GRATITUDE after Adversity
I am enormously grateful to many people, especially a particular person / friend with whom I have been through hell and heaven, for his support, assistance, skills, expertise, time, energies, faith, determination, etc, who helped me move from my humble modern terraced house where I raised two kids for 18 years and from where I often worked 15 hrs+ / 7 days including degree study and TEFL study, then had a mental/emotional/physical breakdown...
...derrrrrrrr....
Why was that???
Joke?
It was not funny!
Well that was 13 years ago and since then this is the third house I have lived in - it being the second that I have owned. One of the several debilitating personal crises arrived whilst I was living in HIS house with no bolt hole and no independence. I didn't realize that then. I know that now. I knew that afterwards! When I was there, I was like a rag run ragged!
In our intimate relationship, he picked me up more than once. The first time was when I could hardly walk about 18 years ago ... and he patiently held my hand so that I could practise walking and the. cycling. After that there was a second time about 11 years ago when my world collapsed and I became a jigsaw puzzle, a complete crumpled form on the floor, which was concurrent with him wishing to move to France. He said he needed my courage to give him courage!!!!!!!!!!! Bizarre when I had none!!!!!!!Before we moved we finished the renovation of a 400 year old inn ... well two thirds of it in which we lived. It had already had the hard work done by others..the roof, the damp barrier, the flooring, the stabilizing of walls etc. THAT is really the time to move in and do the work of making a show house .. a showroom home.. which is what It became!!
He finished being employed on that house, my house and became Restless.
I now recognise it is his pattern... finish a project and move on, never mind who he abandons! Extremely self-centric! OK I can be self-centric too but I don't believe it is right to abandon others for self. He also likes to volunteer for others and has in the past been very upset if it is not reciprocated!
LIVING IN ANOTHER COUNTRY
Despite my ramblings of what to me is my truth, 10 years ago, on 5 August we moved to France, to HIS house, which was in the course of being renovated, after my major op and my loss of career... he had already lost his job about three years before me, which is why I employed him!
It takes courage, madness and sensible determination to live in another country. It takes bravery and foolishness but the pay off for me has been a kind of FREEDOM, once i stopped crying! Perhaps freedom of a different lifestyle could be found in France, but like T&P and S&S have mentioned in local blogs, - they, us, one, I, - would not have been able to afford the riches of daily life, domestic and environmental prospects / riches in England that one has here in France. Maybe elsewhere in France it is expensive or more expensive than here and on parts of UK that I would die to live in! That matters not!
BACK TO GRATITUDE
WELL, I know this might be a repetition of blog content, but I write it for me and not for an audience, HOWEVER, I am grateful and try to show my gracious loving gratitude to HIM for creating the opportunity for me to face my fears over the years and eventually become an adult. That sounds silly but I have never been socially and emotionally aware and am better at that now! However, unlike him, I NEED my property, my house and my home.
I don't seem to feel to receive that gracious loving gratitude in return.... hmmm... I know I must expect nothing!!!!... absolutely nothing other than what anyone gives!!!!!
HOUSE, HOME and ANCESTRY
I am a crabby Cancerian and yearn for the shield of protection around me! I have ancestors who were travellers, travelling from Edinburgh to Walberswick and back every year. Five brothers in the 19th century started an Equestrian Family Circus. My cousin has written a novel about the end of that era and how our grandmother and her cousin left the circus. Even though I have an urge not to stay still, I need security, safety and a home... because that is where my heart is!
HIM
He, meanwhile, sold his French house last year and has been travelling and working for others in Asia and a bit in Australia as part of The Workaway Scheme. His Tales from Asia cannot really tell me the depth of the endurances, smells, tastes, sufferance, joys, magic, and the overcoming of his emotions and the ability to walk away from people if they do not suit his needs or if he doesn't suit theirs.
I feel it is ironic that he has returned to work for me when five years ago he needed to be alone and banished me!
( I may edit what I am writing!)
Of course, recently, he yearned for a European style of living, food, culture and probably creature comforts. He is tired and so would I be at his age! He is also full of energy and it is hard to keep up with such adrenaline!
LIVING NOT IN UK
I have recently read a posting and comments from others about whether or not we are expats (expatriates). It is an abbreviation I do not like. The definition is muddled with the words:- immigrants, emigrants, migrants,
I would like to ADD to the lexicology, another word that would define: 'people who are making the most of opportunities' but I cannot think of one. 'Opportunists' does not describe that sufficiently!
To my mind an expat goes to work abroad but then returns, whilst someone who takes up residency in another country is an emigrant and therefore an immigrant. I am those two. I am a migrant.
I understand from family stories that my distant ancestors were migrants ... there were the tisserands from Nîmes and Nantes and there were Protestants from St-Onge, near La Rochelle. There are Spanish or Italian roots somewhere but I don't have the evidence. Certainly my brother looks Indian or Pakistani and those travellers went across the Bering Strait. At one time I was very interested in Native American Indians.. and still am a little ... and I believe that those roots call me to the tall trees. Some have likened my high cheek bones to some of the tribes and one suggested that I looked like Eva Peron. I think that was an exaggeration!
I AM proud of being English but also I like living in France. It is necessary to embrace the land in which one lives and where one makes a home.
LIVING IN FRANCE
I am proud of what I have achieved ... and in many ways am glad I have not had property in UK to run back to when the going got tough. I LOVE the space. I LOVE my large house. I LOVE that I have to keep active even when I have to drag my body to mow lawns when I am not a practical girl!
I LOVE my garden as it keeps me fit. I LOVE that French people will rally and help if one asks... otherwise they keep a distance and that is good too! I LOVE that although it is 'small steps' my French language has improved. I LOVE that I have experienced challenges and difficulties as a result of weather, accident, ill health or even fun events. It has been truly 'character building' and I am so much happier these days, laughing at the absurdities of what I think or do or what others say as well as laughing in shared enjoyment!
I have learned to meet and be involved with people of all age brackets and I am grateful for that.
I am grateful to all the Workawayers who have helped me and I do need some more!
My lists of things to achieve grows ever longer and I am such a lucky woman that HE has returned to get the kitchen and other things done. Not even my son was prepared to help his mother but why should he.. there is nothing to say he should and I ceased to ask him about two years ago!
Too hot to cycle (Saturday 6 June), but we did it...
Fuschias and broad beans were rescued from the brink by watering several times throughout the day. I was only away for two days during the week but heat and drought got to my courtyard garden plants causing them to wilt!
On Saturday
We had a Banana Split and a Peach Melba as we went to buy an ice cream and thought to have these instead! All very retro yet scattered with modern Smarties! Very odd!
No starter and No first course.
Only in France can a Banana Split not have a banana but the waitress realised as she arrived and did it again. It was rather like a Julie Walters soup sketch!
I shall struggle on because that is what LIFE is for!
... and hey Josette's bar-restaurant has a new owner from Normandy! THE MENU LOOKS GOOD!
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