A cigarette is like a kiss.
Each toxic puff wastes dizzyingly
Into the stratosphere,
The light getting shorter, you fight for breath
Alone in the fag-end of morning.
One kiss is never enough.
Cling to my lips in familiar grip,
Cling and never let me go.
Who hears our kisses,
Who holds us to account?
An-ever changing sky watches, receives,
Arranges its clouds in storm-spun silence.
Taste, and taste again the death of morning.
Let you into my heart, my mouth, my lungs
You burnt out too fast for a possible last time -
But It did happen.
I have the smell of you.
The Personality Police would be happy with this one, I think. It ticks all the borderline boxes. Which is fine, since it’s a nonsense diagnosis anyway. Is it not the case that I feel only what every other bloody human being on this planet feels? I love my transience and despise it at the same time, I want to hold on to all that keeps me fixed and safe, but I have to let it go or risk a living death. Somewhere in the holding on or the letting go lies the problem. It is a problem for me. But I won’t accept that it could ever be solved – no one has the solution, just the offer of a thicker skin. And that will come to me in time.
Last week (when I wrote the above) was an angry one. From (another) letter that I didn't send, the following:
I am horrifically angry at the moment. I feel let down by everyone and everything. It disturbs me how angry I am. I’ve been having some really nasty, graphic thoughts. Violent images that seem to leap into my mind from nowhere like dreams (I wish they were). One of these flashes involved me turning up to the Tavistock in a wheelchair, having amputated both my legs. In another I saw myself slash one of [ my consultant psychiatrist in the adolescent unit's] arms. Possibly exhaustion is the cause. My conscious mind doesn’t usually make such savage leaps to the unacceptable – of if it does, it contains the violence firmly within the boundaries of my own body. I enact my fury bodily without ever really having to confront it. Sometimes I think self-harm is the safest outlet for me after all. The safest for the people who I co-habit this planet with too. Something must insulate the live wire, or impede the flow of current it conveys.
I come to this conclusion, and then I remember Dylan Thomas:
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Rage for raging’s sake, even if all I will ever have to make a fuss about is a storm in the smallest of tea cups?
Instead of sending the above to my therapist, as intended, I ended up writing a letter to the psychiatrist aforementioned. When I left the adolescent unit, she told me that I could write to her and that she would always write back. Over the years, I have written less. I had sent her one letter previously this year. But we are now well and truly in anniversary month (My Dad would have turned 52 today, and next wednesday is the 4th anniversary of his death), and I wanted to send her a card. Enclosed in the card was a letter, mostly focusing on my achievements and other positive aspects of my life, though I couldn't resist whinging a bit about the psychotherapy funding situation.
I'm still reaching out, however cautiously.
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