Day and Night, Night and Day

I've been a bit stuck recently, with regards to writing.  I'm not sure why this is, but I think I need to try and push on through and see if I can find any way of illuminating this problem.

Is it a problem?  Should having to write be regarded as a healthy thing, or an odd obsession?  My trouble is that rather than just writing for the sake of it, it would appear I now have an audience.  Maybe it's performance anxiety.  I've developed a style, you've developed expectations.  But am I the person of these posts, or was that just a transitory phase in my development and recovery, and the person you have come to read about doesn't exist now.

Moving through phases of your life is tricky because it only becomes clear after the event who you were.  Or it does to me.  A sense of who you are and what space you occupy is one of those recurrent themes in my life, and my default method of analysis for the moment is a trawl of the poetry and see if the light of the past shines into those incomprehensible crevices of the present.

It would appear that I've got it wrong about people I thought were friends, again.  But have I really, or have I, or they, moved to a different space and the friendship that seemed so solid was merely a chapter than has come to its close?  To be honest I don't know but I'm trying to be adult about a situation when my inner child wants to scream 'I thought you were my friend, why did you leave me out, it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair'.  Then that parental voice chimes up from deep within you 'you knew you were taking advantage of them, asking too much of people, being too needy, you need to pull back and be more grown up and resilient'  To think as a student at University I was disdainful of Freudian theory, I have the whole text book swirling away inside this mind, superego issues, ego defences the lot.  Does it make it easier to be able to label these feelings with another's structures imposed on the reality that is my experience?

Someone commenting on my blog remarked you could tell I was a psychologist, or something similar, by my observations and depth of analysis.  Does being able to discern the emotional hues actually help you deal with them?  I know it's a criticism that was often lobbed at me that by 'thinking too much' , that I was making the situation worse, bit like scratching an itch, and that I should 'forget about it' and 'get on with it'  However I find that burying the emotions is not healthy, they find expression somehow.  Again, you can see the Freudian influences, the concept of repression.  I suppose this is what fuels my frustration with the idea you can somehow 'get over' situations, and, come on now let's all hold ourselves and shudder together at the awful words, 'move on'.  Emotions are there, uncomfortable boulders strewn across our paths.  We may not want to look hurt when left off a guest list, but if it hurts, it hurts.  Acknowledging the truth is perhaps what I strive for, and maybe that's what should be mediated, the times and places you acknowledge the reality of your emotional life.  How do you  communicate your emotional reality is possibly what I am taking apart in the blog at this time.  What is relevant for public viewing, what should be mine and mine alone? 

I've had some really flattering comments this week about the poetry that appears on the blog, and I hope the person I was talking to, does indeed put her comments up as promised.   It would appear that channelling my reality into an art form is a valid outlet for my internal tumult.  At some point I stand back from my canvas and you view my perspective.  Rather than being a person who slumps over a glass of red in the pub on a friday night moaning about 'the day from hell', by examining the inner chaos and giving it form, I make the unacceptable a tad more palatable.  Except not everyone is motivated to read this.  It is rather a one way dynamic, me, all powerful with my opinions and emotions, you, the grateful subjects drinking at the font of my soul.  Am I right in this and is that my problem, or yours?  You are not being made to read this, I find it useful to express myself in a written medium, and if I'm honest it has taken getting used to, knowing that people are out there.  I do need this change in dynamic, I've been writing on and off for years, but only with a very limited audience.  By offering my poetry and thoughts 'out to the world' I'm trying out what it feels to be read.  It is a strange feeling, that Catholic guilt about putting yourself above others beats strongly from within, but at the same time, oddly warm and comforting.  I would hope anyone who wants to be rude about this blog just avoids it, unlike when you meet them face to face.  How do you let someone know you just don't like them anymore, or never really did?

The trouble is we have a tendency to re-write the past with the mind of the present, re-ordering and modifying the memories to suit today's purpose.  As Andy Hamilton's Satan in that brilliant radio comedy series 'Old Harry's Game' said to the Professor who claimed he knew his past because he lived it 'ah but did you have a good view?'  Breaking up is awful because a small step that has to be made is dressed up with terrible exaggerations in time, justifications that are unkind and unfair.  To know a friendship or relationship is over and just walk away is in my experience, a rare thing.  Somehow it needs to be kicked to death, in guilt and anger, and perhaps saddest of all, with regret.

I'm still going to delve into the achives for a couple of poems, which to me at least, seem rather appropriate at this time.  They weren't written to be companion pieces, but the titles link them.  The first was a desperate cry looking back at my time married to the Absent Father.  I would from time to time, taunt myself with the thoughts of awful things that could happen, much as someone might go to a horror film to enjoy the jumps and screams.  The thought of the children dying, losing our home if the Absent Father lost his job, what would happen if foot and mouth really did take hold of the country such worries filled my mind intermittently.  I had to cope with the fact that my mother, having been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer at 52, was unlikely to make old bones, which although serious was not out of the ordinary.  Then he left.  Beyond my comprehension.  Still is, if I'm really honest.

Night Thoughts


I used to wake at night.
My mind would wander
At the worst nightmare I could imagine,
It was my dark side indulged.
And I would roll towards you,
Feel your warmth
And sleep till dawn,
When I would rise and make us tea.

But now I live the nightmare
Beyond anything the dark could be.
I rise alone and make my tea.
I walk alone
And eat alone
And live. Of sorts.
And not wake at night
For fear of where my mind might take me
And how brave I’ll need to be.

25/05/2008

The second poem is written about my first doomed love affair.  The fact is was doomed was always known to me, but I was just chasing the moment, living for the extraordinary passion that illuminated both our lives in vivid, glorious swathes.  Or that was my take on it.  The last time we met, some years after the affair had ended, he told me I made him feel inadequate, that my vocariousness put him off.  How the sparkle dulls when the sun goes in.

I toyed for a long time with the title 'Mourning Thoughts'.  It would seem that, upon the recent revelations from the man concerned, that would have been the better title, but the ambiguity and the fact it pairs with "Night Thoughts' give it a strength and resonance I still find valid.

Morning Thoughts


So, this is what it will be like
When he is gone.
I’ll sleep and eat and dream alone,
And shop and drive and walk
In solitary splendour.
To the whole world
Nothing will have changed.
But he is gone.

There will be no phone calls at the pub,
No emails through the day,
Texts on the train.
No chats walking round the garden in the evening sun
Or sitting in bed with tea.

No knowing that someone, somewhere, wants you,
Thinks of you,
And smiles as you approach,
And wants you happy.
Because he will be gone.

And every day that empty day gets closer,
So I practise sorting memories,
Trying on the coldness for size.
And tell myself this is what it will be like
When he is gone.

24/05/2008