Waiting

 

Pieces of my mind tumble down around me, shattered shards spiralling like the aftermath of an explosion. Total decompensation, like the bursting of a balloon. Too much pressure to bear. Too much force against an already fragile mind. Now I'm trapped inside this shell, as if my soul just burst and the pieces flew away. A shadow of myself, my potential dissolved with the last fragments of my tormented being. Too weak to even lift my head.

 

I tried. I tried so hard. But nobody understands. The lure of that release, the need to escape, it overwhelms you, wraps itself tightly around all that is you, and doesn't let go. It rips away all that you love, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but never, ever ceasing. An avalanche, or a glacier, wending its way down a mountainside. Ma was watching that Netflix film the other day, what was it called? Hillbilly Elegy, that was it. She pointed at the screen, looked at me and said “That will be you. Mark my words. You're almost there already. Hillbilly Elegy, starring my one and only daughter as she spirals out of control. The bottle will be the death of you.”

 

I wonder if she knows how much her words hurt. The negativity, the judgement. Always feeling as if I was never good enough. Never up to her standards. I would never achieve the leaping heights of academia like my brother. We are wired differently. He, the studious and disciplined intellectual type, while I, the imaginative, but somewhat disorganised creative type. Equally intelligent, yet wildly different in our expression of that intelligence. Why couldn't she accept that? Perhaps her own perceptions of failing in school fuelled her desire to see us achieve what she did not. I don't know. But I do know that her insatiable need for success was a leap I could not make. Her definition of success was not, is not, and never will be mine. 

 

Now I am safe. Safe inside the featureless box where they take away your control for your own protection. What is safety anyway? My world is reduced to a single, windowless room until they deem me safe to be unleashed upon the world again. I am not safe in the world, or the world is not safe for me? Or perhaps both?

 

A fly butts against the door, over and over, it too trapped inside this prison-that's-not-a-prison. The tap-tap-tap of its frenzied escape plot the only sound in this abyss of dull grey nothingness. All I can do is stare at the ceiling and wait as the tendrils of that desperate need work their way around me, through me, out of me. All I can do is wait and hope that the tormented fragments of my mind will reacquaint themselves into some sort of functional order.

 

All I can do is wait. 

It has arrived!

After much procrastination, a rush of editing, then some more procrastination, it's finally here! I never thought in my wildest imagination that a poetry collection would be my first solo work, but you never know where life will take you in the end. 

I am very excited to introduce "Eclectica" to you. It might only be small, but I hope you find it mighty. It contains 22 poems, with a variety of topics and styles. Subtitled "A Journey," it is a journey into yourself. Featuring the lead post from this blog, "A Mother Lost," Eclectica will pull at your emotions with deep and meaningful words.

"Experience, imagination, exploration. Diverse as the world around us. Eclectica will take you on a journey. Some fun parts, some heavy parts, some soulful parts. You'll see some of me, you'll see some of you. I have laid down the stories. The meaning you find among them will be your own. My first foray into poetry, Come, take this journey with me."

Currently formatted for paperback and e-book, you will find it on the link below:

 https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0C6W3HKWM?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_X23ENKTMC8YAZQB2EJFX

Please enjoy, and share with your friends.

The Most Uncertain Gift

 Clouds hung low. Rain fell in sheets as she stared out the window. Today was supposed to be the day that she received the ultimate gift, but would it really happen this time? She had been here before, only to have it snatched away at the very last second. She desperately wanted to hope since she had received that early morning phone call, but dare not expect too much. She was tired. Tired of being sick. Tired of waiting. Tired of hoping. 

The weather matched her mood as she watched the palm trees in the courtyard sway in the wind, cold rivulets of rain running down their fronds and dripping onto the ground. Oddly enough, the drips were falling in time with the irritating beep of the monitoring machines above her bed. She wondered if it was an omen. Would her chance at life be washed away yet again?

She turned away from the window and sighed, examining the all-too-familiar starkness of the room.  A room that had seen many like her, waiting, hoping, praying for a miracle. A flurry of movement had seen her prepped and ready, and now they just had to wait for the final okay. Waiting. Like she had been doing for over a year. Yet this wait always seemed longer and more difficult than the months spent at home, kept alive by medical intervention, waiting for the one day that could change her life. Her own happily ever after, of sorts.

It was an odd feeling. A miracle for one was a tragedy for another. Someone had to die for her to receive the gift she so desperately needed. Someone who, out of all the millions of people, by some fateful chance was a donor match for her. Someone she would never meet, but whose life would be inextricably linked to her forever. One family, out of millions, had to give her this gift on the worst day of their lives.

The smiling surgeon appeared beside her, oozing positivity. She looked at the single, lonely rose placed by her bed, the only hint of colour in the stark, sterile room. A glimmer of hope appeared in her soul. She concentrated so hard on the flower that she barely heard the surgeon’s words.

“We’re going in. Are you ready?” 

What would she be when she woke up? The same tired, sick person, losing hope just a little bit more, or a scarred but hopeful warrior with a chance at a new life. Nobody knew. Just roll the dice and play.

"I'm ready. Let's get this show on the road."

Flags of the Forgotten

Crumbling walls still reached for the sky. Forgotten ramparts still rose in an imposing silhouette against the dawn. Drifts of dust and crumbled stone lay all around, in every nook and cranny and crevice. Where once stood a magnificent and immutable citadel, only these sad stones remained, marking the passage of time in undisturbed retrospection of their once glorious past. A millennium of secrets lay hidden within the stones, whispering their stories on the light wind that blew gently through the forgotten passages. They needed only someone to listen.

Slaves had built these walls, stacking the massive blocks higher and higher and higher, until they almost obscured the blazing sun. Slaves labouring under the flag of their Lord, through the unrelenting heat of the day and the ever-present threat of the burly guards’ lash if they strayed from the task. Forgotten people, left to build the glory of their masters in return for their mere existence. To this day, nobody knows how they built this wonder, so perfect in its engineering, with their bare hands, decades of time, and the simplest of tools. Tools they soon used to turn against their cruel masters.

Revolt and revolution were inevitable. Tyrannical masters may seem invincible, but they always fall. All through time, the cruellest of dictators have lost the obedience of the downtrodden. The neglected slaves found their voices and fought back against injustice. These towering walls became a symbol of struggle, of freedom, of justice, of liberation. Voices rang in joyous echoes as the power shifted and the despot was deposed.

The people raised their new flags high, snapping smartly atop every tower, every battlement, bright standards symbolising their hard-won freedom. People lived happily for another hundred years, building more symbols of power and human greed, until another, stronger invader took a liking to it all. An invader from over the seas who grew lustful of the wealth he had seen in this land. More bloodshed, more tears, for a different reason, or was it the same? A new victor had arrived to lead the people. Another new flag flew high that day.

Then came the glory days, when the walls were a symbol of power and indulgence, holding the stories of the rich inside them. Outside, the poor once again carried the nation on their backs to uphold the fairytale within. Life was no better for them now, than during the long-forgotten days of slavery. Stories of kings and queens and lords were recorded for posterity in tapestries and manuscripts, while the lives of the poor were ground into the very mud that they lived in, lost to the shadows of antiquity.

The flags had begun to fade, for this glory held a human price. A lonely, but exalted princess stood atop the tallest tower, staring into the heavens appealing to whatever God she believed in to find a way out of her arranged marriage. Her story is well known, one of the few that lasted to modernity. Her wailing cries are the stuff of legend – tales told for centuries about the chilling howls heard around the lonely tower on windy days. Her personal tragedy lowered the flags forever. Her royal dynasty, one that had persisted for five hundred years or more, was destroyed. Destroyed by her choice alone - to not submit to the patriarchal control that plagued noblewomen of the time. She plunged her kingdom into decades of chaos with one fateful decision. The glory days were lost with one woman’s escape from the harsh realities of her life. A life that was coveted by those who stood beneath her feet, who saw only the lavish excesses while they starved. They craved the abundance of her life but did not understand the cost of her exaltation.

And so it came to pass, that the glorious, tragic citadel was abandoned to its fate, driven by superstition and fear. One lonely, desperate princess had cursed it forever. Wars, heroes, villains, glory and defeat; all resting now with the fallen stones, their legends all but forgotten. A thousand years of secrets were hidden here, that once were living and breathing truth. A thousand summers, of festivals, of celebration, juxtaposed with ten centuries of pain, of fear, of glory steeped in blood. Ten centuries of life, ever changing like the seasons. Ten centuries standing beneath a hot sun, standing fast against the weather and the human onslaught. Ten centuries of glory and bold sacrifice reduced to rubble in the grass. If one looks closely, the faded remains of a flag can still be found, somehow preserved through time, its colours barely visible, lying forlornly in a corner. But even in ruin, the steadfastness remains, the abandoned walls still reaching for the open sky, waiting to release their vast imagination to the souls who dare to dream within their boundaries

Say Their Name

 She lay in silence, feeling the rise and fall of her emotions as they mingled and then separated. Loneliness, anger, disbelief, sadness, more feelings than she could even put a name to, yet at the same time an intense emptiness. She had the scar on her abdomen, but she didn't get the prize. Yesterday, she was full of love, full of excitement and anticipation, but today - today there was nothing. Yesterday she felt kicks and wriggles and hiccups. Today she felt nothing.

The stages of grief. Yes, she'd heard all about those. All her feelings were normal, that social worker had said. Right now she felt anger. Anger at the cruelty of having to listen to other women's babies cry, hearing their happy conversations when friends and family came to visit. Other women, sharing their stories and comparing how big their babies were and how many hours it took to give birth. The midwives were kind, finding her a single room away from most of the activity of the ward, but she could still hear it. All the joy and excitement that one would expect in a place where precious new life was brought into the world.

She wanted to join in. The little card was the same, it had all the details of her little girl's birth. The time, the weight, her date of birth. Her name. She had one. They had picked it out weeks earlier, after many cheerful arguments over a baby name app. But she couldn't bear to even look at the card. Her pain was too great.

The memories. They were always there. She didn't ask for them to come, but she couldn't escape them. She relived the events over and over in her mind, feeling the lingering agony that prevented her forgetting, even for a moment, the gut-wrenching, nauseating reality. The gnawing worry as they arrived and explained that the baby wasn't moving. Anxiety as they were rushed into a room. A flash of hope as they heard a heartbeat, that reassuring galloping sound on the monitor. The frowns of the doctor as she looked at the printout. The desperate fear as they were whisked to the operating theatre, where there were so many people, rushing around, all in the name of getting the baby out fast. The claustrophobia of the mask descending over her face - there was no time for that spinal she had been told about. Then the horror as she woke to her husband's tear-streaked face, when he had to give her the terrible news, and their world came crashing down.

She waited desperately for sleep to descend, as her mind flashed through it all again and again and again. She couldn't even cry. The first time you hold your baby is not meant to be the last. The ache, oh the constant ache, the heaviness nagged her every moment as she willed sleep to come. It was raw, it was primal. And it was hers.

Diary of an Introvert

The bus stop in mid afternoon. A familiar place on the side of the road. A mess of buildings rise around me, extension after extension on the original building as people’s needs grew. Different architectural eras are apparent in the mish-mash of different, yet equally impressive multi-storey buildings, coming together somehow to form a functional whole. The road feels almost like a tunnel, or a capsule, embracing me in its cold touch of concrete and steel while the grey sky hovers far above.

It’s annoying to sit here after rain, because cars drive past and splash me as they whizz through the puddles in the dips of the uneven pavement. Drivers are oblivious to their selfish actions. I would drive myself, but there is never any parking and it costs a bomb anyway. Easier to let someone else do the driving. I’ve also never cared for the heavy traffic that always plagues this area. It seems that everyone wants to visit their relatives right on shift change, so you can never get in or out without a long wait.

It's not quite peak hour, but there's plenty of people finishing work already in this 24/7 world. I follow the same routine every day - I sit down in the shelter, I read my book. Every now and then, I look up from my book and watch the rain or the sun or the wind, I ponder life. People walk by without even a glance in my direction. It's as if I don't exist. That's fine by me. Social distance is welcome in an emotionally intense job like mine. I always check my scrub pocket again, just to make sure that I haven't accidentally left the drug keys in there. As always, it's empty. I then breathe a small sigh of relief because I don’t want to make the long walk back to my building to hand them over. This is a ritual I have performed thousands of times, and now I wait for my bus. I know it’s due any second now.

People walk past. Different ones each day. Every now and then one will stop and sit in the bus shelter with me. I learn a lot from watching these people. A young girl, usually with a variety of brightly coloured ribbons in her hair is a regular sight. She skips along the footpath, always urged to hurry up by her frazzled-looking mother. The girl would have stopped to talk if she was allowed. I see them most days, always in a rush. I guess the mother has poor time management, or perhaps she is anxious about lateness. A bit like the new grads I have been mentoring recently. Then there's the baker. I know he's a baker from his stained apron, it's original pigment long gone these days, replaced with the evidence of many early mornings in front of an oven. He smells of fresh bread and dried fruit. An image of hot cross buns often flashes through my mind. He usually offers a smile but has never said anything. Neither have come past today, but then again, I am running late, thanks to a critical incident, and arrived at the bus stop with seconds to spare.

I have barely sat down and opened my book, a classic icon of English literature, when my bus arrives, its windscreen wipers making a mechanical swish-thud sound as they scrape the water away. My immersion in the much-read pages is short-lived as I stand up to board the bus for my journey home, where relief awaits in the form of a hot shower and a warm milo. Rivulets run down the blue and orange livery of the vehicle, dripping onto me as I scoot up the three steps to board. It's not too full today. A handful of people are out in this weather, the usual essential workers heading home. Some look up and smile, others just stare out the window. One is reading, I notice that it is one of my favourite books in his hands. I slowly walk to my usual seat as the bus moves off, swaying slightly to keep my balance as the driver pulls out into traffic. It's warm in here, but I will keep my coat on as a barrier against the world.

I sit down, open my book again, and instantly travel back to that distant place. My mind is quickly enthralled in the story, a welcome relief from the realities of life.

The Escape

She gently patted her abdomen, imagining the life budding within. Nobody could tell yet. Nobody had to know yet. As the weeks ticked by, her secret would be out, but for now, the serendipity of the situation was hers alone to enjoy. Luck didn’t come to her often.

They would not be pleased. In fact, they would think it scandalous. She didn't care. This was her private joy, a secret that brought her great happiness. This could be her ticket to freedom, a way to cut ties with a life that she did not want and move on to her own independence. There was also great danger with a secret like this. Her strictly conservative family were known for their heavy punishments, for even minor infractions. She would do anything to get away from their iron grip. Their oppressive rules felt like a heavy weight, suffocating the light within her. She held onto her hope as she counted down the days until she would reveal everything, silently planning her escape.

She hid in her room, alone as always, mulling over the best way to share her secret. It was such a bland space. There was none of her personality here at all. The bareness of her walls steeled her resolve to follow this through. She had never been allowed to express her individuality. Everything was rules and regulations and boredom. Even her shelves, full of books, were filled with only what they allowed her to have. She had never read a single one.

Nothing useful came to mind from her deliberations. No matter how she told them, it wasn't going to be pretty. Instead, she allowed her mind to wander to the excitement she had felt when she had met the new boy at school. There had been such a flood of emotions as she explored her relationship with him. It had been difficult with all the strict rules that she had to follow, but the thrill of being with him far outweighed the fear and anxiety over their forbidden love. She soon returned to imagining the life growing within her, the product of their lust and her ticket to liberty. A fortuitous secret that they shared together. Anxious questions surfaced in her head. How long could she hide it? Would it be enough time to be ready? She didn't know, and she didn't care. As long as she was free.

She endured the violent tirade from her family. She endured their cruel words and declaration of disowning. The words did not hurt one bit. The bruises did, but they were worth it. She patiently endured that first long night alone with youthful optimism buoying her heart. Nothing would stop her now. She was free. Only one more night and she would be with him again, this time for good. Their carefully planned escape now lay ahead of her. She had gambled her life, and could only hope that he really would be there to journey with her.