Hurt Heart

I am having trouble coming to terms with the concept of ‘broken heart’.
In short, I just don’t understand it.

Thinking about it is like trying to capture a sunbeam in a jar and use it as a night light; an impossible and confusing thing even to contemplate, much less do.

Surely, someone should have broken my heart by now. I feel like I am missing out on something.
Other people talk about having broken hearts.

Don’t I have one to break?

Or is it made of such tough stuff that no-one is capable?

Neither option seems particularly romantic.

Some things have hurt my heart, I suppose. Yes, that would be the best way to describe it. A hurt heart. Losses mainly. They have driven me to my knees weeping. They have winded me, doubled me up in pain, haunted me at night.

But they have not broken my heart.

The thing is, once something has been broken, it can never be properly repaired, and the pieces of a broken heart are pieces I don’t think I could ever stoop to pick up.

Crossroads?

I'm back at that junction again.

I don't know where I went. Perhaps it was down the dark route. Perhaps it was nowhere.

But now that I'm back here, I can see that there aren't just two roads, confusing and alluring me; there are at least three.

The third road looks the most dangerous of all, lines with candy cane lamp-posts and marshmallow pavements; it must be hiding something sinister as decay.

Not that I care.

I have already taken the first delicious steps along it.

Hating Mondays

More people than you’d imagine hate these high days and holidays; these ridiculous Mondays off that have a semblance of Christmas and Valentines and birthdays spent alone about them.

For most, (bank holidays, at least) they are a welcome relief from the monotony and tedium of their lives. They can fall into bed (their own or someone else’s) on Sunday night and not have to be up at the crack of the alarm clock to catch the train, do the ‘school run’, dash for the bus, schlep themselves into their car and sit in the rush hour jam for far too long while precious minutes of their lives slip by, minutes during which they would be doing …. nothing, very likely.

For others, they are a reminder of what they have lost, or never had to begin with.

I know. I have heard their stories.

For many, it is just another day, no better than the last one; worse, in all probability, because they will be forced to feel the pain of whatever it is they have pushed to the back of their mind.

There is the Scottish agoraphobic alcoholic with the shaking voice who would have taken himself and his bottle to the grave already were it not for the small dog who depends upon him.

There is the woman who will never see her children again due to the number of times she has tried to take her own life in the hope of escaping the horror of her past. (One day she will succeed.)

There is the motherly sounding housewife who’s medication does not always work, who hears the voices that tell her her sister’s fatal cancer was all her doing and she weeps because she believes them.

And there are thousands of others; they all hate these Mondays.

Already Gone

They keys still lie where they were thrown
A third of the wardrobe is cleared;
The good stuff had already gone

The walls are stripped of pictures
The rooms are stripped of air
The albums filled with pictures
Of those who are not there

The ring fingers are painfully unadorned
What use now belated tears when
The good times had already gone.

Our Souls Remain

There is a song which expresses very well what she is feeling.

It explains to her, better than she can to herself, that all that we ever have is our soul. People and places and things come and, inevitably, they go, but our souls remain.

Whether or not they remain in tact, however, is something of which she is unsure. Lately, she feels that hers is somewhat shredded. Perhaps, in time, she will find needle and thread, and the skill needed to manipulate them, and sew it seamlessly back together.

Things have been lost, places have been left, people have come and taken from her and disappeared again.

But her soul remains.

The Mistress

He is spending the weekend with his wife and children; the perfect family time. Even the perfect family complete with father, mother, brother, sister, golden Labrador, detached house, sports car, four by four…..

They are going bowling, to the cinema, to eat pizza in one of those ‘child friendly’ garish restaurants, oozing with fake cheese and tackiness. She sneers a little when she thinks this last thought, remembering what a snob he is. And then she laughs, as she recalls his last meal; a fresh fruit platter eaten in bed.

With her.

She is sitting in a bar, sipping blood red wine from a goldfish bowl of a glass. Alone. She is alone of choice, she tells herself. And it is half true, at least. She has refused drinks from one man, smartly dressed, nice smile, then another, boxing, she thought, way out of his league. She would rather sit in the window, in the half light of early dusk, and watch the world go by; a world of which she does not feel a part and never has.

She thinks of him.

****************************

He is an excellent actor, of course. But he is an excellent actor not because he fears for his own scaly skin if he is discovered in his deception, but because he cannot stand the thought of losing those two children who’s smiles dance around their faces like kittens in a basket.

To any outsider, looking in, he would appear as the man who has it all. Inside, he feels as if he has everything and nothing, all at once.

She is being propositioned by a hundred men, in his mind. She will be smiling her alluring smile, so innocent, yet bewitching. No-one, he thinks, could withstand that; he could not. There will be one, he feels sure, who’s proposition she will accept.

His whole self bristles at the thought of her being with someone else, though he himself will lie in his suburban bed tonight, wife by his side, no longer able to fake another excuse of weekend conferences or moral building exercises.

Who knows, his wife may even touch him and he may even respond.

But if he does, he will all the while be thinking of the fruit platter shared in bed, forgetting the lingering and long goodbye, looking forward to the next touch of her hand in his, wishing he was somewhere, anywhere, but not here.

Wishing he was with her.

The answer is blowing in the wind

She is a waif. A slight gust of wind would sweep her into oblivion.

She notices no-one and no-one notices her.

Once she was a princess, beautiful and talkative, encased in fine fabrics, protected by sturdy walls.

Now she is a silent ghost on a dirty street. Walking wherever it takes her is the only thing she know how to do, now that all her accomplishments are merely memories.

She is only a few steps from a lifetime in the gutter, and a few steps less from slitting her wrists with the first rusty blade she happens upon.

Nothing

I wonder when it was that my perception became so skewed, when my wisdom went so awry, that I thought nothing was all I deserved.

I cannot pinpoint it exactly, but since then, whenever it was, nothing is what I have received. It is only now, when I seem to have woken up, so much so that I am perpetually awake, perpetually aware, that I realise I deserve something, something, at least that.

There was turbulence, for a while. I deal rather well with turbulence. Sometimes I even think I like it; perhaps it's something to do with adrenaline rushing through my veins and into my brain and out through wide eyes. Or perhaps it is to do with being needed. Perhaps it takes the attention away from me.

All these things and more, probably.

I don't mind so much, when things smash. I let the pain of them slice into me; it lets me know I am alive. I can even pick up the pieces, secure the stronghold, batten down the hatches and so on, despite being bloodied and bruised and blinded by the crash. Still, I sweep into neat, obsessively neat, piles, the remnants of what has been borken.

It's the putting back together that I cannot do. I have no glue. Instead, I have shaking hands.

And these are the times when I wonder if nothing is not merely what I get, but if nothing is what I am.

Musings upon musings

There is no two ways about it.

He is watching her dying.

Death's cart is a heavy presence in the room. It's menacing trundle has long since ceased to haunt him. He knows it will come. He knows it is inevitable.

He wants to claw back fate from the pastel blankets, gently resting on her scarcely moving chest, claw back the years that passed so fast and meant so much, claw back the life he still, after all this time, believes is inside her.

Yet he knows he is lying to himself.

As her breating becomes slower, shallower, barely perceptible, he finds himself doing what he never thought he'd do; he finds himself giving in.

He looks to Death, silent and respectful in the corner of the room. He nods his head, and as he does so, his whole self seems to cave in and over, leaving a shattered cavern where he used to be.

But he is still breathing, living still.

It is she who is not.

Her soul, her magical, wonderful, luminescent soul, is gone from the room. Death has laid her gently on his cart and has departed; he did not stop, to say goodbye.

He looks at the body, at the corpse, scarcely more lifeless and palid than it had been for weeks and feels his own heart, still beating perversely in his chest.

Why then, does he feel it is he who has died?

Reminders

The house is full of reminders.

Not love notes, or perfumed scents, just cruel references to the fact that he is gone.

There are the hall blinds, never hung. She does not know where to begin with the hanging of blinds. She has a feeling is has something to do with plugging walls, which involves the use of a drill. She does not know how the drill works. Imagine that, she thinks, all this time and I do not even know how to use my own drill.

There is the picture he put up above the dining room table. It never did look straight, never matched the décor of a room planned with precision and skill. Before, it annoyed her, the way a beautiful but over indulged child might. Now, it fills her with hate. She wants to tear it down and rip apart the canvass.

There is his side of the double bed, a bed he never made but, instead, upon which he cast wet towels and laundry. For all he knew, the pillows were straightened and fluffed, the duvet smoothed, the wet towels hung neatly to dry, the laundry cleaned, pressed and meticulously folded by elves or sprites or unpaid and invisible servants.

She cannot bear that double bed any longer. She has moved into the guest room. A single bed befitting a single life she thinks, with heavy head and dark eyes.

Each day, she finds something else he left undone, like his life, half lived, like herself, half loved.
Each day she mops up a little more of the spillage she never knew was there and wonders, Is this how it’s to be, from now on?

Fool

You think you’ll woo me
With what? With words?
My well chosen weapons of choice
I’ll snatch them away
From your tremulous mouth
Crush your snivelling, wavering voice

Come then and pursue me
Only to find, you slow
Down when you can’t make the pace
I’ll follow the sun
While you’re stuck in the clouds
And the rain lashes tears from your face

Save yourself

Here I sit. Here I muse.

But tonight, I am not musing. I am not even pretending to muse.

I am staring, not at anything, or anyone, not even into the middle distance, or any kind of distance what so ever, but into a strange kind of wasteland, populated by lost souls with empty hearts.

The landscape is bleak, if bleak is not too tame a word for this grey so filled with heaviness it barely stands. It blinds my eyes, after a while, as snow blinds when the sharp sun hits it like lazers, though I continue to stare and stare and stare until a salt wetness turns my acid green eyes to a vapid Atlantic blue.

I wonder if they can see me, those desolate creatures. I wonder if any will recognise me, when my eyes are the wrong colour and my words and stilted are leaden. I wonder if there is a barrier I may cross to reach them, or if I have the energy to vault it, could I see it.

And what would I offer them, even if I did?

There is a voice behind me.

'Save yourself' it urges, 'before you become one of them.'

I protest. It does not listen.

'Save yourself. Some souls will be forever lost. There is nothing you can do.'

I know that it is right. I will try to wrench my gaze away and turn to the bouyant, hopeful voice that smells of fresh springs and new beginnings, laughter and crystal and white sheets and somehow utters the saddest words I have ever heard.

'There is nothing you can do.'

Precarious balance

I lost something
To gain something
I never would have got
Had I not balanced nature's pedantry
With pain of nature's loss

I lost something
To gain something
Of far, far lesser want
Take that, then, and put it
In your box of paradox

The infamous 'two roads' scenario

I am standing in the middle of nowhere.

There are two roads in front of me. They are un-nervingly parallel.

One is dark and quiet, somewhat overgrown and moonlit; things of an unidentifiable nature seem to glimmer in the foliage. But it is not well trodden. And I cannot judge the distance to the end.

The other is a bright and ordinary highway, busy and burbling. People pass and laugh and exchange meaningless nothings. It is populated, it is safe. There are even signs to show the way.

A shard of common sense pierces me and tells me to choose one or the other, instead of standing here stupidly in nowhere.

But I don't know which to choose. And I also don't know why I can't walk them both.

When life imitates art...

When life imitates art the results are, quite frankly, often disasterous. Like one of those horrid modernistic type things that is simply festering rubbish piled in a stinking mound. (I hope no messy teenage types are reading this; they will probably submit pictures taken on camera phones of their bedrooms for their GCSE art projects, and get triple A * s no doubt...)

But anyway.

I have had an unfortunate brush with life imitating art, the consequence of which leads me to believe I would perhaps be better off staying under the pink eaves and never venturing out again. This is an option which I am seriously considering. I may even make a list of just how plausible an idea it is.

Again, but anyway.

If I could have picked a book (literature is art, isn't it?) or a film or a song or even a sculpture (about which I know nothing), I would have liked this particular period of my life to imitate, it would not have been a morbidly depressing tale of dysfunctional families, a woman's greed, a man's folly and the ridiculous forging of ties that prove particularly difficult to unknot the moment you realise that satin green really doesn't suit you. There's too much of this kind of garbage as it is.

(For the purposes of information, I would have picked The Lord of the Rings and cast myself in the role of Legolas; at least I could have kicked some ork ass and been all wise and mystical.)

Sadly, it was the former, rather than the latter, with which I have been 'blessed'.

Most people have had experiences which they would describe as negative, which they would much rather not repeat, often foisted on them by the cold, gnarled hands of those they really wish they had never met. I am one such person (again, the former, not the latter; my hands are lovely, thank you very much, and particularly well manicured) and have been known to say that, if I stuck a pin in a particularly well defined and accurate map, I would have no chance, no chance at all, of sticking that pin (metaphorically) into anyone with such crone's figures and sackful of crap (for want of a better word).

Suffice to say that I was wrong.

Whatever you do, don't go sticking pins in maps and thinking you'll end up piercing a decent human being. You're just as likely to hit the wicked step mother in waiting as you would be if you went looking for her. More so, probably.

I feel there is probably something deeply significant and karma related to this fact. And it is a fact; trust me on that one. You don't need to suck on the bitter lemon of experience to learn from it. However, what exactly eludes me.

This does not help with the finding and ordering of my marbles which are now scattered all over the place in a dangerous yet attractive pattern.

The joy of text...

Earlier, I achieved the seemingly unthinkable.

I fell asleep before midnight.

I fell asleep before midnight because I was worried what the consequences would be had I not. (I am rather concerned about the whole marble losing scenario.)

Of course, it was not a particularly sound or restful sleep, but we insomniacs can't be choosers and all that, and it was very short lived too.

This is in no small way thanks to a 'friend' of mine (who is difficult to label, having lost many a marble himself, though in a much happier capacity) informing me that he was having a biscuit.

Really, I think this was information with which I could have lived without.

The method by which I was informed was text. Rather cleverly, I thought, I had switched my mightily annoying text alert to vibrate in the hope that it would not wake me from MUCH needed sleep should that much needed sleep arrive.

However, on my bedside table, which stands on a wooden floor, the vibration was so sudden, dramatic and generally LOUD that I woke instantly feeling sure there was an earthquake, accompained by a little flashing light on a silly pink device. No, then, not an earthquake, but an emergency, surely.....

....not.

So now I am awake, listening to August rain and unseasonable August wind lash the water against the windows and run in tear-like rivulets the side of the house, along the drive and into the gutter ... taking something of myself with it as it goes.

Who is sanity, what is she?

I have reached the somewhat unfortunate conclusion that I am, in colloquial terms, ‘losing my marbles’.

Indeed, I may, perhaps, have already lost them.

Perpetually watching ‘Girl Interrupted’, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and ‘Boys From The Blackstuff’ does not seem to help with the maintaining (or regaining) of one’s sanity. I cannot, for the life of me, think why.

I had no reason for beginning this blog (I do not count insomnia and a penchant for procrastination to be worthy of the ‘reasons’ tag) but now I feel very much like it’s composition is rooting me in reality, a virtual type of reality (if this is not too much of a contradiction in terms) or, at the very least, documenting the battle (which I am losing) to triumph over something that I cannot quite define.

The days pass. They merge. They converge. The dance around me wearing ridiculous pajamas. They tease me, taunt me, try to make me do something, anything, an impalpable thing … a thing that I cannot do and do not understand.

A sweeter poison...

The sweeter the honey, the deadlier the poison.

The more sincere the words, the less genuine the meaning.

Yellow and black may appear entrancing, but stings can kill.

Especially the sensitive soul.

The unachievable goal

The things we want, and cannot have, are always far, far, more alluring than the things that fall into out lap, or even those which make us stretch a little in order to reach them.
This, my friends (Romans, countrymen) is le fact.
I am not altogether sure why. Though I am trying to work it out. (Oh, and if anyone knows for certain, let me know; I might sleep better then.)
Don’t misunderstand me here; I’m grateful for the things that I’ve been given, or the things that were easy to get. I don’t mean to devalue them, but there is something inside that insists that they are simply not enough. There is something that tells me I must stride out in search of the seemingly unachievable goal and strike the ball into the back of the net in the manner of Pele or Cryuff.
Of course, the thing about the unachievable goal is that it is, well, unachievable. And I think this has something to do with the attraction.
Wise men have, no doubt, said as much before. And with greater eloquence, I assume. But what the hell? I’m saying it too.
There are many, many things I cannot do. Equally as many fall into the ’cannot have’ category (Way too many to list. Besides, I am not in list making mode; my mind lacks the necessary organisational skills for such action.) and it is these things which I want… though if someone were to give me them, say I’d earned them, present them to me with all the pomp and splendour I feel they would merit … well, I’d probably just walk away.
Someone, I forget who (because I did not pay attention in my A level European History lessons, as was an official policy of mine at the time) said that the problem with Napoleon was that, when he had achieved power, he did not know what to do with it. I suspect I am much the same (apart from the war-mongering and the silly hat and being vertically challenged).
There was/is also a Sinead O’ Connor song; ‘I do not want what I have not got’ or something of that ilk. I’m ashamed to say, it’s the opposite way with me. Clearly, I have much to learn from my Celtic roots.
But, when it comes down to it, I’m stuck because, have it or can’t have it, I’m not altogether sure what I do want.

I was offered a pearl the today.

Sadly, it wasn’t elegantly set in an exquisite piece of jewellery; it was one of the ‘wisdom’ variety. And it was offered by someone who doesn’t know me very well. At all. Which both irritated and amused me.

When I’d prized open the oyster, the general gist of its contents was that, if one does like one’s life, one must change it.

Fair enough. Hypocrite that I am, I’ve been guilty of proffering this pearl to others, on occasion, though I hope I’ve been more discerning in its use.

For instance, if you’re doing a job you don’t like, and complaining about the job, because it’s giving you a ulcer and making you want to walk round with a bucket on your head, then the sensible option would be to look for another job.

But sometimes, oftentimes, perhaps, things, a lot of things, in our lives are waaaaaaaaaaay outside the remits of our control and changing them, rectifying them, righting them is impossible.

You can’t always heal others’ wounds, or breathe life into the dead. You can’t claw back fragments of your existence that have already been stolen, or rocket-boost the economy back into a more ‘friendly’ state. You can’t stop knife wielding maniacs sticking daggers in your back, Christ, you can’t even see them coming, and you can’t sow your seeds on barren land and expect your crop to flourish and thrive.

There are lots of things you can’t do. And, equally, there are lots of things you can.

The real wisdom lies, I suppose, in knowing the difference.