Holes

I always find it hard to pick up after I’ve stopped writing for a time

There always seems an absence in what is missing

I never know how to explain

There should be something, and I never know how to say what it is

That hole

And where I was before I slipped inside

I am not where I was. Appointments with a new psychologist- always trying. There is a sizing up of persons and problems; what is there to treat, it’s prognosis and yours. I am not always most patient; I do not want to be only a patient. In the end it comes down to you and them. This time it’s a match, but these past two sessions have laid me bare

I’m not even sure what’s there to make me shake and cry and fear

We spoke of acknowledging this void as a place where something did happen; accepting that I may never know what. To me it still feels like a quantity I need to know, and a certainty I may never find.

I’m not sure what it is that makes me shake and cry; disappear into my own shadows to a state I can only see, but not act within

I remember the same room I watched television; coloured in; where my sister and I played with a new technicolour walkman; where once my mother held me by my hair as I writhed and thrashed and screamed. Until I understood that like with most things I lacked the words to say what was. Then somehow I forgot….

I could not reach the ground that night; I feel similarly in this quandary of what; I do not know:

Why I go back to that bedroom where I looked for pictures among the shadows each night; that hall, with it’s illumination of the iceberg glass by the night streetlights; that loungeroom with it’s mottled seventies carpet and so much fear I don’t know

I do not know why I am so frightened

Last appointment’s undressing we spoke of the possibility of this permanent limbo

These hole which break me apart

They flash like the shadow picture memories

Perhaps the whole time the only fear I had was to have absorbed the caution of it all

Of a fearful mother, a father who took his role in writing excuses for disability which missed who I could be in spite of it all. Our whole life, working to fit the gaps

But if that is so, why did it end there?

Why did it not travel to the new mudbrick home?

I guess it did in a way: In my childlike attempts to avoid the cracks; to remain smaller, perfect

Like I never felt I was

I wonder if I’ll know one day

These holes, and the substance of their darkness

For now I’ll rest and hope for no bad dreams

Arm myself with battle rose, and try to tread each step with kindness, never mind the cracks

This will not necessarily fill the hunger of these things I do not understand

But may mean I don’t leave the same marks on others

I am frightened

That in the end I will emerge

Something with no relevance to anyone I could know or care about

I guess that’s the gamble

And the hope I will not is love

A temporary care for all these holes

In me