Remember to breathe, Fluffy

Fluffy is under her doona and has turned her comments off because she feels bad about feeling bad. So I'm posting a flower for her, and for anyone else having any kind of tough time at the moment.



I know it's a bit withered around the edges, but it's a real flower, still planted in the ground when I took the photo, and obviously only just past its prime. Don't you think the colours are gorgeous and cheery?

I'm not making a connection here about being past your prime; I'm sorry if this reads that way. This flower is from a friend's garden, someone who suffers from a major depression. He tends to hide himself away when he's down, which happens to be most of the time. He's one of those people whom you can't ring to arrange to see -- he won't come to the rendezvous point. You have to just drop in on him at the house. If he's low he won't answer the door; if he's ok he'll open the door, lead you through his incredibly dirty and cluttered house (piles and piles of the most interesting things you've ever seen: old tools, books, crockery, antique toys, hats, spoons, machinery, with only narrow paths to walk through) into the garden. No; into HIS garden.

He has a green thumb, and that man can grow anything. He has transformed a bare block into the most amazing space full of colour, movement, prickles, fruit, frogs, fish, ferns, herbs and most anything else you can think of. He has a water-recycling plant made of pipes and blow-up baby pools and certain water-plants, so that he doesn't use a lot of town water. Unable to bear working for the Man, he now sells potted-up plants at markets to supplement his government hand-out.

I don't think he's wasting his time with his plants, and if he didn't have them, he'd probably be certifiably mad by now. They keep him alive as he keeps them alive, and they fulfil him as the creative person his family always had hopes of him being. And he's cheery in his garden. It's his own private universe, and the rest of the world can sod themselves.

Fluffy, you are an extremely resourceful, creative and generous person. I don't know about your resilience, but I'm hoping that it can be bolstered by rest. Stay under the doona as long as it takes. Tiny Man will cope with a mum who lets him under the doona too and reads with him, or just flops on the couch and watches tv for days. He'll just do his own thing for a while, and he'll eat baked beans on toast forever. The down times need downtimes. Eventually you get so bored with the smell of stale doona air that you get up, have a shower and go and do something for a break from having a break. And then hopefully the fun starts again. Or not. Maybe you just get a slightly more even keel.

Anyhoo, just wanted really to say hang in there, kiddo. And this goes for all of youse.