‘You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.’

‘.. no truly happy person feels the need to stand in front of a mirror and recite that she is happy. She just is.’
I love routine. Part of my daily morning routines as I brush my teeth, especially over the last 7 months have been affirmations about happiness, being happy, content, joyful. I have visualised it, asked for it, cosmically ordered it, believed it.
These last few days, I haven’t needed my daily declarations or quiet time to day dream about it. 
These last few days I have felt it. 
I pondered a little about whether it was bad that I was out of routine and whether I would lose it all.
But then my bags appeared and with Mark Manson’s book. And those lines. His perceptions on how the pursuit of happiness, the search for a purpose or the meaning of life, affirmations of what you want to become is all a reflection of a current state of lack.
‘Don’t try‘ he says. Accept flaws and pain and suffering. And live. Live as you.
I have been me. We have been us. This is turning out to be a week of good days. 
Without evening trying! 

I am loving my mind out here in Greece. It is quiet .. no noise .. no back chat… 
Has it let go? 
I wonder where the silver thread is, the one attached to the dark box on the bottom of the sea. And when I think of it, I feel it. But I no longer dwell on it. Perhaps the first few barnacles will appear soon?
There are still the moments that my heart clenches as something triggers a memory, a photograph or feeling, but here I am not alone. I am surrounded by positive people and laughter. But most of all the 2 small hands and smiles that invite me to play or the one, big one attached to two strong arms, honest blue eyes that pull me into an embrace and make everything disappear.
The marble jar is filling. Trust is a seed that has been planted.
The mind is learning. Love from the heart has overflowed.
It was the third good day in a row. A hat trick! 

As the sun set bright pink over the aquamarine Aegean Sea, we watched the silver waves wash away to nothing, drank cocktails and relaxed into the simplicity.
As harbour lights softly glowed, and the silhouette of the fortress flag hung black against the purple sky, we sucked every garlic pepper shrimp dry and marvelled at the incredible taste sensation simplicity. 
It was another good day.

My book ‘the simple art of not giving a fuck’ didn’t manage to make it Greece, but I am pretty happy to see that my attitude of ‘not giving a fuck’ did.
To the point that I don’t give one about writing tonight.
It was a good day.  Simple.

An interesting debate – what is essential?
On checking in for our flight for the second time we were told it wouldn’t be guaranteed that our luggage would be on the flight, in fact highly unlikely given ours were with over 60,000 other bags in a suitcase mountain somewhere in LHR. We were told that they would be on the next flight to Lemnos, once they had been found. When is the next flight? They couldn’t confirm or guarantee…. so probably the same flight next week!? I’m sorry madam, I couldn’t comment.
We were advised strongly to go and buy the essentials. 
But what are essentials? 
Toothbrushes, toothpaste, a change of undies?
Fine for one night…. but if your luggage isn’t ‘guaranteed’ to arrive at all? The list gets bigger and therefore the debate. Fortunately, yesterday, we had had the foresight to grab a swimming cossie and spare t-shirt from the bags just as we handed them through the screens to disappear and added to the bag mountain, obvious to us they wouldn’t be with us any time soon.
But I felt panic set in when I realised I had no undies, not enough non toxic anti aging skincare or a razor. Not quite sure what that makes me…? A prude? Vain? Hairy? 
Strangely, Clothes didn’t bother me too much – happy to wear some Greek market dresses and flip flops! But we all needed one change of clothes having been in our current gear for 2 days and even slept in it! But what will BA and the insurance companies see as essential? Terminal 5 only has top brands… my suitcase may be filled with dresses and shorts from asos, Topshop and Zara but there’s only the finest in T5… Prada, Harrods, Max Mara, Missoni, Gucci, Cartier and with the ‘cheapest’ brands being Reiss and Paul Smith.
But no undies.

And no kids clothes…

Anywhere.
Overhearing other families, flip flops and swim shorts were young one boy’s priority… holiday essential clearly! Cycling kit – was it really worth going asks another Dad? Or could they be happy just sailing for the week? Another family stood outside the plane doors arguing whether to get on or not… trying to convince one son it was it worth it without his special trainers!  
On boarding the flight, we were told that the luggage was definitely not on board. 
It was the families with babies I felt for, running out of nappies, formula and one lady her babies’ special medicine.
After 28 hours delay, we did take off. The patient, polite cabin crew having sorted out crazy seating allocation as all families weren’t together; the 4 of us dotted all round the plane and with nervous flyers, the tension only mounted… 
And then the announcement, there would be no catering on this flight. All food and alcohol padlocked up and no keys. 
Seriously??? Where was our free champagne or beer? And at kids tea time?    
If you don’t ask, you will never get. A quiet word with a flight attendant and the Big Man manages to work out there is wine! Only a few bottles! It may be warm wine…but as the word ripples out from row 21, it is in high demand! There is a very British jolly grey market onboard this BA flight…. and the mood lifts.
Wine is clearly an essential for some of us…. especially to celebrate the fact that we are airborne! 
As for my personal travel essentials, my BF says pants are overrated, I found a razor, some high priced non toxic skincare and a couple of outfits worth more than my entire case full of clothes! 

It feels strange to be sat here, reading the headlines of an event we were part of.  As I look at the little blond heads at the end of my four poster bed glued to Britain’s Got Talent, I check out the BBC headlines telling of sensational news at our biggest national airports.

 

Yes, I agree, looking back, it is incredible that there were simply no updates to explain what was going on.  But wouldn’t that have caused mass chaos and stampedes?

 

Yes, the queues were massive, long snaking around the entire lounge areas, but it was a double whammy weekend, bank holiday and the first day of half term holidays, wouldn’t they have been there anyway?

 

Yes, they could have been far more organised, rather than funnelling everyone at the same time back out through border patrol, huge groups of hot, tired families and upset children, could they not have called groups by flight number?

 

With no chance getting near any member of BA staff or on to the BA website, which crashed or bandwith didn’t allow, there was only one thing for us to do, and that was to keep calm, wait and keep feeding the boys every 2 hours.

 

There was only one moment I felt my heart fly up to my mouth, ‘would all families with children under 12 walk towards the police officer to be shown how to get out’.  At that moment, I am glad I was with the Big Man, that it wasn’t back in January and I was alone.  His presence, ‘largesse’, powered us through calmly, politely and through every queue and we were outside far quicker than most.

 

I didn’t see any anger.  I just saw patience.  I saw families trying to make the most of their holidays with cupcakes and picnics and positive smiles.

 

When rumours of cyber attacks passed our ears, in the wake of the Manchester and Syria tragedies, I only felt gratitude that it was simply a disruption on technology and not on life; we took a moment and bought cards and connect 4 and played family games.  We were going on holiday to be a family, spend time as a family – that starts in the car, at the airport, not just poolside or on the beach….. no amount of anger or crying was going to change the fact that no BA system was working…. 

 

In the hour we had expected to be touching down in the Med, we found ourselves back in the car we had dropped off 6 or so hours earlier, unsure which direction to head.

 

There was really only one place to go.  To Grandad’s.  For ice cream.  And claiming the hug I had been wondering about and trying to work out logistically how to get while down South – no time before departure, back too late on arrival.

 

There is always a silver lining.  And we go to bed in the hope that we will be watching the sun setting in the med tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Today, Friday 25^th May was always going to be about packing.  Originally, we had earmarked half term as moving week…  When those plans fell through, we decided to head off for some fun and relaxation, to reset our minds and have a few mojitos while filling out the big white blank sheets of the next chapter and creatively defining what the first page looked like.

 

So, I went looking for my Africa dress, the pink dress that marked my time and future as a single Mum as a strong, confident, loved, independent woman.  It feels the right time to rebrand it as the dress to wear as an independent, confident, loved woman in a strong relationship and a family united.

 

I knew it was hanging in one of the boys’ bedrooms, and as I opened the door, the smell of my Mumbo hit me like the heat from a Mediterranean airport tarmac.  I fell forwards in to the silks, furs and satins of her coats and dresses and wrapped my arms around them, and felt her do the same.

 

It was an embrace of pride as the soft fabrics rustled and whispered their congratulations.

 

We had remained firm.  We had let go.  We had accepted and felt relieved from moving on.  And yet, those words of Woody sang out loudly again… or perhaps it was the tentative, nervous, returning trill of Snow White, finally letting go of her shame…?

 

“If you ever want something badly, let it go.  If it comes back to you, then it’s yours forever.  If it doesn’t, then it was never yours to begin with.”

 

The dream house will be our forever home.

 

With moments to spare, moments before I  intended on securing a lovely little cottage rental with magical views, a text message with emoji’s of champagne bottles and houses pinged.  And our course was reset once more.

 

I will sit with my 3 boys, wear the pink dress, drink mojito’s and relax as the rollercoaster free wheels back down, what I hope, will be the final loop in purchasing our pink house.  This has been one emotional, magical, powerful lesson in the art of letting go, trusting in the Universe and Fate, patience and strength in what you believe the outcome to be.

Tuesday I had to let go. Yesterday i accepted I had to accept. Today I feel relief. So much relief…. unhooking a huge old winter wool cloak and feeling it slipping away behind me and walking away, lighter. 
And towards the light. In this case a bright white blank sheet of paper. No ties.
I drank rose under the wisteria with my family and felt peace with our decisions. I drank a glass of red with a friend as the sun went down and felt warmth from the support of friendship.
And I realised I had driven miles around Yorkshire looking at rental properties without distraction. Without having to listen to audiobooks or music or even the constant chatter of the voices in my head.
Today there was relief, peace and blessed quiet. 

Last night while I had ‘let go’ I was struggling with the next phase, acceptance of the situation. I could no longer breathe and live in the moment, I couldn’t distract myself with positive thoughts and daydreams of the future, pinteresting and planning…. so that left only the past. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think in the claustrophobic space that was once my home, now just an address. I couldn’t bear to be near or in the same room as the Big Man and panic set in…

Did I think a house would fix it all, me, us, life? What was I thinking?!  How could I have thought that?  Did I really think that, or am I just overthinking and over analyzing everything again…

 

The dream house arrived just as I was walking away back in January …  The dream house tempted me back… to give it, us, another go.  It was a fresh start.  And just as we had done when we moved from London to Yorkshire, an opportunity.  An opportunity to renovate an old listed building, to convert an old coach house and develop some land…. renovate, convert and build. All synergistic with our relationship, our marriage and our family life.

And now it is a house of cards. Tumbling down. Not meant to be.

Does that mean the same for us? Our marriage?

Now that I can’t see or count on the future, the past catches back up with me.

I could see his pain, his sadness and anger that it hadn’t all worked out as he was tirelessly planning for. His frustration that an elderly emotional man wasted our time.  And money.  (This Great British house buying malarkey is just horrendous. On all levels.  For everyone involved.)

But I didn’t want his emotions. I wanted to focus on mine and feel mine, let mine go. Last year, in a similar position, I wanted to grieve the loss of Mumbo, and yet he projected his guilt and anger on to me, making me take the blame for the state of our relationship, so he didn’t have to recognise what he was doing, so he could keep his emotions in their compartmentalised boxes.  At that time, I did what I thought was the right thing, I accepted the blame, I absorbed his emotions and focused on making him feel better, in favour of being compassionate to myself and putting my feelings first.

Wisdom comes from experience and learning life’s lessons. Last night, I recognized that this time, I needed to deal with my feelings first and therefore, dealing with my own grief and anger and frustration for the loss of our future and our dreams of new life and fresh start in North Yorkshire… I would not absorb his too.  I did not have the capacity.

And yet all I wanted to do was hold his hands, painfully covered in excema from the stress of it all.  Cup his tired, ashen face in my hands and empathise and share our loss together. But I couldn’t as I wasn’t not yet ready to look him in the eye because the well of sadness and remorse was too much for me to take on.  I spent the evening and the night avoiding him…
As I lay this morning, trying to let the anger and emotion pass through, I worked on my mind to be in the here and now.  We are meant to live in the now, the simple passing of each moment…. but how do we do that when the now is not so pleasant to be in?
The question was answered right on cue, in my daily calm session, advising that we always have the choice to accept, to change or to leave our present situation.  If you can’t leave or change it, you have to accept it… by not accepting you resist and that only causes more pain and suffering.

I can’t leave and run away. I have beautiful little responsibilities.  And to leave and run away with them, would be reckless.
I can’t immediately change my situation.  Moving out of a house and into rented accommodation takes time.  Changing schools, a lengthy process.
So I have to breathe into acceptance and just find the small pleasures…Accept and understand that by living through the little moments, I will soon realise and notice that all things eventually change.

 

I feel better this evening.

 

In the little moments, I have organized new houses to see.  In the little moments, I have finalized our half term holiday plans.  I can now see a little bit more of an exciting future, next week in the sun, the week after moving in to rented accommodation and finding my space and freedom again.

 

And by doing so, I accept, that a house doesn’t make a home, the dream house doesn’t mean we have lost the dreams of our future;  as my friend quite rightly reminded me, the bricks and mortar don’t make the home, the family does.    And this family is a pretty damn strong one.

 

We are a family of dragon slayers.

 

I am a dragon, breathing fire in to my dark thoughts so I can see the light.

 

The dragon in my marriage has been tamed, and now the fierce protector.

 

The dragon in our dream house has retreated into his cave breathing fire, and by doing so engulfed himself in flames, ‘shooting himself in the foot.’

 

In every fairy tale, there willl always be dragons…..

It took me a bike ride, a pilates class and a steady 30 minute breathing exercise to calm my anxiety and tension this morning.

 

Perhaps it was the hangover of the bad taste left in my mouth from a meeting about the dream house, the frustration at our goodwill for turning up for the fifth time with an agreed agenda to only have it kyboshed by the seller to his own, and this time very emotional, one.  The whole process is now tainting the soul of the very beautiful house I fell in love with.

 

Perhaps it was that, lingering on my subconscious that made my usual calm way of dealing with a tantruming 7 year old (I thought they stopped that behaviour at 4?!) disappear after half an hour of calm negotiation to get dressed and out of his blanket toga, to clean his teeth rather than lie in the middle of the kitchen floor wailing.  With the aga turned off due to the heatwave, he could no longer warm his pants, socks, shorts and shirt and this threw him out of his routine and into a flat spin.

 

I didn’t realise my voice had raised to match his, until Tom, clearly at 9 years old, the only adult in the room, said “Stop shouting you two!  You are stood next to each other!”.

 

In that moment, I breathed and heard the words “Raise your words, not your voice”.  But I was up against a screaming, high pitched voice on a loop saying “you horrid, Mummy! You nasty, Mummy!  I hate you!” And with 1 minute to go until he was due to get in his lift to school, I had to shock him out of his catatonic state.  It was a controlled yet firm smack to the soft part of his bottom.  And those blue eyes, steely, stared at me in surprise.  But he was quiet for a moment to hear me ask him quietly to get ready as he needed to go to school.

 

60 seconds later, peace reigned loudly and I was left with my head in my hands, shaking at the kitchen table.  Mortified at my actions, adrenalin coursing through my body.

 

I turned on the TV as a distraction:  the headlines that 22 people had been killed, mostly children in a cowardly suicide bombing terrorist attack.

 

All thoughts of dream houses gone, no longer important and put in to perspective.  And I had just smacked my child while others mourned the loss of theirs.

 

It took me a long meditation, a bike ride and a pilates class to calm down.  To forgive myself, for I know I must.  To remind myself of all the good things I do as a mother.

 

It was only on the bike ride home from pilates, that as I free wheeled through the buttercups, daisies, pinks, spring grasses and cow parsley, I let it all go.  The anxiety, the tension, the smack … and the dream house.

 

For 5 months I have dreamt of this house, but it now feels tainted and time to let it go.  Let it go so that we leave space for something else to come in to view.  Or as Woody Harrelson said in Indecent Proposal about Demi Moore, “If you ever want something badly, let it go.  If it comes back to you, then it is yours forever.  If it doesn’t, then it was never yours to begin with.”