Speaking of Normalcy...

 

I couldn't resist taking a cheeky snap of this mug when I saw it in a shop window.
I'm on holiday in Cornwall; land of smugglers and sea shanties and shipwrecks and ancient tales of hidden pirates' plunder. It's now home to thousands of artists (on account of the beautiful, flat light and the sheer sense of SPACE). 

Cobbled streets, winding lanes, laid back locals and sun soaked flora. The essence of Cornwall. Pints of real ale, Cornish pasties, and fish and chips fresher than any you'd ever find. The streets here are lined with gift shops galore; the type that you bump around, stroking pretty wooden shapes, painted in low tone shades - willow green, dusky pink, dirt track yellow...
It's as far South West as you get in the UK, and the sun sets here last. Days feel long and it's endlessly beautiful. 

I'm on a family holiday. The first for years.

I think we're past thinking we're a nice normal family. With two anorexics, an anxiety disordered mother, a control freak dad and another sister who, believe me, has her own scarring, we're hardly 'normal'. I'm glad we can (sort of) admit it (bar my mother). I'm glad we can (sometimes) laugh about it (almost). But, I remember a time when we couldn't. 

Many years ago, when the values were set differently, when the pride was stronger and the pain - rawer; we were  bound and gagged for fear that someone might see we weren't the "nice, normal family" that popped up, smiling and glossy and beautifully 'normal'.

You might ask the question, 'what is normal?'in an attempt to deny that there's any such thing. 

In my experience, those who deny 'normal' (mother), are either defending their hidden non-normalcy, or, they're just not weird enough. 
If the family is a piece of wood, pain is a plane, relentless at task with which it's charged. And the shape we're in now comes from years of scraping and turning and sanding and smoothing. And we're still very much a rough hewn hunk of wood, but at least we're not still in the denial phase of 'normal'. 
To attempt comparison is ridiculous... yet in some strange way, it's more painful to be at that end of the process. I still bear scars from smothering hands that insisted that we were 'normal'.

Corm Before The Storm

Beautiful Cornwall.

The unexpected warmth of the late October sun; the flat, brilliantly clear light; the depth of blue... This is a place I'd really love to live someday.
My friends have been great. True friends. No terrible questions. Just simple observations and a couple of honest conversations, which in all fairness, is a lot more than I have had with most people in recent months.

I hadn't meant to eat or drink tonight, yet having succumbed to the call of alcohol, I've given in to both. I feel absolute despair right now.
I'm sure I must weigh so much.
I will never go away again without my scales.

Tomorrow I drive home and in some ways, I dread all that is waiting for me.
I wish I never needed anything but oxygen again.

Coastal Wanderings

I have friends in Cornwall and, in need of a change of scene, I packed my little car and headed South in search of wintery sun, salt winds and the turquoise ocean.

I certainly wasn't disappointed by any of those.

Over the four days, I followed craggy cliff paths for miles along the coast.

I love the stinging freshness of the sea air, knotting my hair into sticky tangles as the on shore winds catch you from the side.
I love the flat, wind-skinned grasses and I breathe the salt fish air as it cuts across my face.

Far below golden, sun baked cliff faces, the black rocks gleam like angular seals and I am in love with this place. This moment. This air.

I loved picking my way through the lonely, heathered landscape; Watching swelling, white clouds roll across the blue, to become as one white sea over the horizon.

Beauty.

Humbling majesty.

And somewhere within, a wave builds and I surf it as it folds and crashes and races my heart

There is a bible quote that I always think of at times like these. I have no idea whether it is appropriate to use in this context, but for me, in the midst of the breathless wonder of such untamed, natural beauty, it is as though, "deep calls to deep".

Countless times I have been struck by the indescribable sense that some deep, unknown part of me is responding to a depth of purity in creation that is beyond the grasp of human intellect. Deep calling to deep.

At the risk of sounding as though I am spouting hippy crap, I wish to point out that I am not big into tree hugging.

No. What I am trying to describe is something spiritual. It's almost as if, a tiny piece of earth breathes in at exactly the same time as heaven, and for one fraction of a moment, the two merge and hover together, as one.




I could go on to write about the rest of my holiday, and how I came back early because I could no longer cope with the fear and lack of control over food.

I could write about the terror each time that night fell and the emetophobia sentenced me to moments of extreme panic.

But... I won't because I am afraid.

I'm so angry that I ruin every good thing that I have.