Sore inside

Some days its hurts too much to feel inside To sit with the pain of this heart and body that is aching Feelings that got lost move around inside my body appearing in strange symptoms and energies Pinching, sucking, tearing, burning : out of contact, out of touch with anyone my boat founders on heavy seas I am so unsure of which way to turn feeling so overwhelmed by strange tides that issue from god knows where

Then we talk and a flood of grief pours forth in tears How can I contain all of this water? And how is a body so fluid and so diffuse all at the same time?

In the room at that moment lots of ancestors appear as silent shadows whose contours are just visible I feel the aching in their hearts and the stories they long to tell that so long ago fell into a deep sea of forgetting Then my mind questions what my heart feels and frustrated tears fall again Full of so much fear Who am I and how did I get so lost?

In the outside world life goes on I compare all I haven’t achieved with all that others have and an honest acknowledgement of all of my defects and limitations weighs upon me so heavily.  I see how even at 55 I have not fully separated from my mother and as the container of her pain struggle to give love To fix a wound that I didn’t cause  Her suffering is like a gravitational force field to me that I cannot bear to leave And probably wont ever until she dies And yet and yet I long for so much more

Will I ever break free?  Will the pain of my past finally loosen its grip?  At this time of year memories come of the late spring afternoon you called me home to deliver the news : stomach cancer prognosis unknown I cross the kitchen to embrace you as you cry The father I never really knew Less than 2 months later you are gone

Part of me whispers “but that was years ago, surely you should have moved on ” Is this my thought or one I heard someone speak so many years ago At 4 am this morning I was pulled so powerfully back our house the coast as memories of how it was to actually be there flooded me and the tears fell Leading me to question Do those memories ever really die or just recede pulled down under the weight of years and forgetting only to emerge in the dawning afternoon of our lives like lost phantoms seeking a home What’s gone is gone, isn’t it?

In the house alone I know that any contact with the survivors is a pull to keep a past alive That was really all too much to bear And I see how those who loved me grew weary of it and so longed for me to go free As I long too  But yesterday you said to me : ‘there is still grieving to be done’, who knows how much longer it will go on?  I have no answers and not even a brilliant poem to encapsulate deeper questions So for now this is all I can say : today I am struggling and sometimes I feel so sore inside