The polls have spoken. My country is now to be led by our first female prime minister. It was a nail biting election. Both sides had enough dirt to bury a town. Or actually one side had more dirt than the other, but it did not matter. They won anyway.
This election reminded me of my divorce and it shall stay with me for some time, because the issue ultimately was about people making up their minds. No matter what is done or said, if someone does not want to do what you want them to do, they will simply not do it.
It does not matter whether you change your attitude, your clothes, nothing helps. It is a confounding and bitter thing to experience, and I am sure that our outgoing prime minister shall be feeling the weight of his country on his back as he demits office later today.
I personally cannot look at the results as others have. I found the way my fellow countrymen behaved and what they accepted on both sides, confounding. Confounding in the way that the now old ruling party found its edge wittled away and the incoming party, what it did to win.
A close friend said to me that he preferred to vote in the devil that he did not know to the one that he did. That is how corrupt both sides are! That attitude begs the question, why should we put up with corruption at all? Why should we look at it as part and parcel of politicians' lives? Why should I now wait for the shoe to drop with my new political leader?
There is much to wonder and to assess, but for now, I am glad that the elections have passed and I will do the right thing, support my government and help make my country a better place.

The elections are now two days away, and this one has been the most dramatic that I have ever encountered. This is partly due to having more media than ever before, and more so, the bombardment of all of it on the senses all of the time.
Tonight however, I was severely impacted by an unexpected variable. The leader of a much smaller party, a man who affected an entire decade, and arguably is still feared in our nation.
His son has formed a party, but he is of course very much the driving force behind it. He spoke for about half an hour, and he had so much of interest to say, from first hand juicy gossip that bordered on shocking truth...because he was involved...to practical insights because of his experience with the truly downtrodden in the nation.
His words truly strike a cord because as my mother put it, his is the subtext between the two parties vying for our votes, and as he stated tonight, why do the citizens keep voting for rats to guard our cheese?
This election is about our country, who we are and what we will become. It is about confronting our morality, deciding what we want for ourselves today and tomorrow, and whether we can continue to accept certain conditions.
He made the question of the lesser of two evils one that must be squarely looked at, and the conclusion was not palatable. One is far more treacherous than the other, far more worrisome indeed. The history of our country particularly the last twenty years, must be recorded in full detail for generations to come. it is a dizzying history that reads better than any novel.
But I am writing about this man tonight because he got me to take stock of myself and my own life. He talked about ownership and personal wealth. he talked about the people who have all of the wealth and those who do not. Of course I know all of this already, so why did it impact me now?
It was the way in which he talked about the spiral of poverty. The fact that organisation is what is lacking at the base of it. The fact that it is so easy to see success for others and not for yourself and for those in your family. It is so easy to think that it cannot happen for you. He threw a statement out that I now am running with, that shall change how I see and view economic success from now on.
I have read many magazines, blogs and books on all types of money supporting and assisting tips. I never think of it in terms of myself in my island, getting richer by personal entrepreneurship...although I have had my own business. I never thought of myself from a place of actually becoming wealthy through an idea that I build on.
I am thinking that way now. I am thinking this way because none of the above, not that small party or the other two are really ultimately the makers of my happiness and my success, I am, and I thank him for showing me the way.

missing an aspect of the past...

Tonight I had two encounters, one at the grocery and the other on the way home. It was subtle and actually impossible to detect if you were observing it from the outside. I felt it on the inside, a twinge of reminiscence, a twinge of yearning and missing. I don't like when I feel that way. I always feel uncomfortable about feeling it. I wonder whether I am alright? I get defensive, and I say to myself that perhaps it is normal. I also say to myself all of the things that help me to move past the feelings.Things like...You'll feel this way again, don't worry, and it shall be greater and longer and worth my while.
I don't doubt myself when I cheer myself up with those affirmations. They help. Yet,tonight, there was something else in my gaze as I saw the two separate couples, doing the unremarkable things that life puts forward. They were both just standing together. The first family, with their two children, and it turned out that I knew the person from ballet, years ago.
The second person was standing with her husband, waving to someone who was leaving their driveway. The assurance of the other person, standing there, I felt the value of that, the importance and intimacy of knowing that there are things shared.
I think that I have to come to terms right now with the fact that I have to stop feeling so thrown by love,by lasting relationships that are not my own.
How do I begin to fix what is clearly a hole that I feel inside? I thought that I was doing so? But when I get to this place, I remember that I am still bruised. I am so tired of feeling that I am still hurting. I don't like it one bit. but I don't know what to do about it.
Part of me replies, don't be so hard on yourself and another thinks, get back on the horse. I really do not have an answer.

I found this quote in a magazine the year my little one was born, and I just found the book again, and the quote struck me as quite beautiful, so I shall retranscribe it here.

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We'll always feel like we're twenty years old, even if our bodies are fifty; how our younger selves trail us throughout our lives, and sometimes we cannot explain our choices to them.
The good news is that these former selves are a lot like shadows in the sun: they only lengthen and grow more powerful as the day goes on. And now that I think about it, don't they also appear in the front of us, as well as behind - egging us on, reminding us what to strive for?

~ Jennifer Senior
Contributing Editor of New York magazine

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There was a time in my life when I used to feel optimistic for everyone around me. I would follow their thoughts and their lives, sure that whatever they set their minds to, would work. I did not have this inner belief for myself, and so, I made many lists and starts and stops because I just did not shore up those feelings inside of myself.
Gradually, I found, as work became steady, and I was able to do the things that I was trained to do, I began to feel this same sense of confidence intermittently. It came up in particular when I worked with my partner, to keep him focused.
It has taken three decades for me to finally come to a place where I feel a sense of myself. It is so strange that although I never left what I wanted to do, it has taken this long to come to terms with it, all of this time.
This new found realisation also makes me want to reach out in other aspects of my life as well. I want to move without hesitation in my bearings and dealings, see how my confidence navigates my world.
I feel as though I am trying on a skin that is new but a long time in the making.
How did I finally get here? It has happened through decades of reading and experiencing and making many mistakes and never feeling as though I knew anything at all. The difference today is that not knowing anything at all is not a stickler, it is not a punisher, it is not a surpriser and it is not something to fear or to be stumped by.
It came to me immediately as I wrote, and I would say, figuring things out through writing has helped immeasurably, I actually wrote to myself...

get out of your head,
and into your life.

Those simple lines did it for me.
Along with the realisation that I deserved to give myself the gift of confidence that I give so easily and effortlessly to others.
Because it has taken me so long to get here, I must assume that it was meant this way. I understand now that you can move forward, sideways or whatever way you perceive you are going, dependant on what you allow yourself to be ready for.
I spent a great part of my adulthood in fear. Fear of making mistakes, fear of disappointing others, fear of independence, fear of myself...there comes a point where fear begins to look like worn letters on a billboard sign, a sign with no back, only props.
It does not mean that I do not get a tingle of anxiety, it does not mean that doubt does not nudge me. No, instead, what I have today, is an understanding that fear is what it is, a moment of stepping into the unknown and the unknowable and allowing myself to experience this illusive thing called L-I-F-E. It is but a moment that cannot be held to, for it is fleeting, it is fast and anything can play within its gossamer corridors that are vast.
Does it mean that I now know everything? Hardly, but again, in the embracing of the unknown and the awareness of emotions and choices as just an aspect of who I am and what life is, I actually come off the treadmill of thinking that worrying and keeping my desires small would somehow keep me overlooked and thus, safe. It may have done this, but it also kept my life small and my dreams unfulfilled. I am fully aware that this is harsher than the truth. I did not have a small life really. I have so much to be thankful and happy for, when I say small, I simply mean, for all of those times that I let doubt and fear prevent me from my life. I played it safe and sound, but I also lost an opportunity to see what I could do and where I could go and be.
I let lack of resouces influence what I could do. I saw lack of money as an obstacle, and I shut down my expectations.
So, what changed? Two belief systems changed my thinking, as I wrote before, they liberated me from myself and they came to me this year.

So much time spent, but what was the quality?

Elections in my country has been so frenzied, partly because the prime minister chose to call it early (by two and a half years) There is a large certainty that he shall not be returned to office,and that a mishmash of the opposition shall walk away with the vote including giving us our first female prime minister.
This election has made me very introspective. To me, all that is going on at this time is a reflection of the people. There are few I can speak to who are not deeply emotional about it. So much so, that straight answers about choice of concerns fly out the window and are replaced by cliches and criticisms.
I do not know whether I am just naturally contrary, but I do not see this election in the cut and dried way that is coming from so many.
It is so easy to talk, to complain. In my own relationship, I complained about things that I did not control. I had expectations that I did not manage. With time and maturity, I see now that it is so easy to be like a child, wanting whatever you think will make things better. But what is it that we really want? With our government I would not deny that I too complained about many things, but I now think that it is important to hear how both parties plan to take the nation forward.
I feel very wistful, very moved by my country at this time. We have an opportunity to come into our own and to really focus on nation building where we put the best forward. Yet, I see us getting caught up (as usual) in pettiness, pretensions and scare tactics...which all politicians use and will continue to use.
Today, I had a talk with my ex-husband and I asked him, what do you need right now to be happy into your future? I asked him to take my question seriously.
For possibly the first time, I did not waver in my comments to him about his pattern of blaming others for what he feels he has not been able to accomplish. I have watched him not enjoy himself, always defensive, always anxiety filled. Very little real joy, apart from our years of courting when he would let his guard down from time to time. The marriage was another thing altogether. We both spent a great deal of time focused in the future and the past, and not much in the present.
I have made so many mistakes. But, I have learnt a great deal, and I am so grateful that I have another chance every day that I breath in and out.