Saturn Returns.... Late.
Nobody talked about this ten years ago... bugger all was spoken - not a word written and Emma Watson certainly hadn't voiced her own personal planet spin (she would've been 23, hardly out of Harry Potter) until just recently thanks to the omnipresent voice that is Instagram.
But lo... apparently the planets are whimsical beings that don't always align after 30 turns around the sun - sometimes they just wait it out a bit and decide to slam into one when it's least expected.
Welcome to 40.
Skipping past 2014... I feel that 2023, my 40th year (and now my 41st) has been both the very best and the very worst. Actually, let's not skip past 2014 because I have a hunch that a great deal of this train wreck stems from there. Why? Because repressed feelings and resent will always, always, come and bite you on the arse if they are not nipped in the bud at first bloom. Yes, dear reader, suppress your niggling thoughts at your peril, for they will become a jungle of Japanese knotweed and we all know that's a disaster waiting to happen.... and no, I was not the world's greatest gardener. I let my knotweed run riot and now I am paying the consequences of not using the weedkiller of the soul.
Yet I won't start on a downer, the highlights of 40 have been plentiful and promising (which may have contributed to the direct opposite, funny isn't it?): The beginning of 2022 saw me bursting out of unemployed doom to joining a fabulous production company in Roma, as well as being called upon to be the assistant director of a major festival in Italy, turn it around, and make it all happen in less than 6 months - jetting off to Cannes, Paris, Venice and the like - not bad eh? Not bad at all after a pandemic that left the world in tatters... suddenly I was BACK. I was off. The world was my proverbial and I grabbed it and ran as hard as I could towards a goal that had been denied me for so many years, for so many reasons. I was totally high on life, on LIFE! On being alive and finally doing what I had put aside for ages to make space for other peoples careers, for other peoples needs, for other peoples plans - and the bitch that is cancer and the grey matter that is still hovering around children with autism. I felt like I'd been given a chance and by God did I take it. And yes, it was amazing. However. Amazing comes at a price and I'll try and explain this as best as I can.
Do you remember those videos we all saw on YouTube or Blue Peter about rescue Polar Bears taking their first steps on fresh snow? Or children getting an implant and hearing for the first time? Brilliant aren't they? Well that's how I felt.
But the more I was out in the world, the more another world began to slowly crumble and I had no idea, or maybe I did but I made like an Ostrich. Over the months, a shared bed turned into one on the computer, and one on the sofa - mumbles of goodnights turned into "I'm off now" and mumbles of "ok" followed. The mumbles stayed mumbles and never fledged into a conversation - we were too busy. I was too busy. Mumbles turned to resent, and resent lead to a monumental fuck-up of unfathomable proportions - and the plug was pulled, the truth vomited onto the carpet of our home - and it was "ours" no longer. Just like that.
I was unarmed, dear reader. Suddenly all that amazing success that I was so hungry for, felt like the most futile thing in the world. Suddenly, yet again, I had to question everything that I am, everything that I have done, everything I've wanted to do but didn't (couldn't) and everything that is now open to me. It's fucking terrifying. I used to think I could face anything after cancer, now I'm looking into another black hole and the scary truth is, I'm the only one who can cure me. I have become my own doctor, nurse, therapist and agony aunt - it's exhausting.
I want to go back, turn back the sodding hands of the mystery that is TIME. But that's not an option.
So, Ladies and Gents - before wishing you all a jolly good 2024 - I'm going to ask you NOT ONLY to check your physical health - but check in with your heart, your mind and your soul - are they present? Are they happy? Because one must, must, do this - it's just as important.
Have the conversation, have the hard talks, ask the hard questions and remember, as the Bard quite rightly said: To thine own self be true
With Love x
Rachel
