this consequence

this consequence ~ 

so easily wrought

by your facile savagery ~

finds its mark. 

this consequence ~

so cunningly built 

by your trenchant indolence ~

finds its mark. 

this consequence ~

so carelessly made

by your reckless indifference ~

finds its mark. 

I’m fine, thanks. How are you?

trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma    

Déjà vu

I had planned to begin writing here, again. It was to be an embodied expression of my hope, in a new year filled with all kinds of optimism and healing. 

Instead, it seems there is a particular kind of walloping in motion, enacted already, that has circled back and is striking repeatedly with a vicious and long-lasting venom. Exploitation is not too harsh a word for these toxic coils circling my daily existence, and it has again departed the furthest bounds of acceptability. 

The trauma here is manifold: not just the indignity of unmet need, but the callous absence of care that permits it once, let alone repeatedly. I curse you, empty-mouthed promiser of care. I see your absence, eloquent in its lack of diligent reassurance. Your complicit failure is the cruellest sting. 

more than a hundred

This blog has been closed to public readership since late 2021/early 2022. During the two years since then, I continued to write my way through a series of events and circumstances that were nothing short of completely devastating, on many levels and for many reasons. Those posts were, more than anything, an accurate record of the intense suffering that I was experiencing, and it makes for torrid reading. 

I do not consider those posts to comprise a narrative that deserves suppression, however I am mindful of how distressing much of it is and I have no desire to further the negative consequences of what was already a devastating period in my life. Therefore I have chosen to preserve that content elsewhere, away from this public space. What you are reading now is a blog which has had more than a hundred posts removed. A hundred posts is not an insubstantial amount of writing, and I include this figure here to convey something of the scale of my experience and the extent of its impact on me personally. 

However, much content is retained. Be warned that not all of it is easy reading. Some of it includes detail about the abuse I experienced as a child, which came pouring out in the months after my mother died. Not all of it flatters persons who may recognise themselves in aspects of my critique. But I spent several long years at the mercy of circumstances involving significant failings and the indifference of many people. I wore the real consequences of that. Therefore I have erred on the side of including material that still holds some of the sting I was feeling. It is but a drop of the howling ocean of words that I originally wrote. Readers will note that I could not and would not reopen this blog until I had moved on to a better, more balanced space within myself. 

That day has now come. I am satisfied with the content choices I have made. If you know me, and any of this material bothers you, please reach out to me. There is nothing here we can't heal between us.  

Careful thought

Careful thought, today and in the coming days, about the content on this blog. 

There is a dilemma in it for me. Whether to preserve the accurate record of what was, and will always remain fixed in my mind, as a horrendous collection of experiences laid over the top of each other in one continuously awful period that lasted several years. Or whether to erase the fullness of my own cathartic expression of so many aspects of that, in order to preserve the blog's original intent and tone, as it was originally known by the few of my readers who know me or know my online writing. 

But there needs to be some acknowledgement that part of the experience rested in the suppression of my fullest expression, by myself but also, maybe, by others who wished to avoid the inevitable confrontation with the awfulness of my reality, either because they had some part in it, or because they looked away when perhaps they could have been more attentive to the circumstances that were consuming me. Even in my hour of greatest need, believing myself to be heard, here and elsewhere, I was not, and there's a resonant damage in that with the silence of my abused childhood. That trauma, reawakened, deserved a voice, no less so than the trauma of my more recent experience. But it was not a kind voice, and there was all manner of blame and powerlessness and fury expressed here that was rightly so at the time, but which may not persist beyond the final bounds of the experience. 

So now, with a little time and distance from the worst of that onslaught, and soothed by a more benevolent-seeming turn in my circumstances, I must now decide how much of this written record to preserve, here or elsewhere. How much of that honours the truest nature of my experience, and how much of it might unnecessarily distress readers who come late to this written account, and who might be shocked to read for themselves that way I unravelled, at least for a time. There is no easy reading of genuine despair, and it was the very depths of such despair that I laid bare here. I am mindful of the hurt that reading such despair may cause people who care about me, and that is why I took the blog down when I did, over a year ago. But a year on, a year in which there have been some small, beneficial changes in my life, it no longer seems fair to deprive myself of the joy and consolation of this space. And more than that, I feel the need to reclaim the better parts of my life, the parts that were stripped away during the worst of those incomprehensible times. 

A balance, then, is what is needed here. Not to expunge the more torrid narratives, but maybe to preserve them in a bracketed way, so that I can refer to them without exposing my readership to the fullness of the worst of it. But you should not, if you're reading this, expect to find a nicely sanitised version of the events of the last few years. I may choose to soften some of my writing, but I will equally permit the boldest facts to remain so they can speak for themselves. You have a choice, whether you read it or you don't. I have applied careful thought to my decision to curate my blog in this way so that I can open it to readership again. You too can apply careful thought to understanding what is written here, and why I have written it. 

herein

herein the moment

the small sanctuary of

understanding that this

my excruciation liveth

not once but again

and herein the moment

I find for myself 

forgiveness, bravely

that others may not

herein the moment

and herein the moment

the larger battle of

all this my weakness

that forms the rounding play

in all these places

and herein the moment

I find for myself 

kindness, fiercely

that dwells here or not

herein the moment 

Half asleep

 

    She tells her love while half asleep,

        In the dark hours,

            With half-words whispered low:

    As Earth stirs in her winter sleep

        And puts out grass and flowers

            Despite the snow,

            Despite the falling snow.

                   

                     ~ Robert Graves