It’s been a rough few days. Not Putin rough, though actually now you mention it – an ally turned critic, a critic turned rogue and a march on Moscow, maybe not so dissimilar after all. It started, when? At push back of dissent? At misuse of power? At the moment it was given mouth and eyes, the switch flicked? Home-made monsters will be monstrous at home in the end. It’s their m.o.
Mine’s been telling me everybody hates me, I’m a failure, my life’s work a loss. These exacting, effective bullets and bombs. I armed it. For weeks I obsessed that I’d upset someone I care about, to the point where I considered my life at an end, only to see them by chance and it be normal and the utter darkness of cornered thinking to lift like the shroud it was. I had a brief spell in the sunshine, the relief of living again, only to wake up one morning in the catacombs. Was it because I’d been pushing back?I’ve been reading Complex PTSD by Pete Walker and putting it into action. It’s not a laugh a minute but it is effective. I’ve been telling the ally turned critic, the critic turned rogue to fuck off. Who are you to tell me I’m worthless? Fuck you. But then the beating began. The fear. The intimidation. The march on my senses. I woke in a blackened world. I told myself I was on strike, I couldn’t do it anymore, I work and work and work and I get nowhere. This work flipped between my exterior literary life and my interior recovery. I spoke to my ManPerson on the proviso he didn’t give any patsys. No trite this will pass or reasonable argument to the contrary. My son threw a packet of goji berries at the counter and hit the cactus I’ve been nurturing, breaking a limb, snapping babies. I lost my shit. Said can you just go away for a minute and went away myself and cried. I hunkered down, waiting for slaughter. I snapped at a friend on the phone who suggested what worked for him. I said I didn’t want to talk about it.
And then an ally brokered a deal, an unsure peace, a march on my senses arrested by going to London and celebrating the success of someone else, a book launch that I know has taken all the blood and sweat and tears that this writer friend could cope with. My home-made monster has gone off to Belarus. And when I said there’d be no repercussions, I was lying.
THAT'S writing.
It was more of a underhand, upward, into the hoop kinda thro actually.
And the reason i did it was because there was a kitchen cabinet in the way.
Wub wub