It seems the rest of the world can operate in the gases round the earth, and yet, for no apparent reason, these same gases render me helpless and immobile. I remember humming when young when I couldn't speak as attacks abated. The tiredness overwhelming, like dragging through treacle. I have never been hospitalised with my asthma, never properly disabled, and in my youth asthma was labelled as one of the 'psychosomatic' illnesses aka you were thinking yourself into it. It was years later whilst I was doing my degree I remember coming across the research papers on psychosomatic illness and realising that the only reason there were 12 illnesses associated with psychosomatic definitions was the funding only lasted a short time. It was suggested that there was a psychological link with all illness, but the research didn't really go much further. So migraine, asthma and the others were labelled and perceived as illnesses you could make worse by thinking of them, or have them because you were weak. Fortunately since those days sturdy, brave and achieving people have been found to be asthmatic and so that the image of the asthmatic as an nadequate and needy person has been largely dispelled.
But my lungs have never been strong. They work at about 60% capacity most of the time and the practical upshot of this is I get tired. Well, I don't much anymore because I take inhaled steroids daily, and I don't have to be superwoman and deny the reality of my being. I was only saying today that it is beginning to be very difficult to remember the truth of my life with the Absent Father, but an abiding memory is that when I was tired and had to go to sleep in the afternoon, he would 'leave me to it' i.e. ignore me until I got up and put the kettle on. His excuse was that he didn't like to disturb me, but actually I think he thought I was being weak, and he disapproved of such weakness. He wasn't capable of caring much anyway, and I can see now I spent many years trying to tell myself he did care, just I was difficult and if I tried harder I would be loved. Was I? I really just don't know.
So spin forward to the helter skelter life of the middle-aged single woman. I suppose the thing I want most of all is not to repeat the mistakes of years gone by. This is admirable, but difficult if you don't really know what mistakes you made and what chains of events they set in motion that could not be repeated in any case. You become very wary of anyone, rarely giving in to anything vaguely resembling an emotion. Satisfying physical need with a selection of sensations becomes the desired and safe way to proceed. But every so often that small sleeping part of you wakes and blindly reaches towards what it thinks is love. It must be stopped, because let's be honest, you had no idea what was love the first time round, so how on earth could you identify that addiction this time round.
This poem is from some months ago, when the coping strategy was very stretched. He was gorgeous, but feral. And unless I was very, very careful, he was going to re-break that heart of mine. He didn't.
Love in the Dark
I turned the light on.
Because otherwise
My savaged heart may
Have believed
What my soul knew
To be a lie.
I told myself.
To make it hurt less.
Justify the humiliation
Of Sunday mornings,
Years past.
When the seas of desires
Ebbed away.
The lies of love,
My body felt.
I told myself
I would be brave,
And turn that light on.
Feel just the expert moves.
Quench futile dreams.
For now.
3/20/2011
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