A moment of total wholeness

Thank goodness for that - all better. Still a bit twingey but I made it to befriending and walked into town afterwards and I'm not suffering this afternoon. The girls won't be back for another hour or two so now I'm going to take a nap in the hopes that no more back pain is coming my way in revenge for going out today!

I was thinking on my way home again, as I do every week, just how lucky I am. When you've been around someone with so many problems you start to realise that they're actually so normal. They didn't do anything to deserve how hard things are for them, they don't have some defect that makes them think that way necessarily. My client is a normal person who reacted to extraordinary problems with great courage and still had an understandable breakdown.

I go through all the people I know well enough to make the call - what would happen if it was them? Where is the support? Would I have reacted the same way? I can't imagine that I would have coped much better, any better. We are all somewhere walking a line and we could all be tipped over into what the rest of the world calls insanity and turns away from. Mental health is not a simple issue, not remotely cut and dried. Nobody is on the safe side of the line, untouchable by this, it's part of all of us.

More than this, how many small pleasures do we not count because they are the blessings that everyone has? Everyone like us at least. How many people could not do for themselves, or for any pressing need, the thing I did today? I walked, freely and feeling the youth and strength in my body, seeing the mundane brickwork and hearing people talking.

I saw markets, touched the fruits and smelled all sorts of things I wouldn't normally be pleased to. I saw a carpark. It was there and I was free to pass it, free to see what was there are look into the face of other free people. Did they know how very liberated they are? The feel of my jeans against my ankles, my coat against my shoulders. How very perfect, how very beautiful, to be alive and aware of the so many things that I can't usually see for them being everywhere.