Remembering blue eyes

I tried to write a poem today but the muse just wasn’t having any of it. The Poetry Thursday prompt of blue got me thinking about my love’s eyes, which I have talked about here before, but the further I wrote the more frustrated I became. Frustrated with my pen, with missing him, with my life right now. I feel I have an enormous mountain in front of me, blocking my path. The mountain is called depression and I have no energy to begin the climb, and so I find myself skirting around the base, looking up at the summit and wishing it would just crumble away. I have a rucksack on my back, filled with map, compass, Kendal mint cake, but my feet are bare – where are my climbing shoes?

I abandoned the original poem and started again. This time I found myself thinking of the pet rabbit I had when I was nine or ten. She was called Bluebell. The poem started:  The day my father killed my rabbit. And he really did – he dropped her on her back (she was struggling to get out of his hands) and he had to break her neck to end her suffering. I didn’t witness this as I was told to go into the house, which I gladly did, in a tsunami of tears. And maybe this would make a good poem one day, but all I could think was: Christ, if i post this poem I’m almost being depressing for depressing’s sake. But then I guess our blogs really do reflect our lives. Right now? I’m a bit blue. Tomorrow I want to be red… or pink.

Working on: the synopsis. And I really am – I have been all afternoon.

Michiko Dead

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulders, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.

~ Jack Gilbert, from The Great Fires

For more poetic inspiration, go here
Image borrowed from here

Walking through the flames

Edited to add: photograph removed.

It might be emotional pornography sharing this picture from last night, but I am drawn to it and am publishing it as a way of releasing some of the emotion that tumbled out. No make-up, unwashed hair, eyes swollen from self-piteous tears. Last year I didn’t take a single photograph – I had no need to, I had nothing to record – so it feels like a large swathe of time has been lost. All I have are word pictures in my diaries and memories, and so I took a single photograph of myself last night and by doing so I snapped myself out of the overwhelming poor-me moment I had fallen into. I transferred the image to my computer screen, enlarged it and looked myself squarely in the face. I felt tenderness, I felt shame, I felt sorry for her.

For such a communicative person, I am not very good at reaching out. I feel real-life friends are busy with their real lives, so I don’t pick up the phone and ask for help. I have a fear of appearing needy, a fear that I am the friend who is always slightly fucked up. A year and a half – should be healed by now, right? Should be over it. But as the healing continues I discover other issues that need to be examined, other beliefs that must be unpicked and aired and repackaged. This life business is so hard sometimes, so wearing, so relentless. And the latest discovery is that I feel lonely and I wonder, did I ever really feel lonely before?

Friends are so important, but I now understand how they cannot replace a partner. I miss the daily-ness of someone always knowing where I am, of knowing how I feel. Of knowing what needs to be done around the house, of what cogs must be oiled to keep our life ticking along. I miss the intimacy of shared bathrooms and linen baskets, of someone knowing I woke up in the night, of sharing sleepy first words in the morning.

I acknowledge the fact that human beings need to share. I enjoy my own company, am the mistress of entertaining myself, but sometimes I want to share my time with another. But for the first time in my life, this is not the desperate need for a ‘boyfriend’, this is not me trying to repair the damage my father’s absence wreaked in my life. I am simply facing up to the alone, to the fire of being truly by myself, of walking through the flames and hopefully meeting myself on the other side. And last night I allowed myself to feel sorry for myself, yet even as I did that, emails arrived from my tribe, circling around me, sending out kind words and poems, and offers of phone calls.

I read yesterday that companies are offering money to bloggers to endorse their products on their blogs, and I laughed a little at how this medium is being appropriated in so many new ways. For me, it is simply a way to connect, to write, to reveal myself, to share my thoughts, to find kindred souls. To not feel so alone. We each record our lives, and the masses of ‘ordinary’ people in the world become known, valued and relevant. Each of us is so special, so individual, and we are all connected – by blogs, by the spirit that lives in each of us, born from the same source. So I thank you all for reading my words, and for showing such kindness and understanding. It really does help.