Day 4: Being Alice

"From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole I've been told where I must go and who I must be. I've been shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed into a teapot. I've been accused of being Alice and of not being Alice but this is my dream. I'll decide where it goes from here."

                                                       ALICE KINGSLEY from the film "Alice in Wonderland"

Shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed - too big, too small, too much, not quite enough...so drink some of this, eat some of that and maybe, just maybe we'll get it right- that we'll be just right. But we can never measure up, we always fall short and suddenly we're stuck when we should be moving forward. Alice finally chooses for herself and at the end of the film a butterfly alights on her shoulder  as she sets out on a voyage of her own making - a sign that she is at last free.

Day 3: Through the bars

" I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high."

                                                                           CHARLOTTE BRONTË, " Jane Eyre"

I glimpse her sometimes - the real me.  Like when lost in thought you glance up to see someone walking towards you in a shop window and it takes you a moment to realize it's your own reflection.  I see her then, just as she is, without pre-thought, misconception, past judgements - I see her with my own eyes and nobody else's.  She is somebody I would like to be.  

Day 2: Bending back the bars

"I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out form their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth."

                                                                                       DAPHNE DU MAURIER, "Rebecca"

"Shy" "Quiet" "Reserved" - As a child those were the words used to describe me and they were never meant as compliments.  I came to believe there was something wrong with me. I couldn't find a way to fix it to satisfy those around me so i hid. I've been hiding most of my life, even from myself.  Too many lost years...

Day 1: The Cage

"And what do you fear lady," he asked. "A cage," she said. "To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire."

                                                                               J.R.R. TOLKEIN, "The Return of the King"

The cage. Some of the bars are of my own making, some are there because of happenings and circumstance. All I know is that behind them I feel empty and only half alive.  Éowyn felt it too.  She fought it, sharpening her sword in the dark and growing ever more impatient for a time when she would see the days renewed...

31 Days of Being Free

"Freedom given is not complete. It's only when we receive it, enjoy it, give thanks for it, that it becomes fully ours."
                                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                        HOLLY GERTH

This year named itself for me, a soul-whisper deep in the night waking me to the sound of fireworks and revelry and a cage door wide open. "Free". I have never been more thankful for anything. I cried with relief. But the truth is I've struggled since then with knowing what to do with this gift of freedom, how to own it and...enjoy it. I stepped out of the cage but I'm still here, back up against the bars, wondering what on earth comes next?

 So, for October, the month I was born, I'm going to figure it out one day at a time - how to be Free.

She died

She died on this day two years ago but somehow nobody knows. The world keeps on turning and everything keeps on going. I want to scream it loud sometimes - that she's gone, that she died, that it matters. But it's no-one's loss but mine, ours - those who knew and loved her.

In the early days it was a huge hole I kept falling into at every turn. The first time was less than a week after her death. I decided to make a dessert, needing to weigh out ingredients as though I could somehow weigh out grief and make it into something more palatable and easier to stomach. Only I couldn't find the scales and rummaging in her cupboard I turned to call out to her, to ask her where she kept them... then there I was, at the bottom of a huge hole. There would never be another answer to me calling out her name.

Heart-bruised and soul-sore from falling in and having to scramble out over and over again, I learnt to navigate my way around it. Two years on and the path towards that deep cavern of missing is overgrown and I don't walk that way much any more. It's not a forgetting, more a heightened awareness of how to avoid the pain.

It amazes me, the capacity we have for absorbing grief and loss. What feels unbearable at the time becomes something we learn to carry. The razor-sharp reality of it carves its way through bone and into the marrow of us. That startling clarity that comes through viewing life through the eyes of the dying, dims once again to blur and myopia.

Her death silenced me. I couldn't find the words to make sense of it and I didn't see much point in trying. She died. I miss her. There's nothing else to say.

Spinning straw into gold

I got lost in the woods once.
I was carrying tiny sparks of life. They glowed briefly, fiercely, then went out.
I wasn't prepared for how the dark swallowed me.
When I eventually found my way back, life beyond the edges of the trees blazed too bright. I missed the shadows. I made a place in the woods where I could hide from those who knew me and try to spin the tangled thoughts in my head into something that made sense. I left the door open in case there were others like me. It was a place much like this, but one by one the trees around it were felled. No longer hidden, too exposed, I closed the door and left.

This is my new place hidden deeper in the woods. I've been quiet here. The spinning wheel sits silent. Sometimes I wonder if I remember how to use it. The thoughts are different now, unfamiliar and unlikely, like straw. It's as though  I'm waiting for some Rumpelstiltskin to come along and turn it into gold. That didn't end well for the Miller's daughter and somehow I know this is my task alone.

"You are a writer. You need to write."
Those who know me name me when I won't name myself. They see what happens when I don't write; how tangled I become. Gifted with time and space, I promise to write, to spin the words that make me well.