I look at the date on the screen. 26th June, that means something. Matthew’s birthday. Matthew is hubby’s nephew. And Matthew’s mum, hubby’s sister in law, her birthday was the 16th (or the 12th? I can never remember). Didn’t send cards to either of them. Shit.
Start again. How do I feel today? Shit.
Repeat after me. Happiness comes from being satisfied with what you have. From being grateful for what you have. From counting your blessings, from thinking about all those people who are worse off than you. From making the most of the little things. From looking around you and seeing how lucky you are to be who you are and where you are, not to be hungry, to have a home, somewhere nice to live, not to have to worry that it will be taken away from you. These are things many people don’t have and would give their eye teeth for.
How many times have I told myself this? How many more times do I have to say it before it starts to work?
Chasing after dreams will get you nowhere, only back to this place again. This is where you have to stay, have to settle. Learn to love the one who is here, rather than hankering after someone else, because even if you had someone else (and you know that’s not going to happen), how long would it be before you realised you didn’t love him either, then what would happen? It’s just a treadmill, better not even to get on it in the first place. Happiness comes from the attitude inside you. You just have to work out how the hell to change that attitude.
Yes, it’s all your fault. That bad attitude of yours. You’re never going to get anywhere, are you, with an attitude like that?
So, start again. New day, focus on the things that have to be done today. Let go of dreams. Wanting, wishing, whatever, let it all go. ‘Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?’ Trust in Springsteen, he knows what he’s talking about. That’s the way it goes. Dreams are lies we tell ourselves, lies about how life might be, so why do it, why think about how life might be, when you know that this is how life is?
Start again. ‘This is the day the Lord hath made.’ Well, it might make life easier if you believed that, but you don’t believe it. You’re here because you’re here, because the world is full of people and people make more people, that’s all there is to it, your mum and dad made you because they wanted to, to go through that whole life-creating life-consuming soul-destroying process of parenthood that takes everything we have to give and then at the end of it all, there you are, one more person struggling to deal with being alive.
And that’s all you know, and you can’t make yourself believe what you don’t believe, any more than you can make yourself feel what you don’t feel or love someone you don’t love.