Navigating

I am hot and I am cold.

And I am hot and I am cold.

And I am a ship,

Navigating at night

And under a strong winter sun.

Navigating storms that throw themselves

Wildly at my flapping sails.

Sometimes the waves throw me under.

Sometimes they lift me to the sky,

Where tornadoes rip me to smithereens.

Throwing me down again.

And I am a wild and screaming banshee,

A crazy female deity.

Locked in the back of a carriage,

Carried to the asylum.

Keys long forgotten.

I am one thousand blinking lights

Chasing around my head

Like headlamps on a motorway.

In the pitch black of night.

Punctuated by moments of brilliance.

Oh so much brilliance.

The light brightness of which burns my eyes

So I look away again.

Eyes on the horizon.

Searching for pirates

And palm trees on the shoreline

Feet back on solid ground.

I am holding all the things. Blood, lots of deep red blood which comes with pain and tiredness and the disassociated squirm to will myself outside of this body, wanting it to end. And I am holding dyslexia assessments, below average scores on memory and phonemes and word recognition. And I am holding the many different forms that must be completed. The Neurodivergent Assessment and the EHCP and the forms for funding, appointments for sleep, the forms for me. Medical forms, menopausal forms to state and reiterate all of the things going on in this body. Start the HRT. But what if it makes it worse? More chemicals to disperse?

And I am holding the fear of the blame, as mother, as no other, the only one waking up each and every day with my son as the sun rises on another day. And another and another and another where only I see him like no other. So I will get the blame when things aren’t done that could be done, that should be done except he won’t. And I am tired, tired to my bones. The imprinted routine of breakfast, lunch and dinner and pick up and drop off and wash and hang and sleep and wake over and over again, putting one foot in front of the other. But the kitchen table is still full of stuff, which has no home, every surface covered with the detritus of a life of a home, nowhere for it to go. And what is it all for anyway? But it can’t be binned. And all the dishes need cleaning again despite the fact that I did them yesterday.

And bath water drips from the cracks in the pipes, splashing down windows into the bucket that then needs emptying over and over again. And I don’t so it keeps on overflowing. And a new crack in the drainpipe so the rain water sloshes over and joins with the bath water and there is water everywhere. Within me and outside of me, in dreams and in reality and in fantasy. Somewhere out there is the sea, calling me but out of reach.

And the space bar on my laptop is sticky, the cursor sometimes lazy and there are bills to be paid before the repairs, before the care can be covered and its never enough and how will it ever be when two hours work equals a day in bed and over and over and over these thoughts spiral in my head. And there are slamming doors, footsteps in and out and up and down and the roar of the TV almost constantly and the myriad screens which flash and subsume and remind and call out to be used, picked up, held, revered. And the car door won’t open on the left-hand side, the passenger seat, the left side, the mother line.

The mother line, the mother line.

And I delve into my inner world, converse with the myriad selves, held for an hour of each week. One hour to savour it all and discover and release, foot swinging in the chair someone who really notices me there. And the brief sparks that brighten the dark days. A conversation with a friend, a sticky hand in mine, sun on my face, the offer of a job, a new place to walk, some money made on Vinted, hugs in the dark, hush, hush, hush and sleep.