You Are Not Alone

Not so long ago, I got up on a Saturday morning and I couldn’t see the point to carrying on any more. Not to the extent that I really wanted to hurt myself. Just to the extent that it went through my mind that I just wanted to disappear. Now, before I did this, I did have one rational thought. I tried to call my sister. Inevitably she didn’t answer. I left her a message, asking her to check on the kids for me. On that day, I think this was my last attempt to try to find someone to help me. With that, I turned off my phone and decided instead to roar off in the car as fast as I could.

I got precisely two minutes down the road before I realised that my plan to run away from home was never going to work. First, I found myself trying to go as fast as I could behind another car, who was clearly out for a gentle Saturday morning meander. As I sat in my car, doing 20 miles an hour, I thought to myself that this, as getaways went, was a very pitiful attempt. I also realised that I was running out of petrol. 

I pulled into a layby and sat by myself. The voice in my head berating me for not even being very successful at running away. What on earth was I going to do now? I couldn’t go home. There was no way to run off (due to lack of petrol and lack of money to buy it). I didn’t want to go and bother my friends. They all have problems of their own to deal with and exciting lives that involve doing fancy things on a Saturday morning. I sat there for ages. After a while, I decided I was going to do the only thing I could think of. Find somewhere for a cup of tea.

In the end, I ended up in Tesco car park. A whole 7 minutes away from home. I went and sat in the café. I was a miserable soggy mess, having sat and cried so much. By the time I had drunk my tea and calmed down a bit, I realised that I should switch my phone back on and speak to my sister. She would probably be hopeless at finding me solutions, but it was time to at least talk to someone.

When I did, I discovered that my daughter had sent the balloon up. I had voicemails and text messages from my sister, my children and my friends asking me to get in touch with them. My sister said she would come and find me and my daughter was telling me she loved me. And that is because of another curious quirk of human nature. When we know someone who is in trouble, we are always more likely to want to try and help them than not. It’s another reason why I am certain that if you need help and you ask for it, you are fairly likely to get it.

When Milla and I first began to talk about The Emergency Chicken, the Blog and the Podcasts, Milla gave me a very firm instruction: ‘It has to have a tagline. Something simple.’ I came up with “Life is never easy, but you are not alone”. This was no accident, nor is it just some glib statement designed to attract your attention. 

I picked this phrase because I believe that no matter how bad it is, no matter what trouble you assume you are in, and no matter how hard what is ahead, you are not friendless, or powerless and you are not alone. That may sound easy for me to say. I have family and I have friends. It’s not always been that way though. I know that loneliness is often described as at epidemic proportions in this country. But I really do believe that no one is without friends or help from somewhere. Sometimes it is difficult to find either of these things. But if you try hard enough, they will be there. 

Some days, life is easy. The days aren’t good or bad. We walk through the daily problems and irritations, finding solutions to the puzzles and having the odd little win. We get on with our regular work or chores, feeling that sense of being good to get that stuff done and out of the way. Often, we just tootle on through our routines and get to the end of each day and feel glad that we have made a reasonable job of it all.

Other days can be great. These are the times when you plan the things you dream of doing or work on the goals that you want to achieve. They are the times when you really enjoy yourself and have fun. You laugh, wonder at how the time has passed by in a flash, the sun has shone and the sky was blue. You’ve made happy memories.

Then there are the not so good days. The awful days; the days when nothing goes according to plan or things happen that were so unexpected or so big, that you simply couldn’t deal with them. ’I haven’t got the headspace to work this out’ I shout to anyone that may be listening. These are the times when I become afraid or overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to do it. Or they are the days when you realise that you have made silly decisions, that had serious consequences for other people, maybe that you should have foreseen but you didn’t. 

I’ve had all those bad days and I know people who have gone through all these things too. The days when you just cannot face what lies ahead. You cannot cope with fixing a situation that may not have been of your making or may have been a direct result of something you have done. That it is all so bad and so painful to manage that it physically hurts.

Feeling that you are alone with all of this is horrible. You might feel guilt, shame or embarrassment. It makes the problems that you have or the errors you might have made feel all the worse. I’ve learnt that when you have something to deal with, a problem shared is a problem halved. Yes, its’ really hard to get those words out and admit that it’s all gone wrong. But if you can find someone who you trust and who you know won’t judge you, it is better to talk about it.

Why? Often because once you have said it, it feels better. You are no longer alone with it all. That can be a relief. You might also find that the person you are talking to has also been through the same things. They may have had the same experiences. Suddenly, you can find that an answer to everything you were so worried about can be found.

None of this is easy (because life if never easy) but if you need help, ask for it. You are not alone.

Help! I’m a Perfectionist…

Confession: I’m not a perfectionist. Of course, there are some things I’m very picky about. We all have our own standards, ways of doing things that keeps us in our comfort zone.  That doesn’t make us right, though. If we try and be perfect in everything, we’re attempting the impossible. We burn out, make ourselves ill and constantly beat ourselves up for failing. We need to find a better way.

We’ve talked on the podcast about being good enough and Thomas Curran’s book, The Perfection Trap which rightly points the finger at the world we live in and calls for societal change. I promised Em that, even though I’m not a perfectionist, I would try to identify some ideas for practical action points an individual can take.

Acceptance

There are two things we need to accept: Firstly, ourselves. Whether you like or not, you’re a mere human who makes mistakes, gets ill, makes mistakes, forgets things… the list is endless.  We all do. To expect otherwise is setting yourself up for constant disappointment and failure. Why do that? I know this is easier said than done but we can’t be content unless we learn to accept ourselves for who we are. 

Secondly, the world we live in. I like the way Thomas Curran explains that much of what we see is a set of man-made ideas to grow the economy, designed to make you spend money to get the perfect home or face.  You can either reframe how you see the world  –  it’s an advert you don’t need to buy into, accept it for what it is – or you can withdraw from it some of the time to reset your sanity. I’d go for a bit of both.

Deficit Thinking

This means you are always focusing on the gap between what you have achieved and perfection (and probably an idealised, unrealistic view of perfection) rather than the awesome stuff you did do. This is a recipe for anxiety and lack of self esteem. 

Instead, make yourself notice what you did do. If you had ten tasks on your job list and you did nine, that’s 90%! That would get you an A* or distinction in any exam. I’d celebrate that.

What if you only do two of the tasks?  It’s still more than none Failing sometimes makes us human. It’s normal. Forgiving ourselves is part of acceptance. Try to look at it rationally. Was the plan too ambitious? Did you have to do something else? Were you unwell?  Examine the causes, learn form it and move on. Don’t dwell on it.

 Don’t tell yourself you’ve failed or should have done better. Tell yourself you did your best and be proud of what you did achieve. Keep going until you’ve retrained your brain.

Choose your thing

If being a perfectionist is in your nature, it may be too much to let it all go. How about choosing which areas of your life your will strive for high standards, and those where you allow yourself to ease up? This will give you time to let your perfectionism let rip, and hopefully you will learn that the earth doesn’t stop turning if you loosen your grip in other areas. 

Identify WGLL

One of the dangers of perfectionism is that we’re not rational about what is achievable, given that we’re mere mortals. WGLL means What Good Looks Like.  Instead of have ridiculously high standards, find out what is achievable given the time and resources you have available and stick to it.  I used to have a boss that would constantly say ‘You can’t build a Rolls Royce if you’re being funded for a Mini.’ She was right. We need to work within our means, whether that is time, energy or money. We need to be realistic.

Limit your triggers

What gives you the idea that everyone else has a perfect life, and you’re the only one that can’t balance books while feeding a child and arranging giant lilies effortlessly?  Insta? Facebook? TV?  Your own fertile imagination?  If a platform or place is making you feel inadequate, limit your consumption, and when you do visit, take it with a pinch of salt. Usually the posters are struggling as much as you underneath the shiny veneer. I’ll discuss these ideas with Em (she’s a self-confessed perfectionist) to get her thoughts and see if she’ll try them. We’ll report any successes. Watch this space!

You can read our Blogs ‘Be Good Enough‘ and ‘What’s Wrong With Good Enough‘, and listen to our podcast episodes where we talk more about perfectionism.

I’m Sorry. It Isn’t You. It’s Me.

There is a song called ‘What a Fool Believes”, by The Doobie Brothers, sung by Michael McDonald.  Here’s the YouTube link if you either can’t remember it or are too young to know about it:

It contains these immortal lyrics:

“As he rises to her apology

Anybody else would surely know

He’s watching her go”.

Whenever I hear this, it makes me grin (and sing along, very, very badly).  I imagine I can see a woman, totally at ease with herself. She is looking directly into the eyes of the man in front of her.  She’s half smiling, maybe she reaches out and touches his arm.  And she is telling that man, gently but confidently, that it’s over, but it isn’t him, it’s her.  She’s had fun, but she just isn’t ready.  She thinks its best if they just stay friends. Then she gets up and says goodbye. With grace and dignity she walks out, in her high heels, skirt flowing, completely assured that she knows what she is doing.  She has no guilt and knows that she has made the right decision.  With that, she walks off into the night.

That is how I would love to be able to deliver bad news. I want to be the woman that’s in my imagination.  I wish I could find the right words to say, so that there is no argument and no over-explaining necessary.  To be direct, unwavering and then to be able to walk away, head held up, knowing you are doing exactly the right thing.

In my real world, how do I deliver bad news?  I can tell you now it is nothing like the woman in my mind from The Doobie Brothers song. If I can, I avoid giving bad news, using all manner of evasive tactics to prevent a confrontation.  I will then agonise over whether I am making the right decision. When the words finally must come out, I stumble over them. I cannot find the right things to say. I generally just give up and agree to do whatever it is that I don’t want to do.  Once again, my over-developed people pleasing nature kicks in.  

Instead of being firm and sticking to a decision to say ‘no, this isn’t right for me’ I end up persuading myself, that I can find a way of doing this, it will be ok.  The voice in my head is telling me that, yet again, madness lies this way and this was not how it was supposed to be.  The words I am saying and can hear myself speaking are the complete opposite. I laugh and say “it’ll be fine”.  

But my heart is sinking as in my head I am replying to myself with ‘no it won’t and you know it.” As for the ‘confidently striding away with grace and dignity thing’, I have never been able to pull that one off.  When it’s me, it’s head down, trying to run out of the room. I trip over my feet and get my skirt caught in my heels. 

I don’t like giving bad news and I would rather not.  Normally, the only one who then suffers the consequences of this are me.  Once I’ve given in, I end up endlessly questioning why on earth I have ever agreed to do something else that I don’t want to do and how I ever got myself into that situation at all.

I’ve been working away all summer, in a temporary consultancy job.  I rather like these kind of jobs as I get paid quite a bit without getting involved in all the politics that employment sometimes brings with it.  I was then offered a permanent position.  This is something that does happen (I’m not too bad at what I do and I have quite a bit of experience of doing it).  I said I’d think about it. 

Over the weeks since the offer, I have veered from ‘well, maybe it is time I had something permanent’ to ‘why on earth would I want to be here, with this company, forever’.  I considered the important things (pay, holidays, responsibilities) and realised that they weren’t going to pay me enough, I wouldn’t get enough leave and frankly I wasn’t prepared to be responsible for the rubbish that I would end up having to deal with if I stayed.  Yet, I wanted to just be done with it and say no.  I like the people that are there and the person that I would be working with.  I’ve been worrying that I would be causing them disappointment and the hassle of recruiting if I were to say no.

What did I do?  I’ve put it off.  For as long as I possibly can.  I don’t know why. It’s work and it shouldn’t be personal.  Where work is concerned, you should do what is best for you, no one else.  Yet I can’t find a way to let them down gently, so I’ve said nothing at all.  I still haven’t done it and I don’t know how.

I asked around to find out how you can learn to give bad news.  The answers range from trying to be authentic, genuine and compassionate.  Treat the other person with respect and dignity.  Don’t lie, be honest and clear.  All of which sounds eminently sensible and absolutely the right thing to do.  And yet I still can’t seem to grasp the right way. I have a feeling that when it comes to it I will either blurt the whole thing out (which won’t get the message over that I want to) or I will end up doing something else that I don’t want to do (and torturing myself about it for many weeks afterwards).

I’m going to try the being ‘clear, honest and respectful’ route.  I cannot be stuck in a job I don’t want to do, so I am going to have to be brave. It’s going to be hard. I suspect that I will embarrass myself.  I will let you know how that goes.

Read more of our Blogs here.

What’s Wrong With Good Enough?

It’s Friday morning and I scroll through Twitter/X/whatever it’s called. I come across a tweet (do we still call them tweets now we are living in the new X world?) that began “I thought I was fine but…”

The poster said he had three kids, a full time job and a book coming out.  He felt as if his daughter hated him and he was doubting everything.  

I don’t normally comment on the tweets/posts/musings of people I don’t know or who I have no connection with. But I felt for him.  I knew that there he was, outwardly looking great, in control, capable.  What’s he got to complain about? He has a family, a job, a life.  Doesn’t he realise how grateful he should be? I recognised that, inside, he probably felt as if he was being crushed by guilt and anxiety, thinking nothing worked, his family didn’t care, his daughter didn’t even like him and wondering why nothing he did was good enough.  I left him a reply telling her I thought he was amazing and to stop doubting himself.  He was good enough.

I know all of this, because it is how I feel on a daily basis.  It’s the stab of guilt as the kids get out of the car and I wonder what more I could have done to help them with their homework; it’s the doubt I feel when I give advice to the people I work with, wondering if this time I might have got it wrong. It’s the feeling that I want to run off and hide when I stare down the barrel of yet another logistical problem I must find a way to solve, knowing that whatever I come up with will be yet another compromise that not everyone will be happy about.

We don’t all get it right every day.  Yet instead of accepting this, we continue to strive for perfection.  I don’t want to do this anymore.  Whilst striving for excellence in everything I do is a worthy thing, I am tired of beating myself up when I don’t make it.  

Not so long ago, I read the Professor Thomas Curran Book ‘The Perfection Trap’ and talked about the ability to ‘Be Good Enough’. Here’s the link to his website – thomascurran.co.uk.  I learnt that perfection is unattainable.  It’s a dream that became my nightmare.  Perfect wives, partners, mothers, professionals, human beings just don’t exist.  Whilst this is disappointing and what a lot of what I once believed to be true has turned out to be a load of old rubbish, it’s also come as a huge relief.  I don’t have to be that person anymore and I quite like that. Now I want to know more about why ‘Good Enough’ seems to be looked upon in such a derisory way. Why isn’t ‘Good Enough’ really good enough?

Let’s start with that phrase first – ‘good enough’.  For some reason, the idea of being good enough seems to have become the equivalent to being average.  And who wants to be average?  What’s great about that?  We live in a society now where being average isn’t fun or beautiful or amazing.  It’s just sort of, whatever, a nothingness, just getting on with it, nothing special.

For me this is where the problem begins.  We now seem to have an expectation that every day must be glorious.  It must sing with happiness.  There must be joy in everything you do.  We must find the laughter and be the best that we can be.  Why?  Because that is what the people on the TV say you must do. Or in the online media.  

This is the way everyone’s life looks on Facebook and Instagram.  When I scroll through my friend’s pages, I never see the days when the rain is coming down horizontally, I see the pictures of the bright sunshine and the smiles as they relax on distant beaches or far away places that I’ve always wanted to see.  When I talk to anyone, they never tell me that they are broke, tired, stressed out and have just had another row with their kids.  They tell me that life is great, full of wonderful events and love and exciting prospects.  We never discuss the daily grind, the torture of the Wi-Fi playing up, the fact that your mother is poorly and you are worried out of your mind.

Being average isn’t interesting.  The things that really happen to us every day are just plain dull.  No one wants that.  That’s muted, grey and boring.  And no one wants anyone else to know about it either. 

And yet.  If you look up what is great about being average – or right about good enough – you will find that there is a lot to be really positive about.  People who do not constantly strive for perfection are happier.  Their expectations are more realistic and so they cope better in the ‘real’ world (the world where things go wrong, the sun doesn’t always shine and coffee isn’t instantly available everywhere).  They are more flexible, they beat themselves up far less and have a far healthier take on life and how to live it.  These people are fitter, more successful and well-balanced.  They don’t feel overwhelmed so much and their anxiety and depression levels are far less than those that spend their days tirelessly striving to be the greatest.

So being average is surprisingly great! In fact, you can still strive for the great and be average – or good enough.  Every day that I have those thoughts where I worry that maybe I could have tried harder or done something better, I’m now working on stopping that argument in my head and telling myself that it doesn’t matter.  I am good enough at a time when I need to be.  Sometimes you will achieve what you thought you could not.  Those days will be fabulous and you will shine in the sun.  But it is also time to embrace the bad days and accept they exist too.  When they happen it is ok.  Those days are meant to be there.  They are meant to happen.  Unless they did, we would never understand just how wonderful life can be.

Are you a perfectionist and wish you weren’t? Milla has some helpful tips and action points. Read more here.

You can find more of our Spring Season Blogs here.

The Happiness Question

Confession: I am a secret iPad Scroller. I can sit  browsing for hours; Facebook, Twitter, news channels, online shops and just about anything on the internet generally.  Give me a spare hour (and I don’t have many) and they pass in a blur of moving through those pages, swiping down and up.  My favourite place for this is the sofa, whilst lying down. Normally with only one eye open.  It tends to take place on a Sunday afternoon, shortly before a small afternoon nap, though (subject to work levels) it can be any day of the week. Recently, my scrolling has focused on what I call ‘The Happiness Question’.

You might recall back in the Spring, Milla and I talked about how ‘Happiness Is an Inside Job’. In that Podcast episode and  blog, we talked about whether you choose to be happy, how you become happy and what happiness is.  ‘The Happiness Question’ for me is something that I have wanted to find out more about.  Some days I find it hard to find it and  I know that I want to find more.  And so I have been scrolling away to see if I can find the solution.

I’ve found out that I am not alone.  The words ‘how to be happy’ are googled by over 45 million people per month and the word ‘Happy’ is googled some 902 million times per day.  That’s a lot of times.  It’s a lot of people. There are a lot of people out there that are wondering, like me, what the answer to ‘The Happiness Question’ is.

The results have been interesting.  Firstly, I have discovered that there is a section of Psychology that really does study happiness.  It’s called happiness research (or positive psychology if you want to be a bit more formal).  The science of happiness is a big thing.  There are a load of Psychologists that exclusively work on this.  They are referred to as ‘a movement’. Over eight thousand studies have been carried out.  It’s massive.  It’s also a little worrying that although all this work has been done to find the answer to ‘The Happiness Question’, no one conclusion has been reached. Yet.

Back to me and my scrolling. I have come across a blog, called ‘Barking Up the Wrong Tree’.  It is written by Eric Barker (see what he did there?) and it is full of posts about resilience, being productive, making your memory smarter, dealing with pain.  It’s very good and really funny.  Take a look when you can. The link is here.

Two of the posts that really caught my eye are titled ‘5 Rituals to Keep You Happy All the Time’.  The first introduced to me to the work of Martin Seligman, a Professor of Psychology and one of the Happiness Research movement bunch who have been trying to work out what happiness and well-being is since the 70’s.  He came up with the acronym  PERMA:

• Positive Emotions
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Achievement

These are the five elements that make up well-being – and I assume, as a consequence, lead you to find happiness.

Eric Barker says that positive emotions are those that you create for yourself; memories that make you smile. Engagement is being involved, being present, taking notice of what you are doing and being wrapped up in whatever you are doing so that you forget the time.  The relationships you have are critical to your well-being.  We need to be with others and more importantly we need to be with others that we like and want to be with. The things you do should have meaning to you.  Whatever you do should matter and be important so that when you do it, you will  feel achievement. It doesn’t have to be something that you sweated blood over.  It just needs to be something that makes you feel good once you have done it and crossed it off your to do list.

The second of Eric’s posts talks about the things that you can do to feel happier.  They are: 

• getting off autopilot – it’s estimated that during your day only 5% of what you do is intentional. Now spin that on its head. It means that 95% of your day is spent on auto-pilot, going through the motions and not really paying attention.  You just react to what is happening (or over-react). I find that staggering, though also highly likely.  It’s what I do.  It’s time to stop it though and notice the negative emotions and thoughts as they pop up, rather than letting them engulf you.

• being open to the bad feelings (or unhappiness) that you have – this goes back to the way that the voice in your head operates and how you deal with it. Pay attention to what you say to yourself. Notice what is causing the negativity and the feelings it is creating.

• accepting that you have those feelings – you aren’t giving in to them, you are just saying ‘yes, I know you are there and I know this is happening’. 

• detach yourself from those feelings – after you accept that they are there you can then choose to say ‘I know you are there but I don’t agree with you’.  Or ‘I know I feel like this but I am going to choose to be another way’.   

• Finally, you then tell yourself how you want to be.  You make an active choice not to follow those emotions, you decide you want to do something different.

None of this is easy.  I think that being able to recognise when you know those bad feelings happen and the voice in your head is telling you that you are sad or angry it is really difficult to just stop, accept that this is there and choose not to let it overwhelm you.  The key seems to be practice and being kinder to yourself. 

So, what have a I learnt from my scrolling?  Happiness is a not just a choice; it needs mindfulness, kindness and learning.  More research is probably being carried out as I type this. This question will run and run.

What if…?

When I grew up, there were lots of ‘What if?’ questions in my house.  My sister and I were curious kids, and we were actively encouraged to find things out.  We’d have to consult a book due to the great Google not existing back then.  I used a library. I loved that it was full of so many books and so much information.  How times change; I haven’t set foot in one for years.  When my kids ask me questions these days, instead of suggesting that they look things up in books, I immediately tell them to do what they do best and ‘search it up’ online.

I also remember that a lot of those ‘What if?’ questions originated from my Mum.  They were generally related to the things that she was worried about on any given day:

What if it rains?

What if the shops are shut?

What is the traffic is really bad?

What if it is really busy?

Then there is the classic, the ‘What if?’ question to end all ‘What if?’ questions that my Mum used to ask all the time.

‘What if we can’t find a parking space?’

This ‘What if?’ was then always followed up with this statement made with complete conviction by my Mum:

“We’ll never find a parking space.  It’s a waste of time”.

For many years, Dad very patiently indulged Mum’s insistence upon a negative outcome.  He really didn’t mind if it was really busy, if it did rain, if the traffic was awful or if the shops had shut before he got there.  But it was the ‘What if we can’t find a parking space?’ question that finally drove him over the edge.  

At some point during my teens, Mum uttered those words one too many times.  It would have been around Christmas (always more stressful than usual) and a Saturday (always the worst day of the week for present shopping).  I suspect that the ‘What if we can’t find a parking space?’ question had come at the end of a long stream of declarations that nothing would go to plan/go right/the problems wouldn’t be solved/the presents wouldn’t get bought/she didn’t know why she was trying.

I remember Dad turning round and holding his head in his hands and yelling ‘For goodness sake, if you tell me one more time that we will never find a parking space, it will be the last time I ever take you shopping!’

This is now a family story, regaled at length, normally after we have all had too much to drink. I was reminded of it for completely unrelated reasons this week.

The kids had gone back to school after the holidays and within four days had caught Covid.  I went to wake my son up on Sunday morning and found that he couldn’t get out of bed.  To begin with, I thought this was due to an unwillingness to leave his comfortable, warm pit and play rugby.  Within five hours, his temperature was raging and he was throwing up.  Yet again, I felt like the bad mother for not believing her children.  The Covid test pinged positive immediately and my carefully constructed plans for the week crashed down around me. 

Inevitably, we all got it.  Within four days of my son’s positive test, I couldn’t get up.  Worryingly, my whole head and face burnt and I was in agony.  I lost count of the painkillers I took and gradually came to realise that this couldn’t be right.  After three days and no improvement (and beginning to lose the feeling in the left side of my face) it was time to get help.

Now you’d think that, feeling the way I did and being a relatively intelligent woman, I wouldn’t worry about ringing a doctor.  But no.  It took me at least four attempts to hang on the line and wait to talk to someone. Why? Well:

 ‘What if no one answered?’

‘What if they told me it was just Covid and they couldn’t do anything?’

‘What if they said I shouldn’t have called?’

‘What if I were told that there was nothing wrong with me?’

Oh yes, the ‘What if?’ questions started, and they came thick and fast.  The voice in my head had gone berserk, over-thinking everything one minute and assuming the worst the next.  In the end, torn between telling myself to stop being so ridiculous and convinced I was about to die, I held on the line until it was answered.

Despite all my anxiety and being certain it was a waste of time, I spoke to a doctor.  They needed to see me.  This caused further panic.  I was home alone.  This meant I would have to drive.  I had to go to the hospital and I’d never been to the building the clinic was in.  I didn’t know where to park the car.  What if I couldn’t find a parking space?

I forced myself to stop thinking about it and got in the car.  The voice in my head was telling me that this was going to be impossible.  It was also telling me to stop this as the pain was so bad nothing could really get much worse.

It did.  When I arrived, there was no parking. It was hell. People were driving around, waiting for spaces, parking on verges and abandoning their cars wherever they could.  With no idea what to do, I carried on through the grounds, searching for the clinic and asking out loud for someone to help me find a parking space.  I even bargained with God (if there is such a thing) about how I promised to be a really good person if they would just help me put the car somewhere safe.

In doing this, I managed to find the right building; at least then I knew where I needed to be. But time was ticking on and I was afraid of being late. What if they then wouldn’t see me?  I turned into the obviously full car park and told myself to just drive in, look around and then leave if nothing.  I was going to do this.  There were no spaces.  I didn’t know what to do. I slowly did my five point turn in a very small area and went to make my way out.

And then I saw it. There was a parking space. I don’t know where it came from.  It just opened up in front of me.  It hadn’t been there and then suddenly it was.  I stopped the car and just stared at it.  It felt like I was in a dream.  I looked for signs to say I couldn’t park there.  There weren’t any.  I drove into the space and stopped the car.  I looked around me and waited for someone to jump out and tell me I couldn’t park there. No one came. I checked to make sure I was within the lines.  I was. So, I went to pay for the cark park ticket.

There was a person in front of me trying to work the ticket machine.  She couldn’t do it and told me that there was a problem with it. I pressed some buttons put my money in and a ticket came out. It all worked perfectly.

I saw the doctor, who confirmed that I had a number of infections, probably brought on by the Covid. They could give me antibiotics for it all. In a week, I would be better.  So, no dying that day either.

I will remember this day forever. The day a parking space appeared to me when I needed it most.  I hope that the next time I ask myself ‘What if’ or that the voice in my head says that the outcome will definitely be a negative one, I remember that it doesn’t have to be. It might well not be. There really are always parking spaces out there and you can always find one.

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