A life in letters: I've been here before.....

‘I’ve been here before, and I’ll be here again.’  Not an expression of belief in reincarnation, but another of the mantras which have sustained me at difficult times.  I remember particularly muttering these words to myself one day in the 1980s as went up in the old rickety goods lift to the first floor of the Library Resource Centre in Hamilton.  I was struggling through emotional pain, but I had the detachment to remind myself firstly that I had endured similar pain in the past and secondly that just as on those occasions things had eventually improved, so this time also the mist would clear. But I also had the realism to acknowledge that its return was pretty much inevitable.  ’I’ve been here before, and I’ll be here again.’  It was somehow an encouragement to know that this ebb and flow of angst was part of the rhythm of my life. I also recognise with gratitude that this detachment and realism are gifts, and that there are many whose pain is so great that such a level of self-awareness is at times impossible.