Pat

The heavy grey wind slapped across my face as I walked home to my car in the afternoon with the dull rumble of the river beside me and the sting of my hair in my eyes. With every gust my wrap dress would unwrap and lift then tangle itself between my thighs and little bites would come through my stockings into my legs and hip. I shivered walking, underdressed for once and hugged my bag against my side, the dangling arm holding my lunch pail cooling and whitening. The car was warm inside, having been parked outside all day and the leather had swelled and softened with it as I snuggled into it before putting my key in its holder and pressing the button that turns the car on and flinching from the too loud radio over the whine of the engine.

I backed out and began to drive, heading towards the mountains that hover protectively over our little hill and tried to let the tension seep out of my shoulders into the warm leather. Rubbing my dry lips together and feeling the flake of my matte lipstick as I indicated left for our street.

As the tension uncoiled, the tiredness began to set in and the fog of it surrounded me until I was wrapped securely in it unable and unwilling to break free. Thinking of dinner and wanting, wishing more than anything to not make and not cook and not eat anything but instead to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. But like always, I parked my car in its spot and turned off the engine. Sitting quietly listening to the radio for a few minutes as I always do before climbing out, collecting the bin and tapping my heels against the polished floor boards as I clicked into the kitchen and began the second round.

When Bingley's contract ended on his last job, it was of little concern. He's never been out of work since he graduated and has jumped his way up the career ladder as he always planned. And when 3 months later I returned from my time away, it was not so much of a worry that there was not much on the horizon because something always turns up. And we still had savings and we could keep on keeping on. Then Christmas came and the cool hand of it started to play around in my chest at times, as I watched our little nest egg erode.

Then it was 7 months then 8 and I would wake in a cold sweat thinking of it. Thinking how I couldn't support us all alone. Not without many things giving. And I love working, but we're a team, and all of the responsibility would suffocate me in the night until I sat up gasping.

At 9 months the cracks started to appear, and I began to feel each day that someone had a hold of the key in my side and was winding too much every day, and I worried about how many more winds I could take before the spring cracked and I was broken. But when I was at work I could shut it all out. I could be busy and work hard and not have time to dwell or be anxious. I could be good at my work and while the spectre of a looming exam was never far from my thoughts, I would chase my fear of failure and of study and of financial responsibility away and would instead throw myself into learning and procedures and having one thing in perfect harmony.

And it worked, most of the time, until the morning I came in and found out that the gentleman I'd done a procedure on the previous day had died. Had died of a complication that had come from the procedure that I'd done. That had it not been for me he and his kindly eyes and his soft voice would have still had life and his family would still have had warm hands to hold. And all the rest of that wretched day I worked, but the tears would not stay out of my eyes, and all I could think of was how I never see my children and I work so hard and in the end I have taken a life instead of given it. That that poor man's family would
have been called and if he had not met me, if it had been someone else, maybe he would have lived.

I came home that night and sat on my bed with my feet on the floor and I sobbed. I sobbed until all the tears had gone and the spirit had gone from my breath and so the only sounds that came were the sounds of the shudder as it racked through my chest. Bingley came in and stroked my head as it continued until the nausea began and I started retching, all done. Finished. Complete.

And for all those months that I'd planned how I'd celebrate for him, surprise him when he got a new job, of all days it was that one when Bingley could finally lift some of the weight from my shoulders. But there was a catch, that as my sobs subsided in the warmth of his belly as he held me there with my feet still flat on the floor, that started the sobs anew. This new job is away. Far away and he would be leaving in 3 days time. For weeks.

I thought of getting the girls to school and the Possum to kindy and then getting to work and I thought I could do that, that the rush rush rush I had not missed, but I could do that. Then I thought of coming home every night, of rushing home in the traffic and the rapidly darkening day as the sun tucks herself under her golden pink covers and making dinner and supervising home work and tidying and ironing and washing and sorting everything and whatever strength I had deserted me. I was 4 weeks out of an exam. A specialist exam with a pass rate of 25%. And I pulled my feet up off the floor, curled up under the blanket and cried some more.

Of course, eventually I got up, because what other choice is there? I could have lain there forever. I could have used any and all of those excuses for why I just can't do or be. But what sort of life would that be? There is a steely core within me. Some stubborn tenacious sort of fibre that refuses to break, and I set about making things work. I hired a new after school nanny, I wrote up a timetable, I had a family meeting and I had most of all a long, hard talk with myself and I told myself I could do this because there is and was no other choice.

It's not been all sunshine and roses. I can't be the worker I was before he died because he still haunts the periphery so that there's a tremble sometimes when I finish a procedure now, and an assumption that all things can and will go wrong. I have none of the confidence that comes from ignorance and I have tasted real fear for the first time in my life. There is a new quietness, and I was never loud in the first place. I withdrew so far into my shell that I'm blinded even coming near the light, and part of me doesn't want to come out again, but prefers to stay hidden and safe.

I am thinner again. My elbows are pointier and when I lie flat my anterior superior iliac spines are visible, tenting the pale skin above that does not pull taut but instead drapes across them. My belly again has the slack softness where it was stretched by the Possum and faded into silveriness and no longer has anything to hold it out so it falls. My jaw is stronger and has shadows underneath and there are little hollows in my cheeks that suck against my teeth when I am tired. Strangely, my breasts have remained full and soft and have not emptied with the rest of me, I am glad of this, to have one thing left of what it used to be like to be me.

There are lines around my eyes, still faint and not permanent yet, but they will be, and I am handsomer now than I was at 21 or 25. Not that I was or will ever be pretty, but my features are less harsh on this tired face than they were on the pillowy roundness of youth. My arms and my legs are thinner and my feet are smaller too. Who knew that feet could change in size. My hair is nearly down to my waist again and is darker too, and falls out in strands that get stuck in the bristles of the broom.

When Bingley is away I have no appetite and when the exam came I did not eat because I could not. And as I lay in my hammock afterwards, drifting listlessly in the pale afternoon light I was given food and forced to eat it for all I did not want it, because people were becoming concerned and I suppose they had reason. So I ate.

And now I live by my schedule where everything must be fitted in and around and somehow squished into the few hours of each day. And the children are happy and settled. They are thriving on all the routine and are helping. They miss Bingley too, but they know he is coming home and they know how much he needed to work. We read at night on the white sofa with the cuddly grey blankets in the pale white lamplight and they snuggle into me as I choke up reading Charlotte's Web. And I turn off all the lights at a sensible hour, and I climb into bed, feeling satisfied that the washing is folded and put away and that the kitchen is clean and the ironing is done.

And I lie here in bed, in my cold bed with the late Autumn wind whispering over me and I tell myself to sleep, because the tiredness makes my bones ache and I am doing far too much for one person who does not get enough sleep. And sleep evades me, night after night. So I read and I write and I compose stories in my head. And I miss the warmth in my bed that even on my worst days was always there, that I could somehow absorb into until his regular breathing became my breathing. Or the days when the tears came when I could burrow into the warmth and have it envelop me, encase me and penetrate me until all the cold was chased away.

I'm afraid to cry, but also I don't want to. The little thread inside me, the little core that refuses to break but instead tenaciously holds every piece together is intact. And while my skin may be softer than ever before and the legs that are holding me upright are whittled down, there is still a fire that burns there in the middle, and refuses to go out and believes all this is for a purpose. If only to prove that I can do anything, if I put my mind to it.

But I'm so tired.

Eclipse

I woke with the curtain brushing across my cheek and the morning sun already filtering through my lashes. Tomorrow, the sun will wake me again, before disappearing, hiding behind the moon. Last week I would have been just under the path of the true eclipse, hoping for a fine day - though what other sort of day would I have had in the place that hadn't rained for 3 months? But I would not be anywhere else but here, enjoying the partial eclipse from the verandah as the breeze rushes up the hill.

There's an excitement and romanticism about the eclipse. One that extends to its very name despite what Stephenie Meyer may have attempted to do to besmirch it. I imagine there will be many proposals tomorrow under the dark morning sky - promises to be lights in darkness, suns to moons etc etc. The thought makes me smile, but I am still happier home with my partial eclipse and my partially romantic life.

Because, after 18 hours along the Bruce Highway I am home. Properly home. Not just for a weekend, not for a holiday, but home. I have given up my little flat with the wallaby that came in the mornings and the evenings, foraging in the grass. I have said goodbye to the little room where I danced in the dark and the friends I made in the middle of the night. I am back from being someone respected and feted to bottom of the ladder again and it's the way it should be.

I received an amazing end of term report and even nicer personal reviews. There is nothing quite like the feeling of having your mentors think well of you, and not only think well but share that with you and with others. To have people that will remember you, long after you've stopped working under them but will write nice things when a reference is required. But even nicer is the knowledge that they liked me as a person, respected and genuinely enjoyed my company. It made what could have been an awful time not only bearable but valuable.

In some ways it has been hard coming home and being responsible for hair brushing and dinner for 5 and setting the table and loads of laundry. To a husband that not only has never thought of writing me sonnets about suns and moons but who has become profoundly depressed about his lack of employment since I've been gone and as aware as I am that my hours are now much less and I am earning barely enough to keep us all afloat. To the extent that I am looking for a second job because a life of just getting by is too difficult.

But somehow, even with those stressors, I'm still happier home. Where I'm woken in the morning by the brush of curls under my chin and the sun in my eyes. Even if it will be hidden for a time tomorrow. The shadow will pass. And it's not the same unless I was on a yacht anyway, watching the moon ink the waves.

Schrodinger's Kitty

Are all beautiful things painful? The emotion that runs so deep has the power to soothe as well as slice, and I wonder how much chance there is in that... if it's God playing with his yahtzee dice, while we rattle around in the cup.

I cannot escape rainbows lately, they follow me around like some sort of technicolor omen, and it makes me laugh and wince in equal measure. They both mock and encourage me. My life some sort of weird farcical dichotomy of being. There was one over me as I drove home in hail today, some ridiculous metaphor of being. While others race for shelter I am out being battered, chasing rainbows.

This time last year I lived like I was on a tightrope, where the net shimmered beautifully below while I balanced serenely dressed in spangles. I have never felt so emotional in my life as I did a year ago, so reckless and wild, a raging storm of it. I have grown enormously in the last year - I have never been so beautiful as I am now. And all the lines and the new angles at my jaw contribute. Age is shaping me, moulding me against my will. I still don't remember how to breathe.

Sometimes in hiding from the emotion I have closed myself from looking for beautiful things, of seeing the beauty in everything, in pursuing the Gleam. But in honour of nothing, but being tired and anxious, and wanting to focus on something else, here are a few random things from my blog inspiration folder. I'm sure you all have one, and here's a glimpse of mine...

I have to know - did you dream this of me?

 Of wanting to lie with them, touch them, wake with them

My mirror friend

The hardest part? …there’s a fear that doubt will creep in, you will awaken one day and think “what the hell was I thinking?

I know it’ll get better. I wonder if it’ll ever be as good.

Reminded today of what I'm counting from

my mind is where the ghosted afterthoughts of you linger

you are still the brightest light to have shone in my sky

It's the shortest day of the year today. 
 
From tomorrow, every day will have more sunshine in it than the day before

As with other times before, Time had dissolved

I just closed my eyes for a second and disappared from reality. It was tough coming back

You're unlike anyone I've ever met, yet I feel like I've known you my entire life & beyond.

DFA

i will be frank, because i feel the need: i will take you in whatever form you are happy to share yourself with me, but i will always have, at the back of my heart, a little bit of wistfulness for more

the next day I didn't care & just held your hand for a moment

I was breathing so slowly & deeply that I may have appeared to be not breathing at all

i want words. 
 
and a tree

There was something about the beauty of the location, the company and the surrealism of having not slept and having no idea which day it was or which time. Some sort of suspended bubble that eeked itself out on the space time continuum. A beautiful lucid dream. I remember feeling my palms after all the digging in the sand, and how exfoliated and excoriated they were and the soft pain of that making me double take and realise that *this* was actually reality

Nope, in the end I cbf arguing so just went and did them.
 
QED
 
Then walked into a wall

well if one is going to be antisocial and self destructive one may as well do it antiseptically

now, when I sharpen a pencil, I enjoy the sharpness for a few seconds before deliberately softening the top so that it slides more easily on the paper

I'm perpetually glad that you appreciate the things that mean so much to me

When you're watching someone's face and they've yet to see you. The second that their eyes come into focus on your face and the connection is established: ephemeral; visceral; tangible. The way that you don't actually need to acknowledge it because it is so palpable that you can't help but know that the other knows it too

I understand gravity. Understand how it is that something so invisible can be felt so acutely. The pull towards. I never think about the fact that as I walk my feet touch the ground. It doesn't require concentration, it doesn't really require thinking. By virtue of the attraction of both bodies, the pull and force brings them together. Unintentionally. Inexplicably.

GTFOOMH

it must be strange shooting up your own vein. i look at my veins and think how easy they'd be to stick a needle in, but the idea gives me a shudder straight up the spine

i see it as a tangible edge, wispy and black but interestingly i see it against light