Disclaimer: I realise that this post has nothing to do with what I might feel guilty about; in all honesty, the overriding feeling that is dominating how I feel right now is tiredness. So instead of guilt, I have written about how tiredness is taking my memory and how I need to write to remember what I will eventually forget - there is a heaviness to this tiredness that won't last and I am looking forward to forgetting about the heaviness.
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It's Sunday afternoon and I am thinking about how to paint a picture with words for you to understand what I want to share. If my writing were a painting, there would be great chunks missing and smudged. This is how my brain feels right now. I say this not in complaint or for pity, but purely, to try and communicate effectively. It still feels new to me, this 'missing' of pieces of information that has happened since having a baby. This inability to recall whom I held a conversation with earlier in a week, or what it was that I was thinking about just a few minutes ago. It feels like there are a lot of missing links in my head, but I am certain it is not madness; just lack of sleep.
In all of the years I have had this blog, all I have really wanted to do with it is to record moments and memories with a whole lot of recipes thrown in. So it feels strange to me now, that I feel like I am losing the ability to tell stories in this space. This is one of the reasons why I am taking part in the #lifecapturedproject, to exercise my writing muscles. Perhaps it is the same with writing as it is with muscle memory and musical memory - that simply the process of doing what I have forgotten how to do, I will remember how to make words come together in a way that makes sense.
There is a children's book which I love called 'Mile High Apple Pie', and it is written from the perspective of a Granddaughter, living with her elderly Grandmother whose memory is starting to fade. There's this beautiful line at the end of the book, where the Granddaughter is having a painful conversation with her Grandmother, who is starting to forget who her Granddaughter is, along with all of the other details in her life that are getting drowned out by dementia. The little girl looks into her Grandmother's eyes and says, 'I am your remembering.' I have always loved that line the most. We need people to help us remember, and having a written record of the things we do not want to forget is another beautiful way of remembering. In a way, this blog is my remembering; of things past and present. Of small victories and beautiful memories. It's my way of reminding myself that things always change, and the difficult seasons do not last forever. I will look back on my words from these days - these first years of motherhood and remember that surviving on very little sleep might not be pretty, but it is absolutely possible.
And when I struggle for the words to paint the pictures that I would like to share, I will keep turning to my trusty camera to capture the moments, the memories and the beauty around me. Because it does me good to just write & remember.
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