Dream rambling.

Last night I had a dream, vivid and chaotic. One of those dreams that keep you in a constant state of consciousness because of their physicality. Every so often I would feel the tension of muscles, the contracting of skin or the heat radiating from my limbs. It would jog me into some kind of dogged awakening, then I would fall back into it and return interrupted. I had a man by my side.  I was constantly aware of his presence, the gentle brushes against my skin and the rhythms of his breathing.

I dreamt I was a witch, all olive skin and tangles of dark hair. The inside of my mouth was a vivid scarlet, eyes the same green as the leaves of an oak. I scratched my name into the bark of a tree trunk, marked through with a cross and a misshapen heart. The initials of a lover, sealed and delivered like old magic. I heard him whispering my name, the wind carrying it through. I followed the sound of his voice and pad softly with bare feet on thorns and stumps.  My body is much like it is in real life, fluid curves and rippled surfaces, but it feels stronger. It is wrapped in an ancient nightgown, discoloured lace and frayed edges. My lover is a thousand leagues under the sea. His body is dust and sand, sullying the water. His voice now a crackle from a radio, travelling like the gentle beep of sonar through the waves. He speaks in riddles, he talks of spiders, he hides his charms.

I am at the edge of the ocean, I am holding a coin in one hand and a bunch of sweet williams in the other. My lover asks me to join him, I can see his reflection in the surf, amongst the jetsam and dirty foam. The water cold around my ankles, nightgown disintegrating, a swell of small fish upon my calves, they pull me under. I will drown in you, as I have always done with others before you, it will leave me cold and sodden and I will still forgive you love.

Hello

I went to Africa......

An incredible start to 2012. If you'd told me at this point last year that I would have the opportunity (and the guts) to do something like this I would literally have had you sectioned. But I did it, and I'm trying to utilise the feelings that it's left me with to the best of my ability. 

I really wish I had written this....

I've been posting and sharing on forums and livejournal groups since I was an angsty teenager, you know, before I became an angsty twentysomething. Amazingly it has been really helpful to go back to those places in the last couple of years and find a way of talking about things that I can't talk about as comfortably in reality. Try and coax how I'm really feeling out of me on a one to one basis, looking me straight in the eye, and you'll most likely get one of a number of well thought out sentences designed to steer you ever so slightly from the truth. Place a computer screen and a few thousand miles distance between us and I will bare you my soul. What a generation we have become. Anyway, somebody wrote this today, as a general train of thought about the beauty debate. It's just lovely, and I wanted to share it....

"I remember a conversation I had with my mother. She announced her thoughts that my tangled hair and unshaven legs were unsightly mechanisms behind which I hid the "real beauty" that I could possess, but that I didn't think I "deserved". She contended that my legs and my hair were relics of my inability to recover a sense of self-worth after years of childhood bullying. She insisted that by shirking my potential for (a very particular) beauty, I was permitting the bullies of my childhood to parasitize my current life. Her words devastated me. I felt like they trivialized a hard-won part of my identity. She had co-opted a necessary part of my survivorship and dressed it up as failure. And she was partially correct. There was a long, long time in my life when I didn't think I was good enough- for any kind of beauty, or for much else. I did everything I could conceive of to blend in, to become invisible. I worked desperately to mask, compensate, and apologize for the ways in which I thought I was dissimilar to my classmates. As I grew older, I realized that I would never be able to shave away, brush away, scrub away, give away enough pieces of myself to move stealthily through dangerous waters. Piece by piece, I began to collect all that I'd surrendered.
I knew that being invisible would never be enough to keep anyone safe from the systems that are in place to assimilate or destroy their differences, so I began to resist systems that reward people for homologizing themselves. I started to make space for myself in all the places I stood. I came to conceptualize the ways in which I dismantled oppressive systems-- like my feral hair and boyish grooming-- as a kind of triage that made the world safer for me to be in. I wanted myself to be safer, but I wanted others to be safer, too. Because my body was all I had to throw at the machinery, my body is what I used. It was wounding to hear my mother talk about my tangles and boyishness as if they were symptoms of shame, rather than as badges of honor. The ways in which I navigate through the world, and the body that I do it in, are not accessories of damage, or gimmicks of concealment. They are the evidence of my refusal to be concealed."

It puts to rest the feelings that I've been having about my skin being some kind of karma, like all the bad things I've ever said and done are somehow coming to the surface of me. Ultimately it's still my skin, it's still a piece of me and I have a choice about the way it makes me feel. The above writing also makes me incredibly proud and grateful for my mother. For being so unconditionally supportive and loving. For never demanding anything of me other than the pursuit of happiness....

Hey, give me back my perspective please....

So yes, of course it's vital to be in the midst of everything and see the positive, the moment of calm serenity in the eye of the storm. However, it makes you wonder if you'll look back and think 'no, actually, that was all just a bit shit wasn't it'? This applies to teenage years, which whilst full of angst and turmoil are constantly fed to us as a minor blip on the otherwise steady path to adulthood. That's rubbish though, take a look back, it was horrible, full of strange hormones and traumas that made you feel like the world was crashing down around you. I think for a lot of people your experiences in those formative years shape the type of adult you become. It makes me wonder whether it would be better to have the acne out of the way during that time, or whether I'm more capable of dealing with it now. It feels a bit more unfair that I should have to face it now, that it wasn't just over and done with along with all the other toxic mess. I'm also expected to be much more grown up about it, rather than having the full on temper tantrum I feel like having when I look in the mirror. I think that amongst all the realisations about inner self-worth and not heeding to pressure, I'm still just a young woman who has to wake up every morning and see this.

The doctor is pretty sure it's at a stage where it'll permanently scar, olive skin type is the worst. It's hard not to be trouble by the fact this could be avoided more if there wasn't a 6 week wait for dermatologist referrals on the NHS, by the time we even begin the Roaccutane it'll be too late to stop the permanent pock marks. I'm trying not to get angry about it, I'm sure that doctors have enough on their hands, this is mostly aesthetic, I have to remember that. But to think I wasted so many years feeling ugly, complaining about the odd spot or blemish.....

I want to go back and shake the living daylights out of the 19 year old me and tell her to appreciate what she has. I never knew what the word 'ugly' really meant until now.

I'm not sure this is a good idea....

.....But I think it's important that I do this, so that when I stumble upon it in a few months I'll remember the things that I realised about myself.

It's been an odd winter, that much can be read within the paragraphs of over analytical, seasonally affected ramblings I've been trawling through on this blog. I only really ever post here with the strong knowledge that nobody reads it other than a few close comrades, somehow that makes it easier to voice things that would otherwise stay internal (or certainly off the internet). I've been struggling with some medical issues, as anyone who's seen me in real life and has functioning eyesight will vouch for. A few years ago I started having minor problems with my skin, having got through the delights of adolescence fairly acne free I was pretty annoyed that my hormones decided to come back and bite me at the age of 20. However, with some potions and lotions and a little help from the NHS it's mostly been fine. The attitude I take towards my health is governed by the phrase 'it could be worse!'. In hindsight I should have touched some wood or rubbed a lucky charm upon exclaiming this........because it has got worse. My prescribed potions stopped working at the beginning of the winter, then I think due to being run down and unhappy it became infected, then it seems that I'm unable to respond to antibiotics. Skip to the end.

I've told myself many things; it's not cancer, everybody's too busy worrying about their own crap to care how you look, it won't be forever. But it's amazing how something so trivial can literally affect everything you do. I find it hard to be at work because I know how I must appear to colleagues and customers, I wouldn't want to have to look at me all day that's for sure. It weeps, it bleeds. It wakes me up at night, partly because it hurts, also because I have overly dramatic dreams where I wake up and it's gone. So I wake up, and it's not gone. A lot of the time I don't want to socialise, I certainly don't want to see anybody I've been in any way romantically involved with (or considered the possibility of being). Getting up on a stage, or under a bright light to perform music has been very hard, I feel that little bit more exposed. I've stopped going swimming, which I love, because I got a few audible comments, and a couple of mutters;

"I hope it's not infectious, I wouldn't want to catch that".

Amongst all this there has been some revelations, things that are important that I keep with me, lessons that need to be remembered. Because you know what? It really and truly doesn't matter what you look like to most people, and even when you feel it does you can still keep a smile on your face and look them right in the eyes. It's only when you look your worst that you learn how to lose your vanity. I never thought of myself as beautiful but I was more pre-occupied with my appearance than I should have been, once you lose the option of looking and feeling pretty it stops mattering. I'm going to feel great once it starts clearing up, which I'm confident it will as my hardcore hospital treatments kick in (3-6 months maybe....I'm learning patience too) but ultimately I'm glad it's happened. It's taken feeling right down low about myself to allow me to feel the best about myself.

Had a heated discussion with my sister about getting a tattoo, I've been trying to complete a design for a half sleeve for about 4 years now. I just discovered Thomas Hooper's work, which I adore. If only I had the plane fare to New York....

Anyway; "Well, I think if you're doing it for reasons other than aesthetics, the design has purpose and you've really thought about it then you're always going to be happy with it, no matter how your body changes. If there's one thing I've learnt recently it's that people can find anything to judge you on; look at her skin, aren't her arms flabby, that tattoo looks awful. It genuinely means nothing, it's a fleeting moment, it's you who has to stand in front of a mirror and see yourself for the rest of your life. People mark and scar themselves because they aren't comfortable with who they are, I love the idea that you might mark or scar yourself because you are completely comfortable with who you are. That's the biggest draw for me."

In response to her telling me that she worries a lot about the way she looks, especially as she gets older. This made me sad, she really is beautiful;

"Why worry though? If you really look at yourself you'll see you're totally beautiful, even the bits that make you feel like you're not. Other people can influence it but ultimately it's all about you. It affects the way you see people. Like I don't look at mum and see the negatives of age or think she should lose a few pounds, I see the lovely laughter lines around her eyes and how the way she holds herself shows how open she is with everyone. I'm not saying I'm never going to get down about myself, or wish I looked like someone else. However I am going to make a real effort to see my external self as the result of a life lived, experience had and choices made."

Over and Out