Moving House

It was not my guinea pig, but I looked after him. I looked after him well actually, I learnt all his favourite foods, fresh coriander topping the list, ensured his water was full and rushed out to cover him in the rain or urgently shade him from the sun. I rotated frozen water bottles on the hot days that he would lay next too and lick to keep cool. I even researched his sounds online so I would know when he was content. When I found him dead this week it revealed things to me about myself. I had to acknowledge that I cared for him, for his well being, but I never touched him, I never picked him up or interacted with him. I just served him, served his food, his water, his comfort.

My idea of love is duty, the relationship part is hard when the core of me is to serve. To serve and then quickly paint a façade that depicts all is ok. It’s a vicious circle of being unraveled and then straightening your dress and patting your hair down nicely, so there are no flyaways, walking out the room and painting on the smile, showing them the face that will convince them that didn’t just happen. The look that is balanced to perfection. Just enough of all the ingredients that look like I have not been at the mercy of someone. I need to pull myself together so no one else sees the cracks in the armour, I don’t need anyone else to take advantage. So here comes the debilitating façade that I have it all under control. I am smiling but my knuckles are white.

If life is a journey of healing and revelations, I don’t believe you can ever say you have arrived. It's forever unpacking and laying things down. It feels like I am constantly moving house inside myself. Wrapping things up, gently packing them away in bubble wrap, I don’t know if I need it, but I don’t want to get rid of it. Then one day I am frantically looking for it, wondering how I arrived here without it. Moving all the rubbish, loading the same old shit into the truck and unloading it again at the other end. Not sure why I bought it all along to the next place, I need to learn to let it go, put it out to the curb. I need to learn to let go of things to make way for new things, maybe if I dropped off the constant feeling of fear to the tip, I would have room in the house for a new little box of self-compassion. It would take up much less space. Today I would love to burn it all and start again.

With an overdeveloped sense of responsibility of course I would look after Scotch, that's what I do, I scramble and look after everything, everyone around me so I don’t look at myself. It feels like self-harm sometimes. There is a fear that I will become even more insignificant, more forgettable without my jobs to do. The fear is I don’t know who I am without her, who am I if I am not serving. I have never had the chance for her to unveil herself, she was never in the picture.

I highly doubt being passive and weak will amount to something magical for me one day, the fairy god mother has had ample time to wave that wand and let bucket loads of self-compassion rain all over me. She knows what I am thirsty for.

The morale of this story I guess is that there are answers about yourself, for yourself, in everything you do. A little guinea pig made me see that there must be more to me, there must be more for me. I wish I held him once, just once. But I thank him for this revelation.

'We're all just walking each other home"- Ram Dass