To Live Without Fear

I was watching V for Vendetta today. I love this film

It has mattered to me through so many situations and contexts. I have been so many different people. And at the same time just myself

But it strikes me that throughout all of these situations all that I wanted was to live free of fear. In time I have achieved this

In many cases. At least what I was afraid of then- what I understood to fear

For we can only really fear what we can conceptualise.

Last year I could not really perceive what it would be like to lose Simon

There is a hole where we used to be

Still, in its absence I can only feel the jagged edges where we are not

Though the pain has dulled. I have learned to live around it. I am building my own self again. Without A-Rex too. I thought I had to choose,

Instead I lost them both in a way

Castles in the Sky: Prisons We Construct in our Minds

My new housemate is sleeping at a friend’s house

She has had threats from people she used to live with. Chances they don’t know me- where I live- where she lives now. But that does not stop our minds

We can reassure others

Often they know there is fault and ill-logic in fears

Sometimes fears are right but often not. But the prison is still there

I remember in my teens watching a documentary on honour killings (my poor mother…. she could never get the human situations I wanted to try to understand). I think the women were in Afghanistan or Iraq- at the time it was more some non-descript Muslim country to me at age 15. What I remember most is that it wasn’t the doors that held the women in. They were there for their own protection, but the prison became a construct inside their minds

This mental architecture is a reality for us all. There are those who believe they can do no wrong; others who perceive themselves incapable; who see ugliness; fat; worthlessness. But also in antithesis those who believe they can do no wrong

There are angels and demons- but they exist in tandem within us all

Last week the conversion which made me crumble happened at work. One of the people I support spoke of how they are always getting things wrong and making mistakes. I told her she could be the boss; the Queen; the star; or just another person like herself- or me. It would make no difference, for there would still be errors in their ways

I can say these things to others like they don’t affect me

But struggled with eating today. I couldn’t get my mind past thinking others do it better; aren’t as fat or greedy; needy; they have more reason and purpose to be here than me

But there I get stuck, because I can never justify truly when others point out their own shortcomings- why mine are worse. The fight now is almost purely one of self-perception. My body is safe and nourished; the anxiety is less; I don’t just want to stop breathing

Maybe one day I can live in the castle in the sky

Or at least my perceived heaven

Rather than my mind’s eye-prison

I guess both are just as illusionary

Difference

For weeks I can’t help thinking how different thing are. I was listening to the radio in the car one day. I can’t remember what it was- something generic; sickly sweet; shallow

It made me think of the layers of music that have moved through my life

Singing to the Silly Sisters

Spice Girls and Steeleye Span

The feelings I sought in singing along

Poetry in high school

Darkness and anxiety. The music didn’t change then

But I did. When I first met mental illness I did not have a language to describe how I felt

And so it stayed trapped inside.I remember first finding solace in books, words and poems

I did not write about it, but I began to find more words

They spiraled inside like smoke in a chimney

But they got caught

The first of the new bands was Evenecence

How vanilla. There were others; the brightness of Johnny Clegg

He cast a new spell

But the darkness was deeper. It was only by the cruelty of friends

Their own grief and trying to understand that I began to hear songs that thought more deeply

Through Nemo I realised my difference

And began to build clumsy dwellings with my words

They took root

They built the bones of me;

And bones were where I came back to before I realised how my perspective had changed

When flesh covered them anew

I was not who I was before

I am still not

I am made of more words

More than anything

Not bigger

More myself

Through Epica, Kamelot

Katatonia

I find scope for more thought.

I am still the dancer I was as a little girl

But I am many more things beside

Not just any one thing

Interpretation: How we see and how we are understood

I was half-watching a kids movie last week at a friend’s house. It was a Disney/Pixar type offering about an alien on the run and a soda-powered car

I found it pretty hard to follow. I don’t keep up with technology. I get

The Jetsons

Star Trek

Star Wars

These are movies for me there are still symbols in there I can understand the meaning of. I know what their kind of space shuttle looks like

There are enough references and likenesses to things in my own life that I can understand the landscape of what is happening. I was wondering how someone older might interpret this film

If I struggle to find things to relate to, how might I see this if I was eighty? Older?

We need to know what things are to be able to build

How things work

What things might be. This is how we solve our world

Again today I had another conversation with others about quantum leaps in technology

How it is possible to discover gravity through the simple falling of an apple

Cure illness mold

How many of these big leaps in how we understand things can happen these days

Maybe there were more four hundred years ago there was so much more we (as a race) did not understand

How these moments can still happen for us, but they tend to be more on an individual level. Our own Eurekas

But that these are simply our own revelations;

Not the phenomenal changes of a millenium ago

There is so little left

That has not been said or done

The next few leaps we take may be huge

Or accidental, but likely we will have to work for them

I feel a resonance with that this week

This month; and year

Fighting to get everything done

Pack for Simon

Work

Keep myself from breaking

And the more complex like study

And this bloody worker’s compensation this week

These are not new by any means

Others have been where I am- although probably not in my particular combination

In some ways does this make some of these problems new?

Or can I trust the words and experience of others to help

Perhaps both?

Can I create my own meanings,

Find my own path this way?

I can ask for help these days

Now that I know roughly what I’m facing

But the internal turmoil I felt as my boss arrived at work and I left in the ambulance

The hospital and all the fuss

Showed me true that this is still a big deal for me

I wonder how I can change my interpretation of others good will?

How I can better know who to trust?

How can I change to better understand my meaning?

Perhaps the interpretation in trust need to start with first lies within myself

Survival

So it turns out I didn’t move

I am still here. Simon is still not

Bills are paid

Pets are fed

I go to work

I come home

Inhale

Exhale

I’m so tired. I know the cracks appear beneath my skin

Translucent. I am off work for a few days

A silly error. I have trouble forgiving myself

For all I will forgive others

I cannot let those shadows go

I think I am moving forward. It is a dance

Ironic after all of my stupidity these past few years I finally landed up in casualty the other night. It was simple this time- I rubbed traces of a cleaning product into my eye- much easier to explain than what was so hard about eating

Why I wanted to die, but I didn’t

I struggle so much with asking help of anyone; the effort it took to let the ambulance take me to casualty (let alone call my boss in to work at 2am) was enormous

As natural as it is to help others

As naturally as I can now eat; walk; think; live

It is not natural for me to ask for help.

Those tiny barbs still hold me back

It feels like a loss to accept what I give so readily

I don’t know what it will take until I truly feel deserving

I still don’t truly know what I want or need

Only that here I am still in transition

I know last night was just a slip- “A tiny little fuck”

We make them whether we want to or not. They amplify in all our imaginings

Others don’t judge us so harshly

So I am surviving

I still want more

I want to be worthy

But perhaps to others I already am

It’s just a transition I have to make inside myself