Arguing the meaning of life and what is functional.

I had a conversation with my mother a long time ago about the meaning of life before I studied Occupational Therapy and as I am writing this piece I am sat in front of a beautiful sea view. Maybe John’s mom is right, perhaps the key to life is happiness and I suppose this is why my mom said it’s okay because you are on your way. It is a little weird and wonderful how this all worked out and I am taking the time to reflect on the past year.

I suppose you could call it weird inspiration. I have absolutely no idea. You see I have been through a lot of trials and tribulations. I have discovered that what is in my head when I am stressed there needs to be outlet  to someone or something. Preferably not people because I normally do the weird and wonderful thing of cursing inanimate objects. Are you feeling me? No you are just a rock or a computer: cold to touch with no life. There are multiple purpose’s to the object but not a lot of answers back. This sometimes is good because you really want to vent rubbish at it…. without hurting someone’s feelings; as silly as it may seen.  Damn it! John was only five and he knew that we all needed to be happy and embrace the horrible situations

I recently had those notions that you get when seeing things with absolute clarity. This was not because people had hurt me but it was because I wanted to hear the people who were giving me good advice at the time I was hurt.  I am sat here watching boats pass one another , it is rather surreal. You see this time last year I was in a very scared point in my life. There were jobs around but no one wanted to hire me because as soon as I admitted I had my best friend of my life, my daughter and my side kick to good times, they did not want to give me a chance.

You could say that my story had become the modern day Les Miserable. I thought that I was the character Fantine and I had no choice as I lost my job and I had no where else to turn. However, I was conscious about my point, I was not going to turn to prostitution or drugs.  I thought Fantine had a really hard deal with all that she had, however still to this day people hear about Les Miserable and look at the film and seem like they cannot relate to the story-line. Unfortunately, I can relate to Fantine and every time I think about it, there I left my poor Cosette in some situation where she was unhappy and felt like a spear wheel until I begged the rich person who I worked for to look after her before I died.  I mean, in a nutshell we do not see Fantine for very long in Les Miserable but there seems to be an awful lot of women with the same tragic story-line. They are unable to pay for their lives and their keep; bearing in mind this is the 21^st century. I think it is sad because stability is very important and when I compare my life to Fantine I dread the awful outcome she had. The problem is not that I lack motivation, its just that I really have tried hard and this is when people know about your circumstances and want to rip you a new hole over it. I suppose this is how Fantine felt when they made fun of her at work for having a daughter and she did not have time to see her because she was working all the time, so she had a picture of her daughter and then her co= workers set her up so she lost her job. It happens so much in those situations but at the moment (touch wood, I am not getting that nasty horrible feed back because babies make me feel better.) I was not an awful mom, I was put in a circumstance out of my control and tried everything in my power to be stable.

 

I was conscious that I was not going to be given the sore hand all the time. My ex dealt some heavy blows to my heart and so did my family. So this time last year, I had achy bones, I could not breath, I was unable to see a way out.  I had my ex threaten me on my doorstep daily. It was a heavy burden. When I found I could not hold an injunction against him and protect myself. I felt it was best to change direction. Here I am sat smelling the beautiful air. Yes, I haven’t a home and yes I need structure but seriously; comparing my life now to what it was is exactly what I am doing.

 

It is like giving myself more purposeful motivation for the decisions I made and most have said to me they are unable to have their stability back. I do not know if I was looking for some political action or some way of life to improve but, it was not happening. All the while I would struggle to believe in this action myself.  This is kind of following the Les Miserable theme, as we see the black and the red social party having a grip on Paris.

 

I was taking part but nothing was happening. I felt like the motion in people and the solitude deprivation was not hardly enough motivation for the people to revolt like Les Miserable.  This is the dysfunctional part. Sometimes I feel, people like to bully others when they know they are not brave enough to embrace a new challenge. They would rather hate and despise people when they are comfortable. I am sat here and I am thinking about all the people who despised me. I sometimes ponder on what Fantine would think if she had lived through that terrible ordeal and how bitter she may have become because of the fact so many people let her down.  Although there is a positive note to comparing myself to a book. I am able to write my own life and have my own fate.  It is the tough parts that taught me a few lessons.

So without this process of thought I would like to ask myself how much I have achieved. This is not because I want to rub it into people’s faces….This is because I feel as though I need to plan ahead a little more:

1. Studied for three years if not more if you count studying a new language and where you are now.
2. You have worked in mental health
3. You have worked in accident and emergency
4. You have worked with children in another country and speak their language back to them. You have done this in the space of 8 months and you are in your mid 30’s.
5. You have had to face the days where you have eaten next to nothing and gone to work and ate only bread.
6. You have almost frozen to death when you lived in poverty.
7. You asked your late uncle to help you and he did because he was amazing.
8. You live in a different country and you wanted to ask your family for help the other day and then turned them down due to the fact that your bank details have been stolen again.
9. You were unable to find work whilst studying so you sold Eco friendly products.
10. You went to festivals and saw all the bands and then you sang in a little band
11. You met people in a cafe and one of them is a really close friend.
12. You get along with a french person and that is totally funny.
13. You learned to research about yoga and then translated that into another language.
14. You do presentations in another language almost fluently.
15. You learned to not stress about the little things and have messy hair.
16. You learned to trust some people again even though you flipping hated that idea back in England.
17. You learned to go without clothes or clothes you love because of how niche they are.
18. You learned to answer people back in a polite way even though you are in a pissy mood. (give your self a massive pat on the back for that.)
19. You learned to give self appraisal.
20. You are happy because you are able to teach little children that it is okay to relax and forget about things. The famous lines of relaxing or learning to not stress over the little things has been very good.
21. You learned more history for yourself.
22. You learned to use shops to have random conversations in to improve your language skills. Shop assistants have all that time to kill and they need new customers so you can work on your language skills and techniques.
23. You learned to develop in other areas which has given you more wisdom and yes you may be frightened of your future but you are staying focused. You do not need other people to distract you or make you feel insignificant.
24. You want ed to call the police several times to help you with misunderstandings and felt safer for doing so.
25. You learned to check and verify with people and that it is okay, you are not stupid – we all learn at different speeds. Some of us have more passion than others and this affects the learning process.
26. You learned that Vytosky is a better guy than you though because he discusses communication throughout stages.
27. You have met several people who made you realise it is okay to be weird and wonderful.
28. You refused to be stereotyped. Even when the going was rough and tough you held your ground.
29. You believed that your family was not going to help you financially but reluctantly have helped your side kick. You were completely right about that and you have all the right to be angry with them over matters.
30. You believe that even though it seems like you are over exaggerating about someones behaviour…… you aren’t you need to go with your gut instinct.
31. You know when you are most vulnerable. Your family have left you in circumstances where you could have turned to drugs or prostitution but you still held on to your dignity.

 

 

Goodness me, I read over what I wrote and  it was a lot that I learned over the last 9 months! Surely, there isn’t anymore to learn about? Of course there is, hence the reason why  I am continuing. Not because I will get hurt later, but because the people who hurt me before really couldn’t possibly get to me now. I thought about what hinders me most and I think it would have to be that some people really do not know how to deal with me because I am not the type to give up once I start something, positive with no retribution. I suppose I was looking for what they call the holy grail. However, this is not the meaning of life.

 

Essentially, I am saying I have a job and it gives me meaning even though it does not pay. I wanted to be valued as a person. I think no one values anyone right now. We are living in a Victor Hugo novel in the 21^st Century but we are distracted by technology and it is making us think our voices are being heard., with all the twittering and facebooking we are doing – thinking someone has heard us out there.  We can quite honestly see no one is really paying attention because everyone who feels devalued are throwing stones and rocks at one another in an insulting hurling way and then no one is getting anywhere. This really does not make us function in life we are just throwing comments backwards and forward’s and nothing is happening with the whole bigger picture. So all in all we are becoming more dysfunctional.

 

 

I realised,  working for nothing has made me realise what I would do with that money. Money serves that important function in our lives and we all need it. I thought about a nice sea view home but I would not be able to afford it. I thought about a home with a garden but I cannot afford these things even when I am paid. I think I want to enjoy more of this beautiful place. I want to make sure that I climb a mountain and sing at the top of the mountain when I get there. I want to ski and I want to also make more friends. I mean these are the things I am writing about so that they happen. Then I want my daughter to join me and I want us to live happily with a beautiful view and have lots of hugs and hot chocolate together. I want her not to be hurt. She was bound to be broken hearted but I don’t want her to be physically hurt by the person who hurt me.

 

I want to give up my citizenship and live in this beautiful land I fell in love with and I want to die here. I don’t care how much it will break my back but I see happy people everyday and I smile at them and they smile back. This is how simply put I want my life after all those years of physical and emotional abuse. I want also to make apple crumble with lots of cinnamon and I want to do this to perfection. I want to continue working but get paid for it and have a bank account that I can trust. Not a bank account that will demand charges or steal from me every transaction. I want to be able to save up for my later years so I can give my daughter all the help she needs to study. I want to be that support for her to make up for me doing what I am doing. I want to be in a good relationship like the one I am in now and I would want to marry that person because they are not bad…. they are not abusive but I am scared. I want to be able to go places by myself and then comeback to that person and think they are wanting to be with me because I am worth being with.

 

I think that I have made the meaning of life quite simply now…. you need love and you need stability  which means money has to come in. Also, you need loads of hugs from babies to heal your pain. Oh and smiling at people is so much more comforting because you too can giggle about your messy hair or your shabby dress or that people saw your bum bum when you wore a particular dress and you can laugh at it. Happiness who would have thought it was so simple to be more functional in this world. Happiness and money.