Another exciting chapter, flavoured with the sad moments I am becoming used to now.
I'm no longer scared of single magpies. It's superstitious, I know, but over the last few years of knockback after knockback, culminating in the final excoriating experience of panel, I've greeted each single magpie by saying, 'No sorrow for me,' hoping that this will ward it off somehow.A bit like putting my fingers in my ears, closing my eyes and humming. Of course, it doesn't work, and course, this week has also had its sorrowful moments. But one of the joyful moments has been seeing single magpie after single magpie and realising, due to last week's breakthrough, that I welcome them, that I honour them, that I love them. They are mine now, and the message they give me is that from my sorrow and grief will come my purpose. And, as is brought home to me again and again, my sorrow and grief is telling me I am real, tender, alive, human and strong. I am doing my best, pulling myself up again and again when I fall, I am a climber who will not be defeated but who will reach the top of the mountain and look out at the rest of my life. And parts will not be the view I wanted to see, but it is a view and parts of it will be beautiful. Parts of it will need work, and I am willing to do that work. Sorrow and grief is universal, and are felt strongly by parents, by those of us who aren't parents but who desperately wanted to be, and by the childfree. It can bring us together, if we let it.
Things are still hard. I often feel like only half a person, I often feel that my life is empty. But I feel stronger than I did. And, to be honest, there is nothing I can do any more to become a parent (unless I decide to go down the IVF route with a sperm donor). So I might as well start enjoying the rest of my life. And I know now that I can use my sorrow to fuel and motor my plan B, I can love the part of me that sorrows, care for it and treat it tenderly as it heals. After all, emptiness is painful, but an empty space is redolent with possibility, and there is a responsibility to fill it, to let it grow. Nothing new can happen without emptiness, and filling it is now my task.
I went for a long and lovely walk yesterday with a group of old dear friends and some new but no less dear friends, among bluebells, blossom, tall woods and flying red kites. D, who I have known for 22 years and lived with twice, gave me a brisk and kind talking to. In the nicest possible way. He challenged me to find something new to define myself by rather than my childlessness, to find and make real my dream, and to go easy on myself for a short while but to pick myself up and to carry on too. He warned me of the danger of becoming the childless Miss Havisham, forever living in a dark half world of loss and longing, of bitterness and bile. And yet I see my friend dandling her toddler on her knee and am filled with longing, but longing is OK, and is bearable, and is normal...even when it hurts.
When you realise that the things you are worrying about are OK, and that by extension, that you too are OK, then they cease to be a problem. and you become a fully fledged member of the human race, black and white plumage extended, and ready to fly.
Watch out world, the magpie is coming!
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