I am surrounded by cats, I always have been, I am half cat. In London, Tabitha Twitchit kept me going, in Sussex, Jerry and Sirie. Rosalee Parks sits beside me as I write. Kenny slept with her paws on my shoulder, in the early hours of this morning I woke to her purring. Did you know these Recovery Diaries are coming to end? I do, tomorrow is their last day, and this, the penultimate, feels blank. Each time as I’ve gone to bed, I’ve not known what I’ll write when I face the page the next morning, I’ve always said, turn up and it will come, but today, nothing. Where were we? Riding like royalty in the Subaru to waiting hands, my mother in the kitchen wrestling turkey, the annual row over whether to open presents before or after lunch; it was always after. Yesterday as I meditated, I saw my parts and allies crowding their faces at the window to watch me in the sitting room, we each had a chair, my gifts were piled at the settle, I remember the year I got my marble run and built it in the upstairs corridor, the stretch of coloured plastic shoots and twirls on brown carpet, from bedroom door to stairs, a city of connection, in the way of everyone; oblivious to their stepping over, stepping round, I was left alone to play. And I remembered how the beam at the end on the left was so low even I as a child had to bend my head to get to bathroom or loo, how I always saw the head of a blonde man in the lavatory when I lifted the lid, how I’d flush, and duck, and run, making it to the stairs before the flush was over. The way into these memories is often incongruous and silly, always the risk that I’ll be thought crackers, it can be easy to miss or dismiss, I can’t possibly write about that, but I’ve learnt that with every image offered, there’s a crumb line leading somewhere. A blonde head of a man in a loo. A fear always there. So, my parts and allies crowd their faces at the window as I open my presents while in the dining room the table is set for Christmas lunch, a table bomb from Harrods, crackers arranged at each plate, we will cross our arms and pull, we will put on paper hats and tell jokes. My sister will refuse Brussel sprouts and be made to eat just one. My mother will come in with a pudding on fire, the blue flames lighting up the porcelain dish, her fingers, the exhaustion I never recognised, not knowing what it is to do Christmas for a family of many and granny who drove my father mad, always asking him the same question, what are you writing now, and he’d ignore her. And the Christmas holidays were coming to an end, the return to London looming, the severed head of the blonde man because in this time warp recovery, one thing can be understood: that what I was seeing was the work of my parts and allies who I only came to recognise now, but now being then, their work was done. Rosie in her jeans and fierceness took a sword to his memory, a decapitation of his power, I didn’t know as I lifted the lid and peed and ran, we can change our past experience. Not the events, but the emotional aftermath. I will stay with my marble run, they will stay with their faces crowding the window, the colours and the twirling glass balls that I set off when I sit down to type. Recovery takes forever.
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Well spotted and yes
the title gave a hint to either a substack about crackers or crackers
also did you lose your marbles