Christmas wishes

This is the view from my school in Pisa. I mostly teach online but once a week I brave the virus-infested public transport to engage in humanity face-to-face. I prefer teaching online, though. My introverted soul finds it less draining and when I finish class in the evening, I no longer have to plod the cold hills home. Right now my students include nuclear physicist and tribunal judges. I always feel intimidated when I start these course, but I often find that the people in these classes warm to me very soon and we have deeply engaging classes. I enjoy teaching smart people. They challenge me and I challenge them. Christmas is coming, though, and I find this a little more difficult. Obviously, I get them to talk about their plans and hopes for Christmas and they talk about their family reunions and parties with friends. I always beam like the sun as they talk, hoping none of them ask me about my plans because I have none. And mostly, I am OK with this. Students see me as gregarious and probably assume I am very social but I am only really alive and engaging with a few people in my life. This is not on purpose. It is just how I function and always have. It is just only in recent years have I accepted this aspect of myself and I appreciate it. I don't waste my energy on small talk anymore and I prefer to give  my light to those I feel most connected with. That said, I feel a little down this Christmas. Last year with lockdown it was easier somehow. I felt more secure/ most at peace than I do now and it is hard to not feel a little sad. I suppose my hopes for this Christmas are less ambitious, too: that I have hot water in my shower ( unlikely); that my mother feels strong ( inshallah)  and that those I care about, care about me in return.

midnight runs

The dark nights have come to San Miniato once more. Sometimes when I wander the empty streets, I can hear an howl hooting. Is it calling my name, I wonder, like in the famous novel by Margaret Craven.  I have only ever seen one owl in this area and it was a beautiful white one. It gleamed like fresh snow on a branch. 

But that was a few years ago.

Sometimes I dream that I go running in the night. Like at 3 a.m. in the morning, I get up from my bed and I disappear. I go different places. Sometimes to cities or remote stretches of road that would scare me if they were real. And then, sometimes I wonder, when I have woken, whether it was real after all. 

Winter feels like a weighted blanket this year. But much colder, of course.

Stone-hearted

 Yesterday I reached for my paintbrush and a stone to paint which should sound like a good thing, but I don’t think it is. I haven’t painted stones since 2013 and I associate this hobby with a period of great hardship and sorrow. That’s not to say that I don’t love the things I painted back then. They were, and still are, beautiful life expressions. I still have a few of them even now and others I have given to people whom I love and trust. But it bothers me that I feel the need to paint now because I know it means I am feeling broken again.  This time, actually, I feel even worse. I feel my peace has been broken. My trust has been destroyed and after I have shown such courage, such vulnerability.

Lockdown, I think, was a better period for me. It protected me from giving too much of myself, of my light and creativity, in the flesh. 

I hope I am wrong.  I am an INFJ - HSP after all. I feel things very deeply. I worry terribly, too. Although, unfortunately, I am also very intuitive.  But yet, perhaps my peace is not gone, perhaps it is just resting and my trust is safely resting, too. I hope so. The idea of that returning darkness, after finally finding my balance, terrifies me.

Rar

 Gosh, it doesn't seem to matter where I live but every year at this time my central heating breaks. Luckily, for my landlord I don't tend to get angry about these things. I mean I get frustrated and my fingers are frozen but I remain pretty zen. Actually, I rarely get angry which means when I do it can be quite fierce. Betrayal of trust is what really makes me angry, I have realised. It makes me quite dangerous. 

RAR