What I wish I could say to you

It hurts my body to not really know how to help you, at times I know I probably talk or write too much and my decisions or ideas of what to do oscillate.. I could try to explain it through astrology in that most of my chart is air with a huge undertone of fire and water.. that may make sense to some… I do not know if it will make sense to you, and after all it is just one explanation or way of viewing things.

I think at times fear is what lives deep inside of my body and manifests in all of these symptoms.. I fear not being there enough for you and leaving you all alone inside your own head.. Believe me I know how that feels as you know I chose to isolate myself from you and all of my family as well as my husband when so much was going on inside in those early years of waking up inside my sobriety.. I look back now and think I thought I knew answers then, when I did not..

I read a lot in those early days to make sense of things, I know you often did not understand my need for books or to analyse things, but my therapist says that I did not deserve to be criticised as much for this.. The truth is that I have over time had to work to find my own way through the minefields of past family trauma, anxiety and depression. I also know how much my own state of mind can oscillate and I know how much I panic when it seems you are going down.

I do not know if shock treatment hurts, I only know it makes me scared for you and I understand how you say it terrifies you and yet you subject your beautiful animal body to this.. what can I say, if I focus on the image of you enduring that only to be wheeled back to you room in a stunned state, I feel like throwing up. Everything in my being screams “NO!” Am I over dramatising as I was told so often in childhood?

In those months following Dad’s death I spent all alone wandering the streets of London I went a saw a couple of powerful movies the one that most stuck with me starred Jessica Lange as Francis Farmer and in that movie I believe she was given a lobotomy in order to be controlled, not unlike Rose, one of the female siblings of the Kennedy family. That horrified me as much as it resonated with me at the time because at that stage I had endured over 5 years of seeing my older sister struggle in the aftermath of a stroke, being abandoned by her husband and attempt suicide and I remember how much my mother tried to control as well as feeling so powerless in that situation.

As I look back to 1985 I see by that time I had already endured so much but all the confusion and feelings were buried as I tried to numb the pain with alcohol as well as dope sometimes.. Even all of these years later when I have managed to work through so much of those feelings I can still feel at times as though I am back there.. That is another reason it is so hard to see you go through all of this with all that history now fallen into silence.. You say you cannot remember much and so sometimes I am your memory…

A moment ago it felt just too hard to leave you sitting over in that place all alone with no visitors on Sunday I felt the urge to go because sometimes much as i complain it feels good just to go there and sit in that quiet room of yours and talk and hold your hand or give you a hug.. Maybe when all is said and done you need more of that.. perhaps it gives you more than the drugs.. I don’t know.. It doesn’t cost me a lot so why do I struggle so hard to front up, be there and give it at times? There were so many years I longed for this but it was a thing I could not voice and at that time all I felt was others talking nonsense at me

Yes, a follower said he Let’s Go and Let’s God.. but what about God in skin? Surely we are part of God and as Jesus so often said with two or more of you gather together in my name I am there… those words resonate.. as I long for the peaceful calm of an AA meeting while presently enjoying the peaceful calm of my small home…so its likely I wont visit today but God knows my heart is most definately with you in spirit.

Anyway for what its worth today these are just some of my thoughts.. sometimes the writing takes the body pain away, I am not as conscious of is as I write or maybe its just what my soul feels the need to do… so that is what I did today.. I sat down to write you a letter I probably will never send and I feel better for it.. Sometimes I unscramble stuff by writing.. it was always my go to in a far older family where I so often felt unseen or invisible.. I am sure now the love was there my parents were just very remote… and that is part of the reason I hate repeating that pattern… so there you go.. more of my thoughts for what they are worth. 🙂