What if …

What if I said to you that I love you ... 

What if I told you all the things your tired, aching soul yearns to hear... all the things that would warm and relax and soothe your pains, your sorrows... 

What if I welcomed you into my arms, into my embrace... so that you may know comfort, so that you may know ease and adoration... 

What if I made space for you beside me, nestled with me in the very centre of my world... 

What if I created the home you've always wanted... always knew you deserved... 

What if we faced the highs and lows, the confluences and confusions of the Universe together... side by side... strengthened, supported, symbiotic in our ways, in our selves... 

What if I opened myself to you so that you may find shelter, growth, freedom...

What if I said to you that I love you.

Tile 19

Tile 19

While I sat and waited, I counted the tiles in the ceiling. Suspended on the day the system was conceived, judging by how dirty and sagging this one presented, I kept getting distracted from my counting by Tile 19. The layered effect of multiple rust-coloured water stains indicated that, at some time in its history, this space may have been an office. The kind with a typing pool and a too-handsy but-he’s-harmless-really, "Oh, that's just Bob. You get used to him and learn to ignore him," boss who smoked too much and swore too much and winked suggestively every time he called his secretary into his space to take dictation. 

Tile 19 seemed to stare back at me, emboldened by, even belligerent in the self importance of having borne witness to scenes and conversations over the years that likely wouldn't be believed. 

If these tiles could talk. 

One corner of Tile 19 was particularly fascinating. There, the darkest layer of staining, almost as dark as old blood, caused me to look to the floor directly beneath, expecting to find corresponding damage or evidence of what must surely have been dripping from the ceiling at one time. 

A chill ran down my spine as I considered what the building now housed in this modern Western word, a supposedly enlightened or "woke" society and then how much worse it may actually have been. 

Back Then. Before. When it was A Different Time and it was socially encouraged to treat others badly. 

The floor revealed nothing, however. Relatively new linoleum tiles covered the room. Hard- wearing, easy-to-clean, functional, reliable. 

Seeping outward, away from the darkest stain, the next layer, at least as dark as dried tobacco leaves, was shaped almost like a butterfly. The abject absurdity of something as beautiful and delicate and natural as a butterfly being present or even represented in this space caused me to actually chuckle to myself. The sound startled my fellow occupants in the otherwise silent room, just as the wall-mounted speakers announced, "four hundred seven!" 

I glanced at the Turn-O- Matic ticket stub clenched in my balled fist and sighed. 

604. 

I looked up and re-started my tile counting. When I got to Tile 19, someone started screaming. I sighed again, my fist tightening around the ticket. 

You won’t need your notebook today

 

The No Post Tonight post

 Work was heavy today (in all positive ways) so I’ll contend myself with mentioning what I’m reading this evening and get back to it rather than trying to wrack my brain for a post I’ll later lament for lack of thought or preparation.

https://franlebowitz.com/

I’m late to the party when it comes to Fran, something I think she might actually enjoy, having only come to understand what she might be about after watching the documentary M. Scorsese did starring her. 

While I don’t agree with all of her opinions (how boring would it be if I did?) I’m finding her writing style enthralling, her ability to see and report back parts of the world that, to me, go far beyond “observational” and delve deeply into experiential. A view from which I feel lends her work even more power. Power I can currently only dream of possessing.

Someday, perhaps.

The Self in the Esteem

 The Self in the Esteem

For decades, I've struggled with self worth, self-esteem.

My past taught me early on that my value lay only in how I could be of use, be of service, be pleasing to and for others. It was a lesson painfully learned and oft repeated when I dared to consider another way, that I may have a worth that wasn't only attached to those around me and their ever-fluctuating opinion of me. 

Now, I find it's no surprise that a large part of being unable to value myself is due to having been unable to develop a sense of Self in the first place. How could I consider myself to have any value if I didn't develop a Self in the first place. 

Children of narcissists, of abusers ... children born of and into trauma often find themselves preoccupied with learning what their caregivers needs are during the stages of development when they should be learning what their own needs are. 

This missing element in a child's development creates myriad complications as they grow and develop. Interoception, body dysmorphia, damaged (if present) self-esteem and self-worth and, at its worst, it can prevent the development of a true sense of Self. And these are just the ones I can think of in the moment. 

It's only now, in my late 40s that I am realising, accepting, wading through what has brought me to be the person I am today ... the traumas, the determination, the intelligence, the refusal to be the person I could have been ...

Because the person I could have been didn't break the cycle - she followed, dutifully, obediently, unquestioningly, and she was broken. 

I am not she. 

I am me and I am worthy. 

What do you write when you don’t know what to write?

What do you write when you don’t know what to write?

In a surprising but considered and measured turn of events, I’ve made the decision to write a lot more, everyday when feasible.

Today, being a bank holiday, I’ve had ample time to determine a theme, a subject, on which to write … even more than enough time to source and use a/n idea /theme generator.

Here I sit, however, hoping my muse will appear out of the ether and provide much-yearned for inspiration.

The online generators I’ve found haven't been sufficient in prodding loose any sort of ideas ... not even grabbing the physical dictionary and trying to randomly choose a couple of words as catalysts ... subjects ... words to include …

"Gutta-percha" and "roundel" haven’t knocked loose a single whisper of an idea.

And now I believe I’ve answered my own question ... I will write about being unable to write ...

And that's not on irony.

The curious case of the incurious

As an adult, I consider myself to be quite curious, even inquisitive but when I think back to my childhood and adolescence, I'm dismayed that I don’t recall any such feelings from those years. It's as if I experienced that period of my life in some sort of senses-numbing fog. 

It wasn't safe for me to ask questions. It wasn’t safe for me to wonder.

When you experience severe and repeated childhood traumas, you learn to accept everything around you because you fundamentally understand that you cannot trust your own senses. Everything around you becomes unreliable and, by extension, inconsequential.

It becomes vital for survival to understand that anything and everything can change in an instant. Moods shift, the meanings of words change, stationary inanimate objects suddenly become fast-moving dangerous weapons … it’s safer to accept the environment, the surroundings knowing that, expecting that the truth of the given situation only exists in that singular instance. 

I think this is a large part of why survivors of chronic trauma experience such notable self-biographical memory gaps and why it’s often difficult to imagine, to hope for the future. 

If what we know is unreliable, how can we possibly speculate, hypothesise, dream …

A blog is a terrible thing to waste

A blog is a terrible thing to waste

Words - my shield, my weapon of choice, my solace, my refuge. 

Words often come to me at the most inopportune times … when I’m asleep, when I’m sitting with no way of recording their importance, their urgency. 

Words of fiction, of fantasy, of fact. 

Words end up scribbled on random scraps of paper, the back of a used envelope, the inside cover of a nearby notebook, notecards - oh so many notecards. 

Words come, persistent, alarming, emotional, stoic, clinical, and timid - some words slither, some assault, some whisper from the shadows, barely, if at all, perceptible - but even those refuse to be ignored - coming back to the fore and demanding immediate, undivided attention.

Words I will honour here - on this disused, misused blog.

A place, a chance to give voice to the words that haunt me, that tease me from the depths of past trauma, from an inimitable imagination.