If wishing helped…

During a conversation with friends about the shadow M.E. casts with its temperamental hold on our physical and mental energies we came upon this question: Now that everything is slowed and pared down and we seem at times to be in an almost eerie state of suspense –- should we accept this as life or should we feel that life will really only start (again) when we are better, even well. It’s a fine line to tread. For me it is important to not allow illness to take over my life, to strive to get better, to project into a future, but also to accept this as part of who I am, now. Denial would be as counterproductive as resignation. We do need to live now, this is it, this is life, with or without energy, every day. During the days when brushing one’s teeth or pulling up the blinds or reading an e-mail seems an accomplishment it can be difficult to hold on to a positive sense of self, one beyond illness. The fatigue can pervade every cell of one’s body, every nook and cranny of one’s brain and the feeling of suspense comes from constantly having to postpone, defer – conversations, walks, meals, creative exploits, whatever. Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next year.
Strangely it made me remember something: When I was a child at primary school I wanted to be another girl, Dagmar S., who was in the same form as me. I did not want to be like her, but really wished to be her, as for me she was loveliness and lovability incorporated. I have no idea what she would have made of that had she known. She may well herself have wished to be in somebody else’s shoes.
Today I don’t wish to slip into another person’s skin, but when abjection catches hold of me during extremely exhausted periods I find it difficult to see myself as a whole. I can’t help feeling untethered, a pod-like thing that holds something that might one day emerge. Or not. These periods don’t last long, I’m glad to say and now that writing has taken its delicious place in my life they are diminished further. So yes, the poetry course has started again after the Easterbreak and I’ve had my first really positive criticism, funnily enough for my crocheting girl-poem. Writing that poem felt so good as my visual art and my writing came together, and it made the poem pulsate. I’ve been missing crocheting, several unfinished pieces are scattered around, but as ever focus is of the essence.