On days or at times when I am less happy with my ‘freedom’ I usually avoid writing here. In moments of truculence I disturb that thought, winkle it about with a pointy finger, snarl at it. Why must I always be upbeat about flipping everything? Answer. Nobody wants to hear doom and gloom, well do they? Everyone has more than enough of that within the walls of their own insider life. Well, don’t they? Yes, I have to concede, even as I feel hapless and my arms flop like limp seaweed to my sides. But (and I have plenty of buts) what about being real, about being balanced? In other words, the rough and the smooth, the bitter and the sweet, the death and the life of everything. If everything passes, then surely those readers out there will know that a doom day is just a day, or a time, or a week, and that, once it passes, the sun will out and out once again. And this is true. But there is a lonely in keeping quiet about the times when I feel like a bottom feeder without gills. watching from my depths, the wiggling legs of the surface swimmers, knowing they can laugh without drowning, smile without grimace, breathe good clean air.
At such times I know I choose this bottom feeding thing, not that I’m feeding, obviously. I am a woman, not a fish and I have sunken down here below the laughing others out of choice. I have attached the weights. I know it even as it rolls my eyes, if I could entertain such a thing down here among the octopus and other hideous creatures with gill breath and the roar of forever in my ears, the pressure skinning me even thinner. I am mining. I am searching for treasure deep deep down among my own oceanic rocks, for something, for anything that just might look like an answer. I have always done this, I remind myself and, yes, myself snorts because she has the unpleasant (at times) task of being beside me, even through dreams, the latter enough to send the strongest woman running for safe harbour. You have, she concedes. Childhood was exhausting btw and don’t get me started on adolescence. I say nothing, because if I did we would both drown down here. My eyes are wide for answers, my mind focussed, my fingers raw and bleeding but determined. Answers are here somewhere, I know it.
Diving deep into the sea of psyche is not for many, not for most. We want to find answers at the surface. Few have the courage to sink, to dive into the roar, to mine the rocks. Down there is scary, the predators are lit up like a firework display and they have serious teeth. They don’t want to be recognised or identified and they definitely don’t want to be understood or broken down into their component parts. They are centuries old. They are formed from childhood abuse or neglect. They are the physical result of all ‘crimes’ that happened, in the perception of a mind. They may not be absolute truth but they feel very real. Memory is a fickle friend. Our memories are seen only through the lens of our own perception. But the feeling creates the bottom feeders and those creatures swim forever in our minds. Most days we can ignore them. Many days we cannot. Hence my dive. I want the damn things excoriated and the only one who can do that is me. But before I do this excoriation thingy, I need to see them, recognise and name them, or neither, and let them go. Only then can I deal with the now of Now.
This is why I am down here. However, I need to breathe like everyone else, and tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow always is. And, even down here, the sun will out.
Judy Fairbairns 