House of Cards

House of Cards

When I view myself from above,
As I can do sometimes, in my head – a bird’s eye view of where I am at the moment,
I see a house of cards, but with cards made of rice paper.
It is disconcerting.
I feel like everything is very precariously being held in a balance, at the moment. One false move and BAM, everything tumbling down. I know that things are ok, and I am lucky, and I have my home and my friends and my boyfriend to keep me safe. And I have all the strength I have built up.
But one false move…
It is very odd, I can tell you, to feel this teenage about life again. I feel like the day that I started crying when I couldn’t work out which of the two purple toothbrushes in the toothbrush jar belonged to me. I’m on a verge…
When you lose something that makes you feel stable, when things you rely on fall away, be that a job, or a friendship, or a life or family…the effect is far more frightening than I ever imagined.
When I am not seeing a house of cards I see a matchstick structure held together by spiderweb silk, wavering.
They are strong structures, they are built o stand. But they can be damaged by a false move.
I have never liked change. Change feels like a stiff breeze against the house of cards.
I am blessed in that I have wonderful people around me who can cement that spiderweb silk and who can superglue down the cards.
But the background stability, the knowledge that things work out and remain solid, that some things really are forever and for good, the loss of that knowledge, it’s a stiff breeze.
I am having nightmares most nights and waking up. When I don’t have a nightmare, something on my street wakes me up. It isn’t that helpful.

I have huge reserves of strength. I know this, I have survived before. It is just hard to remember sometimes.
And I pay tribute to the people around me who keep things ok.