Being Broke Sucks...

Anyone who is freelance knows what I'm saying. Yes I have a part time job, but the pay is crappy, and until Spring, when I'll hopefully be branching out into gardening, my income is fixed and small. B's fluctuates at this time of year, its low season, so we are scrounging.

Its a small detail in the scheme of things but it makes me think of power; personal power and the power that money represents. Security. I notice how we are different with one another when the ebb and flow of that freelance life, the feast and famine thing, is in a good place. We joke around more, which is important since we are not the most jolly types at the best of times. When we are in famine mode, everything goes into a slump. Our outlook, our energy (I spent the last three days, my days off, pretty much doing nothing, for no reason at all. I wasn't depressed as such, but was unmotivated, drained), our sex life, and our ability to GENERATE goes into hibernation. It isn't surprising at this time of year and I suspect we both have a degree of that lack of sunlight syndrome called SAD . Seasonal Affected Disorder. IS it a disorder? Or is it 'normal'? Are we just following the natural rhythm of things, close to the cycles of nature?

Anyway, when we are flush, B is grandiose. I am manic. We do stuff. Not as much as I used to. Not the way I used to with turning my hand at every old and ancient craft I could learn about and get my hands on from quilting, rug hooking to decorating, faux-finish painting and making things, all the time. Whether furniture or stained glass....

I have never been so uncreative for so long a stretch in all my life and I have likewise never been so broke, and so I believe there must be a direct link between being able to access the juice of life within me, to feelings of security being overwhelmed by anxiety, worry and exhaustion.

The happy pills help but my doctor tells me it took me a lifetime to get to where I am and it will take some time to reverse the trend. Turning a ship in the middle of the ocean takes a long time. I know this. I am hopeful and optimistic, however.

I still have no relationship with my studio other than to feel guilt, and make excuses. I am often ashamed of this, looking at all the blessings I have and knowing there are so many people in this world who have less, and are struggling in life..... Not that I'm not struggling but I do have my health.

Still, I am reassuring myself that it will come. It will come with Spring, when that quickening comes, which affects all things. That giddy feeling of being high just because the sun is shining. That feeling that one has, when the buds on trees are ripe and ready to burst into leaf, that life is happening and blood begins to flow more quickly. That a secret word has been whispered into the ears of all living things and they hear it even if they don't know what it says; it is a language we all know. The need to be vital, and grab hold of life. The need to be NOW. The need to create, and the inspiration that motivates that will come. I trust that. I'm just still recovering from the last few years....

I've been thinking about my ex a lot the last few weeks. I don't know why this happens still. In July it will be 5 years since I left. April marks 4 years since I told him I don't want him to visit, after begging him for MONTHS to please come, and receiving repeated refusals, I told him it was over. He told me I had just written his death sentence. Can you believe that?!? And then I met B a month later and the rest is history.

Leaving my ex was traumatic. I still miss him desperately in some ways, because he was a such part of me, my other 1/2. In thinking about him today I realized that he wasn't good for me. I knew this, of course, all those years ago, or I wouldn't have left but my leaving was instinctive. I ran away, out of fear. I really got it today. 4 and 1/2 years later. I am absorbing the pain I couldn't cope with and the reality of my loss and the fact that is it okay. I am so much better off now. I am letting go of the grief. But I also realized, in our co-dependence, that not trying to make a baby was what broke my heart and his not caring about that was a betrayal I can finally admit to, and one I can never forgive. I spent my inheritance, my 'baby fund' , on wedding rings for us, custom made to my design, on a glorious honeymoon to Europe for 2 months, on a wedding (we eloped in Scotland), on supporting us for the next two years supplementing our scant income..... I gave him everything and when I left, I was left destitute, emotionally and materially bankrupt. They say it takes as long as the relationship lasted to get over it...yegads, ten years?! Give me strength. He took everything I had. But most crucially, he stole my dreams for a family.

I've built myself up a lot since then. I've found, by the Goddess's grace, a new and very true love, whom I adore. B. I have a home , a family of four footed beasties, a job, such as it is, and a life. I'm getting connected to the community and people through my work. I'm still rebuilding myself. I'm still in recovery. And I know that the art will come. The creative essence that I need to express, the need to make things, it will come again. When life returns to the land, and Green covers the hills. When the sun shines and the days are stretched out, long and endless as the horizon of the sea that surrounds us. When we have sun-showers and rainbows cradle the sky.....It will come. I trust that.

Meanwhile, I need to hibernate for a while longer.....