Scarlett O'Hara...A Woman After My Own Heart

As people who read my FB contributions and follow this blog will know, winter is my least favourite time of year. I don't know if I have SAD...I've never pursued a diagnosis for why my spirits plummet at this time of year...but I certainly feel my mood drops, my energy levels wane, I eat more, I do less, am less sociable and feel generally under par in these dark, dismal months.

 The loss of my Mum in June has obviously been the most significant factor on how I feel at the moment...her cancer diagnosis followed by her death a mere 7 weeks later..still has an unreal aspect to it even though the brutal reality of her absence in my life... in all our lives... is daily evident.

Monday was a  difficult day. I felt everything was pointless, Xmas, the whole shebang could carry on without me...I just felt numb, flat and very sad. However, as strong and pervasive as these feelings were...as the day went on...something else stirred, something that always stirs when I feel like this.....HOPE.


It has always been thus...no matter how bad things have got and they have got seriously bad at various times throughout my life... I have always been an eternal optimist...I always think...this too will pass, things will get better, circumstances will improve and I will move forward. I identify very much with Scarlett O'Hara... not the Rhett Butler problemo or the plantation/slave owning thing obviously(!)...but with how she dealt with her problems....'I'll think about that tomorrow....after all....TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY!' is a very fine life philosophy as far as I'm concerned :-)

I am very good at putting off thinking about problems until tomorrow... or a week next Friday if that is what suits....and I am equally good at ignoring people who are pissing me off until I am ready to deal with them. Putting things on the back burner may seem like cowardly procrastination to some but for me it works and I am sure it has saved me from making some hasty, dodgy decisions and from ripping some people's heads off.


So today, because my mood has indeed lifted, I will focus my mind on the remaining cards I have to send and other ghastly things pertaining to the Christian Capitalist Conspiracy that is engulfing us all and do it with a kinder, calmer heart than I had on Monday.

 Emily Dickinson, one of my favourite American poets along with that other cheery soul, Sylvia Plath, wrote it best, I think, so I shall leave you with her wise words on the subject...

 

'Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.'