Balance

Balance is a thing that so often eludes me in life. Physically and mentally, it has proved challenging. For a while, the ‘work/life balance’ was a phrase that was touted as being both possible and desirable. If your life was disappearing down the crapper at a rate of knots, people would ask about your work/life balance in that concerned, head tilted way that makes you want to commit murder. As if you hadn’t noticed that cramming 14 hour work days, three kids and housework into one 24 hour period and still looking shaggable was neither balanced nor sane. ‘No. No. Do tell me how building an urgent but not important graph to show that making time for pilates at 4.30 a.m. and drinking pond slime will restore my equilibrium. I am agog.’

I wasn’t very good at having a job, due to being ill and/or mental a lot of the time. That plus three children and needy pets kept me fairly unbalanced though, even without the work. The effort that other people were putting into getting that spreadsheet to Kevin by close of play was being expended by me in not locking myself in the toilet weeping, or not crawling across the floor, vomiting. Plus building the colosseum in miniature and attempting to be enthusiastic about Minecraft.

In the last few years there has been no chance to even think about any kind of balance, as our lives were fed through the meat grinder of personal trauma, flipped through the pinball of COVID and slalomed through anything else the external world had to offer.

Then I got a job and had to do all of the above plus sell people a lot of Colleen Hoover books and explain to irate pensioners why I didn’t know what that book was that was serialised on Radio 4 that time, even though it was really good and had that man in it. You know the one.

There was no balance. There was just running around attempting to look calm on the outside whilst running around screaming on the inside. Usually in opposite directions. The best that can be said of those times were that they were an opportunity for unprecedented personal growth. I also realised that I am a lot more patient than I or anyone who knows me had previously given me credit for. I am not entirely sure that is a good thing. There have been several occasions in recent months where I have felt that losing my shit and burning a few things down would have been ideal. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

They say that running away is not a good thing. They say that you always take yourself with you. I say that running away is 100% a good thing if the things you are running away from are not you. Running away to London to live on a boat and spend a great deal of time on my own was an excellent thing. It shook the irate pensioners off for a start.

The first few months on the boat were a trade off for the holidays I didn’t get during the trauma years and the ones I did get, but where the trauma came too. I was in the fortunate position of being able to take a break from regular employment for a bit and I snatched it with both hands. I was exhausted and broken and traumatised. I needed quiet and space and room to stop running and start learning to walk again. Also to not adopt the crash position every time the phone rang.

Balance requires things to be level. Or at least the possibility that things could be level. It suggests stability is possible. For a long while that wasn’t possible for me. Even in the less traumatic years, it has been elusive. I am a creature of sudden, wild enthusiasms, obsessions and strong feelings. These are not conducive to balance.

Every part of my life is affected. I cannot hang a picture straight. If I write with pen and paper, unless I concentrate super hard, my writing veers off into corners. If I am making notes, they spring up all over the page. If I am not sharing a double bed, I always wake up on the diagonal. Sometimes even when I am sharing I wake up on the diagonal.

One of the things that has taught me how to walk, not run is actual walking. I am a great believer in things being holistic. This doesn’t mean I am wise or zen. I am neither. I just know that for me, it doesn’t really matter whether change starts from the outside in or the inside out. It will have the same effect eventually. I think, as a person I may be quite porous, which explains a lot.

The walking was excellent and I did it almost every day. The more I did, the more I wanted to do. Some days I would go out for half an hour and come back four hours later. No balance, you see.

In recent weeks, as my health has taken centre stage again, I have been unable to walk. Now I am feeling better, I have something else to do which is taking a lot of my time and attention and which is important to me. I was doing all the walking, and now I am doing none of the walking. I was getting frustrated with myself. I said some pretty awful things about my inability to sustain balance and my poor moral fibre.

Then I thought about what living on the boat has taught me. On the water, I have learned to feel more comfortable in ebb and flow. Our mooring is in a basin, where there are no big shifts like there are out in the river, but there is always movement. I adjust, even if the movements are small. I allow myself to be held up by forces bigger than me. I trust I will be lifted.

Sometimes, balance is something I achieve by increments so small I don’t even notice them. Sometimes balance is something that happens after I veer wildly to one side or another. Sometimes the arc of that movement is fast and violent. Sometimes it’s slow and steady. Sometimes I pass through that moment of perfect balance so fast I don’t appreciate I was even there. Sometimes I can choose it and sometimes, like with the river, I am at the mercy of forces bigger than me. At those times I am learning to flow with it. I know that if I try to fight my way there I’m always too tired to achieve it or appreciate it on the rare occasions I do get there. What I am beginning to understand is that balance is not static. Everything moves all the time. I am not going to be able to achieve balance in a life that is constantly evolving if I don’t move too.

Balance is not about standing still, or doing the same things over and over again. Just because something worked then, does not mean it will work now. Sometimes even if it does work, the now I am in will not allow for it. That doesn’t mean I have failed to find balance or that I have failed as a person. I always find balance. I just don’t always stay there.

I may not be walking now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t. It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how or that I am too stupid to do it again. It doesn’t diminish what a gift the last few months have been. It doesn’t mean that I am lazy or weak or all the negative things I found myself thinking because right now I am unable to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. It just means that right now those bigger forces are taking me on a wild ride and if I can learn to stop shouting at myself long enough to trust the process maybe they will lift me up into something wonderful.