My Shower – the place to warm my hands up!

A year ago I was living in a tatty little duplex – 3 bedroom house.  An old building in very poor repair and in dire need of decorating, renovating and modernization, however it was our home and we were lucky to have it even if we couldn’t afford to patch it up.

The house had a shower in it which is fine, but I hated that shower with a passion.  As you can see from the photo, it was old, had tiles comparable to that of ones used in the school showers at my old school and it had that horrible frosty shower glass with wire in it and the shower door was broken.

As I have an auto immune disease which affects my joints, I remember placing my hands which would always turn blue with cold; under the shower in a bid to warm them up and I would end up staying there, standing while the boiling water splashed over me until i was bright red and shrivelled.  Anyone with joint issues will vouch I am sure, just how good a soak in a hot bath is and can match a panadol any day of the week for joint and muscle pain.

What was my wish at that time? I shall tell you; the one thing I would have loved to have more than ever was to my very own bath, a bath to soak my aching joints in and warm myself up when cold and what is more; a bath with bubbles and candles to go with it.

It seemed impossible, it would mean selling the house and moving, it was in the ‘too hard basket’ and as my husband wasn’t fussed about a bath, I assumed it simply wouldn’t happen and for five years we remained in that house with that shower that I hated and grew to dread using.

A bath – a pipe dream, it would never happen and I was sure of it.

To cut a long story short, last year we found a house that we liked, we put in an offer which was accepted and our house sold within a week.

You know where I am going with this don’t you?  Yes, the new house had a bath in it and I remember the very first day I used that it, I filled it with boiling water and bubbles and I didn’t forget my candles either.

 I lay in my new bath and kept topping up the water until my skin went pink and shrivelled. Never had I been so happy, never had my joints been so happy either.

Such a little thing made a huge difference to my life and all it took was a change – albeit a large one, but one I could have made years ago had I been open and receptive and certainly not daunted by it.

My bath – complete with bubbles and candles

Darkest moments and all that….

We all go through dark moments in our lives where we literally cannot see the wood for the trees, where we cannot envisage a light at the end of the tunnel and wonder if we will ever get a lucky break.

I truly believe that at some point in our lives, we will take that journey and whilst we have no control over that, how we view it and deal with it is entirely up to us.  It is our choice because at the end of the day, we do have a choice about how we deal with things.

I was going through a very very dark and traumatic stage in my life, I had a period of not working, going through a legal case and we had to take a mortgage payment  ‘holiday’ which had two weeks left to expire.

I remember walking around the local wetlands where I live, it is a 6km walk and I was marching along with my little dog totally oblivious to my surroundings – I could have been anywhere, you could have walked past me naked and I would not have seen you, I was literally wrapped up in my own sad little world of worry.

Hearing a noise of a parrot, I glanced to my side and saw a pink and grey (Galah – pink cockatoo), actually there were several of them on the ground.  I love parrots and birds and never tire of them and here was this group of cockatoos right in front of me.

Stopping to look at them, I had one of ‘those moments’ where reality hits and does so quite hard – a moment of clarity if you like.  I was so busy worrying about what I didn’t have, what might happen and various events that had not yet happened as in losing my house, that I was totally blind to what was actually going on around me – life.

I stayed where I was for about ten minutes and took in my surroundings, the parrots flew off and I remained exactly where I was taking stock of life, of me and the choices I could make in how I dealt with things.

Grabbing my phone, I decided to take a photograph of that very moment so that I could look on it should I ever need to remember what was important in life and that is living it and not worrying about it.

To this very day, each time I look at this photograph I am taken back to that moment, to the sounds, sights and smells and I remember how far I have come in so many ways.

The photo I took of Beeliar Wetlands, Western Australia 

Things can change when you least expect it

Two weeks before we were due to contact the bank, I was offered a lifeline in the form of some temp work which gave me some much needed confidence as well as a wage to pay the mortgage.

A couple of temp jobs later, I was offered a permanent role in a job that I love and that isn’t far from where I live, the people I work with are fantastic and I really could not wish for more.

I am one of these irritating people that totally look forward to going in to work and consider myself very lucky to be in this position but a few years ago, I would never have imagined being where I am now.

Are things perfect in my life now?  No, far from it and I won’t elaborate either but one thing I will say to anyone that is going through a dark patch in their lives and that is things can and do change in the blink of an eye.

No matter how convinced you are of your future, it is not certain, it is not guaranteed and simply cannot be predicted.

Just keep an open mind and don’t shut off a path because you are nervous of taking it; because you never know what is around ‘your corner’ and if you’re lucky, it will contain baths, candles and bubbles.

No words needed – South Beach, Fremantle, Western Australia

Samantha Rose (C) Copyright March 2014