2022? Can’t wait to see to the back if it. For all sorts of reasons it’s been a right royal pain in the arse.
The year didn’t start all that well, the omens were bad even before January shuffled off it’s dreich days – I definitely felt a bad moon rising. But some years are just like that, eh? Bumpy, discombobulating, difficult. Sadly sometimes much, much worse.
The tough times never get easier to handle, even when you know they’re just around the corner. And even on those rare occasions when you’re in some way prepared, when you’ve just about got a handle on a tricky situation, some new drama inevitably comes galloping over the horizon to knock you off your axis. If it’s not a pandemic, or the terror-including arrival of the electricity bill, it’s a family crisis, pranging the car, losing your job or, heaven forfend, a national shortage of eggs during Christmas cake bake week.
Life is so bloody unpredictable, and of course, hard times have a habit of coming like buses. When my very own teenage dirtbag recently moaned that he felt the whole world was against him, I knew EXACTLY where he was coming from. It’s so disheartening, isn’t it, the feeling that everyone and everything is conspiring against you. But we’ve all had it, that “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I’ll go ‘n’ eat worms” feeling, but when you’re in the midst of a run of unfortunate events it can be hard to look on the bright side of life. And BTW, please do NOT get started about positive thinking, silver linings or the particularly facile “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” mantra. In my book, it’s absolutely fine to wallow in self pity or be knocked for six. For a wee while, anyway. It’s how you recover that matters.
Some folks always seem to float along zen-like, completely at one with the world and all its mad twists and turns. How do they do that? How do they float serenely through turbulence? Those life skills are ever so elusive and alien to me, I’m a fireworks kinda gal! But I’m not (I don’t think) over at the other end of the spectrum with the catastrophists, the doomsday merchants who are always expecting the worst, wasting life away wondering what if, what if…
Me? I’ve come to accept that there’s ALWAYS a monster coming over that hill. I simply don’t expect life to be peaches and cream, not all of the time anyway. If that makes me sound like a mood-sapping misery guts, sorry. I prefer to think of myself as a realist, someone who’s ready to roll with the punches and life’s fickle fortunes. Of course, the rough and tumble of those fickle fortunes can leave you feeling battered and bruised, but here’s the thing – bruising fades, and so too do scars, even deep ones. So when I see or feel a bad moon rising, I remind myself that it’s always followed by sun.
Happy new year, y’all.
