Author: ChanAtkins

The Reason I Write

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The Reason I Write

The Mess Of Me by Chantelle Atkins

Why do I write? How do I find the time? Where do I get my ideas from? I get asked these questions a lot. I expect most writers do. As these lines of questioning open up though, I normally hear one statement that annoys greatly: “I’d love to write but I don’t have the time.” Like finding the time or the energy has anything to do with it. “I’ve got great ideas but I don’t have the time or the energy to do anything about them.” This kind of insinuates that I have bucket loads of time on my hands, which couldn’t be further from the truth. With four kids and another job walking dogs to bring the ‘real’ money in, I have as little time as anyone. But the thing is, it’s not about time or energy, it’s…

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A Little Book On Trees

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You see the thing is, there is only so much time. You know that, and I know that. It creeps up your spine every once in a while, reminding you. You see it in the dead leaves on the ground, in the flattened squirrel, in the lines that deepen on your skin. So there is not much time before I cease to exist. I am fighting a losing battle to do all the things I want to do, to see all the things I would like to see, to read all the books, to listen to all of the music, to write all of the words…This is just me making excuses though, because most days I am sickened by my own ignorance.

So I was thinking about this the other day. About how old I am, and how much time there might be left for me, and about all the things I do not know. It caused me panic. Not knowing things. It led me to thinking; what do I know? What should I know by now? What have I already forgotten? Have I forgotten more than I will ever remember? Chances are I have. Chances are this will only increase as I get older. How much does the mind allow you to hold onto? Snippets and fragments. Important things come first. Like walking and breathing, and riding a bike, making a meal, driving a car. What remains once your aged mind has sieved through the rubble? How to tie your shoe laces? Bake a cake? Send an email? But what happens to the rest?
What is probably worse though, is all the things you never knew in the first place, all the things you never read about, or learnt about. Time wasted? Opportunities missed? I am embarrassed by how little I know. How little I have to hold onto and pass on.

So what do I know?

I know how to drive. Just about. I know how to plant seeds and help them grow. I know a thing or two about writing, a thing or two about parenting, a thing or two about how not to train a dog…I know a few things about politics, but so much of what I believe is personal and emotional, heartfelt rather than researched. I have forgotten most of what I learnt at school, college and University.

But what I don’t know shocks me and holds me back. It is staggering in its enormity. My mind closes itself in a panic, shouting there is not enough time, it is not my fault! I can’t help it. But I wish I knew so much more.
I do not know the names of all the trees I love so much. They are a green canopy sheltering me, filled with birdsong, they surround my walks and my imaginings, and I like to look at them and think about how old they are, and I like to stop and touch them if I can. They make me feel close to nature and to the point of everything. I know the oak and the sycamore…pines…conifers. I will learn more and then forget them. And I do not know the names of the hundreds of birds that fill my world with song. I know the robin and the pigeon and the blackbird and the magpie…the easy ones. I will try to remember what I have seen, and I tell myself to go and look them up, go and learn, but I will forget to do even that.

Flowers like the daisy, and the rose and the geranium and the daffodil..of course everyone knows those ones, but there are so many more, ones I have planted myself in my own garden by my own hand, and they still live on nameless to me. Not to mention the flowering weeds that line the lane, pinks, yellows, purples and blues – what are you? Tell me your name and your purpose. It is like all of nature is sat there being ignored. It is becoming unknown and unused.

Space and time and maths and physics…What is electricity and how does the TV work? Mobile phones, and the inter-net. I live with them and I rely on them, and yet I do not have a clue how they work or how they came to be. I am soaked in ignorance. I am weighed down by the guilt of not knowing enough. There is so much to know. Maybe I should make a list and start ticking them off. I would like to expand my knowledge and I would like to not have to keep saying ‘I don’t know’ when my kids ask me things. I would like to know what my ancestors knew, and what weeds to pick and cook, and how to fix a broken bike, and how to change a fuse and what kind of bird sings like that and why…I would like to hold onto the little that I do know before it gets bored and wanders off. What would I be left with?

Self-doubt and rising panic.

I could have done so much more. I could have learnt so much more and put it to good use. If only life was not so short. If only life was longer and not so stuffed full of washing clothes and hoovering mess and sweeping floors and changing beds and making ends meet. I’m running out of time and fear so many things will remain a mystery to me, languishing in the pile of ‘I’ll do that later’, ‘I’ll read that later’, ‘I will ask about that later’. But what if I never do, and just keep scurrying on towards death and getting by on the little bits I have picked up and held onto along the way?

I don’t fear death.

I won’t mind it because I will be at peace and not in a panic.

Meanwhile I will experience the turning of the days and the missing out on knowledge, expertise and experience. So many things I wish I had done. But I didn’t have the money, or I didn’t have the time, or I didn’t have the courage. I played it safe and stuck to what I knew because it was enough to survive on, enough to get me by. I won’t be a wise old woman passing on essential knowledge. It saddens me. I am sickened by the shame.

But I found a little book on trees and I keep it in my pocket.

Hope is a heartbreak

~ ChanAtkins ~ 4 Comments

Children are a heartbreak from the moment you know you are having them, from the moment you find out they exist.  This hope starts to grow inside of you, because that is what they are and that is what they become.  Hope.  For better times, for a decent life, for smiles, laughter, health and memories.  You can have all this without children and it is probably less painful.

I look at my children and it hurts.  The love itself is terrifying, and you would like to run away because it brings such hope, and hope is painful.  They never told you that, did they?  That is can rip you open and rub you raw.  They are a heartache from the start, I tell you.  From the moment you feel the love you are doomed.  They start ripping you up inside.  They grow too fast for one thing.  They make you fall in love with them.  I mean, you would kill for them, as well as die for them, but what you start to do is live for them.  But soon they don’t even need you anymore.

See one moment they are helpless without you, dependent on you for life itself.  Then the next they are pulling their hand out of yours.  It’s a piss take.  They are slipping through your fingers from the start, and they are never truly yours, although you are theirs forever.  They start growing and changing, and you start falling behind, because that is what it feels like.  Like you can’t catch your breath, can’t keep up, can’t hold on.  And the slipping gets faster and faster, every day, every week, every year gets faster than the last.

You would like to hold time still, fix it in your eye line and challenge it not to move.  You would like to grab those moments, those ones that sink your guts and moisten your eyes. You would like to be able to grab them and feel them and stuff them somewhere, hold them somewhere they can’t get free from. But the moments slip faster, one blink and they are gone.  You smile and carry on, but deep inside is a pain that will never heal.  Because it all starts going too fast.

The pain and the hope exist side by side; they are one and the same. They feed off each other. The happier you are, the more hope you feel lifting you up, the more the fear swells with the realisation that it could all fall away at any moment.  That’s what hurts, that’s what kills.  They are fragile things like all human life.  And the trouble is, their pain is now your pain, their sadness will be yours as well.  You would take it away for them if you could but mostly you are pretty helpless, and all just at the mercy of life, and whatever lies around each corner.  Living life with a constant squint in your eyes, ready to duck or dive should trouble come your way.  Try and see it off.  Try and see it coming.  Never knowing if this happy moment you are in is going to be the last for a long time to come.  Never knowing if each simple perfect day is about to fall off the tracks and change everything.  You live in hope and you live in fear.  I don’t know why we do it to ourselves, but we do.

Hidden

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments

Happiness and sadness, similar and overwhelming. The same, because they are frightening and testing. One feels safer than the other, and then it changes. Sitting up in bed this morning, I could see the sky and the trees and the rain, feeding the baby, content. A song comes on the radio and my heart swells because my memory jolts awake, and it’s always like that, always a shiver down the spine and across the skin, a kick in the backside, or a punch to the gut. It’s the little things that make me so happy, he said, all I wanna do is live by the sea. Kind of dark and sad, but who knows why? I just think oh well, it is true. It was then and it is now. Because it’s good, yes it’s good, it’s good to be free…So I’m awake and looking at the sky and the tops of the trees are shaking as the rain batters down, and the baby is suckling, and I woke up older than I was when I went to bed. And all of these lives are hidden. All of these thoughts are unknown. And all of this was so very long ago yet no time has passed at all. All the little things that go on, like food falling out of cupboards, and socks growing dusty under beds, and bedsheets that need changing, all these little things go on inside rooms, inside houses, inside towns, inside countries, and all of these lives are hidden all over the planet while we just get on with our own. When I think about life ending I take a massive breath, the biggest I can find. It is moments we are built from, it is moments we all live for, the sad ones as well as the happy ones because they are all glorious, and none are so glorious as the memories we hold onto and take with us. Because we have no choice in the way time spins us forward, in the way it kills us, second by second, minute by minute, it is killing us while we breathe, and we fight to the death. And we’re all doing it, us and them, and you and me and the rats in the woodpile and the spider on the ceiling and the rustle in the bushes and the cries in the night, except they don’t care as much as us. They are living in the moment, not haunted by the past, not tortured by the future. They just live and breathe and die in their secret unknown lives. While human life is made up of snippets and flashes, and glimpses of what has gone, of photos and songs and smells and laughter and stories and a future which is precarious and wished for, ominous and eager, feared and desired. Then there is you, stuck in the middle inside that moment called now, alive while you remember how to breathe, while you can still recall what made you you. You don’t want to look at the time, you just want a chance to exist, but when you come back round it has still passed by and the next thing happens. It’s not really fair, when you think about it, how conscious we are. You can try and ignore it and fall through life, but it will still knock you sideways every once in a while, and you will take the deepest, longest breath. And one day I won’t be here, and neither will my footprints, and there will be no imprint on the bedsheets, no breath against the glass. All those little things, all those tiny moments, all the things I did and said and thought and believed and touched and dreamed and wrote and read and saw and heard, they will all be gone too. No one will ever know. It will all remain hidden.