Yesterday I awoke to another grey day. Until yesterday my journey into this ‘brave new world’ was going well but I had a momentary lapse! I panicked, nothing unusual for me, but totally unexpected!
I haven’t been sleeping well. I need eight hours and when I only get four, small niggles take on lives of their own. They morph into unattainable challenges! This is a relatively normal phenomenon and not unique to me, but it’s up to me to resolve!
So when I opened the curtains yesterday morning to another grey, dank day, I had only buried my new optimism in a shallow grave. It saw a means of escape and went for it!
I suddenly felt the same as I did, almost twenty eight years ago, when we had decided to leave South Africa. This was a very stressful period! As hard as I focussed on the many reasons why we were leaving a beautiful country and all our friends and family to find a better life for our children, the more I would experience sudden, overwhelming panic attacks! I’d see an image of my face staring out of the window of a small terraced house as ‘mizzling’ rain fell on dark grey buildings from a mottled grey sky. Grey outside and grey inside!
As the days turned into weeks, we sold the house, our possessions went into storage and our two dogs into kennels. My husband left for the UK to find a job while the children finished their last few weeks at school and we stayed with my parents. Gradually I found a way to deal with this potentially debilitating image.
I was determined that I would not look back! I can’t pretend that this was easy but practice eventually made perfect! By the time the children and I boarded that plane on the 31st December 1990, those panic attacks had lost their crippling hold. I had a new vision! As a family we were walking through the crispy white snow, blue skies overhead and we were all happy and relaxed! I used to keep hold of this image for as long as possible. And I never did look back!
The move was hard and not without problems! Thankfully I never did live in a small terraced house and I never sat staring out of the window at grey ‘mizzling’ rain falling on dark grey buildings from a mottled grey sky! My husband found a good job, we had a lovely home, the children went to excellent local schools and I started working for the company I finally left after twenty seven years!
Just as I needed to work on a new mental image to get me through the move from midsummer in Johannesburg to the middle of an icy English winter, I need to build an image for my first winter as a ‘Lady of Leisure’! There will be a lot of grey days! I won’t be going to work where I can ignore the weather. I probably won’t be able to go for daily walks but will definitely grab the moment when the clouds break and I can get out to feed my Fitbit and continue my fight against dementia!
I’m gradually forming a picture of me, sitting in front of a roaring fire, cosy and warm, staring outside at the softly falling snow. I won’t wake up most winter mornings and panic that I can’t get out of our drive and up our hill. I won’t peer up at the heavy black clouds filling the skies while at work, checking for signs of a snow storm to prevent me from getting home. My neighbour won’t be on constant ‘snow watch’!
I’m feeling better already! Lesson number one will be ‘don’t look back’. I have already passed that one! The second lesson is the image I need to build and hold and produce if and when the need arises. So I’ll learn to accept grey. I’ll throw in colours! Beautiful autumn shades of red, orange and gold and then the pristine white of a beautiful winter’s day! I’ll keep you posted …… 👠
Jenny Burrell 