Tag Archives: feelings

May Day and Hope

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April is gone. Today is May 3. I meant to show up 2 days ago but I never made it. Some days are easier than others. Today is not one of those. The sky is cloudy. I’m heavy with it. I’m saggy and draggy but I’ve started the day. I still start it reading the two Heathers. I’m also reading Nobody’s Girl now that I got it from the library. It’s no wonder that I’m weighed down.

I wish that I’m not so serious minded. I wish that I am more light hearted. But that is not who I am. Whether it is because of genetics or how life shaped me, it’s hard to know. It is probably both. It is not easy being an immigrant child of immigrant parents. Being the oldest is not a cake walk either. I bear/feel the brunt of the responsibility for helping them navigate in an English speaking country. Life was and has been a serious affair. There was/are good times and laughter but not the uproarious kind. Our lives always seemed to me to be smaller than others.

That’s my feelings growing up. You don’t shed those feelings of inadequacy easily. I haven’t. They’re still there somewhere just underneath my skin. Not that I feel like a failure. I know I have done very well. I am a well informed and educated person. I am financially independent. I am retired with many interestests. I am never bored. I am occasionally melancholy. Who isn’t, especially in these times?

And so I come to this space to tap out my melancholy, my angst and sometimes my joys and excitement. I do get those happy exuberant feelings once in awhile, too. It must have been what I felt yesterday. They carried me through a whole day of gardening. I repotted seedlings, cleaned out 3 raised beds in the back yard. I planted 3 cucumbers in the greenhouse and 7 celery in the raised bed. Hope I wasn’t over eager and too early. Hope is a good antidote for melancholy.

Sunshine and Stirrings

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It’s a sunshine and lollypops kind of a morning. I feel faint stirrings of wanting to clean the yard of last year’s old growth and debris. I thought better of it. There’s snow on the ground. It’s early and a bit cool for that kind of undertaking. But faint stirring are good. It means I’m still alive and feeling. I saw that my snowdrops are up. They’re a little crushed by the snow but still beautiful to see.

I put in a bit of time in the greenhouse yesterday. I weeded and propped up the snow peas with bamboo sticks. They’re getting gangly and sprawly. It’s not my favourite thing to do. To be honest, I can’t really say I love gardening. It is hard and dirty work. I guess I do get some satisfaction at the end of the chore/season. It is nice to see a neat weed-free bed of greens. In a few weeks, I hope to harvest some lettuce and spinach for a salad or two.

It’s April 28th. Just a couple more days of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. At this moment, I can’t say that I really love writing either. But it is satisfying to see the letters and words march across the screen, forming a sentence and a post. That is the thing, isn’t it? Getting a little satisfaction is worth a little effort.

Wonder

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I think it is silly of me to insist that I feel better when I don’t. It is pretty hard to ignore the crazy stuff that is happening – the Epstein Files, the rants from President of the United States, and the wars he has caused.These are serious times and I feel seriously affected. I am not respectful of myself if I don’t allow myself to respond to these events with whatever feelings that come up. Similarly, losing my mother is a serious loss no matter how old she was. It is natural that I am sad. I know life goes on. I am happy she is not suffering any more but I can still mourn the loss. It is ok that I still feel sad now and again.

There’s no need for me to apologize for being human. There’s no need to fix anything.There’s no need to pull myself up by the bootstraps. Things, along with feelings, somehow evolve on their own. There are things that we do not have control over. Just when I am feeling the lowest, I noticed that my peppers are starting to germinate. I’ve been starting seeds for many years now. I am still surprised when I see a speck of green poking through the soil. I worry every year that they won’t. It is such a wonder to see every spring when they do.

Though life may look bleak and the world seem to be on the brink of disaster, I can still feel moments of wonder. I feel ok and normal with all my feelings. There is still tomorrow and I still have words.

Heart Month

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Photo by Lisa from Pexels on Pexels.com

February is heart month. I am letting that guide me through my days. Though Iife feels bland and senseless to me in these moments, I need not announce it or rain on someone else’s parade. This is the space to unload and work through those dark and messy things. What are feelings anyways? Are they real? What if I don’t have those feelings? How will I be? These are the questions that pop up from remembering The Work of Byron Katie.

I can be good at setting goals and intentions but not so great at carrying them out. It’s like people making New Year’s resolutions and dropping them by February. It’s difficult to follow through, day after day. It’s easy to lose heart. It is easy to fall into “I don’t care.” It is easy to throw up my hands and give up. I’ve done that numerous times. I’ve gotten back on track again many times. The thing I don’t do is make progress. I don’t pick up where I had left off. I always go back and start again at the beginning. It’s easier doing something you’ve done before.

How am I going to get out of that rut? How do I walk a different path so that I don’t fall back into the same hole? I’ve writtin many times about the same problem. I am writing about it again. How can I sing another song? I have the rest of February to wrestle with it. I am going to follow through.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE CHAPTERS
I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost … I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
V
I walk down another street.
Portia Nelson

No Other way

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Photo by Adnan Habib on Pexels.com

It’s another cool and grey morning with the sun trying its hardness to shine through. At least there is no smoke in the air. I still find no reason to smile and feel peppy. I’m having another cup of tea. Maybe I’ll get out of my pjs. Just because the world and life is not as I desire, it’s no reason to mope either. I can try a little, do a little and live a little, bit by bit.

So I’ve gotten out of my pjs into something summery. I’ve been living in sweat pants and t-shirts. They were easy and comfortable. Being a cool spring/summer they were the ticket. I wore them everywhere – to the gym, out for lunch, to the mall, to the garden. Being a sad sack, I didn’t care. I wasn’t fussy about my appearance. But I still shower, brush my teeth and comb my hair once in a while.

June was intended to work on my habits, improving on them and reporting here regularly. It didn’t happened quite often enough. I hit a slump. The weather was bad. There was/is wildfire smoke. And a million other excuses. Now I’m trying to reboot and restart. Not easy. Not feeling like or up to it. Nevertheless, I will just do it. There’s no other way. I will have to stop being a cry baby.

A Good Thursday Afterall

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Today is one of those many cups of everything day. I’m wanting to drown all my feelings. I can’t and I don’t. Instead I sit with them all. I draw my #95 teacup for my #100dayproject and my day 5 of Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day Challenge. Today’s prompt for the #dyicad is hydrangea. I like prompts. They are my guiding lights not only for my art work but also living in this year of being lost in the strange wilderness of grief and loss. It’s a mouthful of a long sentence but you know what I mean.

I’m also standing with all my feelings. I like washing dishes by hand. I’m soothing my nerves as I clean each piece in the warm sudsy water. I’m washing away my cares and woes. The chaos goes down the drain with the dirty water. Peace fills its place. I’m soothed and smoothed.

I go out to the garden even though I don’t feel like it. The lettuce and spinach are in need of harvesting. It would be a shame to let them get too old to eat. I snip and pull and stuff them into bags. They will keep in the fridge or our walk in cooler. There’s enough to share with friends and family. Sharing is good and takes me out of focusing on myself.

It’s been a good day in the end. I got out of the house and out of myself. My sister and I took our father out for coffee in Circle Centre Mall. After, we cruised the Dollarama Store and found some neat stuff for the garden. I bought a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as a reward for a day well done. We stopped at the library on the way home to pick up some Chinese books for my father. I think we all went home soothed and smoothed. I hope so anyways.

Lauguidity

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I hate the feeling of dread, of putting off things I should be doing or should have done. I can’t really identify what it is that I’m putting off. I don’t want to either. I would have to do it then, wouldn’t I. So I rather sit with this discomfort, this dread till it passes somehow. I wash the breakfast dishes, sweeps the dust off the floor and now here I am, at the keyboard.

Thoughts are not flowing. The words are hard to come by. I feel languid. I feel limp. My iMac freezes again and I’m on my laptop. My second cup of tea is almost finished. I’m using tea to fill in the gaps like I used to use cigarettes. At least it has no bad side effects except increased trips to the bathroom. I’m restless. I move to the deck and repotted some tomato seedlings. I’m not sitting stuck.

I cut some tulips and elephant ear blooms from my flowerbed to take to mom’s grave this afternoon. I put them in water and stuck them in the cooler to keep fresh. I head out to London Drugs to get a bath mat for my father. While there, I also got a new pair of sunglasses. I made sure that the bottom of the lenses does not touch my face, leaving their mark long after taking them off. The next stop, The Asian Market for incense sticks and josh paper. Not sure whether we will use them but I will have them. The last stop was to get a potted geranium for mom. It will last a while longer than the tulips. Mom loved flowers.

That was yesterday. Another year. Another Mother’s Day. Now it’s a reminder that my mother is no longer here, a reminder that it’s the day before that she fell and broke her hip and the downward spiral to her final resting place 5 months later. I suppose I am grieving, not only for her but for all of life. I have had more than a few regrets, of roads not taken. I have to live with it all somehow, someway. I am no Frank Sinatra. I didn’t do it my way.

Bit and Pieces

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Here I am again, sitting in sunshine, sipping my tea. I’m tired already, thinking too much on life, death and taxes. I’m working on not letting all that get me down. That’s life as people like to say. Every day babies are born and people die. We know we can’t escape the tax man. I must set a time within the next 6 days to file mine. Everything sits heavy. There’s no escape. Maybe a tylenol might give me some ease.

I don’t want life to drown me. I’m trying to find my way to the shore and get on solid ground. I tell myself feelings aren’t always real. I can still move and function well inspite of them. My mantra in life has always been No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up. During this April it has been make it simple, make it easy. I break jobs into bits and pieces. They add up. I’ve been doing things this way for a long time, even in writing. First, a word, then a sentence. String them together and you have a paragraph. I learned the importance of one small step at a time from Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird. It’s a wonderful little book.

It applies not only to writing, but just about everything in life as well. I’ve sewn 100 log cabin quilt squares that way a few years ago. I have yet to put them together though. It’ll be my square by square project in winter. I talked about getting moving on with my gardening. All I could do yesterday was water the greenhouse and plop 4 cauliflower seedlings in the raised bed outside. It’s not much but it’s not nothing. This morning I’ve managed to pot up 3 squash sprouted seeds before my mood got the better of me. I’m getting things done, living life in bits and pieces.

We Are All the Same

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Photo by Leeloo The First on Pexels.com

It is hard to know what to do with myself in the darkness of a November morning. I am at my keyboard tapping out my thoughts for the National Blog Posting Month. I don’t have it in me to write a novel in a month. I’ve tried and failed each time. A few mutterings will suffice. It will help me to breathe in and out. Difficult times and feelings are not strangers to me.

This human experience is not easy. Life is not for the faint of heart. It gives and then it takes away. I wonder how I can survive the loss without my mother. She was always there in her house down the block. We’ve always had her love as she had ours. She was presence. I have to remember that this journey is not unique to just me. We all travel the same road. We all are given this gift of life and suffer the grief of loss. We are all the same though we may experience it in different ways.

My house is not as clean and orderly as my mother’s. I’ve never had her knack. It is full of clutter and dust. I guess I’m drowning in my disorder physically and psychologically. I’m keeping my head just above the water. This writing helps sort and organize the mess in my head. I’ve rescued my pot of broth from the deck. It’s heating up on the stove to make something for lunch. After lunch my father, my brother and I will go to the bank to sign papers. Life goes on, one step at a time.

Summer Heat & Memories

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Another warm day but not the 34℃ of yesterday. 27℃ is plenty warm enough. The sun is somewhat hazy and there’s smoke in the air. I’m not feeling in a super mood. I’m trying to work through it. It’s a good thing that I have the Ultimate Blog Challenge to explore all this.

Have I ever mentioned that I have never loved summer? It goes way back to my childhood days growing up in Maidstone. We were one of maybe 3 Chinese families in town. We didn’t socialize much with the rest of the community being new immigrants. Our cafe was opened every day except Sunday, all year long. We never went anywhere except maybe North Battleford (an hour’s drive away) once in a blue moon for dentist, optometrist and maybe a little shopping.

Summer time the town seemed dead. The farmers were out farming. School was over. Seemed like everyone went to the lake or on holidays except us. I ordered books from the library which came on the Greyhound bus. I read alot of Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Trixie Beldon books, Hardy Boys books and alot of Superman comics and movie star magazines. I drew portraits of Elvis, Fabian and Ricky Nelson. I can’t remember what else I did during those long hot summers.

Another reason I did not care for summers was being hot, I couldn’t wear long sleeves or sweaters to hide the scar on my left arm. I got the scar when I was 2 years old. We were still in China then. I was scalded by a bowl of hot sweet syrup. It was winter and I had long sleeved top on. It was difficult to get it off. Doctors were not the common thing then. My burn would not heal for a long time. Someone advise taking me to a doctor. My arm healed, resulting in a large scar but I have full function. I didnot lose any range of motion but I did get teased.

I was very sensitive about it for a long time. I tried to imagine what it would feel like unscarred. I couldn’t since I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have the scar. I finally got over it when I became a nurse. All the uniforms were short sleeved. I was by then at the ripe age of 27/28. Took a long time to get over it. You can see dumb I was in this photo – how I turned my left arm in to hide the scar. I was not holding it naturally like my aunt behind me.

All these were long ago but feelings and memories linger still. They feel like part of my biology. But at least I understand the where, when and how. And I have this space to tap it onto the page. Then I don’t feel so bad.