ellen bell

I wake low. It’s a battle to get up. Many have the same. It’s fear that dogs my every waking movement. I want the oblivion, the carelessness of it. And yet life must be lived, each step, each breath. It must.

It is nothing compared to what others must and do suffer. Nothing at all. And yet, it slows me down, makes me catch my breath. It renders me mortal. I don’t mind that. I want my death, when it comes. I want to leave this unkindness of an existence. I am tainted by it. But I won’t hurry it. All of this must be lived through as best as I can.

It isn’t personal. They don’t know us. We just got caught up in their trawl net. It’s an ugly thing. A faceless kind of stealing, more immoral than the usual face-to-face mugging, in some way – though less frightening. I have to let it go. He does. It’s only money, he would say. Why do I cling so tightly to it? Is it because there have been of so little?

I don’t know what it was that threw me yesterday. It suddenly felt impossible. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t see how I could do it. I woke with the same feeling of bleakness but talked myself through it. Take small steps, one at a time. Let those sparks of joy come through. It can be done. Sometimes trust is all there is.

Sometimes it takes so long to return. To fully return that is. I am discombobulated, even though we’ve only been away two days. Things feel dislodged.

I was. I was unkind to him. His sleepiness, and I might even say grogginess got to me. Seeing it as a sign of frailty, of something concerning, I wanted to hit out at him, and did so verbally instead. It was unkind. He was tired. He’d had a bug of some sort and wasn’t himself. It had freaked me. Forgive me.

There’s one that I’ve been going to see for years now. I like her a lot. She’s become a healer. She does my feet and I drop into a snoring sleep. They are cavalier about encountering the intimate crevices of our bodies. Taking it in their stride, they wax, shave, pluck, exfoliate, soap and moisturise us. And I lap it up. My body yield without demur. I even like their chatter, so distinct as it is from my almost wholly internal one.

Autumn and then winter bring them. And we are laid low. He was unwell in the night and then tells of the coffee shop manager throwing up the night before. They are carried on hands and transferred to door handles for others to pick up. They are everywhere all of the time. Some we are touched by, others we are not. Life kills us daily.

I don’t know why hearing about her made me feel calmer, safer even. It came from a Sunday Times newspaper article that he read out to me. A journalist had been trying for a baby and after six miscarriages a friend had given her the phone number of a psychic in the US. The scenario was a familiar one for me. I’ve seen several. Was that what made me calm? The familiarity. And of course, there’s a lot of body language and face ‘reading’ – sometimes they can’t pick up anything at all. But sometimes what they have to share is apposite. As the journalist found. There’s no proof, there never is. But for me it’s the connection with something other than this that warms me. I miss it.

The radio presenter was saying this morning how, over the weekend, she’d asked her two little girls what they would do if they had one wish. I only heard what her eldest had said, and that was that she’d like to speak all the languages of the world, including those of the animals. It’s an interesting question. In the fairy tales there are usually three, the final one invariably used to cancel the mayhem caused by the first two. I thought about what I would ask for. The end to war and strife and conflict. But then again isn’t it better to wish for an end to poverty or hunger. It’s hard. War is the most appalling to me, but that is probably because that is most ‘visible’. I don’t know. It’s too hard to make a choice. And asking for happiness for all – what would that mean? Some people’s happiness is another misery. Maybe. An end to pain? Help me out.