Autumn Fears

I just dropped my son off at college.  He snarled at me most of the way , denying any sense of unease or anxiety ,  yet he yearns to remain at his old school .  They won’t accept him to do his chosen subjects  because he didn’t ‘ meet the grades’   ,  I don’t want him to go back anyway,   there are some seriously dysfunctional leadership teachers at his school.  Well 1!   But she is interim Head Teacher , so pretty significant .  She loathes my son with all of her being.  She is so utterly non- suited to teaching young people it’s almost funny.   So ,  I want to push him into the world ,   a new place,   a new start.  A place of maturity , where you need to take responsibility for your own work and motivation.   I think that’s what he needs.   Both my son and I have a diagnosis of ADHD.   I am still in a place of contempt for this diagnosis ,  I think it’s a diagnosis of the modern era , to allow those who don’t fit into the stream of life  to have a reason  ;  a label.    To be accepted.   I think  it’s just a different type of brain that we have.   We thrive on energy ,   we need things to be fast and intense or frankly fuck off.   But the world doesn’t approve.  Well the world can fuck off too.

I just lift my son up to the universe ;  the light ,  and ask that it guide him on his journey.    Let him shake off the strangulated confines of British schooling and let him breathe.  Create a pathway that allows for a man-child with such  intensity and desire ;  channel it with the love and expertise that is certainly lacking from the teachers who just see the ‘ league tables ‘  .

I didn’t start writing this post to be about this.   I was going to write on my desire and parallel fear of  moving house,  moving county .    I think however,  that,

perhaps there is a parallel between by son’s fear of moving from school to college and my own fear of moving away from all that I have ever know.    There is safety in the known ,   but maybe I should heed my own ideas for my son,   in the unknown there is surprise, growth , freedom & a newness that I crave.

Advertisement

Breaking free

I go to Group therapy.   Not unusual to do therapy if you’re American perhaps,  but in Britain ,  it’s considered quirky,  weird,  odd or downright indulgent.

I have been going for a year now.   I have been wondering whether to leave.

Last time before the summer break ,  our facilitator said that people almost always enter therapy due to some kind of loss in their life ,   then she suggested,   perhaps for my benefit that it can be due to a loss of self.

At that moment I realised that this was indeed my reason for signing up .   Albeit , I didn’t have a sense of that at the time ,  but through this last year , I have discovered that I was indeed lost.    Lost to myself ,   untethered in a whirlwind of avenues and streets of which I had not agreed the destination .   In fact ,  as I look to where I was a year ago today,  I realise that this year has been one long passage of discovery ;  enlightenment and freedom from the chains of my own making.   I feel like the phoenix who has been rising from the ashes,   dramatic image maybe , but nevertheless,   resplendent in colours and passion ,  I have shed the irritating , itchy skins of conformity & self consciousness ,  or I am in the process of still shedding them…   But I know that a glossy new skin is visible and it’s actually me .  .

Photo by Juhasz Imre on Pexels.com

An ode to myself .

The Wake – Up Fairy

 

I lie Still ,  desperate to remain good

my insides squirm.

The woman pads around the room punitively

Attending to any slight misdemeanour ,   the

twitches are recorded in her list .

Who will Be the Wake up Fairy? 

Slowly , I sense the others drifting off to sleepy realms

their breathes ;  soft like the shore –

How do they sleep in this tangle of bodies?

Who will be the Wake up Fairy?

NOT ME

She knows that beneath the stubborn frame

I lie awake .  Disobedient child.

How I long to just submit , to drift away and escape the longing

to be the one who wakes.

The chosen child who gets to be the prized , dainty , wake up queen.

Time Stops.

Punished by the routine .

Sleep?

How to they sleep ?  I am 3 , perhaps 4 , I want to roar around and climb

I come to play , not lie here as part of her token regime

I shift my limbs

I just want to be me.

Perhaps there was a time when I floated among the others ,

crowned the Fairy Of Sleep.

But this is the only memory I have  –

My first in fact.

Book ending the shadows of my existence .

As I Lay today , resting in the darkness of my yoga end,

I landed back in that room of limbs –

I took the hand of my childhood self and we chatted through

the expanse of time.

She is no longer alone .  I love her .   Now she is just me

And together , we can just BE.