Flash Floods

Week 5

Flash flood Friday

The television meteorologist was giving the weather forecast; “There were unexpected flash floods today on the east coast”, she said. “The rainfall has been way above average.” Ha! That wasn’t rainfall. That was probably me, projectile weeping.

This is how crazy you get; for some reason I remembered him acquiring a grave some years ago, and coming home to tell me where WE were going to be buried. I was less than impressed at the time although I saw the funny side.  Today a new form of “aloneness” hit me. To be without parent, partner or child is to feel bereft of the most primary connections. I am blessed with family and friends. I am. But I am also alone.

I sit peacefully in the garden and watch the fish do their synchronized swimming up and down their aquatic centre.  Only mad for a water feature, I had waited years for His Nibs to put in a garden pond for me. Eventually decided I wasn’t prepared to wait any longer.   Off I’d gone to the Garden Centre – wonderful! They had plastic precast ponds! “What size would you like?” asked the assistant. “Whatever size will fit into the back of a Peugeot 206 please” I drove home with the boot open and a pond sticking out of the back of the car.

I remember standing in the back garden admiring the pond when His Nibs arrived home.  “I got my pond. Isn’t it lovely” I said. He stood in contemplation for a moment. “That’s not a pond. That’s a baby bath”. And he turned on his heel and walked into the kitchen before I could run a trowel through his heart.

Shortly thereafter, he built his own water feature which took up a good portion of lawn and half the boundary wall. Right enough, his was bigger than mine.  Large rock face, trickling waterfall into a large pool…  He’d built a smaller version of the Grotto of Lourdes… Just to wind him up one day, I put a statue up on the rock face.  

In these parallel universes I inhabit at the same, time, I get up, go to work, do all the normal things while at the same time moving through a dark universe of  silence and fear, particularly at night when I am obliged to stop distracting myself and rest.  Light and shade. Veering between hope and doubt. See-sawing and knowing that it is essential to find emotional equilibrium, and the rest will then fall into place. Knowing what I need to do and actually accomplishing it are two different kettles of fish. And they ain’t goldfish.

I made an appointment to see a new counselor. A relationship counselor. The previous one suggested it.  Could he recommend someone? He could, in line with my preference for a female therapist. When I heard her voice on the telephone I knew immediately that along with a load of framed certificates on her wall, she would have empathy. And I was right.