Dark, Light, Fight, Flight

Pounding head, racing heart
Anxiety, fear, continued concerns
What more will be expected of me?
Will I be able to get everything done properly?

Wracked sobs, swollen eyes
Exhaustion, sadness, depressive despair
Why is everything so damn hard?
When will something just go right for a change?

Black fog clouds my mind
The cataclysmic abyss calls
The deafening silence of the Void
Hails a ceremonious welcome

Video call, smiling faces
Happiness, joy, loving warmth
I wish I could slow time
Just to see the longer and talk some more

Hot bath, snowy bubbles
Calm, tender, relaxation
This feels like therapy
A reflective moment of me-time

Light filters into my thoughts
The awful shadows hide
The challenging heaviness lingers, clinging
But hope springs eternal

© Priscilla Anne Fick – Reflections of a Misfit

Find Something Good in Every Day

Today this rings extra true for me. I try to find something good in every day, and most days, I am successful. Moving has been stressful. Seriously, if it is ever within my ability to do so, the next place I move to is going to be a place of my own (even if it means paying a bond for 23-30 years). Parting with many of my things made my heart ache because as much as I understand it not being practical to hold on to the shirt half the school signed on my last day of Matric in 1997 (yes, I’m that old!), but I have happy memories of that day, and many others of my high school career. For the record, I ended up keeping the shirt, even though I don’t remember half the people who signed it. It’s the only example I could think of.

Grief is Sneaky

As many of you will know from my previous post, I am packing up The Cave after living there for almost ten years to move back to my folks because Dad is ill, although coping very well – something for which we’re all very grateful.

In the clean-up, I came across a postcard that Charlie sent me for my birthday one year, while he was sailing in Alaska. It read “Hello there, from the other side of the planet. Happy birthday. I hope you get a jam-filled cake.”  I read it, smiled, reminisced for a moment, and then placed it in a bag with other papers for recycling. After all, it’d been years since our paths split. He got married last year on October 8^th Shannon, the blonde American who swept him off his feet in just three days of meeting him. He felt bad, but ‘the heart wants what the heart wants’. When I happened upon the wedding photos on her Insta (it wasn’t difficult to track her down), I finally summoned the will to delete our entire chat history of almost two years, along with his number. I felt an inexplicable numbness, a tiny tinge of horror, and a pinch of relief. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the feelings I was having, weren’t ‘it’.

Heartbreak Autopsy

Does the hurt you caused me ever sucker punch you unexpectedly?
Do you ever feel enveloped by a storm of sadness?
Do you ever wonder if I’ve wanted to die because of it?

Your broken promises are splinters of glass in my mind
“I’ll never hurt you” – the salt in my wounds

Do you ever have to stifle screams of terror at night
As the memories choke you with their icy hands
Their bony fingers squeezing the throat your lips often caressed

Silent tears flow as panic threatens to turn to hate
“I’m sorry” – the word I damn to Hell

I try to sleep to silence the voices in my head
My rest plagued by inescapable rooms
Every door I open leads to another dungeon of heartache

My bed is cold, a sanitized, steel slab
You make the Y-incision with the diamond of her engagement ring

Did she stand beside you as you cracked my ribs
To remove my still-beating heart?
Our end: your start

Meh, Meh, Meh!

One thing I have struggled with during the lockdown is reading. I’m not sure why, because reading has always been a great form of escape for me. It’s as if my brain refuses to leave the place it’s at now to go to places of fantasy, murder, and intrigue. It’s frustrating to say the least.

Maybe it’s because I’m feeling like John Coffey in The Green Mile, which coincidentally is one of my favourite books.

There is a lot of awful stuff going on. Not just in South Africa, but globally. It makes me sad, even though I know there is nothing I can do about it. As far as possible I try to live in my little bubble, oblivious to what’s going on around me, but the muck still filters through.

Moodboard Monday: Purple

A long while ago, I was tasked with making #moodboards for work. I decided to do some research on the Psychology of colours. It turned out to be an incredibly fun, creatively soothing exercise for me. Not being much in the mood to write of late, I lay in the bath wondering what I could do to inspire some blog posts. One of the things my therapist told me is to remember things that invoke good feelings and repeat them. It was then that I decided to write a series of colour-related posts.

I think it fitting to begin with my favourite colour: Purple.

Day 151: Remembering Honey

On Thursday last week I had a MS Teams meeting at 11 and I was out of data, along with money to buy, so Eliza offered that I work at her and Nathan’s place for the day. Their little boy, Lambert, aged almost four called for Eliza and I to ‘come look’ and eventually we got round to it. There on the ground in front of the sliding door lay a tiny bird, clearly stunned from flying into the sliding glass door.

Day 123: Wyn vir die Pyn (Wine for the Pain)

If there was a Pandemic Prevention Olympics, South Africa would be on the podium taking gold medals by the barrel full. We’ve had the longest #Coronavirus lockdown in the world.