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 .. I got a letter from God this weekend, and this is what it 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. I've been driving past for more than a decade, but I only noticed them a few days ago.