For quite a few years now I have been coming here, to this place, and sharing my thoughts with you each day. You, who have been reading me for a while, have been with me through my ups and my downs, my ins and my outs. I like to think that it has been a safe place, and for the most part positive. This isn't always easy, especially recently, with all I have gone through. But I have tried to be uplifting most days. It has been a place for me to work out my feelings, and yes, sometimes to vent. (I am sorry for the occasional venting, but I am only human.)
I am not a pschycologist, or a therapy expert. I am just a simple human being, trying to live my life the best that I can in the best way that I can. I have struggles and feelings. I have hopes and I have fears. I have successes and I have failures. I like to think that for the most part I am doing the best that I can in most circumstances.
Yesterday I expressed my feelings, that had I stayed where I was living in the UK, I may not have survived. This was in no way meant to distress anyone or cause a problem. Simply a statement of how I felt and how I also felt God's hands and timing in getting me out of there when He did. Unfortunately someone took offense to that and for that I am sorry. I in no ways meant that everyone in the UK was dying from the virus. Many are, but many more are not. I was only saying that me, with all of my underlying health conditions, living on the street that I did, where everyone has it, would most likely have also contracted it and had I done so, would not, in all likelihood, have survived.
Me. I was talking about Me. Not anybody else.
And I was expressing a very real fear of mine along with an expression of gratitude for having been what I felt was saved from perhaps contracting the virus and not surviving.
From the moment the virus began to take hold in the UK, until the day I stepped into Heathrow to leave the UK, my fear of the virus controlled every aspect of my life. I had not stepped out of my home. Not to go to a shop, or to the chiropracter, not to visit friends, etc. I think I left the house on only a very few occasions and always under very controlled conditions. A couple times to go to the Doctor, once for my flu shot, once to babysit Grace, a couple times with Tina in which we sat in the car the whole time.
I am not sure anyone can fully understand the courage it took for me to go to Heathrow and to leave the UK. To sit on a plane, breathing in recycled air with a bunch of strangers for 14 hours. To not only go to Heathrow, but also two other large airports amidst a global pandemic, mingling with people from all over the world. And I had to do it all while my whole life was falling apart around me . . .
At the moment I am living in a very safe part of the world, but only because we don't take chances. I do enjoy a bit more freedom of movement, but always under very controled conditions. I stay within my own family bubble. My sister, Dan, my father. I don't have any physical contact with anyone else unless it is absolutely necessary. We wear masks, we sanitize, we wash hands, we socially distance. Even on Boxing Day when Eileen was here, we all masked and socially distanced as much as possible. And there have been NO cases of virus in this area that we know of. But it remains a great fear of us all. And that is as it should be. I think complacency is a dangerous place to be during a Pandemic. Carelessness is not somehing any of us can afford.
And yes it is a pain. I've been waiting years and years to be near my family, and I still have to wait. But I believe that the wait will be worth it. We all have to wait. We all have to do our part. And we do it in hopes that the future is much brighter than the present. And we do it because we care about our neighbours and our friends and our families, our communities, our elderly, our vulnerable, and we want to protect them along with ourselves.
If occasionally I offend by expressing my feelings about things, I apologise for that. But again, I am only human, and doing the best that I can under very difficult circumstances.
I have good days and I have bad days. I try hard to remain positive and looking forward to a bright future but I also have moments when the past catches up with me and drags me down and I feel very sad and sometimes very much like giving up. I never know what will trigger it. I try very hard not to mourn the loss of all my possessions, because, after all . . . its only stuff . . . but every now and then the thought of something which I particularly cherished will come into my mind and the tears will come.
Some days I am afraid to ever love another animal, or another human being because the pain of losing them hurts so very much.
Sometimes I lay in bed and night and think to myself, this is it for the rest of my life. Alone. Me, who only ever wanted to be a wife and a mother. Alone. With nobody to share it with. All because of the poor choices of someone else. And I can't even find joy in the memories of the last 20 years of my life because they have all been tainted by the actions of a very selfish individual. They are all coloured with the black brush of his deception and criminal behaviour. I hope and pray that none of you ever have to feel that way, because in all honesty it sucks. It really does.
ON good days I feel a deep gratitude for all that I am and have, and how very far I've come . . . and I look forward to a brighter unknown future. Thankfully those days are far more abundant than the bad ones.
I find Pumpkin all curled up on my bed, which was mom's bed and I think to myself, how very wonderful that an all-knowing-God has brought me to safety in this place, surrounded by people who really, truly love me and care about me and my welfare. And I am grateful for that. And I have a knowledge and hope that a God who has brought me this far will not drop me now. I just need to be patient and to wait and to do my best, whatever happens.
And that's it for now.
Everything for a reason and a season.
In The English Kitchen today . . . . Baked Chili Cheese Dogs.
Have a great day. Jazzy has gone in today for her neutering. All will be well. Don't forget.
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And I do too!
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