The Family Room

It's been eight months since I have written for this blog. I've avoided it. Missed it. Been relieved to see the back of it. All of those things. To say that life gets complex is an understatement - well, life between my ears, that is. This thing, called my brain, is a troublesome thing. It quickly turns an act of love into a labour of perfectionism. It creates a corner of the world that is supposed to be a place to breathe ; both for myself and for visitors...and it turns it into a formal lounge room. You know what a formal lounge room is, right? They're not so common where I live, in middle class working suburbia. My experience of a formal lounge room comes right out of the nineties:

When I was in my teens, my mother cleaned a home for a few years, to bring in a little extra money. I occasionally accompanied her; helping to do some of the tasks and she would reimburse me for my 'part' of the job. Mostly I remember the toilets (ick), vacuuming the upstairs bedroom and the bookshelves, where I would sometimes get distracted by enticing reads such as 'How to win friends and influence people' and a book whose title I forget, which was lamenting the loss of femininity in a modern world. The writer - a male - suggested that women had even lost touch with the art of brushing their hair. How a woman's hair today was, flat, dull and lifeless. His remedy was an old one; he suggested female readers ought to tip their heads upside down and stroke in 100 slow, deliberate movements from the nape of the neck to the tip using a natural bristle brush. But back to the lounge room.

At the front of the modern and sparse two story home that my mother and I cleaned, was a large, narrow room with a front-facing window. The room was pristine. It contained a formal lounge suite and a formal dining table. A fireplace, which looked untouched. A crystal vase or two and a generic picture on the wall. Every week, the room was spotless, clearly unused, and I was always taken with the waste of it.

All that perfection, no one to use it.

My blog, became a formal lounge: in my head at least. A place where only the best china belonged; only the most intelligent and eloquent thoughts; only the most innovative ideas that no one else was writing. My inner perfectionist loves to take the reigns of my life as it sees fit.
I'm learning to beat it into submission.
Realising that I don't always have to be the best (I can't)
the most polished (too much work)
or the most intelligent (how exhausting!)
so I'm reclaiming my blog as a family room.

Stains on the pillows, half-eaten snacks on scratched, ikea plates. The television might be blaring on a station no one is interested in watching.
And that's fine.
That's family life.

And that's what this is all about: creating space for life. For thoughts. For imperfection.
See, no matter how much I avoided this place, I couldn't stop the writing spilling out of me. It poured out in Instagram and on Facebook. In free-writes on my computer and in my bullet journal.

I'm made to pour out.

It's how I process life.

I stopped the process for awhile because I was afraid to be vulnerable.
Afraid for you to see my pillows. Afraid for the criticism I might receive.
Afraid that I might see for myself what a mess I am.

Now, I'm saying no to fear.

This is me and this is my corner of the world. My take on God. My online journal. It's a work in progress and so am I.

Put on your comfy pants - the ones with elastic in the waist - and join me on a new and comfy journey.

Here's to 2017!