Tuesday 12 June 2007

The Disappeared: Part One


I tripped over an old man today and twisted my ankle. With all the grace and dignity of a drunk being thrown out of a bar I disgorged a string of obscenities. Disappointing, I thought, to have become this lame gargoyle frightening old men on the street corner. Slumped on the steps of a bar (as it happens) I contemplated the fact that I had so much anger inside me, enough to transform me into A Very Unpleasant Woman. The pain became a kind of comfort, the inability to walk reduced me to stillness as I assessed my options, all the while going into mild shock. Is anything ever by chance? I tried to recall my thoughts at the moment in time I tripped. "Suffering" was the general theme, of course, as it seems to have been of late. Self indulgent crap, and I know it. There is muck inside me, black and bloodied muck. A junk yard heap of unanswered questions, each of them beginning with: Why did you disappear? A taxi took me home, I hobbled upstairs to my current dwelling and settled in for the day, and night. Wrapped my ankle in a scarf that was a gift from a man I no longer love. Fitting, somehow, but not sure why.

I am stuck in this silent room, and being pulled deeper into myself, with pain as my only distraction, my only point of focus. And the memory of the look on the old man's face when I exploded in hysteric, obsence, and angry psychosis. "What's happened to the ladies of today?" He might well ask. I did. "What's happened to Grace and Dignity?" In myself. Was there ever? I could write a list of qualities I would like to embody, as an alternative to the monstrousness of my current state. Swing an axe to cut off dead wood and you're going to make a mess. No getting around that. Ghosts haunt me. In the light of my father's passing, I mean this literally now. There's a small child inside of me bleeding everywhere, and time is running out. Will I let her die, or apply salve to her wounds? She's a ghost too. I used to know her well, but she died one day. Well, actually it was more like a slow death. I stood back and watched it happen, growing apart from her as I continued living. She couldn't grow up because she bled out. Her heart it was. Ripped open. I had to leave her behind, I mean, when there is that much pain, that much blood ... death is preferable, surely?

Every now and then she visits me, and I don't like it. She is disruptive. Like a rebellious twin. Like me, but not me. Of me, but beyond me. I want to send her to Heaven, because I think that is where she really wants to be, with her list of unanswered questions. I mean, people have their reasons don't they? Tramping about the room in my scarf-wrapped ankle, I know what it means to disappear, leaving unanswered questions behind. So this is karmic payback maybe? I'm still not sorry I walked out on Scarf Man. The answers to the question of "why?" are so ... complicated. My answers don't matter anyhow, I mean don't we all draw our own conclusions? I am my Father's daughter. How amusing, how very fucking amusing. Well, there is no walking away from anything today.

It is all crashing in on me, like a dark and bloody waterfall of memories and stifled emotions. As the room floods with unshed tears I reach out to that dead girl and hold her under, hoping that this time, death will finally take hold and she will be free to go. Leaving me to Move On. This malingering lingering of hers has got to stop, because I don't like the woman I was today, screaming at old men in the street who might or might not bear a resemblance to my Father.

FIONA

No comments: