I often wonder how much of ourselves we can leave behind?
Science tells us that our body relinquishes cells at such a rate that by the end of seven years it will have discarded and replaced every singe piece of who we were
Every molecule.
In this drug-like half-life what can we hope to hold onto?
So many memories have shifted within me these last few months. Fragments of circus printed summer dresses; dark hallways and frosted doors; and those first feelings of shame and disgust in the difference and weakness I made my strength
Perhaps those walls within I built myself
Cell by cell within my bodily prison
Is it always the older cells that fade?
I remember when I first learned about chemical absorption and the process of our bodies breaking down the substances we consume. I remember too reading an essay by a friend talking about the halving and halving of things into smaller and smaller increments. We do that so naturally with so many things.
Like the neat little piles of Coke on the patterned kitchen plate
The daylight-bright phosphorescent lightbulbs always make life look so surreal
It tasted bitter
And I felt if anything more of a reality
I had less access to my thoughts; my mind
And that is me
Dancing didn’t have the same high
I remember; although it was like being barred from what is internally and inherently so much myself
Life is enough for me. And more so when I can truly feel it
I remember the hours I spent scraping through skin and the slick ooze of epidermal fluid
As I fought to feel
What of the fragility of our tender green new growth?
The vulnerability
Stripped bare by kisses and love
Fearing it cannot last. In more ways than one
Though it’s evolution came so naturally
Of the innocence before acts?
What traces remain?
As each day we gain more and more understanding and fight with every cell
Not to make the same mistakes
Hurt the same hurts. As we always do and always did
One meditates deeply on the process of miniturisation
How much more power we have over a world we can roll around in the palm of our hand
It reminds me of the story of the young Krishna who showed the universe to his mother through an open-mouthed gape
He revealed the worlds beyond our world while for a time I shank, huddled and to frightened to speak
It’s been strange these past few months realising just how much the world had shrunk around me. How insubstantial I had felt as things slowly fell apart
The year it’s taken me to resurrect my fragments and rebuild
But then I always did like the perfection of tiny things
I always did like to build and write and collect my own stories
Reading through a collected book of poems by Yeats I found
The Coat
And remembered the winter I spent stripped bare
Memorising it. More for it’s permission than for it’s warmth. Physically I outgrew and shank back into that place several more times before reaching this point where I stand now
Realistically there is no surety here either
Perhaps only in the solidness I am slowly gathering
Things are still so very fragile. But perhaps life is too?
I’ve had remarks on how healthy I look today and today I feel it too
Perhaps it’s not strange that to get here I have outgrown so many perceptions
Only to find the coat I so longed to fit was an ideology all along
Not an item capable of holding physical limitations
Everything feels so clear and cold. But with no feeling
When it’s happening is worse because everything is just happening
Falling, falling, falling….
Tonight I’m watching “Donnie Darko”. The scene about the Lifeline and it’s 2D perception of motives as being divided into Love and Fear. The accusations of a lesson missing the whole spectrum on human emotions
Emotions and their motivations and subsequent actions are so much more complicated. The story becomes so much more complicated by daylight. I’ve heard from the police- twice; I’ve spoken to those who were there.
It’s not your fault they said. But I felt so responsible. I led them there
The nightmare of not knowing; outside in the dark
The slight give of the rungs of the metal gate as we climbed. The window as we worked it open. I opened the door. We checked through every room. I couldn’t face what I might find if I did it alone, but still I led him in. Our conscience is clear- he’s right, but the potential for repercussion
She was inside all along; she hid
“If you hurt my friend I will come back to haunt you. Don’t break her heart”
Like I’m some fragile creature, incapable of knowing
Some ethereal fairy
Like the terror of not knowing if you would find them dead in the half-darkness
A pool of vomit and pills
I’d already checked that morning for places capable of holding a rope and noose to find none
What’s “right” is not a law; but it is my moral compass. What’s right to me
And the conflict when that risks anyone else
It’s a curse to appear so fragile
There is so much I carry. I feel guilt that others carried for me the fear I had for them
I wonder at how hours and moments can shatter the perceptions others have of us
The web started a week ago as I finished my training for foster care
I had to write about my life so far. The places I have come from and overcome
Perhaps to an extent what I still struggle with they need to know too
I have written what I know. I want to find ways to make where I have come from useful
In honesty. I think I can. It’s what I don’t know that frightens me
Lots of disjointed images and feelings. Some I know
They are the familiar fragments. I understand that childhood is made up of pieces
Umbrellas and sunshine; bedroom curtains and the pictures I saw in wall-shadows
Others
The fish tank in the old hospital waiting room
The green damask carpet in our old lounge room
Screaming and flailing. Feeling in that moment I could never get away
It’s difficult to remember what you did not have the language to describe
The feeling of wrong-ness
The feeling was me
The frosted glass on the front door
The bathroom in our old house. Sitting in there one day tearing the vinyl on an old stool
There was a strange, numb, “nothing” I remember feeling but not quite understanding.
Everything felt so vivid but disjointed. I would have been about four or five
The dim light on the boxes in my father’s office. The deep chocolate brown face of one of our old cats
The patterns on hospital curtains
Chairs in so many offices and faceless specialists
There was not a place to record these things in my story. They just sit inside the semi-darkness of my memories
I feel numb and empty
But at the same time there is this screaming ache inside
About eight years ago I had a dream
There were two young girls in a bathtub. A man came in.
I saw through his eyes
He did something to the girls in the bathroom
What he did is a blank
I spoke with a friend into the early hours of Sunday morning
The dream came up then
I was a little blonde girl once…
I vaguely remember the changes, but not their reasons
It might not be me…
It might be…
I know I feel so very fearful of the unknowns in my story
The places I do not know
Vulnerable in these maybes and what might have been
I’ll probably never find out from my family
I wonder if this is why for the longest time I could not be touched or held
Or if this was just the person I became through my
“Difference” from others
For a brief time this feels like the undoing of so much I have fought for and won
On Thursday I sit for the first of four interviews with Pathfinders
After that, with my checks completed (all I’s dotted and T’s crossed) I am a foster carer
I feel so unready with this uncertainty. It reminds me of a song by George. I first heard it at sixteen and felt it’s words so deeply though I’d never let anyone that close
I didn’t think I could
I pushed so many people away while I wanted so much to be able to speak
Before the silence choked me and I ended up crumpled in a corner unable to let the words out
In so many ways I’m so far past where it was ever mapped that I could reach
I’m here for a reason, a friend said
And I believe that. It just feels so frightening to be beyond any of my wildest guesses
In the last months
Since Simon left
I have rearranged my life
Stone by stone. Like my garden, slowly but surely it is growing
I long for at least a little certainty though. Somewhere to call home
In the pale light of the Dawn Service I thought of my Grandfather’s medals from World War I
As a child I always wondered why I couldn’t march with them like other kids did
I never did know my grandfather. He died years before I was born
It was only later I realised
My parents only came to Australia in the 1960’s- Ten Pound Poms
My grandfather fought as an Englishman
This morning I wondered if this “difference” between countries and belonging wasn’t what brought us into those wars in the first place
It’s been a hard week
Work hours have dragged on
I got my car to the petrol station well past empty
I settled my Superannuation account with the bank, only to be told a debt that does not exist hung over my shoulder
I cried. It felt like everything I’ve worked so hard for these last months
All that I’ve paid off and ahead so patiently was gone
I am starting to put money away towards building or buying my own place
But the debts still come
Then I heard Living on A Prayer on the radio as I shopped in Coles
The worst never does come
I felt exhaustion to the point of nausea
But then I laughed with my friend’s granddaughter, staying up far too late
I helped a friend retrieve her dog from the pound
I felt so deeply how hard it was and is to be alone; I know how much my pets mean to me
It feels good to have that little bit extra in me that I can use to help others
I found a picture in my phone, just over a year old. I look so dead inside, so pale and thin
A brave face you might call it
I wonder at the difference a year has made
I have always hated having my picture taken and know well the “I have been told to smile” look I have on my face. But I also know I look a lot healthier a year later
I still struggle to know how much I have gained. But in reality I don’t really know. I don’t use the scales. Mostly I have gained health and a stillness and happiness I never knew before
I am getting ready
To be myself- truly
I feel such a closeness with people. I can let them in
Finally.
My parents came to visit yesterday. I felt the tension
So visceral
As they arrived. It didn’t stop there
When we stopped by my house the intrusion was severe
They even walked through my bedroom
I feel so…..
They know about Simon too. A visit from a friend and they “overheard”
Their anger was palpable. Their disappointment
But then they said his contribution was never equal
I told them it never mattered when he was the person I first met. But now he is not
They want me to tell them everything. Let them know everything
But that is not my way. I was firm with that
They left
As I found how deeply they had intruded; things they had touched
It answered something I had wondered for a while. I won’t be able to let them close when I am doing foster care. It is bad enough that I cannot trust them. I cannot let them talk to my friends because I never know when they will change and dig into my life, like it is theirs to know. They judge so externally
I cannot inflict that on the potential of such fragile relationships
It frightens me how low I can let myself burn with barely a second thought
There are places you can still go
If you take out too much
There will never be enough of you for that
It’s the end of seven days straight of work. I thought I had my strength back, but lying on the floor of the spare room with my hands shaking on Tuesday I wonder if I can I can ever have as much as I want to. To me that can only mean greed. But I want to keep going because I can never do enough. Need to walk as far as I can from this week though there were enough small blessings to keep me afloat
It’s a wonder what a Moon Calendar
A crooked smile
An untuned piano and the friends to help you move it can do
Still this unsettled wanting and uncertainty are my enemy
Yesterday I woke with strange feelings I couldn’t settle from dreams I don’t remember
Monday I realised how deeply ingrained the emotions of memories become
It takes so, so little to take us back there. It is a strange feeling. I do not have the shadows of A-Rex. I remember so clearly when those first thoughts came
The filth to cover, and the fighting I heard through the walls most nights
I used to watch shadows form on the pine boards above my bed and wish I could disappear into them
It always seemed so dark and wild in those knots and whorls
I spoke with my parents today. Mostly lots of small chat
Our weeks; work; our gardens and the weather
A few weeks ago when my parents were cleaning out their I asked them if they could keep the dolls house I had quite carefully stored away from my childhood. Garabaldi the rocking horse too!
The dolls house is gone. I remember the foil picture frame and the picture of two mice in one of the rooms, the red gloss roof. I’d hoped to keep it away for myself. I remember all the hours of imagining and rearranging I spent with it. My father made it just for me
I know with how he is now there will not be another
I remember the gloss on the red roof
I wanted to pass it on
It was important- but by the architecture of my parent’s thoughts there was no cost. They did not think of intrinsic value
It’s such a small thing
But as I leave behind the memories of my childhood Room it was one of those few corners of good and peace. I built things there….
More memories this week of fights and fear
This was not all there was, but the anxiety stayed trapped inside me
It is only now I can begin to let people close, now the feelings have changed
But they still were- and so was my red-roof house of dreams
I never wanted fear and disappointment there and though I played through it, I found ways to build other thoughts
It was like the thunder I watched in the mountains where beauty could be made in it’s strange light
Today I went to my doctor to have a medical check completed in working towards being a foster parent. I’ve wanted that too since those dollhouse days
I remember the Institution episode of Call The Midwife- the broken ones. But perhaps we all see things differently for I rarely see people past repair
Images & words 