Trisha Cornelius

Figuring it out as I go

A New Year’s Wish for 2018 and some bits about grief

Hello world,

This is something that I shamelessly stole from Neil Gaiman. The idea of a New Year’s wish, even though this year he did not make a wish for us:

I still have a wish, on this difficult day. My wish for 2018 is that you find your balance. May you find the balance between taking care of yourself and looking out for others. May you find the balance between the frost and the fire. May you find the balance between fighting fights that need to be fought and walking away so that you are not always fighting.  May you find the way to channel our destructive emotions into useful things and use it to find your balance.

Love and balance,
Trisha

P.S. As I typed the wish I realized how much of this was inspired by Sir Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith and I Shall Wear Midnight.

***

Today marks two years since my dad was murdered. This time two years ago I was getting ready to spend the night at my parents-in-law’s house after I had come to my childhood home and seen that the horror of the truth of a phone call that I hoped was a terrible mistake was a harsh reality. And so, on this difficult day I am grateful for music that helps me feel. The specific song that called to me now was Song for my Father by Kim Boekbinder. A haunting piece of music, whose lyrics I identify with:

In between me and you
are a million points of light,
I’ve cast them up into a darkening sky.
You can follow them to me
when you are lost or you are free
and I will wait here, I will wonder why.

I don’t presume to know the meaning that Kim Boekbinder intended, but I know that for me the idea that my dad tossed up a million points of light into the darkening sky to guide me is comforting. Death doesn’t end relationships, it changes them to be one sided and made up of memories and interpretations. I was always a daddy’s girl. Ironically after I became a mother I now identify more strongly with her and understand her more, but she is also gone, but naturally (even though suddenly as well).

And I know in the music and the memories I will always find my dad.

Love and grief,
Trisha

Tactical retreat

Generally my anxiety and depression are quite well managed and under control. At the moment, specifically, my depression is misbehaving.

I don’t think that there are any particular triggers at the moment. I just know that it is hard. Part of me is telling myself to carry on regardless to just fight through. The wiser part of me knows that the best thing to do is pause, acknowledge that this particular battle is a difficult one. This part of me knows that there is no shame in taking a breather, giving myself space and cutting myself some slack. I will not lose my war, but I am going to retreat from battles that I cannot win. And that is a victory on its own.

I’m back

Hello blog!

It’s been a while. So let me catch you up: At the beginning of 2017, I wrote that I thought that I might have burnt out. I was wrong. I did not burn out. I was ill. My GP picked up the fact that I had a goitre on my thyroid (which is just a fancy way of saying that it was enlarged) and referred me to a specialist. The specialist with the help of a detailed ultrasound and blood tests made a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis which meant that my body was attacking my thyroid resulting in fatigue, joint pain, brain fog and a myriad of other symptoms. We decided that the best option in my case was to have a complete thyroidectomy. On, the 4th of April I went into the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre to have surgery. I am incredibly grateful that I am in the position to have a good medical aid and the resources to afford private health care.  The surgery changed my life for the better, I was immediately able to breathe better and my energy level improved dramatically.

In the meantime, my quest for justice in my father’s killing continues. I am glad that I have a solid support system, a legal background (including inquests) and a great therapist.

I started tutoring Computer Applications Technology at the beginning of the year. I am appalled by the way that our policy is not keeping up to date with the technologies. Textbooks and student guides should not be referring to deprecated HTML. It felt like I was going back in history to the days of the browser wars. I am glad to have had this experience though even if I have needed to teach computer history and then the modern implement. I know that teenagers have a terrible reputation, but interacting with these ones has reinforced my view that they have an amazing perspective.

We went on an amazing road trip as a family for three weeks where we touched on six of nine provinces in South Africa and travelled over five thousand kilometres during September. I will post pictures and stories soon.

Now, I am back in Cape Town for WordCamp. I am hoping to do some more blogging soon.

 

Anxiety sucks #WCCT2017

Anxiety sucks. It sneaks up on you. It spirals out of control. It’s the one little thing in the morning that tries (and often succeeds) to eat up the rest of the day. It is the thing that causes you to believe that everyone cares about the insignificant things that you have messed up. It’s a bizarre dichotomy, simultaneously believing that no-one really cares about you and believing that they are picking apart every little thing that you have done and interpreted it in the worst possible way.

Anxiety is what strips away your ability to focus in a workshop that you have been looking forward to for weeks. It gives you a brain fog which it weaponizes to call you names like “Stupid” and “Fraud” and tells you that you don’t have any right to be sitting in a room among your peers.

Anxiety sucks. But it is not all powerful. Anxiety can be calmed by trusting the people who tell you that you are allowed to be where you are. That it’s okay not to know everything. That it’s okay to breathe. It can be calmed by being brave and trusting the community that has welcomed you.

Right now, I am sitting in “Sass to the reCSSue” at WordCamp Cape Town 2017 and I am not going to let anxiety win. My battle cry is pushing publish and giving myself the time to reset my day.

Self-care is the antithesis of selfishness

I have been doing a lot of reading in the last while about selfishness and self-care, and the fact that while it is good to be selfless in an emergency situation once the emergency is over one should revert to proper self-care.

Taking care of myself was not a priority in twenty-sixteen. There were other more important things that needed my attention. I have started looking at how to take better care of myself in twenty-seventeen. The two biggest things that are going to help me with that is that I have help. My amazing housekeeper is back from maternity leave, and I have more help with child care.

I have also been reflecting on why it was so much easier to keep the house clean while we lived in Costa Rica and immediately after we returned. I have come to the conclusion that it was a case of us having less stuff and because of that being better organized. It is a challenge to get rid of stuff, especially when there are memories linked to the stuff, but sometimes you can hold onto the memories but let go of the stuff.

And so in the weeks to come I am probably going to be letting go of more stuff. Keeping the high quality, useful things and letting go of the rest and I am looking forward to it.

 

Hello 2017

The last two months have been an incredibly tough time for me. I am a bit cross with myself for not acknowledging that it was going to be so tough. For not blocking out 19  November to 16 January as being a difficult time and marking it off for self-care. But as life goes on, I live and learn.

It was my first Christmas as an orphan…but I am grateful that I have an amazing chosen family, my in-laws and my child’s God Parents. That I have people who I can be honest with, that will let me have a good cry on the couch and then bring me tea and cheerfully joke with me, and love me at my best and worst, and every stage in between.

I don’t know if I just got burnt out. It is inadvisable to be working, worrying about a police investigation, supervising an estate’s executor, organising a conference, grieving, mommying a toddler, managing a house while your helper is on maternity leave, being a wife and I am sure there is something else without having more help. But this is changing. My mind is foggy, my body strained. But I survived, and 2017 is off to a much better start than 2016.

Twenty-sixteen was the most difficult year of my life, and I think that it might be the year that I learnt the most from. I did not achieve the goals that I set out to, but then life happened in a different way and I got other stuff done instead.

I have a top secret list of things that I want to achieve this year (and include the reason that I am writing a blog post twenty minutes before midnight on a Saturday night). I don’t know if I will manage a fraction of it. What I do know is this. I would rather try and fail than succeed at not showing up.