starstuff

Variation On the Word Sleep
by Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary. 12 months ago

It gave me goose bumps. I thought it was brrrrrilliant. 12 months ago

Slightly late, but everyone deserves a birthday week, right? I hope yours is as sweet and as colourful as you are! 12 months ago

And now for my next trick, I am going to go and see Joe tomorrow! 12 months ago

Why I Hate Reading Maps
by Gabriel Gadfly

I have unrolled a map
onto my kitchen table
and put one finger
where you are and
another where I am.

The space between
is only inches. That close,
I could feel you breathing.
I could reach out and
run my fingers through
every strand of your hair,
touch your lips and
barely need to move.

In the corner of the map
there is a guide for judging scale:
every inch a hundred miles
full of roads and rivers and trees,
the guide a sharp reminder
that you are where you are
and I am where I am,
inches apart. 12 months ago

I finished reading the Prophet on the recommendation of a friend. This quote fluttered out of the pages at me also. 12 months ago

Are you still heading towards this goal coming true? I hope so :) 12 months ago

Thanks for all the cheers! 12 months ago

This is a really lovely comment to come back to! :) 12 months ago

I guess everyone has a little dragon inside them somewhere, eh? 12 months ago

I appreciate the image – it reminds me of the daemons in Philip Pullman’s novels!

I especially like how the woman’s and the lion’s strength is portrayed with gentleness and companionship. Often strength is equated with hardening and even bottling up and shutting people out. I definitely want the first kind over the latter. 12 months ago

And you’re absolutely right. I often reflect on the advice and support I’ve been given from people here, it’s not something I want to be without! 12 months ago

In the same way that a magnet attracts and repels, I have been both missing and avoiding 43Things (missing the process of writing and the people).

My birthday left me with a quiver of existential doubt. The quiver turned into a shudder and, as with many uncomfortable feelings I want to ignore, I pushed it down, deep into my belly. The problem with ignoring emotions is that they don’t always go away, and you also tend to ignore the things the emotions are associated with.

(Plus you end up bloated and round with all the feelings inside you, as if you are pregnant with a dragon.)

I was avoiding Time and the future. I realised that I was 25, still in the wastelands of M.E, and in five years I am going to be 30. What then, Zeus or Jesus?

It is scary.

The future is like a sinister shadow in a child’s bedroom, and you don’t know if, when you turn on the light, it will turn out to be a benign blanket over a chair, or if it really is a lion in waiting.

I have been thinking a lot about hope, and what hope is and the environment you need to create in yourself in order to grow it. Hope is a future orientated mood, and you can’t have hope until you are willing to face the future, to face yourself and your fears. (All hope involves fear because it involves risk. Hope always risks itself in order to be.)

If the future is a lion, then I will learn lion taming. 12 months ago

Happy anniversary, Dreamer.

:) 14 months ago

I don’t want to write this entry, but I’m too lonely to sleep.

Steve phoned to say he might not be able to come to see me for my birthday. His grandmother died last night and so he is staying put with his family until after the funeral. It would be madness for him to get on the train to see me for the evening, but as he is both mad and a saint he is considering it.

But the fact that he might not be here shifted the lid. I have been keeping busy and distracted to push my feelings down. Tonight they all came spilling out.

I might regret this, but after writing the above few paragraphs the only way I knew what to say was by talking, not by typing. I picked up my phone and recorded this:

http://yourlisten.com/channel/private/?id=123667

If you click it, you can hear me talk. It’s mumbled as I am trying to be quiet (it was recorded at 6 o’clock in the morning), and maybe I am only posting it because I am too tired to know better!

I’ve wanted to make a recording or a video clip for months. I didn’t imagine the first one to turn out like this (I cry a bit), but I’m going to leave it up at least while I sleep. If I wake up and the idea makes my toes curl… well, we’ll see. 14 months ago

I had about an hours sleep between bedtime and midday, and so phoned to cancel my appointment. I realised (because I was going to my dad’s house in a few days) that I felt I should go by a deadline (perhaps because I felt stressed and rushed about moving houses, which created this general sense of urgency).

Afterwards, I felt sheepish. That I had given in to fear, and was potentially giving up opportunities.

But I don’t blame myself. I think I was too ill to handle that extra stress. Stress is like water in a cup. If the cup is already half full and can’t accommodate the extra water, then it will simply spill everywhere. I was too full to deal with any excess.

(In this case, a half empty cup is the more positive perspective!)

Part of the anxiety is I don’t see the point in seeing the doctor. I am uncertain about them on every level. I would like to have someone to report back to, someone to work with and give me guidance. I feel I am doing many constructive things recently: I am going to start a cognitive behavioural therapy course, for instance, to help me sleep better. I have begun to do graded exercise, something you are supposed to do under supervision but that I am cobbling together from the advice that my boyfriend’s physiotherapist gave to him.

When I added this goal to my list I imagined bullet pointing my plan and firing them off one by one. Bang, bang, bang!

- Talk about sleeping tablets to help me recover from events
- Talk about pain and options for managing pain
- Anxiety issues
- To talk about management in general…

... and then I lose confidence. I lose confidence in them and in myself. I feel helpless around them rather than empowered.

The confusion is compounded by not knowing what they think about M.E because they don’t always follow the official guidelines. I looked at the guidelines recently and it began with this description:

The physical symptoms can be as disabling as multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, congestive heart failure and other chronic conditions. ME places a substantial burden on people with the condition, their families and carers, and hence on society.

However my last doctor told me that M.E was a mental illness and doesn’t understand why I can’t accept that (he holds the highest position at the surgery). Again, it feels like there’s this secret knowledge that patients aren’t privy to.

This rant is like shaking dust out of a carpet.

I need other people to open at least some doors for me, but I have to put myself out there first… 14 months ago

Cheers to you, too! :) 14 months ago

Thanks for your message, angel :)

Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply, I actually feel guilty about neglecting my account this year.

“It should be working together, not a competition.”

Yes! Exactly. Health care needs to be a collaboration between patient and doctor. The doctor shouldn’t be in charge of the patient, but empower him or her with good advice.

I did cancel the appointment in the end – it was too stressful – but I can’t tell you how much a support base like the one on 43Things helps. 14 months ago

People here are so generous with their words, I really appreciate your support.

I’m about to write a proper update on what happened… I procrastinated on doing so because I didn’t go, but, nevertheless, I’ve had your message in the back of my mind and it really has helped.

Thank you :) 14 months ago