under a blanket

you lay in your room covered by a blanket, your face was ashen, underneath the covers you are wearing a top the color of which I have never seen you wear before..you tell me your friend John visited and you asked him to take you shopping so you could buy it.. That makes me happy, its a sign of life.

My gut is quieter than it was before I left home, full of anxiety about the gifts I had to give you, how would you receive them? Miracle of miracles, “those will do” you said as you tried on the clothes.. I breathe a sigh of relief, this is easier than I thought it would be but I notice how much I am rambling on, maybe it was the way I always was as a child, not held back at all. Earlier today as I lay there thinking of them wheeling you back from shock treatment, I remembered how Mum sold your piano out from under you in 1969, and how I fought the man who bought it, even then I was your baby sister, trying to protect you.. Its just now I do not really know what to do to do that effectively any more. In my mind I have fantasies of arguing with the doctor about your treatment, but it is not my place, you are choosing this.

Maybe its just okay to rest and let go for a while, accept this is the path you are travelling.. You ask me at one point “what is going to happen to me?” “I think I am going to have to go into a home,” you say. I ask you if that is preferable to you living alone and you tell me you do not feel able to take care of yourself. I offer for you to come and live with me “that would not work” you say, Yes I probably agree but there you go. I really do not have the answers for your life..

What about getting a paid carer, I asked you and then you try to tell me you have no money, this is not true at all I don’t get how you can have the amount of resources at your disposal that you do and still feel poor.. It completely flabbergasts me. The conversation shifts… I realise its enough just to be here and make conversation about different things… You tell me your son and his family will be going away for the 3rd weekend in a row when I ask if there is a chance they may visit you on the weekend.. Part of me thinks “how lucky are they to just be able to go on living their lives” while another part of me things “this is the person who gave you life and is undergoing so much and you cannot even spare one weekend?” Such are the way my thoughts oscillate, who is to say who is wrong or right.

You thank me for the help with your clothing, I am so pleased to help, the reason I felt put upon before was that I expected the present to be like the past with you rejecting everything, but today it was not like that. I left after a hour and a half. Its always a relief to be able to get in my car and drive home while part of me finds it hard to leave. I felt better for fronting up though.. I realise more and more lately how life has to be lived not thought about being lived, and how thinking about how we are going to live it, or of the obstacles we are going to encounter may be a huge waste of energy and time. Maybe that is the message of recent times..

Who knows what will become of the shock treatment or where the next stage of life is going to lead both of us, the only thing I know for sure, is that I need to front up for it feeling the anxiety but using it to propel me forward, instead of keep blocking me in a paralysis of fear and over thinking.

…. problems arise when we get lost in that liminal space between “here” and “there,” between actuality and possibility, reality and fantasy. It’s not that one is better than the other, nor that one is to be distrusted while the other is reliable (it is just it depends upon the lens we use to show us a particular perspective.. how accurate is it? Is it showing us a clear vision, or are we looking into) a distorted mirror that we mistake for reality.

Evolving Door Astrology