The hills we die on

Hello again, 

Often I enjoy writing in the style of Kathleen Kelly (You've Got Mail) where she starts as if the reader is in the middle of a conversation with her. The Internet has been such a wonderful place to have these kinds of distant yet intimate interactions. For instance, you are here, reading my blog and going about your business outside of this... But also we are sitting across a table from each other and talking. This is a conversation and sometimes you respond. I appreciate it immensely. But not to sound self-centred, this is also a conversation about me. 

And I remain adamant that this is the kind of conversation I want to keep having. That I need to carry on speaking to you this way because it would be a betrayal not to. There is

art and beauty in these imaginary cups of coffee and the ugly emotions that need to be discussed too. There is a place for pretty prose, the kind laced with poetry and embellished with nostalgia. There is a place for the anger and the joy. But there needs to be a place for both, or none at all. 

This is the hill I am choosing to die on. For the precious friendships I have fostered through this keyboard. Because a thread on twitter won't be enough or appropriate to express what I need to. Because there is a need that gnaws at me at night if I don't have some of these conversations.  The point is that this is what I ordain it to be. For my sanity, I must have these conversations with you.

  

For something more distant and cold, there are probably instruction manuals that would make thrilling reading. For something more structured, there are textbooks with numbered chapters and learning outcomes.  There will always be something to suit your particular need (this is the internet after all), but right now this is what I need. 

If you want to have a chat or go on a ramble through someone else's mind- there is this.  For the last seven years, it has been this mix of musing about death, marvelling at life and reflection on the journeys I am on, even when I don't know I am on a journey yet.  

Tar and feather me if I turn against this need to stay true. Because all I have is this voice. That's all we ever have. Something to say and something to stand for. When something is unpleasant to the ear, we turn the radio off or listen to something else. This is all that will play here- a loud conversation about a spectrum of emotions and occasionally a whisper of my innermost fears. You choose to listen in the same way I have chosen to let you into this messy world of mine. 

So...Would you like milk or sugar with that cup of coffee before I carry on? 

Growth- An update

(Last week I wrote about a letter I was waiting for (give it a read before you read this.) It arrived about ten minutes ago and moved me to tears because of how far I can see I've come in a year. I will leave it below, exactly as I got it. The thing I'm taking from this is that the glimmer of light on the horizon is brighter than you can believe. I have found myself with the most wonderful friendships and the most affirming people in my life since the letter was written. I love you all. So much.)

Dear You,

You're having a day. Not a bad day or a good day but the sort of day that opens up your chest and your heart feels raw.I want you to remember this, in a year from now and every year for the rest of your life:

You're a good friend. You give and love and cheer for people and that is the best thing. You need to keep screaming hoarse and take a moment to listen for those who scream and cheer for you. You do not have time to waste on those who will not even whisper for you. Those who will not smile for your joy.

You must remember that your nature is one that forgives and understands and no matter how angry you feel - know that you need to be this person more than other people need it. Nurture your soul and forgive yourself. Remember that the things you resent about others that have hurt you, have built you to be better. To be kinder and to have a greater capacity for love.

You probably are having a weird week. Exam season depresses and you must must must remember that you carry light within you. You carry grace at your heels and you hold a flame that you cannot give others permission to extinguish.

If we're going to use June 9th to remember that good friends are jewels and that we must prune away those who are toxic- so be it. Nothing can hurt you in a way that lasts, so don't let it. You are fierce and majestic and so carefully made.

As always, I want the best for you and I want you to remember that you want that too. Choose kindness. Cruelty is a choice and you never have to make it.

All my love

The oceans between my ribs

I used to go swimming often, around the same time mulberries would start to ripen and colour the ground beneath it. Dreaming up dragons and fanciful stories that I can’t remember. All I recall is that deep feeling of serenity that came with floating on the surface, warmed by the afternoon sun. It feels like a lifetime ago and the things that are clearer to me, feel a lot less calm.

I am waiting for hindsight to be less unforgiving, for a gracious light to be cast over things I can’t change until the details blur and the edges soften. But the way memory works is strange and cruel. It stains the way those mulberries stained your soft cotton handkerchief when you were young. You have to wring your life out, between your fists and soak it in cold water. You have to agitate it until the suds turn colour and then you try to breathe again.  A day or so in the sunshine, that’s all it takes sometimes.

I’m expecting a letter soon.

 An email, to be more precise. I wrote it on some dreary June night at some point in the last two years (I can’t remember when) but I’m expecting it to pop up in my inbox soon. It’s a thing I do, you see, I send future versions of myself emails** and pour my honest soul out when I feel conflicted and lost. When I just need to tell myself something or tell someone and not feel like I am burdening them with heavy pieces of my soul, unnecessarily.  

And in the next week, I will get the first one. From a younger version of me who was probably just reaching out and wanting to hold something that only becomes tangible much later. I can’t remember what I said. Usually, these get tangled in the memories of late night exam revision or buried beneath deeply stressful things that I bury and move on from.  I can’t even expect the softened edges or the rosy haze because it would be a voice, clear and raw. And she would have had a lot on her plate at the time. Messy circumstances and a heart that did not know itself. I have these emailed lined up for years to come. At my deepest valleys and on the peaks of my tallest mountains, they have been quickly typed and sent to a random date and forgotten about.

They are markers along a path I forgot I had taken. There are letters from the broken girl, the euphoric girl, the girl in love and the girl dipped in hate, the girl who prayed and the girl who could not remember to because she was terrified of the looming exam.

 Letters about the oceans that exist between my ribs and people who have drowned there. The oceans where I had sunk down into, trying to reason with myself and the tides that wore the jagged rocks down, eventually. The oceans where flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecked regret float. Those things tossed overboard in times of distress. 

 Letters about dying and then blooming again. Pleas to a future self to make things right again. And: I did. I made some of it right. And that was the point, wasn’t it? In writing those “I hope you love yourself deeply by the time you read this”, it was the possibility that the version of myself who read it would have those things I deeply wanted for myself at that dark moment. All the questions and hypotheticals and fears I couldn’t quite address – they are all monsters I have named now.

Whatever the letter says, I know I made some of it right, eons before I fathomed it would be possible. Conquered dragons I did not know the names of, but I know them now. I have wrung my life out until the colour ran clear.

** The service I use to send emails to myself can be found at www.futureme.org

An open letter to my Muse

 

Dear Muse,

Losing something you have written is almost as painful as losing a possession or a person, I think. Only, it is not a generic thing that can be bought again and it cannot be reclaimed from an insurer.  And it isn't someone who you can find again or visit when you miss them. It is a piece of your soul, laid on a page and made tangible. To lose this moment that has been captured by ink and blue-lined paper hurts more than any heartbreak. It is the only pain I feel more than my acknowledgement of death. Because in a way, it is a death. The part of you who wrote aforementioned words is gone forever.

Once upon a time, I had pages and pages of a story that was only beginning to write itself. I was only beginning to know myself. Written over 3 years and each word a burden that needed to be laid down, it was bound in a red folder with a blue ribbon around it. Red, black and blue were the inks that splashed my feelings into reality. There was a girl, lost and in search of purpose and identity. There were others of course but now when it is late and the night is silent, I long to hear from her again. By pouring so much into it, at 2am when sleep would not come and the words would not stop, the ache lingered for so long when it was lost. Misplaced or thrown away by someone who probably thought it was useless during a spring clean. I would search every cupboard and every page, even two years later when we were moving- I still searched. Even now I sigh at the memory.

But she has gone now and I forget the parts of her story that were once so vivid. I wish you could know her too.

I used to keep journals. But that was a mistake. Of course it was a mistake to pour every simple, naive thought into a book where the only intrigue and scandal is not your own but rather the idea of what could be or the lives of those around you. There is no filter. And when it is read and taken for more than it was, your heart can only weep while you throw them away. The bitter regret of trusting yourself to reveal to much teaches you to be less vulnerable.Perhaps it is better now, when every thought may be forgotten and when memories fade away to make room for new ones. It is better now, that I have learned to internalise each problem. Who needs a retrospective opinion anyway?

I will never meet that girl I was again, even if I chose to. You would laugh, at my exaggeration and musings about the people around me.

I was full of ideas, when life had not yet made a cynic of me. My writing was my secret project and I was too shy to let anyone examine the flesh and bones of my soul. So I tore up my poetry and wished it away. The few that remained were cryptic and held very little weight. Pages and pages that drew a map of me were discarded into a tall green bin. The intensity of my confessions were too stark and obvious, there were no secrets that were not in plain sight in my stanzas.  My sentiments seemed more heavy than I wished to be known. Each one was a record of my doubts, fears, failings and sadness. 

Such deep sadness that I would hate to revisit ever again. If my heart held on to these for too long, the veins would become lined with lead and soot that burned in a time of angst. What would be left? A shell I think, who had to let go before it was consumed by all this reflection.

And when I fell in love with you, I wrote a poem or a letter every other day. I wanted you to know that one secret. And when you told me you felt the same way, I wrote two a day to try to contain myself.But before the urge to burn it up and hide behind my wall arrived, I bound it in ribbons and watercolour and left it for you. It is so cheerful and full of my smiles and laughter. I'm glad I gave it to you for a while. Now you will know how deeply those pages decorated with flowers and ink, are tied to my heartstrings.

You were given those pages so one day, I am able to see who I was before "me" became "we". 

 To lose something you have written is akin to pretending it never happened. Be it your fault, or an accident, the pain stays. You crush and sweep away the fallen leaves in Autumn, leaves that unfurled in a time in your life when it was Spring. And now, while it is Summer, I will endevour to write to you and about you so that I remember what the blossoms smelled like when it is Winter again. 

Yours faithfully,

Your semi-retired poet