learning to sleep with the light off

Moving on.

2008-02-12T13:19:00.000Z

Thankyou to all you lovely people who have left kind messages in my absence. I have not fallen off the face of the real world, just the virtual one. For a time there I just couldn't find any words. And then when I did, the thought of putting them here made me shrink away.

The thing is when I started this blog I was a very different person to who I am now. It may seem contrite and hollywood-esque to suggest I could change so dramatically in less than twelve months, but it's true. So, to keep this blog just doesn't feel right. I need a clean page. But thats not to say the pages that came before didn't exist, just that I want, need to move on.

I hope you all will join me in this new chapter at:

http://itsinthesmallthings.wordpress.com

Everest

2007-11-08T00:41:00.000Z

The deadline looms and I can't decide if I lack motivation or am simply just predisposed to laziness.

Each and every time the same roller coaster of emotions, thoughts and ideas. Initial indifference morphs into enthusiasm that is in turn dulled by realisation that what I thought was Primrose Hill is actually Everest.

And so the slow ascent begins. Papers and books clutter desk and words crash and meld indiscriminately in my mind. Confusion sets in, dizzying in the height of knowledge, not knowing up from down, right from left, cause from effect. But slowly the mounds of theories and piles of propositions condense and fall away like the mountain snow to water, trickling away and allowing me to pass, eventually.

After the fact

2007-11-04T16:51:00.000Z

eliot saw it
those who lived after the fact
who died in their minds
and breathed in their memories

for those who saw colour in the past
and vividness in the future,
the monochrome of the present
only brought a sense of loss

to be in the now
to taste the infinitely tiny
particles of air at the moment
they touched aveoli

to have skin shock electric
with the gentle touch
of wind in flight
and after no memory

eliot saw it
though they could only
reminisce and ponder
on it, after the fact

Lady in Red

2007-10-31T22:51:00.001Z

She sat in the red doorway waiting as her grandaughter sifted through trinkets and treasures, old watches and glittery brooches, occasionally holding up a particularly well-kept piece to show her. She nodded and smiled, lost in the flow of memories seventy-six years in the making. How she had passed so many days to be in that red doorway she could not fathom.

As vivid as the crimson hue that framed her, she could remember herself Tessa's age, blindly feeling her way through marriage, finding a happy existence between intellectual engagement and domestic life, and then, having it all snatched away long before the years had a chance to dampen the love.

The cancer stole his joy quickly but toyed mercilessly with his life, cutting each thread with cruel tardiness, letting him and his family linger ever longer in the shade of death. She helped him sever the last thread, her hand lingering on his knee as she kissed him goodbye and closed the door.

Necessity made no space for loitering grief. Her boys needed a mother and a future. She set to work at both. Her sons grew with stifling speed. The eldest morphing into his father's son, with a handsome face and a swimmers body. When they finally left to start their own lives she started to etch out a new one for herself.

She shared a house with the youngest and went back to university. First a Bachelor's then a Master's. Sociology took her to remote islands in the pacific, sleeping on grass mats and eating rice with her hands. She observed and noted, concluded and recommended. It was satisfying but could not fill the gaping hole in her life.

So she remarried. She compromised with herself that one life-changing love was enough, she could settle for companionship and compassion. A year later she realised she could find neither in this new man, so in the middle of a winters night, she left.

As it was, she learnt to fill her life up with the family she did have. Sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren. In the midst of warm contentment, as she watched her grandchildren play and grow, she would occasionally still be stung by his absence.

But where she sat now, as she looked on at her dark-haired grandaughter, she refused to be stung. Her life, she thought, may have pieces missing like the jewels from the brooches her grandaughter sifted through, but it was enough for her.

Her knees creaked as she stood from the stoop and walked across to the stall of glittering trinkets and treasures.

The grass is always..

2007-10-30T00:16:00.002Z

The footpaths are on fire with smatterings of autumn leaves. Even the trees are too lethargic to do more than just hold their branches up. And now, now the light is fading earlier and faster and all I hear from that island far away is of endless sunshine and days that are stretching the distance between us.

But there is beauty in these last dying breaths of summer. The warmth of the seldom sun on my face. The crunch of cracking fibres stomping through the park. And the afternoon light seeping through the growing gaps in trees' tangled arms.

Soon enough I will be back in the melting heat of summer, fanning my sweaty face with a crunched up magazine and brushing sand from my legs, longing for an icey autumn breeze and some crunchy orange leaves.

The morning of her making

2007-09-23T22:30:00.001+01:00

The clock glows green 4:45 as she lies diagonally across the small double bed. Street glow seeps in through the gaps in the blinds and the air is prickled with an early morning chill. The bathroom lights blind as she steps into the ceramic boat, still bemused by the British love of the bath even in the non-fuss era of the shower.

Steaming water cascades over her shoulders, rushing over and between her breasts and down the soft curve of her stomach. She catches herself in the mirror, youthful but no longer young, soft but no longer new. How will he see her, she wonders. How did he see her the day he slid that ring on her finger. Did he notice the tiny spider veins crawling around her lower thighs or her rough, calloused feet from years of ill-fitting shoes? Will he see the small wrinkles forming round her hazel eyes or the deepening furrow between her brows, a symptom of a frowning thinker?

She dresses in silence. Carefully slipping each moisturised leg into a thick black stocking, she pulls the neatly arranged navy dress over her head. The hair dryer buzzes and blows her brown hair and she is briefly thankful for the noise to muffle the internal dialogue. One, two, three strokes and she puts the brush down. 5:15

A half-read novel sits by the bed as she pulls the white covers up, straightens and pats, surveys from afar and readjusts again. She briefly observes the parallels between the her life and the narrative that tells of a young Jamaican woman who gives up everything to live in London with her new husband, a man she hardly knows. Except that she isn't giving up anything, he is. And they aren't married, not yet. 5:20

The time, it's time she thinks. The cab will be waiting. She surveys herself once more in the mirror, straighten her dress, hitches her bag and walks out the door.

Coated in an ethereal pre-dawn texture, the street is empty but for her cab. The driver looks quizzically at her lack of luggage but he is too tired to muster a question. She settles into the back seat, blowing circles of vapour on the window, wondering how an action so simple can produce such a perfect result. They speed through the near-empty streets, past the green expanses she has so come to love and to think of as her own backyard. She wonders if he will feel the same. If they will run through these parks, as they had talked of, and lie in the sunshine reading the paper, as she had dreamed. She understood her expectations of the city, her love of its vastness and possibilities, but she knew nothing of his. He was coming for her, that was all she knew.

The car pushed on out through the outskirts of the city, the buildings morphing from residential to commercial as the sky lightened to a familiar shade of dark grey. 5:50 He should be landing by now. Wheels touching tarmac. Sighs of relief from uneasy flyers. Would he be excited now? Limbs twitching with the knowledge she was just beyond that runway, just within that building. Her stomach fought with itself. Excitement battling fear, shattered nerves the innocent victim. Would he be feeling the same? She new he was nervous about leaving so much behind, risking so much to be here, but did he share her uncertainty about their future? Did he doubt for just one second?

5:54 the car stops outside the terminal. She pays and steps out into the familiar buzz of the international airport. Childhood memories of dawn journies to Dubai international airport jolt through her mind, she can taste the adventure on her tongue and feel the anticipation tingling through her legs. And as she waits for him by the gate she wonders why she shouldn't feel the same about him, about their future. That when he walks through that gap in the wall, mingled between weary backpackers and grumpy mothers, searching the crowd for her face, she shouldn't be equally excited about all the possibilities that stretch on from that moment.

6:02 he walks out. For a moment, before he see her, she surveys him from afar. And while her stomach still churns with fear and cartwheels with excitement she decides then that she will stop wondering.

2007-09-15T23:52:00.000+01:00

There have been better weeks than this.

Living out of a suitcase, staying in a decrepit hotel run like Fawlty Towers with a South London twist. Eating pre-made salads with plastic forks and drinking too much. Considering suicide by jamming my head between the covers of my Powerbook when the fifth day of house hunting proves finally that when renting the word "student" is a form of tenancy menangitis. Sharing the room with my one-week married best friend amidst a Bold and the Beautiful worthy relationship meltdown. Finding great joy in the weeks only triumph of "free" internet garnered from a neighbouring flat yet to discover how to protect their network.

Oh, but I almost forgot, at least there was sunshine. Lots of sunshine.

swim

2007-08-28T23:13:00.000+01:00

I can see her swimming in the thick black mucous of despair, treading frantically, head just above the dark sticky mess. And I can see that part of her is desperate to be dragged out but the other part is just too tired to care if her head should sink below.

And while I know how her heavy heart threatens to drag her under I am a lifeguard that never learnt to swim; reduced to shouting useless instructions from the edge in a helpless panic.

Nonsense

2007-08-24T10:15:00.000+01:00

A thousand million miles away. But the distance doesn't dull the aching. Instead it amplifies it. Aching amplified by space and distance and all that exists between us and all that keeps us apart. And yet I promised her not to long for something else for some other life. I promised her I would be in this moment. Now. But I lied. Strawberry coated, crunchy-hearted lies. Not that I knew it at the time.

Two a.m. Shakes

2007-08-16T14:14:00.001+01:00

It had been a week of restless nights. Sheets piled at the foot of the bed in a knotted innocent mess. The lovechild of jet lag and two am anxiety. Each night as he fell into the crook of her neck, asleep before eyelids shut she would draw his arm close around her breasts and listen as his breaths grew louder.

It wouldn't be long til the creaky wooden bed would shout out with his sudden jolt awake. Short of breath, eyes wide but mind creaking open slowly as the shakes would start. She would try to soothe his nerves with milky reassurances and tight embraces but they were band aids on bullet wounds. She knew only one solution. She had to stay.

But as she would try to hold his shaking hands lit by the moon creeping through the curtains, she knew she had to go. That if she didn't it would be her shaking in the early morning hours not with the fear of losing something but with the knowledge of having been to afraid to risk it.

Broken pieces

2007-07-30T16:11:00.000+01:00

most of the time the threads are invisible
a family in name not appearance
individuals held together by blood
nothing more
nothing less

then there are days like this
when everything falls apart
when we individually disintegrate
and reform as one, whole
made of broken pieces

but whole
nothing more
nothing less

Peter

2007-07-29T09:22:00.000+01:00

Tap. Full-stop. Save. Run up the wooden steps two at a time, finished Hamlet essay flapping in hand. Eyes turn as I reach the top. She walks over. Hand on shoulder.

"The school rung, it, it's Peter.."

Legs buckle. Limbs tumble into a liquid mess on the polished boards.

"NO."
"No, no, no."

Head shakes. Fingers feel for ears, stuffing flesh in the gaps. I can't hear the words but her mouth is moving. Slow motion. Slow spinning. The silent words attack me. Penetrate my mind. My reality.

His promise burns hot. Stings my eyes. Liar. Bastard. How could you. How dare you. You promised. Said you wouldn't. Said I'd never forgive myself. How could you. Two weeks ago, in my arms, you promised. Liar. Bastard. How could you.

She picks me up. Eyes burning. Heart bleeding on the polished boards. Tells me to shower. Get dressed. Get ready for school.

Tumbling down the stairs. Water scalding numb skin, mixing with salty tears dripping into mouth. Towel. Underwear. Shirt. Skirt. Shoes.

She brushes my knotted hair. Yanks with a mothers kindness. She is hurting but she doesn't show it. I hate her for it.

Black lines. Soft shaking. Car moving. Stopping. Door opening.

The common green blindingly bright in the summer sun. Sad shadows loiter in the shade of the buildings. She walks toward me. Eyes mirror mine with crimson colours. The bell sounds out across the school as I collapse into her shoulder.

And she whispers. Between sobs, she whispers.

"It's not your fault."

And I will know she is right. And he was wrong.

Not right then. But eventually. One day.

Wednesday

2007-07-26T06:21:00.000+01:00

Strawberry icecream dripped pink and cream dots on the grass as she taught him how to to use his tongue to push it to the tip of the cone, sweet and crunchy to the very end. And below the sun-baking grassy cliffs at the most eastern tip of the lonely country they could hear the whales breathing.

Monday

2007-07-23T05:10:00.001+01:00

I can't understand where it creeps in from. Absent one minute and suffocating the next. Blink for a second and all of a sudden the air feels heavier on my arms and my stomach registers a freefalling motion and in reaction lurches into my throat, my mouth, my eyes and my mind. And there it stays, for as long as it sees fit, an unwanted guest that does not take the hosts subtle hints to clear out. No. It stays for as long as it wants. Consuming all that is good, creating a by-product of numbness and despondancy. Diseasing my eyes and ears, polluting my mind and poisoning my tongue with apathy. And yet my mind battles with itself, the solid voice of reason telling the irrational scream of emotion that nothing has changed, nothing is different. When he asks me what is wrong and I say nothing I know I am not lying because between last night and us the world did not catapult into despair and my nightmares did not come true. So I say nothing, nothing is wrong. But really, I know that is a lie. I am what is wrong.

No Regrets

2007-07-20T15:18:00.000+01:00

I often wonder how it is I will die. Different scenarios of varying morbidity play to the same tune of inescapable mortality in a picture theatre reserved for the type of people that read the last page of a novel first. The way in which it will happen worries me little. I've seen the car wreck with contorted limbs pierced by claws of metal. Cancer's slow occupation of the body, eating, eating away, day by day by day. I've pictured the bullet of metal hurtling toward the blue as I put my head between my knees and 'brace, brace,brace'. And I've felt the swelling vessels in my head as blood congeals and clots where it shouldn't.

No, it is not so much the way I will die, but death's mutual exclusivity to living that scares me. I'd like to think I was one of those people that could look at the passenger next to them and yell above the terrified screams "no regrets". But I couldn't. I can't. I regret, that is me.

It is any wonder I am terrible flyer.

No Regrets
Edith Piaf

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
All the things
That went wrong
For at last I have learned to be strong

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
For the grief doesn't last
It is gone
I've forgotten the past

And the memories I had
I no longer desire
Both the good and the bad
I have flung in a fire
And I feel in my heart
That the seed has been sown
It is something quite new
It's like nothing I've known

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
All the things that went wrong
For at last I have learned to be strong

No! No regrets
No! I will have no regrets
For the seed that is new
It's the love that is growing for you

Growing bones

2007-07-12T10:14:00.000+01:00

For months she grew bones in her belly. Tiny fingers clenched and relaxed and miniature muscles kicked out little legs, pounding on the wall of flesh, announcing their presence. And outside, giant hands felt for signs of life. For flutters of hiccups. Ears pressed to stomach, skin stretched out over a mountain of life, listening for the morse code of the yet to be born.

And one day in the middle of a mild winters day the two dimensional black and white picture became a three dimensional baby. Crying, breathing, sucking, sleeping, living. A real life boy. A child. A human. A life to be lived. A life yet to know love, feel confusion or reel with pain. A life unjaded and untarnished with the dirt of living, with the marks of memory

Another

2007-07-10T13:11:00.000+01:00

Eyes weep not with tears but tiredness. The day's toll of witnessing life passing by burning into corneas, making eyelids beg for rest. Another day of life without living. A day absent of wonder and barren of surprise. A day not even the small moments could bring joy. Just a day of breathing without taking a breath.

{ Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room
Living first in the silence after the viatcum}
- T.S. Eliot, Animula

Please.

2007-06-15T11:58:00.000+01:00

Make it stop. Make the cliches stop forming at the tip of my tongue so that I may speak in words that have an unattributable meaning, a meaning I have made, not re-used and recycled phrases from childrens books and those compilations of contemporary 'jargon'. Make these paralysing thoughts stop. Banish the heart-stopping fear that latches on with a lock-jaw, a lock no amount of force can undo. Let there be a single moment of clarity, of truth, however fake it may be. Let it exist for hopes sake, for hope of sanity amidst a cloud of crazy. Or thoughts of crazy. Or are thoughts of insanity simply the signposts to the eventual destination? Read me a fairytale and put me to bed. Make it stop.

2007-05-26T15:49:00.000+01:00

I am now officially in the ranks of the mentally troubled. I had my first psychologist appointment on Monday. I spent much of the hour analysing how the book shelf filled with children's book and toys was unsymmetrical.

It was irritating me.

So apparently I am suffering from separation anxiety disorder. It would explain why I find it distressing to be by myself for any extended period of time. Why as a young child I could never fall asleep unless my parents were there as I drifted off. Why I found it so difficult to end a relationship that had expired years before. And why I am craving settling somewhere after university is finished. I want and need routine. My life as is feels like organised chaos. I write lists to try and order it, but it's like putting a band aid over a bullet wound. Makes it look pretty from the outside but if you look any further it's just a big fat old mess in there.

Sunday.

2007-05-20T13:10:00.000+01:00

Failing is something I have never dealt with very well. I have developed the mentality that it is better to not have tried at all than it is to try and fail like a sad miserable mess.

I was that sad miserable mess today. Fifty-three per cent is technically a pass in a university assignment, but to me it might as well be a fail. It seems the longer I study at university the less results have any correlation with effort applied, or content grasped. Although this particular piece of assessment was a miserable failure predominantly because I didn't follow the Stalinist guidelines on how it was to be submitted.

ex-Boss says he knows some people and that he will have my teachers knee-caps broken. I considered his romantic gesture but decided that Sunday's are meant for rest (and perhaps peace). We spent the rest of the day lying in the park, eating corn off the cob and trying to avoid sitting under trees with shitting birds.

I spent most of the time wondering if I had said those three words with too much haste. I wondered if I did indeed love him or if I just felt, I don't know, something else. I'm leaving for London in seven weeks, I'm insane to even entertain the idea of falling in love, least of all actually do it. I'm terrified of committing to him while I'm away, I don't trust myself. Mainly I don't trust myself to feel anything constantly and so I can't promise I will still feel the way I do about him when I'm a million miles away.

I can't figure out if that is selfishness. If it is opportunism; that I'm always looking for something else, something more. I wonder if I will ever be satisfied enough to have constant feelings or perhaps I will always be an alternating current of emotions, switching every time I feel uncertain or afraid.

A double coffee kinda day.

2007-05-19T10:02:00.002+01:00

I have a strict coffee code of conduct. Only one per day and must be consumed before 12pm.

I'm highly sensitive to caffeine you see. Actually, I'm just highly sensitive to everything. But caffeine especially. Breaking the rules this afternoon mean I am now ready to bound out of my chair and start bouncing around the walls like one of those crazy cartoon balls that spring from one side of the room to the other. I remember now why I set the coffee code of conduct in the first place.

What is it about setting rules for yourself that just make you want the exact thing your denying yourself even more? Coffee, cake, chocolate, cigarettes, it's all the same.

There was good cause for my double espresso day however. My friend Tortoise is leaving us for a island hideaway. She is the first to leave, but the rest of us (there are five) will soon follow, but all to different corners of the world. So we are in the process of saying long goodbyes. Actually that is a lie. They are long periods of partying followed by short coffee meetings for a quick goodbye and a few tears.

And at this meeting today, they cornered me. Read my face and deducted that I had started to fall disgustingly fast for ex-Boss. They asked me if I had said it. Tortoise, Puddleduck and Bluebird stared at me "well?". I looked away and hoped they wouldn't notice I wasn't answering.

"Your an 'I love you' hussy" Puddleduck accused. I felt one of the red balloons of happiness bobbing in my chest burst with the prick of her cynical look. Tortoise kept probing. "so, so, do you love him?".

I thought I did. I told him three days ago. And once since.

Why do their reactions make me doubt it? Fuck them I think. Fuck them and their cynicism. Even if ex-Boss and I break up tomorrow, weren't three days of elation worth it?

I couldn't say that to them. Instead I just sat there, blinking back tears and cursing myself for being so sensitive to everyone elses opinion. For valuing theirs over my own. For wanting to please them instead of myself. Fuck them, I'm going to have another coffee and keep falling in love.

First post.

2007-05-18T14:43:00.000+01:00

When I was a child I had to be trained to learn to sleep with the light off. I believed that not only was there someone waiting under my bed or in my cupboard, but that they would attack the minute blackness filled the bedroom. I still check under my bed from time to time, but mostly I have learnt to sleep with the light off.

Starting this blog is much the same. Let me explain how.

I am terrified of everything.
E_V_E_R_Y_T_H_I_N_G

My mind is an endless cinema reel of imminent disasters. Disasters and mistakes. Fear of making the wrong choice has sent me into a mental paralysis. Decisions send me into a frenzy of jaw clenching and fear of failure has my heart racing at a dizzying speed. Writing is mostly too difficult to attempt because for everything I want to say and every word I want to use, I can always think of a dozen different (maybe better) options, and in the end I am confused and terrified by choice.

I think often that I am going crazy. Maybe I am. But I need to do this because I can't keep sleeping with the light on just because I'm scared of what might creep out of the dark.

Welcome to my blog.