[7/10] "Differently Wired" +Playlist
Galloping my way through adversity on a stationary stairway to the stars! ..x
I made a playlist as I lay riding my mind like a roundabout or chain-linked swing back and forth. In my heart I should be rocking on a chair covered and dressed with my mum’s best knitted blankets, stroking my dog, swallowing the sunshine or even tasting the wind. Nursing a cup of coffee as the rain sets in. Instead, I am in self-inflicted darkness on a wonky sofa, alone and absorbed in my own discomfort half ignoring the real itchy blankets or toast crumbs under my legs and down my dress from this morning. I didn’t quite hear him come in and stand hovering over me. I am delighted and wary and sad for not knowing how to act; worried that he might sense my yearning for him. My hanging on his every approach like a moth with a lost wing.
Being fed breadcrumbs from the man who I am supposed to love, and think I do because if I didn’t it wouldn’t hurt so much that I am being used. He turns his emotional touch off and on like a tap. He’s actually tapping me now, not my eyelids this time as I am wide awake, but my bank account. He is droning on and on about going back on steroids again. This time doubling up on orals and injectables. I’m looking at his tiny pupils twinkling from his pale blue eyes, and looking on into a future of more fury, aggression and fights. I say nothing but my mind wonders why his direction in life is always relapse back into the past, and then I realise so is mine. I must reach back into a past life whereby I am an old, ancient, relic of a soul. I rolled my eyes when I was told I’d have to buy those for him some time when we’re straight.
He called me in to the room-of-doom to show me something on TikTok. It was a girl in distress, going crazy and sick and smashing her head off walls. He said “there’s you!”. He likes to ‘reminisce’ about times we’ve shared like the day before my overdose. I guess that’s how he shows he cares. He knows how much I can’t resist his smile, and his wild, booming laugh gets me every single time. I just love the bass in his voice, his animated state, his elation, so I smile a closed mouth, grin which reached sad eyes. The I walked back into the room I live in, went straight to the window to smoke as tears rolled down my throat. Why can’t I just be grateful that he called me in, that he remembers me that he has just let me in?
Speaking with my Mum on video call our lost loved ghosts hover over us, yes I lost my Dad but she also lost her husband within a week of each other. Which is why it is important that we talk about food, the weather, our dogs, how tired we are, and the same questions and same answers day in day out. I ask if she is ok, she’s fine. I ask her plans and what time she fell asleep last night. Mopping the floors and about 4am. She doesn’t need to ask if I’m alright, I blurt out my daily hypochondriac complaints before she has had chance to wipe the sleep from her eyes every morning. At least we can tumble into a much lighter world. Anxiously rambling (me) and Stoic silence (Mum) has been the ‘cement’ in our sort of daughter-mother-mother-daughter pact since childhood. I have been trying to mother her since I was born. It's an immutable ritual, via absence (and now silence) she imbued me with the power to use my own imagination, passion to believe in it and values that are pretty bloody useless at the moment. The values of surpassing self, team spirit, panache, and how to lose without losing heart.
