That Nowhere Feeling

My therapist told me yrs ago to think of my emotions like a river and my mind as a passerby sitting on the bank. As I sit and watch the water it may swell up and become violent, and sometimes it will empty out and become just a flat expanse of sand. My job was to watch over the swelling tides, feel the drain and pull without any need for action or worry. Just focus on the gentle wash of water on my skin.

One day we found a park on the harbour that was perfectly flat and covered in yellow grass. Everything was quiet, all noise soaked away by the wind and body of water, and so light. Illuminated in sunshine. We lay there for a while drinking coffee and watching fluffy dogs walk past.

I miss the cold and quiet snow and hot baths when we visited the snow monkeys

I hope every1 my age is ready to enter their 3rd phase of external social rearrangement and internal growth! Look out for new friends also old friends who are dragging on u, also big changes in group dynamics, social structures and power dynamics ‘(^  O ^)’ this year will see lots of change now that final consolidation period has ended

Heat-ruined film stained purple and pale the colours of this summer

I finally got my whale tattoo done !

Based on the last stanza of  “I Cover my Eyes” part III of a series of poems I wrote about illness and shared +ongoing female identities; “I know one day, I will find you again. And we will swim through star-bright water. Two whales under a night sky.”

I didn’t feel much pain during but afterwards, looking at the whale and thinking about what it meant, I felt very sad. I thought about swimming in Leichhardt Pool as a little kid, holding on to my Mum’s back and the smell of chlorine in our hair.

I’m still unlearning the subconscious lessons that grief is something that must strengthen and teach you, and is always linear and focalised. Things I’ve been taught and that we’re all taught to make it less threatening.

I feel a sense of loss every day and each time it feels different. Sometimes I am angry and sullen, mostly I am just regular me but more quiet. Sometimes I feel sadness like it is so much water that I have to swallow. I hope these emotions will quieten down over time, but I also know that I’ll continue to carry some form of them for a long time.

Loss has become part of me, just as this whale has. It continues to change things about who I am, but not in any negative or positive way, just in the way that any loss alters anything remaining. The giving and taking of energy.