Jouska

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I saw a list this morning on social media derived from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. Jouska is described as “a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head”. Yep. That’s me. And then I realised that that concept sums up my life; a rehearsal for the real thing… only it never happens. I have wasted years of my life by now imagining myself on stage delivering a talk, quietly pointing out flaws in someone else’s reasoning with devastating logic, taking down a belligerent bully with whip smart dialogue, delivering a grief stricken person with that ‘one thing’ they needed to hear to release them, taking back a humiliating moment with a witty retort … you know, “If only I’d said…”.

And so it came to pass that my life slowly drained away like the flash flood waters into the parched earth. At some level I’ve realised this before, but we humans need the lesson 3,456 times before the “Aha moment”. That’s partly why I’ve not written anything for **gosh** 5 years now. The blog (that' I’m paying for) sits idly in the anonymous ether like a grain of sand on the sea floor. I’d decided that my maudlin wafflings were all a bit of a waste of time. But fuck it. I’m going to start waffling into cyberspace again.

I lost a dear friend a few weeks ago- she told no one that she had lymphoma so I was shocked and devastated. Now I’m just left with the heavy ache of her absence. And the realisation that time is short. I am not the young, carefree free spirit I once was with the heart of an immortal. I too could wake up dead tomorrow, so I’d better get cracking. I don’t know why- I can write a bit so I guess I should. To what ends I don’t know.

My son, who’s suffered from debilitating depression for 6 years now, went out the other night. For the first time in months. A friend was in town so he managed his anxiety and braved the social world, hero that he is. He told me he had a pretty good time. He’d had a conversation with a bloke about divorce. It was a revelation to this guy when my son told him that he’d been devastated by my divorce and grieved over it. The guy had no idea- assumed he was a wuss because he’d been sad when his parents split. My son told him it was perfectly normal to be upset and it was a process that took a long time.

My son is an amazing person. The bravest I know. Whip smart and funny as fuck. And he has emotional intelligence out the wazoo. He is often a revelation to those he comes in contact with (although because of his mental health issues, that’s not too often). He will have changed that man’s life. He will have given him permission to grieve as he should have years ago and so enable himself to properly heal and become free. Because the dragging of baggage (unlike auguring a wonderful holiday) actually minimises you- your life, your potential, your relationships. Baggage infects everything and you’re not even aware of it, like the first stages of the Wuhan coronavirus.

So I’m going to keep writing and know that if someone needs to hear the words I speak, they’ll stumble across my grain of sand in that incomprehensible way of synchronicity.

voiceless

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voiceless

i find myself voiceless. i find the air in my lungs is not enough for me; i struggle for breath. my heart won't stop hurting. an insistent murmuring and tightness. it is trying to break free from my chest. it is a discomfort; a reminder of your not belonging. of your aloneness. 

i have felt this before; this not wanting to be in my own skin but to be free; floating somewhere out among the lovely stars. the light, the mesmerising colours, the heartbreaking beauty. out where there is no air. where it doesn't matter if your lungs don't work. where your heart will stop beating and release you to the silent beauty that is endless and so big you are nothing but a single pulse of something. and then gone.

Or I could drink. 

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Old Love Poems

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Old Love Poems

My marriage broke up probably last October; I can’t really remember- it being such a tumultuous time of confusion and hurt. In all honesty it died a long time ago with a bit of a whimper.  It wasn’t a case of well, today, Wednesday the 16th of September or whatever he walked out the door… I will remember that day for as long… Because I don’t. It was all just a blur of pain and holding my breath. Waiting for the release. Waiting for the moment when he was gone so I could relax in my own home. When the tension of the preceding storms would break and release the cleansing rains.

I don’t even know where to begin with the dissection. Should I even bother? I’ve been through this before so really I’ve had practice and the body does remember; like a muscular memory. The rolling tide of pain, the overwhelming sadness, the fear; you revert to your factory setting. Like coming into the world for the first time. The shock of the blinding light, the terror of the cacophony, the confusion, the not-understanding. To a deep feeling of aloneness.

I know grief intimately. I was undone the first time. Completely. And that is not the hyperbole to which I am prone. It is a simple fact. I was smashed into my inherent cellular constituency; pulp upon the bathtub ceramic. Dust.

Is it worth an autopsy? We didn’t autopsy my mother. I panicked as I knew that she had an aversion to operations. I didn’t want to upset her. She was gone I know. But grief is irrational. She was gone and that’s probably all we needed to know. Is it the same with a marriage? It’s gone so move on?

 I remember the first, I’ll call him Adam, rewrote history. He could remember no good times. But he stayed for 10 years. I couldn’t understand- I couldn’t understand so much. Why had he stayed if it was all so awful?  It took me so long; going over and over every little conversation, every look; trying to piece together the series of events that had torn our family apart. Broke the hearts of my sons. Broke my heart. And found nothing in the end. There is no ‘closure.’ There is no enlightening truth above all truths that can explain the vagaries of the human relationship.

And now I find myself doing the same. I am rewriting history because I find I can’t remember any laughter either. It was all  business. The business of raising 5 children. And we got lost along the way. Neither of us tried. We willing surrendered the romantic notion that was the genesis of our union. The poetry ceased. The flowers withered and forlornly shed their petals to the floor, their heady perfume shifting imperceptibly to an insidious decay.  The intimacy shrivelled from a fine fat grape to a wizened raisin.

From the slam of the door til now there has been time to ponder. But grief blurs reality and drags your thoughts into the darkness where you spend so many hours with tears unshed, with wavering breath, with echoes of the past reverberating in the silence, that no time seems to pass at all. No sense is found. Nothing but confusion and pain trapping you in the void. Grief is a thief of time.

Is that all I need to know? Can you ever untangle the wicked threads that bind us? Can you ever discover the moment it all came undone? I don’t believe that; because it is a series of small undoings. It is a slow perishing of the love poem that once was. The paper ages, the writing fades, the words lose meaning as a letter here and there disappears. Until it is no longer a love poem but a ragged piece of paper that is trodden underfoot by a  stranger with shapely thighs and a coquettish grin. It becomes caught on the heel of her stiletto and is gone. Taking him with her.

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The Walking Dead

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The Walking Dead

Most people would be vehemently averse to airing their dirty laundry in the galactic ether; you never know when a Saturnian might be listening afterall. Most people would be mortified to be so personal so publicly, because once it’s out there, there is no dragging it back. And that’s true. But you see there is so much “out there” that this will be lost among the clamouring noise of those more vociferous; funnier, cleverer, more interesting, more notable…

You see I am nobody. And this account is nothing. Because I realised this morning that I am just dust in his rearview mirror. I am dust in quite a few rearview mirrors. And finally one day, I’ll only be dust in my sons’ rearview mirrors. Until I dissipate into nothing, sprinkled by the breeze, like a whisper in the darkness.

And just after Ash Wednesday- that’s probably pretty telling. And certainly pleasing to my Catholic worldview of guilt and sin and mortality.  It’s pretty humbling. And I realise with certainty, that no one ever reads this. Some quickly scan the Dementia Diary to get a quick laugh because I am pretty good at that; I can drag one tiny thing out into a whole and make it amusing for your delectation and uplifting.

But this, this will remain silent in the maelstrom of humanity’s voices. Hidden among the debris that is floating in the universe among so many images, sounds, cries and pain and canned laughter too.

This journal of sorts. My life is like Like Water for Chocolate. It’s obscure. It’s foreign. Sure it has subtitles, but I can’t seem to keep up with them. What the fuck does it even mean? I never understood it and I guess I never will.

The walking dead makes for a great tv show, but did you know it’s based on reality? Robert Kirkman must be well acquainted with grief. Your heart is stopped in that moment of disbelief. Your breath has ceased. Like the time No. 2 son ran away from home in the middle of the night and the police asked me to provide dirty clothes of his to give to the tracker dogs. You see your hands pulling them from the laundry basket but it’s someone else doing it. You’re not there. You’re outside in the dark.

You just can’t breathe. You’re forever left standing on the porch looking out into the darkness. Willing your eyes to see him coming  down the road.  Spiriting yourself out into the night in search of him.

Grief is a suspension of reality.

But you keep moving.  The washing gets done and the dinner gets put on the table at 6.30pm. Sometimes a little haphazardly; what the hell are you doing serving bokchoy with Boeuf Bourguignon? But it’s sustenance.

You keep going. Humans do don’t they? Keep moving till your dead; till it’s over. My pa’s brain is mashed and fried but still his body keeps moving. Onward. Shuffling till the end. Stumbling into the big sleep.

Grief is an endless cycle of mindless movement.  The shock of it numbs you into being a zombie. Shuffling towards the next task of survival; nothing more. But what is dead should be buried.

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