my northern faerie history

(my autbiography in 50 words)

born and bred in good old yorkshire, i was an eccentric child. the family breakdown preceded unreachable teenage years, before i 'found myself' again at university studying books. afterwards, i returned to little girl lost and sought solace and freedom in the mountains. currently working on the search for contentment!

so it started with the zen dog, and hopefully now i find myself mainly on the healthy side of the boggart/faerie borderline. but it took a long time for all those seeds of thought to sprout - somewhere along the line it seemed i’d gone off track (a joni mitchell lyric?), hurling myself headlong into an uneasy state of stasis from which i had no idea how to escape.

the problem was and always is, that although you don’t realise at the time; there is no escape. everything must start from within and gradually extend outwards. your mind must settle itself before all else, because that’s the only way to really live life instead of continually torturing yourself for 80 odd years, or indeed, however long or little you happen to live.

i was a bit of a tortured soul. generally a worrier, lots of teenage angst and not without my issues. i remember watching the news as a kid and seeing war raging in some far-off land. i erroneously wished for such drama and excitement to occur in my own life, since that was what i was always reading about in my books. i thought that this was necessary in order to have any hope of becoming an artist. not that i didn't simultaneously realise that this was ridiculous - because not only was i terrified as i heard about this bloodshed, but i shed tears for those people caught in the reality of crossfire. i thought kids lacked empathy, but sometimes i look back and think it can be the opposite - that we learn to shut certain things out as we grow. as a teenager, i could watch any violent film or depressing documentary with ease. nowadays, i struggle to do the same. it seems to have all gone full circle.

anyway, we’ll save this stuff for another time. the problems began when i finished university. unexpectedly, after telling everyone how much i was looking forward to freedom from the shackles of education, i found myself with a fairly hefty case of the post-uni blues. i felt like a castaway, ill-equipped for life on the new and confusing island of adulthood. nobody warned me about this! i was ready to start campaigning for university-leaver counselling as standard, such was my dramatic reaction. i became a waif, a stray, a little girl lost. i hadn't realised it, but i loved learning and it gave my life meaning.

in a more cynical sense, studying is also the easy way. whilst studying, no one can question the worth of your life choices. you’re getting a degree, who’s going to tell you not to do that? you feel fulfilled due to all the new, academic and ’important’ stuff you’re learning. you also embrace a newfound freedom, which includes new people, places and free money! what more could you ask for? although not many of us are really happy with it at the time, which is typical of our stupidity.

so in that sense, living in the moment has always been a problem for all of us. we lean forwards, backwards, sideways; any which way but bloody stand straight up! we spend half our lives being excited, reminiscing, remembering or anticipating. why can’t we just be here, now, like the zen dog? aims and objectives are good, we all need to develop the stamina to journey step by step, day by day, perhaps even inch by inch (with an occasional few steps back!) towards our dreams. but surely there is a middle ground that lies between the two?

so where are the directions to this middle way? and would it be boring there? or are we looking for/expecting some kind of higher level middle way?! are we just expecting too much? i’ve been searching for longer than i knew, and i’m still not sure that i’ve even located the map. i’m just plodding along like all the other little ants, hoping to find whatever it is that i don’t know i’m looking for.

so this little history is to basically tell you, that like everyone, i’m searching for contentment. it’s been a hard slog this last couple of years. despite having the privilege of being born in a wealthy country with loving parents, plus having access to a good education and wanting for nothing that i really need, i have still managed to torture myself into panic attacks and all sorts of mental anguish.

pathetic eh. but i'm not going to torture myself looking back at how hard my own mind has made the last few years. i understand that this was just a path i had to walk to get to where i am now. despite everything i've learned since those days, i realise that there will be challenges along the way and that sometimes, the boggart will rear his ugly head to drag me back down from my positive frame of mind. he is there for a reason - because i'm only human. perhaps i'm missing something here, i'm sure the buddhists amongst us would say that we are all capable of ridding ourselves of our inner boggart. perhaps they're right, i don't claim to know. anything is possible.

for now, i'll simply struggle onwards, having a stern word with both boggart and faerie when required. as somebody once said to me, 'that's the beauty of life, you can make mistakes. you're in a constant state of self-improvement'.