The last month has been quite challenging for me personally. We went to South Africa at the end of February, for close to 3 weeks. We flew home mid-March, the day after our younger daughter's wedding. The end of March was awful for me! While we were in SA my younger daughter (Paula) and I were in a car accident and amongst various bumps and bruises, I broke a couple of bones in my right hand (I'm right handed...). No sooner did we get home and I developed a really ghastly sinus infection (so SO painful!) and then as I was getting over that I got tooth ache - turns out I cracked a molar, probably also a result of the car accident. Oh-my-soul...I am NOT a good patient at the best of times, but this lot nearly pushed me over the edge. Trying to cope with life left-handed, fighting a fever, antibiotics, constant pain and on top of that missing my Paula (who is also dealing with some miserable health issues) something terrible... yeah, it was not a recipe for happiness!!
All of this made me realise that a LOT of the success of emigration, or life in general really, depends on mental attitude. With all of this misery going on in my life, suddenly England was not feeling like the happy home it had felt like before. I was finding things to be grumpy about and I was comparing England to SA and finding it seriously lacking in some respects. The people weren't friendly enough, the weather wasn't warm enough, our flat wasn't big enough, the dentist wasn't chatty enough, the sea wasn't near enough, the trees weren't green enough, the water wasn't soft enough.... Oh my soul, it wasn't 48 hours and I had dug myself into a deep, dark hole! It was ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous!
I can tell you that it has taken me 2 full weeks to get my head right. Once you allow yourself to get drawn into all this negativity it takes a mammoth effort to pull yourself out of it! One morning I said "enough!" That's it! Line drawn! I started to think of all the things I have to be grateful for and, believe me, those things are many and varied. I began to look for the beauty in my surroundings (not hard to do in Spring in the UK!) I started smiling and saying "hello" to people - and they started smiling and saying "hello" right back. Grant and I went for a nice long walk through the woods and I breathed in the lovely fresh air and marvelled at the feeling of freedom and pure joy. I cleaned our little flat from top to bottom and suddenly it felt a lot more homey. My (long-suffering!) husband bought me a gorgeous bunch of roses and that cheered me up no end. I began planning fun things for us to do and we went on a couple of nice outings. I had long video chats with Paula and that warmed my mommy-heart and made me feel so much closer to her. I spent loads of quality time with Roxy and the grandkids and suddenly life was feeling a whole lot better. I'm very relieved to say that now that my attitude is sorted, life is looking pretty darn happy again!
All of this made me realise exactly how much of a mind-game this is. If I sit here and start focusing on the negative I can talk myself into a really dark state of mind in no time. I can start comparing things here to my life back in SA in an unfavourable light very easily and land up feeling utterly miserable and defeated. By the same token, I can start comparing things here to things in SA in a favourable light and I start feeling really grateful that I have the opportunity to live here happily. Having said that, I'd like to make it clear that I don't believe it is a good idea to start comparing the UK with SA at all. It serves no purpose. The two countries are completely different and both have pros and cons.
The bottom line is that in the last month I have come to see very clearly that it really IS up to me how I see things, my future happiness depends largely on whether I choose to be happy or not!
