólargeislarnir leika um húðina eða hvernig regndroparnir skella á hárinu og renna svo leikandi létt innundir hálsmál þar sem þeir framleiða gæsahúð í hjólböruvís. Hvernig snjókornin bráðna í andardrættinum sem við gefum frá okkur. Hvernig vindurinn smýgur inn í merg og bein og hamast eins og hans æðsta markmið sé að sjá okkur takast á loft.

Ég er farin að ryksuga. Það er æðislegt að ryksuga. Þá finnur maður hjartað hamast, hendurnar hreyfast, fæturnar beygjast og svo videre, en hugurinn hefur samt ótakmarkað skotleyfi á að reika hvert sem er.

Þá er tengingin í lagi.