Upside down.

It's four months since my father died. My world has turned
upside down. I've gone from being the baby of the family
to being its general manager. I've gone from reading and writing
to 'rithmetic. I've gone grey. I go home every morning to do work
that isn't mine, and I leave home every evening to sleep in a bed
that isn't mine. I go crazy once in a while, and go into the abyss
even more often. I go on. I indulge in a lot of emotional overeating,
and am intrigued by the amount of emotional weight loss. I smoke
like a salmon and cough like a cancer patient. I cry, even in front
of other people. I wake up screaming, and wish I had an Edward Cullen.
I obliviate by drowning myself in Harry-Potter-abilia, which works well
until my favourite characters die, and then all the heartache comes back,
and I cry like it's four months ago.

But .. Nature spoke to me this weekend, and this is what she said:




















So - it's been four months since my father died, and my world
has turned upside down. I'm not the baby of the family any more,
I've grown up. I'm learning new skills, like how to balance accounts
and pay taxes. I am getting to experience emotions that I've spent
most of my life running away from. And when it gets too much,
I have places to escape to, some down the road, and some
inside my head.I do smoke and I do overeat and I don't exercise,
but I haven't walked into a bar and I haven't got hooked on
sleeping pills. It's difficult closing my eyes because the nights
aren't very nice, but the mornings keep coming, and when
my eyes are open, that's when I catch such glimpses of
the loveliness of life that is always there to find if I just look.

Upside down isn't all bad. I'm growing. Just not in a direction I'd expected.

P.S. I don't know what these amazing flowers are called. They're growing on a tree 
in my next-door neighbour's garden (she calls them "trumpet flowers"). I've been 
driving past for more than a decade, but I only noticed them a few days ago.

(Edited 15 April 2014)