Five Minute Friday: Release

When I discovered this whole community of bloggers who participate in Lisa Jo Baker's Five Minute Friday link up, one of the things that appealed to me about it was the invitation to just write. If only for five minutes, to write without editing or too much thinking, to ignore the inner skeptic and just let the words flow. And yet in recent months, I have felt at a complete loss for words and so I have not given myself the opportunity to sit and write. My inner critic has been speaking loud and clear, and so I have avoided participating. But there's something in me that misses writing more than a recipe. And so today, here we go...


Release:
The sun is shining powerfully as a leave the house this afternoon to take some post to the post box that stands in its regal red splendour, just around the corner from our home. The first thing I notice as I walk, aside from the sleep that is already closing in on my baby, is the music that's blaring and declaring its presence. I scan the street to discover where the music is coming from, while noticing how my mind makes the immediate connection with the music. Leftfield. Release the pressure. As I reminisce about the years gone by since I discovered Leftfield, I realise the blurring of lines that has happened with the passing of time; a blurring that means I cannot pinpoint when I first heard their music, and the present blurring of music - this is not Leftfield, it just sounds very much like them.

On my journey home, I note that the music has stopped, and for some reason my thoughts have travelled to the moment during my labour when I had just been transferred to hospital. After eighteen or so hours of labour at home, I needed assisstance, and the first thing the midwife assured me of, was release from the pain with the help of an epidural. I had never wanted an epidural before I knew what the all consuming contractions of labour would feel like, and even in these final stages of labour where my body felt weak in a way that I had never known, I knew that release from the pain was not what I needed. I needed to be able to feel what my body was doing. Because for me in that moment, release would have felt like loss.