054/100 days of aspirin

Friday the 13th, and on the recovery road - driving around to a nearby village (with wool shop), and to a couple of retail parks to pick up groceries, printer cable, resistance bands (which like the yoga mat, are going to do good just by being in my house rather than the store!), and some tights.

Passivity was going through my head today.

Firstly, I reached out to the Facebook group to ask for tips on self-care. Daily gratitudes seems to be the consensus, along with (for one person) prayers and meditation. My mind turned off. I equate self care with actually doing the things my body needs to be healthy which I often neglect. I don't often think about self care for my mind, and to be honest, I'm probably scared to, scared that my adult persona will crumble and I'll become a child wailing "it's not fair" again. It's nudging up against that CBT downwards spiral of low self esteem, thinking about gratefulness.

Secondly, the downstairs neighbour was playing loud thump thump thump music for around four hours. I'd banged a chair on the floor after three and a half hours, a couple of times, with no result, other than feeling shamed and annoyed that I was worked up, full of adrenalin. I then got up the courage to go and confront them, got my crutch and knocked on the door.

"Is that you, playing the thumping music?"
"Was that you, banging upstairs?"
"Yes, it's really loud even without my hearing aids."
"You should have just come down and asked!"
"Um... broken leg..."

Then, pondering passivity and how it was now somehow my fault for behaving unreasonably and banging on the floor rather than the neighbours for playing the music loud in the first place. And using my crutch to elicit sympathy when it didn't even work. And when I can get around without it. More shame.

I went upstairs to bed early (the dark nights, and the exhaustion of doing nothing, and the emotional exhausting of behaving badly). The neighbour to the side of me was having a party too, his birthday, guitar music and singing. I recognised some of the songs. It was annoying, after I'd mentioned the noise below to him, but I had gone to bed, was naked, and didn't feel like getting up and dressed and yelling over the back fence. Maybe, because of that, I had an excuse for being passive. It didn't annoy me as much as the thumping bass either. 

Finally, with the broken leg, there is a mindset I've got into. That I am not quite right, and I will do all that when I am better. World class procrastination. I'd like to snap out of it, to feel energised and actually do stuff. But not enough to actually get up and do it.

#awakeaugust 20

The salt sprayed meadow is sweet but hungry, it bites and gnaws at your ankles, though clover flowers bob innocently and fritillaries bounce obliviously

#awakeaugust 10

A shades of grey day, driving back from shopping.
Between the two dulled pewter carriageways of the elevated road, the lampposts are "T" shaped, sparse trees in a stolid steel.
Gulls perch on the branches, six or seven outlines per lamppost; their flint-shadow-faded cotton hues lost to the clouds and only a yellowed beak turning to remind me of colour in the world.


Awake August Facebook page here

I saw the stars move that night

I sat at the courtyard table in the restaurant,

under the warm night sky

a time capsule of light

glimpsed next to the chimney

and by the time the wine and calvados was drunk

the sky had wheeled a short way.

a nature loving man

he was beautiful,

moved like bog cotton dancing

swirled in autumn gusts

Weak as I am...

I am sprawling in the dingy light, behind the bars that contain me, keeping me penned into the corner of the room.  I am not really there as a possession, treasured or otherwise, I am not really something he would display to other people.  But, in the recesses of his mind I am on display, I am defined by the sex we have had, and by the ideal of a mute naked slave, existing only to perform for him.  A casual pet.
I see the bars that keep me in, but I don't want to acknowledge that they were always weak, and now that he has broken a hole through them, I still stay in my corner cage.

Catch you tomorrow?

"Catch you tomorrow?"
Words that should be hopeful, speaking of continuity, speaking of the future; the wish to be talking again then as we were today.
But, but... they are so final for today; from experience I experience them as a turning off, being shelved, put away until it is convenient for him again.

The days pass

Today he is unfettered and alone; he sits naked in the cool sheets in his Eastern European hotel room and messages her to pass the time.
Tomorrow she will be alone at home and feeling desperate; swallowing down the urge to contact him and spill her sorrow; she is sure he will not help so she will drink and shut the world out, cork the feelings in.
Today though she messages him back; he tells her about how swollen his cock is and how he thinks of her lips on it, no not those lips, the others.
The day after tomorrow she will pretend it is all in the past, that she only misses that she has no special person to turn to when she has a bad day, it's not that she misses him and him only.
Tomorrow he will be in the bar alone, since she told him she would not talk to him that night; he drinks some of the local beer to be friendly, smiles at the barman but there is no-one he can have a conversation with.
The day after tomorrow he will travel home to be with his wife and child again; he is puzzled when she tells him she assumed that a few moments relief thinking of her would make it difficult for him to go back and be the family man.


Wow!  this submission was accepted to the 6S Blog publication on 03/03/2010
Pleased as punch!

February

Fridge calling, I need comforting,
ease the door open hoping that interesting food has somehow jumped in there direct from the supermarket without my help.
Beer?  I wish, nothing like that in here.
Rum and Raisin Ritter Sport, oh yes, "quadratisch, praktisch, gut" chocolate, slipping
under my tongue and teeth as I graze.
And there is the target, the chilled bottle, a feat of forward planning on my part to get the chardonnay cold ahead of drinking time.
Yes, oh yes, I can start to put the day behind me now; step out of my work persona and be, well be the nothing that I aspire to today.

Morning

The sound of the radio hauled me into the present, the inane chatter dances along the borderline between bearable and irritiating as always, and as always I think about retuning it but don't, the well worn dialogue of my internal debate seeping through my conciousness.
Waking up knowing I haven't written anything for 4 days, recoiling from the derisive voice telling me I've letting people down again, no surprise there; recoiling from waking up as me.
Perhaps the radio is part of the problem, I wake up with other peoples words in my head, song lyrics being particularly pervasive, today I will find it difficult to forget "I'm safe, up high, nothing can stop me, so why do I feel this party's over?"  But every day, more words, more phrases, not just songs but fragments of speech, words I have read or written or thought.  They jump into my head and whirl around, dropping some bits and connecting to others, and how then do I tell if it is my voice speaking when they come out?
Small wonder then that I trust the only distinct voice I know, the one that tells me to forget about trying, it won't change anything, just turn over and go back to sleep.

Memory

Why do I struggle to remember your face?  Yes, of course I have photographs I can look at, snatched pictures, although none from the time we were together, and certainly none of us together; you'ld never even know we'd been in the same room...  And yes they capture your physical likeness, but why can I not picture you in front of me?
I try to bring memories to the front of my mind, but although you are there, you are also strangely absent.  The time I picked you up at the airport and you noticed my bald tyres, and after searching for and finding a garage we had to spend an hour or so hanging round the reception area smelling of rubber and cheap coffee; when all I wanted to do was pull you to me, oblivious of anyone else.  But I didn't, and you didn't either, and now I wonder where you are while I cling to shards of the sunnier past.

Lonely

Today, when fresh out of the shower, bundled in a charcoal grey towel, I checked my e-mail account, and he had replied to me. Thoughts of coffee chased out of my head, I sat down at the desk and clicked to read what he'd written to me. My hair, hastily rubbed, stuck up around my head, and I felt a drop of water run around the side of my neck, across my collar bone and into the top of the towel.

It was the usual blah blah, work ok, family life ok, (he knew this was a topic to keep away from, but always he told me it was ok so that I would not get my hopes up again) Blah. Then the final sentence...

"I don't know alot about depression but I know one of the main causes is loneliness. Perhaps being at home with friends and family soon will help! I hope so."

The initial reaction one of anger, bitterness.
Too fucking right you know nothing about it, mate, to come out with such a cliché!
Fucking guilt talking, of course I'm lonely, you fucking left me.
You went back to your boring wife who you don't talk to, who you'd told me you couldn't talk to, not like you could talk to me; and all because you want to make things "work".

And now you won't talk to me like you used to anymore; when we used to spend everyday texting, mailing, messaging each other for months. I had long ago thrown caution to the winds and shared every thought with you, and stupidly I assumed you had done the same. But now I keep thinking, the realisation that I was just a tiny corner of your life,turning over and over in my head. That I was something to fill up the dull hours while at work, and in the odd moments when at home alone, when you could text to tell me what you were thinking of. And no matter what the content, the fact of the text itself made me smile, that you were thinking about me to reach across the miles and tell me something.

And after you made that choice (again, how did I not notice each time you chose duty, monotony, conformance over me?); after the choice and after an age of drawn out goodbyes, after another "final" further decision to live up to that choice; then all the focus and interest and communication between us was withdrawn and you say I'm lonely!

Fucking Brain of Britain, how long did it take you to work that out?

The anger burns in me, corrosive, white hot channels through passive flesh; anger at you for stating the bleeding obvious; and scalding anger at myself as I ask "How did it take me so long to get to this point?"

Loss

Eyelids itching, tightness at the corners.  Hopelessness, feeling an idiot for not being able to change the course of the world.  Pressing at your eyes with a tissue, tears are hot to start but cool so quickly.  Words cycling through your brain, what if, I should have, what if, maybe I could have... I'm so stupid, it would only happen to me.  Songs going through your head...
"If I could turn back time"... if I could I would still be unable to make a difference...
"If I could find the words"... if only, if only words changed something.  I understand words, I'm good at them... at least in my own language, but I've never been able to use them to change things once in motion. 
Crying stiffens the eyelashes, they gain a little crust - salt?  sleep?
I miss it all... I miss the things I took for granted and now they are gone.

Sheridan's gone

He lies on the white cushion, a fuzz of dark orange and ginger hairs; oblivious again.  Sleeping, his breathing coming out in little snores.  Amber coloured, diamond shaped eyes closed for the moment.  His head rests on two paws, with his back leg and tail curled in front of him. 
Awake, he was wandering up to the closed doors and pausing, as if listening to see if she's there behind them. Rubbing his cheeks up against the doorframes, depositing scent and surely smelling hers too?  Does it smell different now that she has passed on?
He seems a bit confused not to find her after circling the flat a few times, and settles down to sleep on the cushion, shaded grey in patches by her darker hairs.  He's always been the more sociable of the two of them, and he's never lived as the only cat in the house before.  I wonder how he will cope, if he will change.  He's only a couple of years younger than she is, but always seemed more kittenish, less grown up.
I am reminded of her with the minutest of routine things; her piercing miaow everytime I moved, as I obviously needed a reminder to head to the food bowl; her ability to weave in and out of my walking feet, almost but not quite tripping me on a daily basis; her jumping up onto the worktop so that nothing is safe.  And now I am able to get out the butter and leave it on the side to come to room temperature without her knocking it off and over so the lid comes off and she can get into it to lick to her hearts content; but now that I am I wish I was not.
I keep thinking there should have been something I could have done to prevent it.  I almost want to have something to feel guilty for, so that I could have made a difference.  But I am glad I was there when she fell ill instead of having a night out on the town after the christmas party, to wake grumpy and hungover and unobservant.  And I'm glad I was there when she went; it could so easily have been when I was away for the weekend, and the thought of returning to find her cold would certainly have kickstarted the guilt engines.
She was a scratchy bad tempered thing when I first got her, but over the years she mellowed, and she spent the last night licking fish paste and drops of water off my fingers.  She went out of the world with tenderness, but tenderness did not leave with her...

Meeting up

Craning her neck over her shoulder she flipped the indicator switch and pulled left onto the autobahn. Although she never felt completely at ease doing it on the wrong side of the road, it seemed easier in the dark than in daylight to judge the speed of the other cars, and the lorries. Two cars moved across to the middle lane and swished by, the roads were wet with spray although it didn't seem like it was actually raining at the moment. Foot down on the accelerator, listening to the automatic gearbox change up as she increased the pace to match the traffic.
The radio was tuned to an English station, the music was not to her taste, dance music, but she had forgotten to put the CD case in the car. In any case, her mind was definately not on the music but on the meeting to come. She picked up the phone from the passenger seat and typed a message, "Just leaving airport be bout 50mins will call when leave m'way". Turned the radio down low so that she would hear the sound of an incoming message and dropped the phone back onto the passenger seat.
Focus on the road ahead, the carriageway fully lit, no need for full beam here at night. A gentle sine wave of streetlamps as the road dips and then picks up again to crest the hill. Nothing behind her at the moment, coming up fast behind a lorry and moving over, the tyre noise changing momentarily as the car crossed the white lines marking the lanes. She listens for the same as she pulls back in, but missed it, or the tyres missed the lines.
It would probably be about 50mins before they met, although she thought the drive might be a bit quicker. On getting dressed this morning she'd planned not to change her clothes, but she knew that the bed was unmade, the last thing she'd done before leaving for the weekend away was strip the sheets off. Would it be tempting fate too much to make the bed before going to meet him? He might decide, on actually seeing her face to face again that they would not get together after all, despite all the flirty chat messages, and the dozens of texts over the weekend, anticipating the night to come. He'd admitted to being a bit nervous too, under the excitement, which she'd found endearing.
The spray has turned to drizzle, she turns the intermittent wipers on. At least when she gets back she hasn't got too far to go to meet him, the bar is a minute from her flat, no risk of getting soaked unless the heavens open. Past the first set of services, she knows she has enough petrol to get back without stopping. The fluorescent lighting disappears behind her, nearly half way now.
The 130kmh signs disappeared, although she was already going the usual 15 kmh faster than she should have been. She pushes the accelerator down some more, how fast did she dare go? How quickly could she get back? She felt the movement rub against the blister on her heel from her new boots as she did so.
She knew she wasn't concentrating fully on the drive, glancing down to see whether a new text had arrived, head full of the texts exchanged over the last few days. Oh for fucks sake, she'd bought condoms for the first time in years, if that wasn't tempting fate nothing was, making the bed was just something that needed doing anyway. Even if she did sleep alone. Of course she was nervous and a bit unsure too, they'd known each other as acquaintances for years, and only over the last few months had started getting to know each other better, the conversation initially joky and often crude, but then falling into flirtation. And over the weekend! Even the fact of the texts themselves, he was thinking about her almost all the time to be sending 50 or 60 texts a day. As for the content... she's wondering what it would be like to kiss him. What if he feels differently when he sees her?
A single ring from the phone and the screen lights up in the dark. "Just gettin 2 tram station :) xxx". It is really going to happen, he wouldn't text that if he was going to back out now. Too late for her to back out now too though. The news headlines came on the radio, 9pm already. She imagines the autobahn is a river, she's flowing along with the current, moving to the left or the right to avoid other fish, but flowing, being pushed along towards the destination, towards the rest of the evening. It is smooth, effortless, she feels in her element.
Nearly at her turnoff, tucking back in the inside lane as soon as she sees the sign for the exit. Much earlier than she normally would, crawling up behind the dirty white back of a Polish lorry, swinging right with relief when the junction appears and the lorry goes straight on. Ok, Ok, now she has to make the promised call. As soon as she joins the next road, after the loop that connects them, car and body angling to the right as she drives around it. He's just got to the station near the pub, he's early too. His voice a surprise after all the texts and IM chat, she realises how little she's actually spoken to him.
Seconds later she can hardly remember what was said, just that he is there. A voice inside her, listing the things to be done in the few minutes she's back at the flat, an insistent metronome. And a blur, getting to the flat, hardly remembering the garage and hauling the weekend's bags out of the car. Making the bed in a rush, no need for hospital corners, just throwing the duvet and pillows into the covers, a brief plumping. Takes the condoms from the bag. Puts them on the bookshelf in the bedroom. Keys, money, put them in the coat pockets and she's back out of the house walking to the pub. Not thinking. She walks into the pub, scanning the room for him. Will he look different because they plan to be more than friends?
She sees him at a table, and is surprised to see him wearing yellow. He has a bottle of white wine and two glasses in front of him. She feels a smile breaking across her face, and a tension she wasn't fully aware of dissolving. Relief, she didn't realise she was worried that she might have felt differently when she saw him. She corrects herself, it's more that she had been anticipating not wanting to "go through with it" because as he notices her and smiles back she does feel differently.

Serenity

Serene... Serenity... even the words themselves sounded nice. And to be serene was one of her early yearnings, to be aloof and calm, to somehow float above the experience of life, unruffled and tranquil. To be herself in a petty, irritating, immediate world, and for that self to be somehow clear and immutable. She supposed it started with not wanting to be upset, or hurt, or ignored. To be upset was to be ugly, to be distorted by feelings she had no control over. To show you were upset made it worse, people noticed, people commented, highlighting the difference between you and the self you wanted to be. Serenity seemed to be the opposite of the things she didn't like about herself. Building cold walls, a space that stopped people getting in as it prevented the ugly things getting out, an icy moat between her and the world. 'The Lady in The Lake' was an attractive meme on the face of it although none of the Arthurian tales she read ever explained why the lady was there and what she did, but perhaps that was the point. To be a character rather than a person.

Thunderstorm

Thunderstorm coming, it's not only the sky that is the colour of old ten pence pieces, the whole world is. Standing outside on the patio in the dark, feeling the swirl of the wind and trying to ignore the suburban surroundings, waiting for your imagination to carry you away to a shoreline. Thinking crashing waves, and the rubbley rumbling of the water turning pebbles over and over as it retreats back to the sea, gathering itself for another hurl at your feet. Waiting for the rain to start so you can convince yourself you taste salt in the wetness on your lips. Waiting for the peace you feel being on the edge of things, liminal, neither of the land or of the sea, no expectations other than to be there. The air growls.