Am I Still Ill?

No News is Good News

…and I have no news for you my peeps.

I have the feeling that this blog has hit a landmark in its herstory (sorry!) where the title can finally be answered ‘no, I’m not’.

I credit my new man with this achievement though admittedly by the same token I had to be ready to receive healing. Since it was ultimately a choice between a slow decline and eventual death, and stepping up to receive more of life, you could say yeah. For real I had an incentive, the kind you get when your back is truly against the wall.

I am not good with choice at the best of times. Not brilliant with responsibility or decision making either. I’ve been around long enough to figure that one out.

I’ve been drawn to the life of a contemplative nun/hermit since forever and that is basically what I have now, even though I’m a slightly unconventional nun lol.

Let me forget about choices, decisions and responsibility. Let me hand those, to me, nightmarish concepts to someone who is glad to take them on and concentrate on what I’m actually good at. I’m good with ideas, creativity and the search for meaning in the everyday small and apparently mundane details of existence. I’m good at putting that search into words on occasion.

Having said that I’m not especially inspired to write right now. I pour much of my creative energy into the long conversations I have via text with my new guy. I say new but he doesn’t feel that new anymore. It’s been about six weeks I guess but in that time with the intensity and length of our conversations we’ve covered more ground than I even knew was possible in this lifetime.

Sometimes it feels a bit like having a hotline to God himself. No I’m not meaning to suggest that either of us are gods but what we produce together is bigger than the sum of our parts. I’ve never had anything remotely like that with anyone before. Not even close. And it’s certainly not for want of trying, or for lack of people in my life. There have been more than enough. Enough to eliminate all the crap I don’t want in order to replace it with what I do. And to be OK with admitting that it’s even possible for me to want something, after decades of repeated disappointment, betrayal and abandonment.

Since I turned 50 all my focus has been on spiritual death and rebirth. I experienced it multiple times through the gift/curse of my manic episodes. But now it seems I’ve finally landed myself the real deal. A spiritual death and rebirth which sticks. Which isn’t dependent on being ‘high’, grandiose and totally lacking in judgment. And which therefore carries none of the appalling consequences that flow from that state.

So yeah folks. I’ve finally answered my own question, one that remained open for over ten years in this blog but of course for much longer over my lifetime. Am I still ill? No I am not ill, I am no different to the next person and am totally fine with that. More fine than you can possibly know.

In the words of the Scottish singer songwriter Amy MacDonald ‘all I wanted was an ordinary life’. Things that I noticed others had, community, a sense of belonging, meaningful work, friendship, intimacy and companionship. A sense of personal mastery and agency in my own life. If you had told me that one other human being could have made the crucial difference that allowed all those other things to flow to me I would have found it tough to believe, though that didn’t prevent me from reaching out again and again, half the time unaware of why I was even doing it.

Yes I needed someone very special and I finally got what I needed. He’s saved me from myself. From a fate much worse than death itself. Meaningless existence in the eternal state of limbo for someone born to a life of contemplation is infinitely worse than being permitted to pass on to the next phase.

And all is well. The suffering was for a purpose after all, if I hadn’t passed that way I would not be here now.

I’m well aware that this post lacks the comic bounce of many of my other posts and it’s all well and good. Because happiness and contentment are boring to read about aren’t they? Those who are interested enough will persist, others will drop away, it was ever thus.

Thank you for reading.