Perhaps the one thing

Perhaps the one thing I would like you to know is how mentally busy all of this makes me. How overburdened my thoughtspace is, with the compounding excess of things I should not need to consider, crowding in over the top of all the ordinary things I need to think about. It is so taxing to have such essential facets of my life relentlessly unresolved. And not just my thoughts, either, but my feelings too. My feelings are woefully entangled in these great unsolved mysteries. And the heart wants what it wants, all the feeble desires of a thwarted life, all the tantalising promises of improved circumstances, and the brutal counterpoint of the real difficulties I encounter day by day. (This is not what I thought it would be, any of it). And there’s a workload to all of this, a cost of thought and strategising and difficult decisions that never seems to lessen, no matter what footholds I manage to clamber onto, even briefly. And with it, self doubt. The grind of not-knowing, of having no certainty, of constantly guessing at the meaning of so many things, of reaching for confirmation and finding only speculation, always. And it would be one thing if it only concerned my own little bin-fire of incompletions and failures. But it goes further than that. It touches the lives of other people, and then rebounds back onto me with redoubled vigor. And I ache with the absence of people I value, people who may, for all I know, have decided I am too much. Too much confusion, too much crazy, too much effort. And even the having of this mental load adds to that, as if my right to clarity and communication and transparency of intention is somehow muddied by the process of daring to claim it, even in my own mind. “Stress” doesn’t adequately describe this overload. Neither does “burnt out” capture the depth of my weariness. I am tired. I am tired of the conscious load of always reaching for anything worth having, only to have it denied. I am tired of absence, and failure, and mixed fucking messages, and wanting. I am tired of acting like the unbearable burden of this on me is OK. That I am OK. I am tired of the constancy of having to question even the easiest of apparent facts just so I can find the shape of my own sanity in such a distorted mirror. I am tired of having my crazy wrung out of me like it’s its own commodity. And I am tired of the effort of believing you ever cared, most especially when that belief is still, even now, something I cling to. And I am exhausted by the mental load of knowing how utterly pathetic I am to have that need, as if there was anything different I could do about it. And even that is a burden: trying to understand what, if anything, I can do to change it. Because this overload, this constant hum of mental turmoil, is not my natural state. It is something I have acquired as a result of being confronted with the baffling inconsistencies of fractured cause-and-effect that now govern my life. It is a response within me to something outside my locus of control. (Or is it? Have I missed something obvious?). And it shouldn’t be such a grinding source of disempowerment. But if you knew, if you only knew, the fullness of the burden on my life, the delays and denials and disruptions and disappointments and disconnections, you might marvel at how unfathomable it is. And you might understand, in a way I cannot, how much of an effort this is to me to even comprehend it. 

Shock

What really shocks me, and it still does, is how you absolutely failed to assist me. It’s been more than a year since I fell over on your unstable, dangerous path, and I still feel the effects of those injuries every day. Ankle, ankle, knee, hip, tooth. I have pain, inflexibility of movement, and my balance is still, STILL compromised. It’s fair to say that I am likely permanently affected by the damage done to my body as a result of falling on your path, and the hard reality of that is that it has made me horribly vulnerable to future falls, because of the way my balance and proprioception has been damaged. I’m now staring down several decades of my older life when serious, life-threatening falls are a real risk to my wellbeing and survival. And during that year, I have been actively excluded from assistance. I had a doctor’s appointment booked at one point early on, specifically to have my injuries reassessed. I could not attend that appointment on that occasion, because I literally did not have enough money to pay. And being a compensable appointment, I should not (legally) have claimed any Medicare benefit for it. This is what you have done. I am still, even now, shocked by this. I am shocked that I am embedded in entire living, breathing organism of people, a “community” of persons whose existence and wellbeing are dependent on how well they look out for each other, who know so very much of every detail of my life, and yet no assistance was rendered. I have had to fight every day, on a personal level, to push through my pain and, yes, my trauma and despair, to move my body sufficiently to claw back my ability to walk in a normal-seeming manner down the street. (Normal-seeming because I’m only ever a short uncoordinated, unbalanced stumble away from another fall. I can’t even dance properly, I can’t step or spin or travel across the floor because it’s a constant risk of toppling over). And yet nobody, in all that time, has leaned in to offer advice or support on how to go about claiming monetary assistance, compensation or god forbid, actual specialised rehabilitation? I am still shocked by this. I am shocked by the absence of care, of the most basic gestures of empathy and support. The psychic damage of this to me, sustained every day when I wake up and confront the reality of what has happened, is enormous. How could you allow this to happen to someone in your midst? What game plan can this possibly serve? Injuring me, in the first place, either with your carelessness or your careless-seeming engineering, and then utterly failing to step in with an appropriate after-response? It’s not OK. I am permanently altered. My life, my fundamental physical being has been changed, damaged permanently. And yet you are content to allow this to be done to me, without ensuring I have the wherewithal to recover? I do not intend to go to an early death. But without a full recovery, that is what is at stake. And since basic survival also requires monetary resources, when those are withheld, so too is my welfare and wellbeing. 

How much harder to you intend to press down with your steel-capped boots? It’s fair to say they have already left an indentation on my face. 

I mind

I mind very much when I have no discretionary lifestyle choices because my finances have been constrained.

I mind very much when it’s payday and we already have less than $400 to get us through the fortnight.

I mind very much when my husband finds himself within a very small subset of persons who are required to travel away for days at a time but brings home exactly $0 in allowances for his troubles.

I mind very much when I am required to be subjected to a set of circumstances again that were unacceptable the first time I was subjected to them. 

I mind very much when you lie to me, and when you make out you have planned for contingencies that you clearly have no qualms about neglecting. 

I mind very much that I won’t have sufficient funds to get through the next week, and that there will be attendant social and health ramifications for me that result in cumulative long-term damage to me. 

I mind very much that you are willing to pour resources into maintaining a pretense of looking out for me, but you are unwilling to pour any resources into actually looking out for me.

I mind very much that I’m required to suck all of this up with dignity and discretion, when what you really deserve is a torrent of verbal approbation. 

I shall

The Crystal Gazer

I shall gather myself into myself again,

    I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,

Fusing them into a polished crystal ball

    Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,

    Watching the future come and the present go,

And the little shifting pictures of people rushing

    In restless self-importance to and fro. 

~ Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933)

Not waiting

Tired of being weighted down by hope, she threw three days’ worth of biscuits, cold backstrap, and sardines in her knapsack and walked out to the old falling-down log cabin, the “reading cabin,” as she thought of it. Out here, in the real remote, she was free to wander, collect at will, read the words, read the wild. Not waiting for the sounds of someone was a relief. And a strength.

From Where the crawdads sing ~ Delia Owens 

What do I care?

What do I care, in the dreams and the langour of spring,

That my songs do not show me at all? 

For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,

I am an answer, they are only a call.

But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,

Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,

For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,

It is my heart that makes my songs, not I. 

~ Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933) 

I found this poem in winter, near the beach of my childhood, and dreamed of spring. And with it, the promise of fairer weather and better days. But now that spring has arrived, I find myself weathering a different kind of storm. I'm staring into a vast, churning void, heaving with absence and silence and unsaid things. It is a torment and an anguish to hold so much unresolved for so long, and in the midst of it I feel profoundly unseen, unheard, even unknown. It is as if I have become tangled in someone else's version of a story, and it is unwieldy, intractable, unyielding to all my efforts to shape it into something kinder, more generous, more benevolent. And there's a wailing sound coming from my mouth, a keening that's been made by the pain sustained in the story, so there's this awful noise coming out of me and there are people who think this is what I am, that this role that's been forced upon me is who I am. No. It is not. But the story has been so overwhelming and so relentless on so many levels and for so many reasons, and in all of that loss and hope and longing and grief and striving and brutality, there must be a voice. Let my heart have its say. All of that suffering cannot be visited upon a single person without choking out some form of expression in response. The wind cannot sing through the clefts and curves of the sand dunes without scouring them into new shapes, but neither can the beach be dragged away from its moorings without the ocean roaring its terrible songs. But those howls are the voice of pain, and I am not my pain. I am undone in pain, but I am not destroyed by it. My mind is proud and strong enough to be silent. Even at my lowest ebb, I have had the presence of mind to guard and defend some place of sanctuary within myself, so that I have the wherewithal to do what needs to be done. To declare painful truth in the face of the vicious onslaught. To chant the wracking lamentations of that other story without being consumed by them. But it is gruelling work, it is exhausting, and I am worn down. So now that the spring I dreamed of has arrived, bringing kinder weather but uncertain relief, I take comfort in these words, written nearly a hundred years ago, which remind me of my strength, my ability and my worth: I am a flint and a fire, / I am an answer, they are only a call.

If

 

If 

you knew

if you really knew

what caused me

to hiss and claw so

to ball myself in this

vortex of spiky words this

vicious spray of thorns this

hail of caustic edges this

grimacing howl of blades this

deceit-cleaving fury this

razor-yawped pause

why

would you

reply with

your 

own

?

every time

 

It is a thousand knives, every time,

and every one of them has found its mark.

reflect

 

Let us reflect on what is truly of value in life,

what gives meaning to our lives, 

and set our priorities on the basis of that. 

~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Story

I can’t live like this anymore. Always strung out on promises that never, ever come to fruition. And the mockery of all around me pretending this is some enormous success. How is this success? How is this anything other than outrageously wrong? How do you even sleep at night? How do you sleep? Because I do not. I do not sleep at night and this has gone on for years, because of this vile falsehood you have enacted against me, continuously. 

And my heart is sore. I am wounded in body and in spirit. I cannot live like this anymore. I cannot live this enormous pretence that yay! everything is getting better! when it hasn’t, it still hasn’t. I am still strung out. I am mocked by your obscene pantomime of assurance when I have enjoyed no such assurance. I am dangled even now over the next awful repetition of the next awful assault against me. This is not success. This is not what success looks like. And you have failed utterly in your fundamental duty of care towards me. 

And it overwhelms. It overwhelms me and my days and my few tiny chances of doing anything differently, ever. I am overwhelmed. I am sad. I am angry. I am very deeply betrayed by your indifference. I am heartsore. And I feel lost. Even the most basic information has been withheld from me. Fuck. Do I need to draw a fucking diagram of what that looks like? When the information flow is bent back on itself so you can keep pretending you told me what I needed to know when the ONLY thing I know is that I didn’t get the information I needed? My entreaties for help went nowhere and I was provided no other means to help myself. How many layers of wrongness need to amass right in front of you before you shake yourself out of this stupor? And when you do not and have not, my questions must bend towards how your interests are served. How have your interests been served throughout this whole intractable episode in which I have been smashed repeatedly and you have continued your self-congratulatory campaign of obliviousness? What have you been getting out of this that was worth allowing all of that to happen to me in your midst? And even the most benign answers that I can summon do not provide me with any kind of comfort. Because the weight of my suffering is greater than any benefit you, any of you, could have taken. So even the moral budget is wildly out of balance and must be restored. 

So, believe me now when I say, I cannot live like this anymore. The improvement must be enacted NOW, not at some tantalisingly close-but-never-achieved future point. The unsustainability of  your enterprise has reared up and devoured the very last remains of my cooperative intent. It seems to me that you need to go away and get your fucking ducks lined up in a very helpful row before I permit you even so much as a right of reply. 

In the meantime, my challenge is to make good what parts of my life have not been trashed absolutely. And I will have the help and kindness of good people around me, assisting me, while I do this. I will repair my life, with or without your input, or the fruition of your many promises to me. I have already earnt this much, and I will claim it in the living of my life. Your rot will be excised from my existence, your lies will fall helplessly into obscurity. I will patch over the tattered remains of my hope and steer it into gentler landscapes where it will be welcomed and renewed. I will meet challenges and overcome obstacles, new and old, with my sense of confidence intact, and my instinct and intuition will guide me as surely it always has. You might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of me, genuinely flourishing and thriving, or you might not. You might even be allowed to participate in some small measure of my glorious life. But you will never again be granted the easy lassitude of your convenient assumptions. Because this is my story. It is my story and I am writing it now. I am writing it and I require it to come to a very satisfying resolution, starting now. 

apart

apart

kept apart

apart from everything

apart from everything else

there is this

rankling realisation 

that this

even this

my space

has been 

kept apart

i have been 

SCREAMING

into a void

that is

kept apart

my words 

have fallen 

into nothing

nowhere

kept apart

my pain

has gathered

insensible

in drifts

kept apart

away

elsewhere

otherwise

unseen

apart

&

apart

kept apart

even this

is/become

a cage

What?

What

did you

imagine

was

happening

to me

during

that

entire

awful

expanse

of time

when 

I

was

being

strangled

and

you

looked

nonchalantly

away

?

I’m not sure

I’m not sure you understand yet. I’m not sure you understand that this isn’t about you, or what I think of you, or how I really feel about you. This is about survival. It’s about running on empty so long that I no longer remember where I was running. It’s about making do with nothing until there is nothing left I can do. It’s about pain that hasn’t been salved, and injury that hasn’t been treated. It’s about extended deprivation and repeated assaults, enacted again and again, using the same clumsy manoeuvres. It’s about being victimised by assumptions about my apparent success, while my real failure is delivered in daily doses of economic strangulation. It’s about the kind of despair that engulfs, not after weeks of hopeless futility, but months and years of it. It’s about the lies that people have told me before they went on to enact the very opposite of what they said they would. It’s about the cumulative physical damage to me of being unable to access medical and dental care. It’s about losing my inheritance and all the personal mementos that I vowed I would fight for, before I’ve even had the chance to fight. It’s about the falsehoods writ large that have kept me personally isolated from the people I most care about. 

No, it’s not about you at all, unless you are one of those people I care about. But it is about you if you find dismay or distress or anger of your own in what I’ve written. It’s about you if your pain meets mine in the twists and turns of this horrible extended torment that has taken so many excruciating words for its voice. And it is very definitely about you if any or all of this thrusts a jagged blade through the tattered remains of what care or regard ever existed between us. I’m not sure you understand the depth of desperation that could require such an enormous risk. But neither can I comprehend how any of this could be a shock to you. How is it that the truth of my life has been so invisible when I am so painfully in the view of so many people all the time? How can you, any of you, have allowed this to go on so long, even after all of my best and most eloquent words had collapsed into a torrent of incoherent distress? 

No, I’m not sure you understand. But I hope you will try. 

thirty

This thirty rings hollow, like the crashing of these waves onto an empty beach. This thirty is mine yes but stripped away from me also, taken along with all the other absences and all the other losses. This thirty is wrapped, muffled in your convenient assumptions, and your careless permission for unforgiveable things to be rendered unto me, again. Again and again this thirty is turned upon itself, unrecognisable in the disgorgement of what should-have-been, false in what was, and yet it was this way and it is. This thirty is mine yes but taken from me also. Did my words cut you? Did they cut you like this misshapen thirty has cut me? Did they stripe upon your skin like this thirty did mine, this thirty and before that others too? This thirty has howled in this listening place, and with many others, and its cries were met with silence, and that too rings hollow on the moaning wind. There is no joy here, only failure. Is the failure mine, or is it merely borne by me? I am torn down by this, again, and no new number of promises will make this better. This thirty was mine but now it is become wrong, like so many other wrongs, and I have forgotten so much and in my forgetting it has been turned to lies. And with those lies only sorrow and all the harrowing hours are wrapped around it and all of my hopeless helpless anguish and I cannot and I cannot do this and I cannot bear this and I cannot I just cannot live this thirty and all the others I cannot. 

insufficient

your tidy lawn / is

a poor receptacle

for these waves of despair

you

You

yes, you

have made a

travesty 

of my life. 

30 years

and this 

this

is what I 

get? 

I am 

done.

I am done with

pretending

that the insufficient

is enough

that the unacceptable

is happenstance

that these misfortunes

are but a near miss

I

deserve

better

Fuck you.

Fuck all of you.

You who are getting away with it

and you who have failed me

and you who didn’t even fucking turn up

You 

have made a 

travesty 

of my life

In low fields by the sea

Like barley bending

In low fields by the sea,

Singing in hard wind

Ceaselessly;

Like barley bending

And rising again,

So would I, unbroken,

Rise from pain;

So would I softly,

Day long, night long,

Change my sorrow

Into song.  

~ Sara Teasdale

fortnight

I would like you to understand this: my anger does not represent some kind of mental unravelling due to the large assaults I have endured these past months, but it is a justifiable reaction to the small ones. The small daily, weekly, fortnightly assaults of repeated denials and exclusions and the daily effects of that on even the most basic aspects of my life. 

It was “payday” just a few days ago. I have not yet bought medication, nor shopped for the main part of the fortnightly groceries. We now have little more than $40 remaining in the bank. That won’t cover my medication, which is about to run out, and it’s not enough to pay for food for the next two weeks. This is not a result of my inaction or mismanagement, but rather the cumulative effect of all of the circumstances that have been artfully designed and systematically implemented for several years, while denying me access to all the normal mechanisms of seeking income and addressing financial issues with the main thing needed: money. 

So, go ahead and read the rest of this blog. Linger over those posts that have descended into crazy sweary rage-fuelled ranting. Consider what you know about me, if you know me, who I am and what I have done, for you and for other people, and then consider the depth of my anger at being so deeply under-resourced and unsupported for such an intolerably long time. Now consider your own role in allowing this to occur. At what point did you lead me to believe I would be OK, when nothing about this situation is OK? And then ask yourself whether you could or should have acted differently towards me, then or now. 

You might decide you have nothing to answer for. Maybe you are content to allow someone in your midst to be so badly treated, provided your own interests are looked after. But imagine it’s you who has only $40, and your fridge is about to be empty, and your medication is going to run out so you will start feeling pretty awful, and you’ve got nothing of value to sell, and there is every indication that none of this should be happening. Wouldn’t you be angry? Now ask yourself how or where or to whom you would express that anger, especially when your situation keeps getting worse? Because that is what is happening here. No amount of resilience or excellent mental health or personal transcendence will change it. Even if I manage to scrape through this fortnight, I am facing the same essential lack of necessary resourcing next fortnight, and the fortnight after that, on and on with no foreseeable improvement.

So, please do go ahead and read the rest of this blog. Be as hurt and offended and insulted and whatever else you like when you see what it is I have written here. But remind yourself that your grievance is perched atop Maslow’s hierarchy, while I’m down here at the bottom of it trying to figure out how I’m going to get medication for my basic wellness and how we are going to eat for the next fortnight. And then think about how many fortnights it's been and how many fortnights of this are still coming and everything else that has been and will be displaced from my life. Yes, I am still angry. And I will direct that anger wherever I fucking well like. 

endured too long

  

Though bleak these woods, and damp the ground
With fallen leaves so thickly strewn,
And cold the wind that wanders round
With wild and melancholy moan;

There is a friendly roof, I know,
Might shield me from the wintry blast;
There is a fire, whose ruddy glow
Will cheer me for my wanderings past.

And so, though still, where'er I go,
Cold stranger-glances meet my eye;
Though, when my spirit sinks in woe,
Unheeded swells the unbidden sigh;

Though solitude, endured too long,
Bids youthful joys too soon decay,
Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue,
And overclouds the noon of day;

When kindly thoughts, that would have way,
Flow back discouraged to my breast; -
I know there is, though far away,
A home where heart and soul may rest. 

Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine,
The warmer heart will not belie;
While mirth, and truth, and friendship shine
The smiling lip and earnest eye.

The ice that gathers round my heart
May there be thawed; and sweetly, then,
The joys of youth, that now depart,
Will come to cheer my soul again.

Though far I roam, that thought shall be
My hope, my comfort, everywhere;
While such a home remains to me,
My heart shall never know despair!

The consolation ~ Anne Brontë

in Poems for a world gone to sh*t 

what nourishment is this?

I've spent some time, these past few days, looking over my recent writings, here and elsewhere. And what I see, besides a raging torrent of anger/grief/despair, is that my underlying circumstances have not improved during that time. And yet, I am finding a new distance from that outpouring of unbearable emotion. The situation has not changed, but (miraculously, mercifully) my relationship with all that has been (and continues to be) unacceptable has shifted. 

And the situation has not changed. In some ways it is worsened. My teeth again need repair, as if scraping together the barest wherewithal for the last dental repairs had never happened. With that comes pain and discomfort. My health, despite my earnest, focussed efforts, remains precarious. My injuries linger, untreated. My finances are in ruins, and following on from that is an eternity of days in which I cannot go and I cannot do that which I need and want to be doing. More than the lack of necessities, this comprises a kind of theft of days of my life, and an eternity of opportunities that I relinquish, week by week, as the days, months and years of my life tick past, undone. 

There is a fuller realisation, too, of how these more recent circumstances sit nested within a longer span of similar, but less acutely confronting circumstances. It is as if someone has looked over my life, and identified all those things that were problematic, and amplified them in very deliberate ways. Turned up the dial on things that I managed and overcame, with varying effort, for years beforehand. And looking now at those circumstances, I wonder how it is that I remained so buoyant, so resilient against the constant grind. We have had so little, for so long, and oftentimes what we've had has been whittled away in patterns that are not evident in the lives of those around me. Strangely enough, even in the face of all that, I always believed I was surrounded by abundance, when the reality is we had so little, and often not enough, and yet I made a kind of art out of doing without. I adopted a kind of boho earth mama sensibility to smooth the rough edges from having to rely on second-hand, cheap, homemade things, because we simply did not have the money to buy what we needed. That works, for a while, when you are young, and have your health, and you can spend your time filling the gaps left by not-having enough. But I am no longer young, and my health is less assured now, and I have not the energy left now to transform the shoddy cast-offs of other people's lives into something I can pretend is nice.

More recently, I had to turn to charity for food. This is deeply embarrassing to me, and it was shocking to my family when they found out. Because the assumption is that we are doing OK, and if we're not doing OK, then there's a universe of people we can turn to for help before we need to seek the impersonal assistance of strangers. But it never occurred to me to ask my family for money for this most basic of things, food. Because, for years, we've scratched by with the most meagre of supplies, and I never asked for money then, either. We've shopped with a calculator and gone without many, many times before. But what's different now is I cannot eat the very cheapest food anymore without endangering my health. I can't cook a packet of pasta or rice or beans and dress it up with condiments and the last of the vegetables and eat that and then stir an egg into the leftovers and cut it into pieces and fry it and serve it again like it's a new meal anymore, because what's at stake is my eyesight, my kidneys, my fingers and toes. So when the fresh food has run out, and so has the money, and I need to buy medication, and the car needs petrol because I'm required to be places, then food comes after everything else. Because no-one's going to pay for medicine or petrol, and the debt collectors will still take hundreds of dollars every fortnight even though you've stated quite assertively that you cannot afford it, but you can turn up, brittle with embarrassment and need, and people will give you food, at least a small amount, enough to stretch whatever you have left, at least for a while.

Perhaps this provides some insight about the incandescence of my rage at all the other circumstances that have unfolded, usually in contravention of well-founded, reasonable expectations. The cunning subterfuge of my mother's domestic partner, in concealing her death to spirit all her possessions away before we were even given the space to grieve her loss. The affront of institutional non-response which prevented me from seeking therapeutic care for my substantial injuries following my fall. The trenchant refusal of multiple organisations to grant me job interviews, even when my resume is dripping with a vast body of highly relevant experience. And a plethora of denials, refusals and withholdings of other types of access and support that have been hinted, offered and even overtly promised to me by many people, as I have traversed the half-dreamed other-life that provides the only explanation for the bizarre manner my life has careened off the rails of normal cause-and-effect into this other non-sensical, repeating farce. There is a shape and form to this other-life, and it is peopled by those who have, smilingly, proffered loyalty before slinking off to attend to their own interests with nary a second glance in my direction. That I am absorbing all this loss is immense, that I am absorbing it all without even the most basic material sustenance is unfathomable. And yet it continues. 

My younger self would stand fast in her steady belief of existing in an abundant universe. But this circumstance is not abundant. Not because the universe has changed, but because the underlying abundance has been systematically stripped away before it can reach me. But I am open, Always it seems, to generosity and foolish hope. And I do not wish to suggest here that I have been a wholly passive victim of what has transpired. I have rallied, many times over, tried and re-tried despite the cautious urging of my intuition, which has, it seems, the measure of my reality even better than my clever, rational self. Nothing is what it seems here, and hasn't been for a long time, and yet I am not ready to cede defeat. Even when I have been swamped by my own rage, anguish and despair, I have not laid down arms. And in a non-sensical realm any response is appropriate, and I am aware that I have enjoyed some successes, even when the whole of my trajectory has appeared to be one of impossible dead-ends. But the end result is I do not have the money I need to be living the life I should reasonably expect at this time, and that blunt instrument slugs me on a regular basis in real ways. 

My mother was extraordinarily preoccupied by a narrative of monetary denial, and it pains me that my recent life has been tarnished with a similar-seeming obsession. But obsessed,  I am not. I am merely confronted as anyone would be, in the same circumstances. And it belies the reality that I am an extraordinary person, that I have contributed value to the world well beyond the scope of my ordinary-seeming life, and that I will be remembered for a legacy that few can yet know or guess at. But for all that, I cannot pay to fill the tooth that now gapes, jagged and half-vacant in my jaw. I do not have the means to travel to see my family and friends, while all the big and small occasions of their life pass without me. Is this worth it? Is any of what I have undergone worth what I have lost in the process? This is not something I can answer, even now, because too many parts of the broader whole are hidden from my view. There are too many ambiguities, unmet potentialities, and even future disappointments for me to be able to cast my opinion one way or the other. What I do know, though, is that I cannot seal myself away from the inevitable tides of this existence. I am in it, even when I think myself to be entirely self-directed in my actions. It is what it is, and it has not finished with me yet. 

Anger, then, cannot linger here forever. It burns too quickly and consumes too much. Perhaps the idiotic longevity of this situation has deprived my rage of the oxygen that first caused it to flare. Because this is true: this has gone on for too long, well beyond any sensible reckoning, well outside the parameters of even the most rigorous planning or forecasting. It has stubbornly persisted well beyond even my capacity to survive it, and so I have not, and I have not survived it for so long and so absolutely and even that has caused no cessation and no improvement so the only option left to me is a kind of paradoxical calm. Or maybe I'm just having a good week. Maybe the relief of having been able to buy a few groceries again flicked the PAUSE switch on my still-seething psyche. Maybe I am so burnt out now that my standards have been reset impossibly low, so that even the sun shining for an hour or the prospect of a single job interview is enough to restore me to a giddy sense of wellbeing. What nourishment is this? Whatever it is, it is a welcome reprieve, even though it comes from within and not from any obvious improvement in my fortunes. 

Mixed feelings (in a mellow moment)

It would be both misrepresentative and inaccurate to infer, from my more heated writings, that I spend the majority of my days in a state of ranting, steaming fury. Yes, fury has been a companion to my days for some time, and for good reason, and this is something I have been living with, but it doesn't comprise the fabric of my everyday life. 

I have more mellow moments. I reflect upon my actions, and the manner and form I have chosen to express some of my stronger feelings, and I do not apologise for that. There is a depth of complexity to my life that is not apparent to the observer, and that place of complexity is one of disempowerment, and loss, and an entire spectrum of entirely normal emotional responses. And yes, those responses include anger, and it is proportionate to the  scale of that which I have borne. But anger is not socially acceptable for women. Instead, people plaster over the reality of the very real assaults and injuries that we experience with a thin veneer of judgment which questions our stability, our sanity, our capability, as if fury in the mouth of a woman is always born out of our own personal weakness. And some of you reading this (if I ever decide to give you access again) may already have made that judgment about me. There's not a lot I can do about that. But here, in this space, I am not going to censor my anger. I am not going to pretend that I have not been angry, and that my anger has not been an expression in response to very specific circumstances, which if known would prompt similar responses in anyone else. Nor I am going to assume that you, reader, are incapable of developing a more nuanced understanding of the fuller state of mind that lies underneath my spitting vehemence. Nor will I apologise if my anger provokes your own, for any reason, but especially if you feel that my anger towards you and your actions is misplaced. If nothing else, understand that the depth of my distress has at times overwhelmed my sense of the calm benevolence of my relationship with the world and the people in it, and I have encountered instead an indifference and absence of care that belies the undertakings that people have given me about what to expect from them. And that looks and feels like betrayal, and I've worn the real, practical consequences of it in entirety across multiple spheres of my life for a very long time. So suck up your discomfort, sweetheart. It ain't a patch on what I've been subjected to. And I reserve the right to express that, calmly or hysterically, rationally or passionately, accurately or with all the colourful exaggeration that the strength of my emotion demands, here or anywhere else. 

I might choose, at some future time, to soften the harder edges of some of my words, in recognition that what I have written is only a piece but not all of my experience, that it reflects one aspect but not others. I might, one day, write more about my hopes, about the good I aspire to bring about, about the privilege of living this crazy, unfathomable life, about the joy of sharing it with multitudes of strangers and seeing the unimaginable take form. I might, in a more mellow moment, reflect more fully on my own agency in bringing about what has occurred, the good and also the awful. I might even acknowledge the sense of unseen support, of small, momentary kindnesses, the encouragement that I've taken from near and far, and the very deep respect, affection and gratitude I feel for the people who have given it. None of that outweighs the mad, bad, sad that has been my lot, but it is something that sustains me and it has helped me enormously while staring into the existential maelstrom of my powerlessness. And I am aware that some of my anger has been directed at the same people who have been that source of strength to me. And I will not apologise for that either. Because it goes to the heart of the complexity that has made everything so difficult for me. But neither can I pretend that no strain has been placed on those relationships, or that people I care about might not turn away from me, burdened by an undercurrent of unresolved feeling. But I hope not. I hope they can find the same strength in themselves that they've helped me to find in myself, and that our care for each other is matched by our courage to express it. 

What I am trying to work out

 

What I am trying to work out

- and this is a sincere question -

is why or how (or even when) it is 

~or ever would be - OK for me to be 

so drained financially, in every sense, 

that we cannot afford to buy food.  

How does that represent an OK 

outcome of your planning, your plotting, 

your scheming? How can this be the 

outcome you sought? And yet it seems, 

yet again, that this is entirely the 

desired effect. Look, I’ve pulled the exit cord, 

I’ve signalled in every way at my disposal 

(and some that are not, but I used them 

anyway) that I’m done with this repeating

cycle of penury and lack. And yet still you persist 

with your outrageous misuse of my life. 

What should I do? A member of your

number is hungry - and will be sick, very sick, soon

with that hunger. That hunger has arisen entirely

as the inevitable consequence of all of your

corrosive mendacities. How is it OK - how

was it EVER OK - to treat me like this? 

Yeah, you better believe I am calling

this out - and loudly - and my noise will find

its mark, so that your amused indifference

is revealed for the disgusting sham that it is. 

And every person who willingly allowed this to 

occur, once, twice, or the third 

time now, will be denounced amongst their

peers, yes, this and every time, until

this mode of my suffering is erased 

permanently. And even then your names 

will fall from my parched, worn out mouth 

until nothing is left but the marks of

your crime seared into the shadows 

of the earth.

perhaps

perhaps...

apparent

 

          it is apparent you

          have no care for the wreckage

          left in your wake

unrelenting

 

i am tired

i am tired of

your foolish games & 

my weary hope &

the strain of

holding nothing

nothing real, anyway

nothing that helps

or heals

or holds up 

the strain of

eking out this small

choked misery

when the truth is

even when i sleep

i dream i dream of

your foolish games &

my weary hope &

these are my days &

these are my nights 

unrelenting 

&

all this

is a whip

i wove from

my life &

my trust &

my dreams &

i gave it 

to you

&

soon as

you had it

you used it

on me & on

my weary hope &

these are my days &

these are my nights

unrelenting

&

now 

you’re gone.

you got what

you wanted

i suppose

then you 

left.

i am tired

i am tired of 

the strain of

eking out this small

choked misery

& 

even when i sleep

i dream i dream of

my foolish hopes

& when I wake

i am holding

nothing

&

it’s

all my 

own stupid

fault i guess

friendship

 

          you brandished our friendship

          like a weapon but then you

          dropped it like an old toy

sun/flower

          I still remember

          you turning towards me like I’m

          the only one there 

          

Falling

 

he fell off his bike.

The getting of "wisdom"

Today I remembered a time when La Narcisse hit me with a book. 

Feet

I stayed awake all night, the other night, and this is why. 

I feel very much

I feel very much...

even when

even when

Split

 

split

It’s like…

 It’s like…

Shouting

I am shouting.