Well, it’s been such a long time since I have put pen to paper, often I sift through my musings and think I must continue to etch my thoughts in the edifices of time , I read them and love the capturing of my life at any given moment. Points in time get so lost and forgotten without record.
I don’t know what stops me , I feel like I have travelled far from my creative nature lately, I look back upon the last few years of my life and somehow feel I have lost my way , but I guess we all go through cycles of being , which at any given time will be different to what once was or what might become. It’s been such a tough year . Part of me is dreading the winter as the year that has passed held such pain and to tread back into those winter months is creating a real sense of unease. My daughter tried to kill herself twice, once in December 2020 and once in March 2021. The lead up to Christmas was so hard as she began to deteriorate and I was rendered helpless to impact. Those dreaded text messages telling me that she had taken an overdose. The mixture of anger and dread, the knowing that all that it would lead to would be short stays in hospital and professional probing of all our lives. The awful sense of incomprehension into the reasons why . The bittersweet opportunities to get in her room to clear up and clean as though somehow this would make everything better.
Slowly with the approach of summer and the light , things have got better and she seems to be in a different place. But the uncertainty of actually not knowing what goes on deep down in her mind still remains. The horrible intrusive thoughts when we haven’t seen her for a day or two, holed up in her room about what could be going on in her mind. The new lacerations to her already butchered arms which she seems to relish with great affection . Not knowing what is the right reaction, but knowing that to not react is easy , to avoid looking – but so wrong.
To face the pending darkness of winter , which I usually embrace . I try to linger in the sunsets and sit outside in the warm far longer than is normal. I seek the light and ignore the beckoning earlier nights as bit by bit they sneak surreptitiously in like the tide. Unstoppable. I want to stay in the light where things seem safer and life seems to have more purpose and hope.
I get drunk , I read voraciously , I eat far too much , I make too many plans , I buy too much on amazon. Anything to keep the darkness out. But yet I don’t write. I don’t do what opens my soul and helps me understand my pain. Something unlocks me when I tap away at my keyboard. Yet , perhaps I needed to contain it to cope. There have been times this year where I have just cried and cried . There is so much pent up emotion and disheartenment. . To lay it bear would have hindered my ability to function.
Since she has self diagnosed herself with Autism , things seem to have shifted in her mind. The obsessiveness with suicide and dying dissipated. Like she now has an identity , a sense of the whys and how’s of her difficulties. Maybe it felt too hard to be her , without a label for the pain she feels at the world and in herself. SO I guess now I can see why my creative self has been silenced. I have been shifted into survival mode , emotionally I have had to just keep myself going without falling apart.
flossyfeet 