Begin again

Or you are a magnificent work of art

So it’s like this.

Every day, no matter what is thrown at you, you have to begin again the next day. Apart from a select few people (mostly children), waking up brings with it an onslaught of tasks, niggles, worries, potential joys, lists, random memories and a general sense that you need to don your armour forthwith just to make it across the bedroom floor.

And generally, unless you are incapacitated in some way - illness, depression, exhaustion, insert here your chosen malady of modern life - you do make it across the bedroom floor.

Unlike my previous somnambulant self, these last six months I have aced making it across that floor. The weight of that onslaught has been flipped off like gossamer silk, left wilting on the pillow to sneak its way back in the night as I take refuge in sleep. The gear to fight in has mainly been tracksuit bottoms, as I dress to walk and move and lift things, or ridiculously fabulous and highly inappropriate items like a tutu or purple thigh-high boots (this shouldn’t need explained). And without the sleep deprivation that characterised my early days of parenthood, I am on for these boys of mine, I am strong for it - the building of strength, both physical and emotional, being a daily decision that I make as a way to manage parenthood.

I take this shit seriously. It weighs on me each moment of every day how I am responsible for these boys, I am their rock and punching bag for figuring out what the hell it is they are feeling or what even is a feeling (answers on a postcard please) and it is clear that whenever I am broken, they break too - except faster and with no glue.

As adults, we become living, breathing kintsugi - broken into pieces over and over again then patched back together with precious gold, made more beautiful than ever as each sliver of wisdom, each day and month and year, teaches us more about who we are and the gifts that we must give to the people around us.

That sounds lofty. Well, so what? That’s what we are here for. What is all this running and working out and uplevelling for? What is this relentless forward motion of life? It is a supermarket sweep, hurtling through the days and grabbing what you can as the years whittle down to seconds.

What are we grabbing at? I think it’s stuff (not like, tins of beans or Weetabix, refer to a more practical writer for notes on that) I mean the stuff of you to apply to your life like a mathematical formula that is both stunningly complex and beautifully simple at the same time.

But all this sharing of the stuff of you just isn’t easy. The weight of your armour - whatever it is you have chosen to get you through the day - can become heavy. You become tired. You start to drop it off, piece by piece, at the end of the day, or at the end of a season in your life.

And as you lay your head on the pillow to rest, brushing off that gossamer silk if you can remember it’s there, you put your faith in something larger than yourself, and hope that great artist with their infinite bucket of golden healing paint will never stop piecing you back together, with great and reverent care.