Artist and writer currently living in Aberystwyth.
I usually write a brief one page incantation, or prayer each morning just after my bath. It’s a repetitive thing, a kind of reminder of all my blessings. Of late I’ve struggled to do this, not, I might add, because I no longer feel those blessings, I do, but because my beleagured body is sapping me of the inclination. It is taking so long to go. Too long.
It’s his birthday today. He used to be a major athlete, a cyclist, renowned for his skill and personal style. He told me at breakfast that he’d read that he’d gone bankrupt, that he’d lost his wife, his house, everything it seems. Such a fall must be hard. Poor love. Is it better to live in the shadows? Possibly. No highs but no real lows either.
I don’t remember ever having laughed in a dream before. And I do remember them. Last night I did and I watched myself do it. It was a rich laugh. A genuine one, replete with the pleasure of it. I was at a table with a group of people, possibly in a restaurant. I was watching myself and them from above. I noticed how happy I looked, relaxed, safe even. It was nice.
So much of it is a nonsense. Or at least how it is reported. This odd mish mash of the catastrophic and the idiotic, the important and the silly. Food is running out in Gaza. The woman abused and trafficked who killed herself. The Pope’s funeral. And finally, a bear is found in somebody;s garden playing on climbing frame. How are we to make sense of it? Act, even. What is it asking of us? Is it entertainment or life? I feel tainted by it.
It lingers. A month has passed and the rigidity remains. What is it about? Stress, she said. The other one called last night and I shall see her in two weeks. I am lucky to have them both. They are very different in their approach but equally intuitive and skilled. Will it heal? Perhaps it may, perhaps not. I need to accept this. I think about my pain as I walk. Sometimes, just sometimes, I am distracted and am thankful for it.
Discomfort, or shall I call it pain, makes me scratchy. A scratchy tart is the term he used to describe a past colleague. That’s what I’ve been this morning. I am disappointed that my back isn’t healing faster. It’s been over a month, and I long to return to my once-flexible body. I must be patient and accept what is. What can I learn from it? Go slower, take more care, notice what you can do not what you can’t and all those other wise but difficult to live be exhortations that roll around in my head. Self-pity usually triumphs. Ugh.
I’d asked her if I could borrow some of her teddies to draw. Why? I wanted to understand what they meant to her. And drawing is the way I understand things. She’d agreed. I’d asked for about twenty. She let me have six. She said it was hard to let them go. I felt it. She may decided not to do this again.
A TV story unwittingly prompts a revisiting of old pain. We rake through the remains, he and I. It never does any good. I cry in bed, just before sleep, which doesn’t come. Not until later. Then I wake and wake and dream and dream. Having her in your life wouldn’t have made you happy, he says. She would have always let you down. Possibly, he is right. But I know and he knows that it’s not as simple as that. I must accept it as it is. That’s all I can do. She leaves, offers me no other choice.
There is a kind of grace in acceptance. That letting be what is, rather than fighting against it. I like the peace of it. My back seems a little better, but it is never enough. I have eschewed painkillers this morning. Let it be as it is. Hot water bottles. Three of them will do better. Let it be as it is.
I’m sore again. I don’t know what I did to bring it back. It’s my back naturally. And it’s stiff as a board. Rigid. Like iron. I think of Frida Kahlo and the drawings she made of her pain. It must’ve been constant. Mine is nothing in comparison. A blip. An inconvenience. But my potential for self-pity hovers. Always. Breathe into it, she said. Relax, she said. I will try. Mind over matter.