I’m not sure whether I believe in the Universe.  As in, ‘if you want something, ask the Universe to provide it’.  I don’t believe in God, so why should I believe in any other form of higher power?

And yet…

When you put it like that I guess the power of the Universe is pretty convincing.

So what about fate and destiny?  Again, I’m not sure.  I often find myself saying that everything happens for a reason.  Does that count?

Coincidences?  Synchronicity?  Six degrees of separation?  Maybe.

In short, I’m not really sure what I believe in.

The only thing I am 100% sure of is that it’s down to me to decide how I want to live my life.  That the choices I’ve made and the people I’ve met along the way have led me to where I am now.  The choices I make and the people I connect with now will lead me to wherever it is I end up in the future.  To whoever I end up being in the future.

To illustrate this we need to rewind fifteen years or so…

When I was a day patient in hospital recovering from anorexia I pretty much kept my head down and got on with things, not really interacting much with the other patients.  The only exception was ‘M’.  M and I were both in the lounge watching TV, sitting in our discomfort after eating our afternoon snack, when the planes hit the Twin Towers in New York.  We bonded over mutual horror at the attacks and an identical feeling of panic that we weren’t going to be able to get home that evening because every single taxi driver refused to take on passengers.  From that day forward we continued our journeys together, discharged from hospital at different times but staying in touch to offer each other support and inspiration to keep on getting well.

Through her, nearly a decade later, I came across a blogger/artist on Facebook called Judy Clement Wall.  Having followed her work for a couple of years now, I make sure I pay attention to what she says (and creates) – it’s stuff that’s good for the soul.  Last year she kept on mentioning a woman called Cheryl Strayed.  Intrigued as to who this person was that Judy held in such high regard, I investigated.

It turns out that Cheryl is the author of a book called ‘Wild’, which describes her journey following her mother’s death from lung cancer – both literally (she walked the Pacific Crest Trail from Mojave in Southern California to Cascade Locks on the border of Oregon and Washington – a trek of over 1100 miles) and figuratively (describing her grief, her thoughts and feelings, and the things she learnt about herself as she hiked).  Ever since I heard about the book I’d wanted to read it because it reminded me of the reasons why I went travelling through Australia and New Zealand for over a year after I recovered – a sort of pilgrimage to grieve the loss of who I thought I was and to discover the me that I actually turned out to be.

(Incidentally, one of the friends I met whilst sharing a dorm room in a Sydney hostel, who I am still in touch with today, is also currently reading ‘Wild’ – she and I are on a similar path I think.  I consider her to be a ‘soul sister’ of mine, despite us not having seen each other in person for many years.  The wonders of the Internet – keeping people connected and in each others lives despite physical distance and busy diaries)

Anyway, I never got round to buying the book, using every excuse under the sun (“The girls need new school shoes”, “I haven’t got time to read”, “Why do I deserve to buy myself anything new?”) as to why I shouldn’t.  Just a few months later Cheryl’s story got made into a film starring Reese Witherspoon (who I have always admired – she’s a fantastic actress and an inspirationally strong woman) as Cheryl – she received BAFTA and Academy Award nominations for her portrayal.  I desperately wanted to see it in January when it came out at the cinema but my local screen didn’t show it, so I resigned myself to having to wait until it comes out on DVD.

Just three weeks after the film was released my Dad died (of advanced lung cancer).

It was then that I knew it was time to buy the book.

I devoured it over the course of my four hour wait in hospital to discover the cause of the two lumps in my breast.  Just let me emphasise – I am utterly terrified of hospitals.  And yet I was completely absorbed in the book.  I walked the trail alongside her.  Felt every blister and aching muscle as keenly as she did.  Felt my grief anew as she wove the stories of her childhood and the memories of her mother into the pages of the book.

By the time I closed the book, I felt as exhausted as I imagine she did when she finally reached the Bridge of the Gods in Cascade Locks – the end point of her epic journey.

I felt like I’d been on a journey too.  A journey of understanding myself – and my grief – a hell of a lot more than I had done just four hours earlier.

As I read, I’d turned down the corners of pages that held some glimmer of wisdom that had reached into my heart and touched my soul.  Below are some of these excerpts…

~  “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed.  Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story.  I decided I was safe.  I was strong.  I was brave.  Nothing could vanquish me.”

~   “The death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me.  The worst thing already had.”

~  “I simply made a leap of faith and pushed on in the direction where I’d never been.”

~  “I’d only wanted to be alone.  Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.”

~  “I’d come out here, I realised, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really – all that I’d done to myself and all that had been done to me.”

~  “The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding.”

~  “‘But you seemed so happy’ was all they could say.  And it was true: we had seemed that way.  Just as I’d seemed to be doing okay after my Mom died.  Grief doesn’t have a face”

~  “I was lost but I was not afraid”

Ever since Dad died I have been wanting to escape.  To run away.  To have some time to myself to think and feel – the two things that I won’t allow myself to do in the everyday ordinary for fear of being overwhelmed by it and washed away on a tidal wave of sadness.

I do feel very lost in pretty much every single area of my life at the moment.  And I’m not afraid of that any more.  I know that it’s ok.  That the lost-ness will ultimately transform into finding myself again.  That the me that emerges from this will be different from the me I was before.

I just don’t know who that’s going to be yet.

 

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