abuse

I love wordish, the play on words, the flux I create as I challenge old meanings, long laid down and probably long dead, but still with blow, like bubbles when you slide below the surface and lift breath after someone has gifted you a bath experience. In your blow, you create a new map. It may not last for long, but, just for that moment, as you watch the dynamic shift and slip away, you see something new.

I find words, they come to me like darts, random, and, it seems they feel arrogant enough not to explain, so I have to Dictionary them. And, I am finding, having invented at least two words, once challenged by a magazine editor, and which are now confident within the restrictions of the Oxford or the Collins, that definitions limit. Language is an endless shift, and that, for me, is how it must be.

So, these words, Diversology – understanding diversity, inclusion and equity in the classroom. I, and my peers would have loved that light in our day. We are the survivors of none of that, back in the days of England ruling half the damn world, and not very kindly.

Variogram, another word that came to me. Broken down into my simple speke made me thinkalot. ‘In spatial statistics the theoretical variogram, denoted, is a function describing the degree of spatial dependence of a spatial random field or stochastic process.’ I am engaged, big time, with the word spatial, and it is mentioned twice, as if space from another actually has a name. We all need space and it is not a given, I have learned over decades. A singular soul has to demand it.

Stochastic. How weird am I! This is my favourite and you may see why because there is a freedom here, and the stand tall of every one of us, the broken, the lost, the abused, the confused, deserves recognition, however wild, according to the dictionnaires of our life.

‘Stochastic – having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically…..’ aka following old patterns, old controls. (read on)

‘……but may not be predicted precisely. ‘Hallelujah! We can all rise from the old, the old ways, the old words, the old meanings. We can. We just have to have that tiny bubble lift of courage, that one glimpse of our own map, to step up and out, a heart beating like a flutterby, feet unsure, fear like a huge overwave, and say No. Or Yes.

Even as I write this, I feel the sharps of this writing privilege. I know it isn’t easy, in fact it may feel impossible, at first, but I do know some of you, many, have recognised that your one life is not ok and who have said this No, Yes, thing.

So, I would say, on this lovely summer’s evening, in my long life, if I could take away the struggle for you, I would. But I cannot. Maybe all I can do is say, hey, hallo you. I believe in you, even if you don’t.

When I ask someone how they feel about whatever is going on their lives, almost without exception, I get answers of logic. ‘It will be alright in the end,’ they say, or ‘this will heal, eventually,’ or even ‘I have nothing to complain about. I have enough food, a home, friends and work.’ Invariably, but kindly, I will round on them. I asked you how you feel, feel, FEEL about what has happened or is happening to you. Can you tell me that?

It is the toughest question, I know. Many of us ignore our feelings, so jumbled and ‘illogical’ are they, so messy and loud, so scary to name. If I say I feel afraid, I will, inevitably, be ‘fixed’. If I say I feel angry, the room goes quiet, as a room does just after lightening and just before the thunder crash. In my young days, feelings were allowed, providing they were ones of joy and delight, and even those must not be allowed to erupt. You can spin around, arms wide, in sheer delight, but don’t dislodge that vase of roses, or step on the dog or knock the musical score off the piano musical score thingy. And, this mustn’t last more than is bearable for the ears of all others in this confined space.

Feelings of pain, sadness or grief, such as the abandonment of a trusted friend in P3, is something you will get over and laugh about one day. She wasn’t such a great friend anyway now was she? Yes she damn well was, and now I go to school feeling sore and vulnerable, ashamed and brimming with self doubt. Who is there to hear my agony? Well, perhaps someone will ‘hear’ it, but who will sit with me whilst I burn and drown in this unbelievable flood of feelings? It is no surprise to me that, as ‘mature’ adults, most of us suppress what can only cause inner damage eventually, those deep feelings of rejection, abandonment, neglect, cruelty. We all know what I’m talking about, but too many of us keep burying the undead. They will rise again and again, twisted now, neglected for too many years, layered over with logic and life. The undead are not dead, not unless we dig and dig until they can finally rise into the light of our Now. Who is brave enough, I wonder, to admit (why ‘admit?) to feelings of pain and fear, shame and doubt, anger and resentment? Because we just know we will be ‘fixed’.

Feelings are the one thing we cannot, never could and never will, control. They come, unbidden, sometimes as tiny whispers, sometimes as a tidal wave, bowling us off our feet and into the gutter, upside down, knickers showing, wounded, bloody, feeling like a fool as the rest of the world checks their watch and hurries on. How we deal with our feelings, however, is completely within our control. It is not the fault of the world that it rushes on by as I lie here broken and tumbled. It’s not my fault either. It’s nobody’s fault. If I have the courage and the guidance (very critical to healing) to dig deep down for the undead feelings from childhood, from before the Now of me; to dig and to unbury, to lift into the light and to name, I am on the road to freedom. If my current pain relates to neglect, rejection, abandonment or cruelty in my past, I will overreact to the world in which I live right now, but, if my deepest longing is to be seen, acknowledged and celebrated for myself, to be valued just as I am, then I have to dig, have to unearth the undead. I can do endless goodly works in my Now, but I am kidding myself if I think this is going to eradicate my strong need to be seen, acknowledged and valued. I will meet rejection, lack of respect, careless or neglectful behaviour but it is not because I am ‘nothing’. It is, simply, complexly, the result of buried feelings as old as I am, pushed down, labelled foolish and ignored.

So, when I ask you “how do you feel about what just happened?’ might you pause a little before answering, and might you have the courage and trust to give your feeling its rightful name?