Obligations

The little orange 'Blogger' icon winks at me from my Favourites bar. Come on it says, haven't you got anything to say, just a teeny weeny bit of something you'd like to share? 

I'm too busy, I'm at work, I've only got five minutes, I can't think of anything interesting. I DID think of something but now I've forgotten it.  Hmmm.

I'm not going to apologise, because this is my page.  I can write on it or not, as I wish. I was going to say that one should never apologise for not doing something unless one is contractually obligated to do it, but then I realised that there are few things that we are contractually obligated to do.  Employment, paying the mortgage, all sorts of financial things, marriage perhaps (especially if you are the sort of person who likes a Pre-Nup) - but probably nothing you couldn't buy your way out of.

That then made me think that argument was weak, but is it?  Do we have to apologise for things that we haven't done, when nobody asked us to do it (or said we must) in the first place?  Surely we should only need to apologise for things we HAVE done, which we shouldn't have.  Or is there a moral obligation to do things, an unspoken code of society and when we break it by not doing something we are not obligated to do, we feel guilty and have to apologise. Especially if we are British.

Last night Mr H and I watched a video on Facebook which was a montage of clips of 'the general public' doing Good Deeds such as holding doors open for a blind person, picking up a toy that a child has thrown out of a pram, preventing someone stepping front of a car, or helping a bully victim up from the floor. In each clip there was a 3rd party wordlessly watching the Good Deed be done, we assumed that they were supposed to be thinking 'I could do that'.  I complained that it was depressing that people made such a big thing (ie. making a film and spreading it around the internet) about what to me seem basic courteous actions and attitudes.  Mr H, on the other hand said that it acted as a reminder to people just how easy it is to do simple things to help others out, things that are done on impulse in an instant and take no time or trouble out of your day.  I can see his point but I still mourn the fact that those actions are an exception rather than a rule, allegedly.

I say allegedly carefully, because we can be told that society is now rude, unsociable, unfriendly and uncaring, but is that actually the case?  or is actually the norm to not slam a door in someone's face, or to help someone push their broken down car off the road, but the internet and the media think it is better to paint a grim picture of near Armageddon where no-one cares about anyone else, and we're all going to hell in a hand-cart?

Are people actually regularly complying with their moral obligations more than we are led to believe?

Weeding my mind

I am feeling depressed about the garden today, I've been working on one of our borders and have made a brick edge to stop the grass encroaching (one that I can mow right up to), and have weeded and planted some new plants. Ones that are out NOW because all the other flowers in our garden seems to have finished by the end of June.

Because of my leg it took me three sessions to get the bricks down, partly because the soil was hard digging.  So it's probably taken me a month to do what I would normally do in a weekend, because that's all I can do (and people still tell me I should be taking it easy).

I walked around some beautiful gardens this morning at Beaulieu and came home inspired, bought three plants at the nearby garden centre and they are perfect.  My plan is to plant so much stuff that there is no breathing space for weeds.  However, we don't have sweet little green weeds, we have brambles, and ivy, and bracken and really the shady part of the garden should be turned into a woodland glade because that's the kind of stuff that grows in it. Maybe after 21 years of trying to tame it we should throw in the towel and pave the whole of the SW corner (that's a joke by the way).

I need to turn these negative feelings into gratitude for having an amazing garden, that has so much potential as well as so much wild-ness.. How many people have that luxury these days?   We could be stuck in a flat with just a couple of window boxes...

But I also know my depression isn't totally about the garden. It's about me. It's about being knackered after one hours of gardening, when even taking the spade back to the shed is an effort. It's about tackling it alone, rather than the teamwork of me and Mr H.  It's about not knowing how long this is going to last, right now the light at the end of the tunnel is pretty dim.

I think it's time for a cup of tea.

A thought

What is normality?
Merely what has gone before.
It can change at the flick of a switch,
Or by barely noticeable mutations,
Until it is no longer recognisable.
What is normality?
It is ourselves.
It is our lives.

But take a look from the other side of the road.
Is it normal now?

Shorts: bed

... well today I feel just fine, yesterday must have been it so that's a Good Thing.

Last night I decided to chuck half the pillows off and sleep in the middle of the bed. Usually even when Mr H isn't home I sleep on My Side because it feels normal, so I felt a bit of a rebel.

A strange feeling day

Tomorrow is 27th June, a date that has been etched on mine and Mr H's brain forever now. A date that has been written over and over in statements, reports, forms, diaries and numerous other documents over the last year.

27 June 2010 was a Sunday, so today is the day that I feel strange.  It was warm and sunny, just as it is today.  If Mr H and Django were here instead of in Scotland, today is the sort of day we'd say 'let's go out and sit by a river with a picnic', just as we did last year.

It's almost 4.30pm now and I feel as though I'm waiting for something, almost as if it is some kind of premonition.  It feels as though the day is being repeated somewhere in a parallel universe; as if every day is going to go round again on the same cycle, but without us in it.

I know that feeling 'out of sorts' (that phrase makes it sound like a bit of indigestion) is normal on the anniversary of trauma.

I also know that I (and Mr H) have come a long way in the last 12 months, and many things in my life have changed for the better, that might not have done otherwise.

So after this discomfiting couple of days are over, I will be back on the track - onwards and upwards. I reckon that I'm currently about 75% towards my 'normality' (a subject for another blog post), so just another 25% to go...