On Karma's Wings~Mixed Media Artwork by Kirsty Campbell

Ever get the feeling...???

your life is going in the wrong direction??? But you keep following the same path anyway? Because its what you should do, or you might let someone down, or its not the 'done' thing, or it goes against common believe. Do major things happen to change the course because we don't listen to the hints, the whispers along the way? Those internal voices that say "No not this way" "Don't take that job just for the money" "Don't neglect the present because you are too focused on the future, on where you are heading, you will miss the here and now the things right in front of you, what you have right now. What if you knew it all wouldn't be there tomorrow. Would you listen ? Would you hear them just a little louder? Would you take more notice?

I quite often get these 'feelings' somethings not right, it just doesn't feel good, I get anxious and nervous and feel unfulfilled, like my soul, my hearts desire is being pushed down not to be heard. But for a 'big picture' person like my self I want to know...well, everything. I want to know the plan, where I'm going, what I should be doing, how I'll get there, when I'll get there...on and on I could go! So you can only imagine how I feel right now with my 'big picture' being taken away so unexpectantly and so painfully.

I am quite simply lost. Lost and very broken.

I feel like the whole going to uni teaching thing is not meant to be. I had planned on going to uni and doing teaching back in year 12 but my life took a different course or I chose the wrong path back at the fork in the road I guess you could say, or maybe the right one who knows? Too hard to tell with no scarecrow for guidance! and obviously never made it to uni then. Time went by I become a hairdresser and hated every minute of it, but it was my job my means of income my responsibility so I stuck it out, till I got married at 21 (yep very young) and at the risk of sounding horrible I knew it wasn't right, but by the time I'd realised it was a week before and my parents had paid for everything and what would I do if I didnt get married? I'd let everyone down, I would hurt people. hmmm maybe it was just cold feet, well thats what I told myself, but no it was more, it wasn't right and that was proven to me time and time again when I hurt so badly both physically and emotionally but I'd had kids so didnt I have to stay?? wasnt that my responsibilty?? My only 'out' was my craft, any craft I've done it all... jack of all trades master of none is a quote that comes to mind there! Eventually I saw what it was doing to the kids and listened to those whispers telling me there was more and I left, its not nice when your five year old comes home from kindy and says "I didnt tell anyone mum!"

I felt free, happy, like anything was possible like I could set those clipped wings free (to a certain extent remember the kids!) I could follow those dreams I'd had for so long. I realised I loved Mark, think I had for a very long time actually he was sweet, kind and very encouraging, always. So the day he rang me and said "I love you, I think I have for a very long time, when you feel like you are ready to start seeing people please let me know, please put me at top of your list (hmmm, did he think people were beating the door down to get to me?? hardly!) Let me make you happy, give me a chance!" So I did, and he did!! He encouraged me to follow those dreams I'd had and I enrolled at TAFE to do the Education Assistant course it took 6 months and at the end I had my job, my dream job and I felt at home!! I felt fulfilled I had the gorgeous guy (and he was very much so!!) who loved me and my two gorgeous kids, and when I when I felt something was amiss or my soul needed feeding I did my craft. By that stage I was a scrapbooker who loved photography and they were my outlet along with painting. We dreamt together, Mark and I, we planned together and eventually bought a house, our home, we had a baby together our darling girl McKenna and never once have I regretted my decision NOT ONCE!! even when things werent right with us I had faith. I once again felt that calling those whispers starting to get a little louder, I listened, I thought they were saying to follow my heart again I thought that meant they were telling me to become the teacher do the uni thing (make more money) so we talked and against my feelings of anxiety I applied for uni i did a part time year last year and things with Mark were not right, he didnt like it, me going to uni on the weekends once a month (he worked afternoon shift so we didnt see a lot of each other during the week), he missed our life and I did too but I thought it was for the greater good.

Now here I am again not at uni not doing the teaching thing another huge life event thats changed our lives forever!! What if thats not what the whispers were saying?? What if thats not meant to be?? What am I supposed to be then?? What am I supposed to be doing?? One thing I am certain of no matter what is that I know in my heart and soul that I love being a mum and that Mark and I were meant to be. I just need to figure out why it had to end this way and not like the fairytale I wanted...guess not all fairytales have a happy ending!! So here I am once again feeding my soul through my art, my painting...am I finally hearing them right?? Am I finally paying enough attention??

And if so why didnt I listen sooner, maybe I'd be sitting here a very different person with the love of my life by my side!!!

The Day My Life's Journey Hit a Major Road Block (warning:long post !)

It started three months ago today. February 23^rd 2009. The year I turn 34.  

My death that is, my slow painful death. “Things will get better”, “You are such a strong person.” If even just one more person says these trite things to me I think I’ll kill them rather than myself. I don’t say anything however, or kill them of course, I know they mean well.

 

Three months ago exactly I was a wife, a mother, an Education Assistant, and a Uni student and in most respects would have been described as a happy person. But today I sit before this computer a broken, lost and scared little girl who can not even begin to imagine a way to dig her way out of this black hole she now calls life, well others keep referring to it that way anyhow.  Nor for that matter does she know if she even wants to try.

 

Life.

 

A humorous word to me now. One of the dictionary definitions I find most oxymoronic (Yes it is a word I looked that up too.) is;

A STATE OF

LIVING

1 a: the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body.

 

Humorous? I hear you ask. What could possibly be humorous about the definition of life? Well then my response to you would be; congratulations you are a healthy ‘normal’ being. But you see for me this very definition would imply that I/me/Kirsty be referred to as a vital and functioning being. Yeah, well you had the capacity to write this, I hear you say.

But why? I ask. Why would life refer to me as ‘vital’ and ‘functioning’? Simply because I am breathing? Surely nothing more. Because ‘vital’ and ‘functioning’ wouldn’t even begin to describe what I now see in the mirror. These two words are as foreign to my description as they are to my being. What if my spirit is dead? My will to live is dead? My soul is dead? What then? Am I still considered living? Again why? Simply because I am breathing? And anyway if I had it my way breathing is one thing I wouldn’t be doing. So I feel the very definition of life does not take into account anything more than breath or the lack of it.

 

Suicidal ideations are never far from my conscious thoughts nor my dreams for that matter. I am a coward. I know it. I’m not ashamed to admit it, it has after all kept me here in this living hell. But you see, I want it to be painless, quick. I dont want to muck it up, to have my attempt fail.  My suicide, my death I mean. I don’t want anymore pain. I could not stand to feel even the smallest amount, that’s even having faith I could possibly possess the capacity to feel anymore. In fact that’s the thing I’m really trying to kill off I guess. Not myself as a whole as such but the pain part, the depressive part, the part that is allowing all this pain to slowly consume me, to suck the life and soul out of me once and for all. I want the pain to die. I don’t necessarily want to die; I just don’t want to go on living. At least not like this.

 

Where to start? When did it all start? I could start back when I felt the first sting of jealousy. Or the rejection of my first ‘real’ boyfriend constantly finding somebody ‘better’ as he put it time after time. Or the knowledge that the next guy I liked was just adding me to his ‘collection’ of ‘lovely girls’. Or that the man I married was not who I thought and saw me as nothing more than a punching bag, for all his emotional, mental and physical demons. Or maybe I should just start with my second marriage. My marriage to Mark my soul mate. Never did I think I would ever experience or deserve such a gorgeous man to show much a pure love. But it wasn’t to last, my past, or lack of letting it go would make sure of that.

 

I blame myself. It’s hard not too. I let everyone down, most of all Mark. I have said a thousand times I am glad to have had the six years we had than to not have had him in my life at all. But truth be told six years was no where near enough. I want more. I was not ready for this to be the end. I’m still not. I love Mark, and these events have now set in motion  a never-ending (so it seems) quest to understand why? Why he would leave me this way. Why he would want to inflict this much unbearable and soul destroying pain, leave this much devastation in his wake. But then how do I explain my desire to do the exact same thing? Not necessarily (although inevitable) the devastation or the pain but simply to be free of my pain, free of this world and all it’s expectations and demands. To take my life.

 

“You need to think of the children now; they will be your strength to go on.”  Oh if I hear that one last time, I think I’ll explode in a fit of blood boiling rage and self combust. Now you ‘normal’ people will have read that last quote and thought how very selfish, the children need their mother they have just lost their father, and yes by all factual accounts this is true but…

What if their mother has lost the will to go on? To see any point to life? Lost the capacity to love like she once did? What then? Does she play pretend until hopefully those old maternal feelings find their way back to the surface?

Do they really need a mother like that? What if that mother can never claw her way from the deep black pit in which she now resides?

 

Questions, questions forever swimming in my head with no plausible answers, well none enough to satisfy me at any rate. Am I going insane? Is this just what its like to go through the grief process? Am I now depressed? Yes that was the disease, the disease of loneliness that led to all this confusion, unanswered questions and pain, the unbearable agony of all those left supposedly living behind.

 

I’m sure, in fact I know for certain I am not the first person or even the only person to be going through the pain as a ‘survivor of suicide’, no this doesn’t mean I’ve tried it (well yet anyway, and hopefully not ever, remember the coward thing?) it just means in the very simplest of terms that  I have 'survived' the loss of a loved one to suicide.

So where to from here...more on that next time

testing... testing...

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