Headspace

I could never really manage the meditation-thing. Couldn't empty my head. It's like King's Cross station in there, thoughts milling around, criss-crossing with each other, jostling about. Even if a space opened up, it would be filled again immediately.

But swimming is different. Not everywhere, just a few places. Here I can swim early or late, when I have the pool to myself. After a few lengths I can find a rhythm, and enjoy the sensation of water rippling across skin, of limbs stretching, joints easing open after the crush of desk and train. 

My mind begins to clear, and all I do is swim and look, swim and look. Arms and shoulders, hips and legs, the slow cool glide.  At one end is oak and slate, at the other end horse and sky.  Up and down, up and down, oak and horse, slate and sky.

This is where I find my calm, this countryside that feels like a home - although I have never lived here.  I can write here, I can always write here.

A Close Shave

Sometimes the small things are more intimate than the big things.

Perhaps I'm wired differently - but watching someone button a shirt, or shave, or shower - the small everyday tasks, has a special pleasure of its own.  These private moments can be as close, as tender, as nakedness.  It's an exposure, a sharing, of a different kind. 

My inner cinema runs a lively schedule, as we know.  But you might be surprised to learn it's not all XX rated, not by any means. The erotic is there in the everyday, if you watch closely, if you notice.

Missed Connections

So here it is. Writing. Itching inside my head, waking me up in the morning, stopping me sleeping at night. Words coming to life like butterflies breaking out of their cocoons. It's as if a switch was thrown. 

What's interesting is that I've realised I was holding myself too tight to write. Curled into a ball, a porcupine.  And for all my talk of unfurling, the attempts to open up - it wasn't quite happening.

Until now. 

Perhaps I was looking in the wrong place for the Unlock button. 

Comeback

Then suddenly, after a long, cold absence, it's here again.  

It's hard to explain how you know when it's back.  First of all it's just a feeling, a kind of inner shift like a loosening of the bowels, an itch, a hum at the back of the mind.

It starts to build and will not be resisted. Words are sprouting everywhere and cannot be held back.  They take up all the headspace and start spilling out onto scraps of paper, the notepad on the phone, demanding to get onto the page. Insistent, relentless.

I am beginning to think that I understand why this happens. I hold myself tightly closed so much of the time. Safe. Nothing can get in that way. Romping around inside my submarine, closed away in the dark depths.  You can't see in, you can't get to me.

But nothing inside can get out, either. 

So now I am uncoiling again, opening up. What was a fist, fingernails cutting tight into palms, is uncurling. It's been taking a while, but it's here now. Sunshine helped, and some other things.  I'm welling up in a surge of turquoise waves, a breaking of buds, a crescendo. 

Day. Break.

Takes a while, doesn't it, to get the hang of this life-malarkey.

A man can wake up one morning with a hard-on, and two fried duck-eggs smiling up at him from his plate like twin sunshines.  But not that much later, the paramedics can't resuscitate his dad, and he has to take a drive through the hills to a place he's never experienced before. 

So how can we make it bearable, this long slide from the light to the darkness?  Let's dance through the dull drag of days - hug and help one another, work and write, flirt and fuck. Do something - that's the thing to do. 

A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and time to dance. 

Tunnel

Oh there is still such a long way to go, to get to the end of this thing. I remind myself that I had a number of options, thought about it all very carefully, made a choice and am following it through. 

It's all part of plan, a conscious decision. I am not trapped in this part of my life - I have chosen it. Just keep reminding me though, because I feel at the moment that I can't walk another step on this path, cannot stay on this course a moment longer. 

Friends are few and far between on this journey, and close contact rarely to be found at all. It's dark in here. 

Disorientated

Oh god. I feel really weird. I don't feel right at all. Just have no idea what I am doing or where I am heading. I feel like I am tumbling down a vortex of work. So tired I'm not really sleeping now.  This can't carry on. It just can't. 

Note To Self

This is my latest homework task. 

Letter to my younger self, on setting out to University

Well done – you did it! Be proud of yourself and enjoy the moment: you will never want anything quite as much again.  Try not to be dazzled and daunted by all the silver spoons – you have won your place on merit alone, with no school or family connections and this should make you feel strong rather than embarrassed.  Who cares if you don’t know how to each fish on the bone or what to do at a sherry party? You have learned other things instead – how to dance in a cool way, how to give the perfect blow job.  Later in life you will see these attributes are just as important. Get out of those dungarees and baggy jumpers and wear a bikini every day – you look amazing, so hold your head up and strut your stuff.

You are full of potential so here is some advice on how you might best fulfil it.

• You have an inner voice that continually runs you down.  Every time you hear that voice, stop listening and do something else instead. Don’t let these insidious messages get inside your head – they will hurt you and hold you back. Talk yourself up not down!

• Don’t waste years of good reading time on self-help books. You’re fine just as you are. More than fine, in fact. Magnificent, wonderful, gorgeous.  Read poems, bury yourself in novels, learn another language – anything other than texts that help you find new things to fail at.

• Eat whatever you fancy and don’t worry about it. If you relax, your body will take care of itself.  Enjoy all the delicious things that will do you good and don’t make food a way to reward and punish yourself. You’re a woman, not a dog.

• Your mum isn’t good at expressing herself, so try to work out what she really means when she says things that come out hurtfully. When she said “you’ve always been hard to love”, what she really meant to say is “I find it hard to know how to show love because my parents were really odd”. She loves you to bits – always has, always will.

• You won’t need to work as hard as your dad.  Things were different in those days. Yes, he kept telling you weren’t trying hard enough, not stretching yourself, but that was at school, you weren’t meant to let that echo on forever. Know when to stop, know when you’ve done enough.

• Spend time mindfully with your daughters. Don’t take too long to learn this lesson, as the time flies by.  Try to treasure the days, even if you might end up counting them down for other reasons.

• Don’t chase after men – save yourself for men who will chase after you. And walk right away from men who need to be saved.  A relationship doesn’t need to be a challenge or a project, a mountain to be climbed.  It could just be uncomplicated and good, you know. You are smart, kind, funny, sexy and sparkly.  You don’t need to worry that you won’t be able to meet someone nice. The world is full of nice men – hold out for someone who will love you back.  You deserve to be The Very Thing.

• You can’t make other people happy. They have to choose that for themselves. Hug them and make them cups of tea when they are sad, laugh with them when they are happy.  And don’t believe them when they say you’re making them miserable or angry – they’ve chosen that for themselves too.

• Know when to quit. Don’t pride yourself on never giving in.  It’s as strong and brave to let go as it is to hold on.  It’s ok to walk away, to call it a day and move on.

• Accept help, and learn to ask for it too. You are in danger of chewing up time and energy battling away at things on your own when two heads might be better than one – or two pairs of hands. There are no prizes for doing everything by yourself – and people like to help their friends.

• Don’t spend too long realising that your motto “do no harm, but take no shit” does have that second element to it.  Simply following “Do As You Would Be Done By” won’t suffice on its own.  Recognise that not everyone operates to the same standards and behaviours as you. Don’t be afraid to call people out on their actions.

• It doesn’t matter if some people don’t really like you.  Don’t worry about it.

• You’re lovely. You’re a good mum, a good daughter and a good friend. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Be the leading lady in your own biopic, not a bit player in someone else’s movie. That’s your spotlight, right there.

• Write. Read. Write some more.  It’s your oxygen. And all the shit that happens on the journey, all the ups and downs: it’s raw material.

Lots of love,

Me xxx

Wound

I can do this - I can. I definitely can. I can explain how I feel not what I think. I'm a writer, right?

I feel outraged that I am not allowed to be as successful as him, career-wise. That was not the deal, was it? That I would walk three steps behind, forever, just because I started there? Didn't he choose me because I was bright and smart, full of potential? Why wouldn't I be allowed to catch up? Why wouldn't I be allowed to overtake, even?

I feel astonished that this would even be an issue. I was spoiled by spending my student years and early career with men my age who did not have an issue with equality. Or do I just feel naive for not realising this is how the world works? 

I feel sad, and stupid, that I held myself back. Because let's be honest here. He didn't actively stop me. I realised it was an issue and I stopped myself. If you asked him, he'd say he was there urging me on, supporting me all the way. Indeed that's what he says to everyone. And doesn't that make him look like a great guy? All this is going in the background, under the surface. I decided to hold myself in check, because it made things easier for me. It's the same sort of feeling as letting your dad win at mini-golf, just so that the family order isn't thrown out of kilter.

I feel angry with myself for doing this. And ashamed, actually. What a pathetic thing to do. I don't deserve to call myself a feminist. 

And I'm confused too. Why would I do that to myself? Do I really think it's important never to come first? And do I even have any sense of "winning" at life? I don't think I did, to start with. I think it comes from him. He language, woven in the weft, spun into the every everyday phrase of it, is of fighting, contest, competition, war. I never had this in my vocabulary. I played in orchestras, not tennis matches. I was made of collaboration, harmony, the belief that the most fun you could have it is to join with other people and make a perfect symphony. Someone who worked for us once said "he was born in the wrong century. He's wasted on this day and age. He should have lived in the days of Crusades, or pistols-at-dawn". How true. 

It was five years ago, more now, that a woman said this to me. That's another problem with all this Thinking. Not only does it seem to take up so much space there's not much room left for Feeling; it also seems like a weak alternative to Action.  I could have gone five years ago - and my god I'd have saved myself some trouble. 

In attempting to connect with how I feel, I have been rereading my diaries, and this blog. It made me cry. I am sorry for myself. I am sorry that I have put myself through this when I perhaps could have been gone 5 years already. I see how sad and lonely I have been, and I do see that I got in touch with my feelings, and wrote about them, and that I was walking the days like a great big open wound. 

I started to feel better when I stopped feeling.  I am afraid to experience what I might actually feel like with the boxes opened, barriers lowered again. This last year I have dragged myself back by my fingernails, inch by bloody inch, from the precipice edge of despair. I'm not going back there. I can't. I can't bear it. 

I still don't want to be settled for. And I would still one day, like to be the leading lady in my own life, and to be The Very Thing. 

Blaze

I am furious. 

I worked for 20 years to make a good life for the family.  All those moments I missed with the girls growing up, so that I could secure their future. All those hours I worked, so that I could pay off the mortgage. All that time I put into...

Hey, you know what? 

I have made a good life for the family. The girls will soon be at college, and I despite all the obstacles thrown in my way, it looks like they will finish school without having to move.  How lucky I was, after all, to grow up poor. I knew how to cut back, make do, and I have got through the worst of the recession without having to sell the house or forgo the private education. I have got them on the right track towards the futures they think they want at the moment, and they are doing pretty well, all things considered. 

Sure I've missed some moments, but I have a good relationship with the girls.  We're close, the love is there, strong and pure. They are good people - I am proud of them. Maybe they will make it through ok. 

I've lost myself in all of this - but I reckon I can find myself again.  I was so full of energy and ideas, there was so much life in me. Perhaps that's still there, like the sun behind the clouds, like the moon below the horizon. 

Maybe I haven't done such a bad job after all. 

Monilophyte

Okay, okay. I admit that was probably not a helpful image, the one I invoked in my last post. I can see how evoking that situation when I'm trying to unravel my feelings probably isn't going to help me.  Here's a nicer one - a fresh green fern. This could be me - small, hard and tightly wound, about to uncurl gently into a fan of soft fronds. Why not?

However the whole "feelings" business is still making me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I tried to come out of my shell, be more authentically Me, say what I thought, behave in a way that allowed me to be myself rather than someone who other people thought I ought to be. I wanted to get my life back to a place where I did not feel so alienated and detached from it. And now look what's happened. 

I was looking back over this blog and it made me cry. I started writing it five years ago, when I had so much hope that I could make things better for myself, even perhaps by the very act of writing.  It builds early to some touching optimism, then plummets fast to the greyness of depression, interspersed with some desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempts to talk myself up.  It feels like a catalogue of failure: resolutions not acted upon, plans not delivered, aims not achieved, dreams that turned into a nightmare. 

Are things getting better? 

Well I guess they must be, relatively speaking. This time last year I was approaching a desperate rock-bottom. Now I longer feel that I want to disappear into oblivion. I think I am slowly rediscovering a direction, and formulated a medium-term plan. 

So how do I feel? How do I feel? How do I feel? I'm trying, really I am.  I feel sad that I got married for practical reasons, because my head told me to, even though my heart (and my friends) were screaming that it was a mistake, that I was selling myself short. And I feel angry with myself that I missed my cue to walk out of this particular doll's house when I had an open door three years ago. I feel ashamed that I am not showing my girls by example how to insist that a partner will treat you with consideration, kindness and respect. 

I am not The Very Thing. For anyone. That makes me feel like Nothing.  I want to be loved, and to make someone smile when I walk in the room.  I feel that I'm the inverse of this, that I'm on the flip-side of life. Spreading my misery like a disease to the people I get close to, and being too hard to love. 

Gauntlet

Here is my challenge. I am to get out of my head and into my heart.  I am to focus on what I feel rather than what I think.

This is hard, hard stuff. I am only really comfortable in the cool calm ambience of intellectual distance. Having to get down into the visceral stuff, the guts and gore of it, the awful, dreadful screaming, panicking mess of it feels scary. It feels like it might all be out of control. 

I did a project once for London Underground. They were looking at their process for what happens when someone slips down beside a train as it's pulling out of the station (or pulling in if they try to jump in front and mis-time it).  The person slips down and gets wedged, usually at the top of the hips or around the trunk (any higher and it's a straight one-under, a straightforward case of crowd control and haz-cleaning). 

When a person slips down the side, the train pulls the bottom of their body around faster than the top. Its like wringing out the bottom of a flannel. In these situations, it's common for the person to be alive and conscious. The twisting acts as a natural tourniquet, and they don't actually feel much pain. They think perhaps they are going to be ok. 

But when the train moves away, the tourniquet is released and they will definitely die, as all their main arteries are torn. Everything just drains out. There isn't really anything that can be done to save them. 

However there is quite a window of time, maybe even half an hour, when a family member could be brought to talk to them, when the situation can be assessed, when they are lucid and can discuss what might happen next. Should they be told? Should the family member be told? Should they be knocked out with morphine before the train is moved, even if they say they prefer not to be? 

Anyhow. My situation feels like this. Like I have been in a train wreck. That somehow I am managing to hold myself together, but that if I am untwisted everything will hurt too much and all the life will gush out of open wounds and I will just soak away.  

I will try and untwist, and see what happens. Logically speaking, I'm pretty sure I won't actually die.  Just need to convince myself to unwind gradually.  Little by little. 

Maybe a different image would be more helpful.  That might be a good place to start.

Unresolved

Do  you know what? I'm not even going to start with the whole Resolutions thing this year. Just another set of things to fail at. And all my Januaries are all the same - you know the drill. Write a novel. Publish a poetry collection. Fit into size 12 jeans. Learn to play Lullaby of Birdland. Blah blah blah.

This year I'm not going there. I'm just going to take it as it comes, see how it goes. All these plans and goals are just ways to beat myself up - and I clearly don't give a crap about them really, deep down, otherwise I'd have done them all by now. 

I am going to think smaller. Not a poverty of aspiration but more like a miniaturist. Do little things properly. Drink good coffee slowly out of a good cup. Brush my daughter's hair. Look out the window of the train. 

I am going to get stronger. I need to support my daughters, and to do that I need to stand firm myself. That means be healthy, eat right, get fresh air, try to sleep. 

I am going to write. I'm not even going to say what. Anything. Everything. I do know that writing makes me feel better. 

I am going to reconnect with myself. This is homework from my counsellor. Who the heck am I? Actually I think I already know the answer to that. I am my Collected Works. I am here. in these blog posts over the last 5 years. In my poems. In all the words I have churned and cranked out for work.  I am write here.