Listening to the Animals

November 2022

 
As the car comes to a final stop, a woman in torn jeans and a faded t-shirt emerges from the shadows beyond the front door of the house to greet us.

I reach out to shake her hand with a relieved hello, while Harry starts unloading the car.
 

_{Part of The Accidental Theory: A journey to freedom
Read from the beginning >>}

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I'm wiry and thin again, after the last few weeks of tension, and my smile is hollow and taught. Despite my edgy appearance it's obvious I'm happy to be here and she smiles in return. She introduces herself as Dana and explains that the owner is busy somewhere.

Dana lives on the property and helps out in exchange for accommodation. She's been left with the responsibility of greeting and showing me around. Our rental is beyond a wide farm style metal gate, on rusty hinges. It's closed fast with a traditional loop of wire tied to a wooden post.

The gate secures a stone path off the main driveway that leads to a narrow flight of similarly rusted metal stairs. I can see a wooden deck above us where the entrance to the flat must be. Enormous, shady trees surround the entire plot.

The place feels like a completely different world to the gang ridden area just beyond its gates.

Harry helps me pile my remaining belongings next to the path, sweating but still smiling and obviously eager to be off.

Time is money and he'll be missing possible last day rides, so I jump in to help and we hustle to get him on the road again. In a few whirlwind minutes, he's waving goodbye as the heavy security gates swing slowly to a close behind him.

I'm left alone to carry our things in four loads up the narrow stairs, but I'm used to this now. The excitement of being out of the situation in Somerset West and at this new, more earthy place makes the load seem lighter.

On entry into the flatlet, however, my heart sinks in disappointment.

At first glance, the flatlet seems nothing like what was advertised in the photos.

The front door leads straight into a dark, windowless kitchen with an old, stained linoleum floor that's ragged and torn in patches. Although the place feels safe, it's as worn thin as I am right now.

I don't allow the feeling of disappointment to linger. Business like and purposefully I maintain my momentum and methodically continue to move our belongings into the flatlet. When I finally enter the bedroom, that Nathan and I will share, my heart lifts again as suddenly.

In complete contrast to the kitchen, the bedroom is bright and cheerful; airy, spacious and clean with two sets of wall to wall windows. Curtains billow gently in the now late afternoon breeze.

There's a neatly made, queen size bed with a pretty comforter and matching pillows against the far wall. It's printed with a mandala that lives wonderfully with the wooden furniture. Side tables, with lamps adorning them, decorate corners and convenient places. The flat feels warm and homely.

The bedroom-come-lounge is large enough for a small couch and a generously sized coffee table as well. I shuffle these around to create even more space and comfort. The owner has also taken the trouble to move a single bed into the room for us.

Although Nathan will try to hijack the queen size bed in the far corner, we will end up jokingly squabbling over the smaller bed because it's so comfortable.

I will, of course, let Nathan win.

Once the loads from downstairs are done, I excitedly get to making the place look more welcoming for Nathan's impending arrival.

I pull the faded mat out from under the kitchen table to cover the torn parts of the floor near the front door of the flatlet. I throw a single bed-sheet over the white plastic table, as a make shift table cloth, and add salt and pepper shakers to dress the table with a flourish. Just behind these, the way it would be presented in a low key family restaurant, I position the tomato sauce bottle.

The finished table looks cheesy, cute and very much as though some superbly decent junk food might be served in baskets with colourful serviettes on its counter top.

Here, Nathan and I will begin to have family meals again for the first time in some years. Over time, we've made a habit of eating in front of television and this always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. But moving forward, at this very makeshift dining room table, Nathan and I will sit opposite each other each night to share a meal and talk in some semblance of normality and routine again.

And each meal will begin with Nathan quipping, "So honey, how was your day?" in a nasal drawl that will make me laugh out loud with delight.

Every single time.

After the kitchen has been shuffled around, I unpack our groceries and few remaining kitchen utensils. I then move on to our clothes.

These are placed, neatly folded, into a narrow cupboard in a not really a hallway, next to the bathroom door. We each have our own small shelf and Nathan's surprisingly large collection of socks are placed into a picnic basket, now transformed into a mobile drawer, under the half hanging space, on the floor of the cupboard.

My guitar fits neatly into a back corner and, with the kitchen and clothing done, I move onto the bedroom.

I put Nathan's boxes of Lego next to his bed, bright and visible, to make the room more homely.

His books go onto the coffee table turned nightstand, now moved next to his bed, within easy reach. The Woo Man is placed onto his pillow as a familiar, first greeting on entering the room.

Our belongings are unpacked bit by bit, into neatly chosen places, until our bags can be put away. I slide them under the bed. This gives the place a feeling of semi permanence and stability for the relatively short time we will be here.

This intentional personalizing of the space, along with the animals only a few steps away, will result in Nathan suggesting we stay at this place for good. But the plain fact is that we aren't able to walk safely around the neighborhood beyond the gate and I no longer have my own car to get around.

Instead of our usual, rambling walks we will walk just a few short meters to visit the horses, chickens, dogs and ducks everyday.

More than once a day.

More than twice a day.

Although I'll also fall in love with the horses, and the lifestyle within the high fencing around it that we'll be confined to for the next two weeks, this is not the life I envisage for Nathan and I forever.

My focus, these days, is entirely on freedom.

Nathan is excited on arrival and we immediately head to the enclosures at the back of the farm to see the horses.

I have little knowledge of horses but since volunteering for a rescue farm back in Noordhoek I've wanted to get to know them better. I've had a keen interest in Equine Therapy for some time, in fact. A skill I went as far as to research study for but the fees for a formal qualification were unaffordable.

Volunteering was the next best thing.

My experience with horses is still minimal, though. I've yet to spend time with them in a proper professional therapeutic setting. What I do know is that they're a profound method for recovery for many different challenges.

Horses are extremely sensitive to the mental states and, consequently, to the nervous system reactions of those around them. And they respond directly to this in real time. Just as we humans do, only we've mostly lost the capacity to be aware of this.

If you want to know how you're really feeling...

go and hang out with a herd team of horses for a while.

The biggest shift in my own full recovery from the plethora of clinical psychiatric diagnoses I received over the years, has been shifting my focus from what I am thinking to how I am feeling.

And by feeling I'm not talking about feelings, but about how I'm feeling physically.

I've spent a lifetime behaving in a manner I've was taught is socially appropriate. A lifetime of, basically, lying to everyone around me (but mostly to myself) about what the "truth" of any given situation really is.

After years of "being socialized", I got to the point that I hardly knew what I was feeling at all. Bar happy, sad or angry. And all of these were often hidden behind a socially acceptable mask anyway.

Do you want to know what happens when people aren't allowed to be who and what they truly are? They turn to alcohol. Or drugs. Or food, sex and social media. Or any of the gazillion behaviours we humans adopt to ease the pain of daily living.

And if those aren't sufficient enough, to dull down reality, a person can actually lose their grip on reality in full, instead.

I wonder how many people would even feel it necessary to use anything to avoid reality...

if every kind of reality was accepted as "normal" and okay...

and was simply allowed to Be?
 

^{In case I haven't told you lately... UR already Perfect! 👈 True story}

I approach the horses with caution.

It's only day one at this beautiful place and my nervous system is still ringing from the triggers, and the toxic environment, from the last couple of weeks.

I know this now.

I can feel this now, even though my mind is calm.

I can feel immediately when my nervous system reacts these days. I'm that tuned in after some years of practice. It's been three years or more, since I stopped listening to my mind. In fact, I mostly ignore what I'm thinking and go solely "on instinct" these days.

Once upon a time I doubted my own mind, as many people out there do. I see you, you know. You who care too much. It takes one to know one and all that.

There was a time I didn't trust myself either. But when I stopped listening to other people's noise inside my head and started listening to my nervous system instead...

I couldn't quite believe I'd been walking around for so many years, physically feeling like that and thinking things were actually normal.

In fact...

learning to listen to how my body reacts to my environment, and the people in it, is what gave me all of the information I needed...

to find and address the core reasons I was struggling mentally in the first place.

And to, eventually, fully recover.

Horses are incredibly sensitive to nervous system reactions. Very much the same as we humans are. As expected, when I approach the horse to try and stroke him...

he immediately backs away from me.

In my place, Nathan steps towards the Patch we will fall in love with, aptly named Picasso, and slowly reaches out a hand. Picasso immediately steps forward to nuzzle Nathan's hand and greet him.

I'm not jealous or upset.

I am so very proud of Nathan!

Once again, my heart expands at his calmness, fearlessness, sensitivity and respect towards the animal. And how easily Picasso takes to Nathan because of this.

This happens a lot.

Nathan adores animals and has a knack with them that borders on some kind of gift. They respond to him in the most amazing fashion. As always, when one of my children is around, I step back and enjoy watching him experience this new place and marvel at how cool my kid is.

Not so long ago, Nathan was diagnosed with childhood anxiety and depression, you know. Interesting thing...

since I've recovered...

so has Nathan.

Before we go to sleep on our first night at the farm, we will have organised for Nathan to help the owner, Miriam, to feed the horses and chickens the following day.

And, once again, Nathan will make it seem like he's been doing this all of his life.

_{Still getting up to date with this journey called Life, from there to here...
in reply to the latest prompt from one of my favourite places to stay connected to...}

 

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”
_{-Terence McKenna}

Eternal Seeker
Hardened Dreamer
Mother
Peaceful Warrior
Determined Dancer
and Stargazer

still...

Beyond fear is freedom

And there is nothing to be afraid of.

_{To Life, with Love... and always for Truth!
Nicky Dee}

_{All images my own. Edited with GIMP}