The other reality

Night brings on other realities
of a languid woman of lusty hues,
spreading her limbs apart in desire,
and him. Dark eyes and dark hair
beautiful and clear and burning.
He could desire me, admire me,
snake his arms around my waist
kiss my neck to envious eyes.
He could, and I would let him,
now, when my limbs are liquid,
my man and my child locked
away in another reality.
I could even let this woman look
into his dark eyes and fall.
But I know, through my stupor,
that if she were to look over his shoulder,
the dreamy mist would give way
to ugly black dying shapes.
Why should this lust fuelled night vision
have anything more than the inglorious end
of the other reality of day?

(From early 2011)

The Priory

(The Priory became the only sanctuary from the persecution of my own thoughts. Could not imagine life on the outside. And yet, here I am, well and getting better. Looking in at that place from the outside is nice.)

(Remembering Gary, Hilary, Matt, Danielle, Lana, Toby, Becca, Beth, George, Richard, Caitlin. And Caio, Bhavna, Nicola, Christos and Harry.)

I remember that place
where I walked with those others.
Rough carpets and blank ceilings,
bland pictures that said nothing,
nothing that could reject or invite
or allow belonging.
And us others passing through this place,
mothers and children, addicts and saints,
stories flowing into stoic walls.

Curtains of ivy framing sash windows,
consultants ensconced in warm academic rooms
upstairs, at the tap trickling drugs that blunted our demons
while we raged and wept on the lower floors.

The garden with the border of red tulips,
defiant buggers that demanded we look.
Deflated balls lying around
for us to kick and ruminate over
while we talked and walked,
bared and covered.

The cold corridors with doors along it
like a tedious metaphor.
I stalked and sweated there.
Once I opened a door and looked in
on a child woman's tormented mind -
raped, addicted, judged, ashamed.
I ran back down that calm, cold corridor
and through my own unremarkable door.
Demented hermits we were behind the doors.

In my room I lay still, watching TV
day after day, escaping my thoughts.
They came with food and drink and care
and too loud voices and too bright lights
and made me wake, shower, eat and step out some.

There was love and philosophy and some simple things
pragmatic grit and resolute hope.
A little bit of everything went
into the making of my new peace.

On my last day, I was alone a lot in the garden.
The tree strewing pink blossoms
effortlessly, impartially,
on whose bed I sat and stared
for an hour at air.
A perfect circle of time,
broken perfectly by my child's embrace.

Outside in the disjointed world
I remember that sanctuary.
We others are among everyone.
No one hears our gnashing teeth
through the chatter of rambling days.
I'm learning it all again, how to be
a mother, a wife, God's loved child,
How to just be.

A warm memory

Warm brown faces, dust-sweat streaked,
drooping trees and baking streets.
Brave little voices clamouring
in frenzied games of songs and stones.
Lost embraces from the past.

(Reworked. First draft 11/04/12 @The Priory. Listening to Jagjit Singh.)

Art Therapy

I feel ready to share what I wrote and write some new stuff about my time at the Priory, recovering from my breakdown. I met some wonderful folk there and I want to make sure I remember them. So here's the first instalment.

For George the doctor and Richard the musician.

On an insolent day of April blue
I sat with alabaster shadows.
Wan faces turned away
from tempestuous tulips
that hurt our eyes.

'Paint a picture. Anything you see.'
I see fear but I won't look
I won't look I won't look!
I gather my blankness around me:
white, clinical, sanitised.

'How about some colours and brushes?'
I say I was never one for art.
Shrug. Pick up the brush.
Ragged grotesque strokes.
Shame. Strangled scream.
I told you I didn't want to look.

George showed me his work:
a darling delicate daffodil.
We were children then
daring through our infancy.
A few pallid petals
that survived a burning bough.

(Reworked. First draft: 11/04/12 @The Priory.)

On a dull October afternoon

Today is one of those grey, dreary days. It's foggy and dark outside and inside my head. I'm that 'patient etherised upon a table'. I'm not really here, not anywhere. Feel little of anything,  maybe a little sad at some things, mostly disconnected from everything. I am exhausted easily by little things - showering, eating,  playing with my son. The effort involved in getting through the day is unreasonably high. I was ready to go back to the unchallenging comfort of bed after making my son breakfast.

Today is also one of those days where I can watch the tide flow and not drown in it. I'm learning to stand by the water, still,  and let the tide wash my feet. I'm learning to not rush into every emotion I feel, flailing in the rising waters and not being able to see past it. (A metaphor I was instructed in at the Priory, where I spent some time recovering from my breakdown.) It has been dark and dreary for a few days but it will pass. I have faith.

Am I happy? I keep asking myself this, as an index to decide which direction I should take, what choices I should make. When I asked myself this over the past few years, the answer was always shaky. I was happy momentarily a lot when I did some things but I always felt fearful of those things ending. I used to fear waking up in the morning to go to work, fear returning home from anywhere, fear looking in the mirror. I used to fear meeting people. I felt afraid and anxious, always. Nowadays when I ask myself 'am I happy?' I notice that the answer is more certainly, more regularly 'yes'. I am more at peace with myself. I am still trying to work out all the tags and labels that make me, but it's a great ride, this exploring of me. I like who I am more now. I have surprised myself. I am not at all unfulfilled as a stay at home mother, in fact I have never felt more creative, more enlightened, more content. I have very little money and I find it liberating. It's so much easier to say no to the pressures of a consumerist culture's recognisable traps when you just don't have the enabling agent! I have freed myself from relationships that were meaningless and bound simply in expectations and pretensions. I have detached myself from relationships which I am still duty bound to, but which provide no joy, no nourishment. I have found poetry in my child's voice. I have found stronger reaffirmation of my faith than in any time spent amongst the loudly faithful.

So today when I'm in that familiar displaced, dislocated fog, I have just stopped struggling and let it have its run. This too shall pass. It will be a brighter day soon. I am this displaced self and much more. I am ok with who I am.

So today I smile at the black dog and tell it to stick around and watch as I make Halloween craft with my son and some cakes for a friend's birthday. The bats, spiders and bugs are really taking shape (note you unforgiving school teachers who wrote off my art skills). The cakes look messy, have to wait to taste them. The black dog is still sulking in the background but I'll probably go for a walk in the awful weather if he gets too unpleasant. My grey fog can meet the grey fog outside; I can stay busy with the special madness that muddy puddles excite in a toddler.

Behind the scenes: Anxiety

I get a little tired of people asking me why I can’t just ‘snap out of it’ or ‘shake it off’ when I feel depressed or anxious. I’m not a dog and depression and anxiety aren’t drops of water. It’s rather difficult to articulate what happens in an anxiety attack, but I’ll attempt it anyway, if nothing else to prove that I do not lack determination or courage!

It feels like there is a trapped, feral animal, pounding on the door to be let out. If I let it out, there will be tears and blood and savagery. Fear and anger. Helplessness and rage. Flashbacks from the past, imagined doom from the future. Sometimes opening the front door, stepping past the threshold and feeling the world on my skin is like exposing my nakedness to the harshness of searing heat and burning cold, all at the same time. My heart beats in a panic rush, trying to lunge into my throat. My chest tightens, my ribs contract. Every breath feels like a crisis, pushing precious air through paths that are collapsing.

The phone rings and my heart drops through the floor of my chest, somewhere into my churning stomach. I want to scream, pee, swallow air through a gasping mouth, all at the same time. My eyes push against my head, the sockets ache. Someone says something to me, asks a question and there are flashes in front of my eyes, like electrical circuits have clashed horribly and I feel blinded temporarily. Hot and cold flashes on my skin. My arms, legs, back, neck feel clammy and scalded, at the same time. My clothes chafe against my skin and the rising heat permeates my skin. I force myself to stay awake, terrified of sleep, of nightmares, of a new day starting at the end of a night.

And while all this is happening, I have to work, live, love, cook, talk, laugh. There are two of me. One that surges with the anxiety, holds it at bay, is soaked in it and fights the battle everyday, sometimes forced to hide behind shut doors. The other does all the other stuff, the normal stuff that people need to see. Sometimes the battling me leaks into the other one and my hands shake, I feel dizzy, my mind struggles with simple thought like a senile mind childishly putting a puzzle together, incorrectly. I get confused by the days of the week, change in my pocket, how to drive a car. I can’t make any decisions, not even what clothes to wear.

So there, that’s what my anxiety looks like.

Once upon a train journey

I could pretend that through the branchfuls of sky I can glimpse God

That the light fingered clouds are something more than

Magic to a child

Below, blinking houses

packed into the ground

Sucking space

Red bricks bleed

White fronts pale

Man and Superman I see.

God I imagine.