When the nightmares were the best bits

Someone was kind enough to ask, How are you doing?

Now? I'm laughing. Sometimes in anger and contempt, but it is laughter, and that is good. Once, at a message sent by a person masquerading as a colleague (but who is basically an arsehole). Another time, at the client we worked for, sending condolences which read like corporate blurb. Then, at the emergence of one more 'colleague', surfacing on Facebook. She tells the world how she'll meet my husband in Heaven. Two dozen messages follow - emoji weepings, dripping tears, sympathy for her loss. I think, Ha! When you're in Heaven, no elbowing each other in the queue, please!

But, when the laughter subsides, these are the things I recommend as a practical remedy for when life, er, gets difficult:

1. Strip down the stars, locate the pair covered in shit and spit and throw them where they belong, in the dustbin.

Yes, murder all darlings. Throw away illusions of good things, fair dealings, fancy ideas of loveliness. No illusory gazing at the rabbit in the moon or the phoenix in the stars.

In death, there are ugly dragons and demons abounding. I can face them out. The way I think: I am here now and I control my story. I can make a Hell out of Heaven and a Heaven out of Hell. And I'm damned if I'm living with this lot of shite in Hell. So I consciously shape what I do. I plan futures. I make a positive lesson from memories or thoughts that rear up, all fangs and teeth, growling and snarling. I plan, roll up my sleeves, and get started.

2. Control my environment. 

At a practical level, this means I create a new future for an object everyday. I send a book to the charity shop. I place an item on my ebay pile. I offer something on freecycle.

I scour a drawer. I divide the contents into save/landfill/recycling. Every day, my fingers handle an object whose future will be different from its past. This re-organisation of things is a reallocation of life. It is a dismantling and a rebuilding. I do not need to reclaim beard trimmers and toothbrushes left around the world. I do not need several editions of the same book. I will never listen to tapes left for 30 years in a drawer. I am organising, clearing, rebuilding, restoring. I am a road mender. I mend my way as I go.

3. Cycle.

I have always held hope in high contempt. Hope is when you don't have a plan. There must always be a plan. Put one foot in front in the other. See? That is a good plan. Even better, even faster, even quicker to get to that plan? Get on a bike.

Cycling is wonderful. I am free-spirited, self-powered. I talk to myself as I cycle, surrounding problems with solutions and Who Cares? Not I. I am smiling, laughing at trees and dappled light. I choose routes and bylanes that promise all shades green, alive with blackbirds, berries and hedgerow honeysuckle. The stretch on my leg muscle pleases me as I travel with greater speed than before.

4. Swim.

Thank goodness we have a lovely pool in walking distance. How many times do I read that exercise is the best cure for your dumps and downs? Absolutely. Swimming for me has become the ultimate restful therapy. The only drawback is I like to swim with my eyes shut, and this upsets everyone. (Memo to self: get a new swimming costume, because the elastic's gone funny in the old one.)

5. Feel my surroundings. 

Summer was lovely. In the quiet of a walk, I slipped off my shoes. I walked barefoot to feel the temperature change of earth; the shift in tonal range from soil to sand to concrete to stone.

In autumn, I walk through rain to feel pin prickles on my face and feel how my shirt eases itself to my skin with wet and cold. I lift my head into the rushing wind on a dry evening to feel how the air moves across and around me, travelling on its eternal journeying where I am no impediment at all.

6. Enjoy revenge fantasies.

Oh yes. I can shoot down dragons with my sure shot. For extra enjoyment, their skin peels off, then their eyeballs explode. I am in the land where hit men come cheap and poison is real.

Forgivenesses? Forget it. Where there are injustices in the world, I'm not about to say 'Hey! It was okay!' That seems like a licence for shit to happen all over again. People, you need warning against injustice! Making the injustices of death and skeletons and crawling corpses through which I've waded knee deep - making these matter less to me - is my goal. And if I have to stab someone to get there? All's fair in love and war.

7. Dream.

Sometimes, less so now - now, when I prefer to dream of books and chocolate - I woke in the middle of a conversation. I'm asking Dig, Why? Why did you say that? Why did you choose that disastrous course of action? Why did you do that? Why did you die? It wasn't because of what you said.

I used to get a nightmare at first, but it became the best of my dreams.

It started with me fooling about at the edge of an ocean, splashing around and enjoying the view. But I fell in, falling deep and deep, so far down, I cannot breathe and I know I have no breath left in me. I know I must drown. In panic I struggle to turn my body back to the surface, to stop my perilous descent. Dig's hands reach up: to grab me by the ankles and pull me down. I think, here I will die. But I cannot agree to that. I kick with all my strength to propel myself up to the surface. I can barely make it, but I do: I break the surface and I gasp the air, gulping water and air and I wake, breathing deeply. I am going to survive. I am going to live. I am going to find this new world around me and I'm going to make it, mine.