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

explain

 

I want to explain something to you

I want to explain this is how it is
that the teasing of hope becomes
the feeding of despair

I want to explain how it is
that small kindnesses become
the tools for larger cruelties

I want to explain how it is
that I gather the last of my resolve
and I aim again for 
the better day 
the better day you told me about
the better day you explained to me
the better day you promised
that hasn't come

I want to explain how it is
that this exchange has a price
the transaction from hope
to payment of despair 
extracts a toll paid
in the currency of belief
and the ravening expense 
is 

trust

I want to explain how it is
that the payment becomes
inexorable and the price
too high and how it is
that I have explained this to you
again and again 
until these words
were all I had left

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

?