Over the right shoulder

She: You're back.
Me: Hmmm. Yes. Reluctantly.
She: But you're here.
Me: I've been realising that avoiding writing is a habit, based on something, someone I think I am. Tied up with identity. Someone who's suffering, and thinks that writing will heal the suffering. But if I stop suffering, then who will I be? In some ways I think writing will save my life. I give it this tremendous weight and importance. And so I don't do it. I avoid and fear it instead.

It's exactly the same loop as the drinking/quitting drinking loop, except I cracked that one -- exposed it I suppose is a better way of putting it. I quit drinking, nearly 1,000 days ago. I needed to, wanted to, thought it would heal the suffering, had it all tied up with identity, thought it would save my life. Gave it tremendous weight and importance. All those things matter. They all happened. But quitting drinking wasn't conclusive in the way I expected it would be. It was just the end of one thing and the start of something else. Definitely something better. I never regret being a non-drinker. It's become normal. And I can learn from this.

Writing is just normal for me. It's not a huge shattering deal. It doesn't have to be at least. I can write because I'm drawn to it. I think I've been looking for more valid reasons for doing it.

She: what do you mean by "valid"?
Me: I've felt like I've needed a bloody good reason to write. To heal myself, to heal the world, to expose the truth, to make a living, to make an impression, to inspire, to entertain, to deal with the anger I still feel toward my parents, to make sense of life, to make something of my life, to leave something worthwhile behind, to validate myself somehow.
She: How does that feel?
Me: A huge burden. That's why I avoid it. Too much pressure.
She: Where is the pressure coming from?
Me: Interesting question. I can locate it in space over my right shoulder, about a meter away, higher up than me. I can't "see" it... like it doesn't have a shape or colour. But it does have a message.
She: ... which is?
Me: "You will NEVER be a writer."
She: How do you feel about that? Start in your body.
Me: Hot in the chest. Tightness around the shoulder blades. Fingers want to curl up. And toes. I'm actually feeling quite relaxed today, so I'm not having a huge reaction to be honest. It's pretty mild.
She: How does it feel mentally?
Me: Old and annoying, boring even. Incredibly strong. Like the grip of something dead. It can't let go. But it can't do anything else either. Powerful and powerless at the same time.
She: Good description.
Me: I can see it for what it is. A very old, strong, dead idea. That's all it is. How can I let go of it? How can I get it to let go of me? I don't know what to do.
She: Just keep writing.
Me: OK.

The whole point, and why I have two bums

All this time, all this struggling and effort clusters around one piece of annoying grit: what's the point? What's the point of anything? "Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?" as Stephen Hawking put it. And on a mini level, why do I go to all the bother of caring about why I exist and what it's all for and all about? I'm like a dog with a very juicy, indestructible bone, and I'm not the only one in the world. Not by any stretch.

I'm hung up on childhood. Why it was so weird. What was so weird about it. Am I a Benjamin Button who did all the grown up things first and get to do the child things now. I mean that's kind of happening, in a way, or could if I would let it.

Everywhere, even on public radio, we're bombarded with messages about respecting ourselves, trusting our intuition, following our hearts, being authentic. As a child I was aggressively brainwashed into distrusting myself, my intuition, my heart. The only thing to trust was adults, particularly parents but adults in general, and the Catholic church. Basically bad until you proved you were worthy, unlovable unless you behaved in certain slavish and demeaning ways, untrustworthy to the bone. Bad, wrong, naughty, untrustworthy.

Is it the intensity of the damage that comes with those messages that drives me toward finding some meaning. Is it the habit of looking for an answer -- an answer that someone else has, and I don't have, and I will unlikely get until I'm good enough which will probably be never?

I don't remember the polio injection story. I was just told it. But it might explain something about the separation I felt from mum all my life. One of the side effects of going to school was taking swimming lessons, which in turn involved being see naked or near naked by classmates. This what when I found out there was something wrong with my bottom, or my leg, depending on how you looked at it. I had a normal enough bottom, but on the left side, I appeared to have two bottoms, one about 8cm lower than the regular one. The flesh and skin on the left leg was pulled into a pursed mouth of a scar. Actually there are two scars, like two small smiles, etched into the top of my leg.

I don't remember who pointed it out or asked why I had two bums, but I do remember mum telling me that next time anyone brought it up I should tell them I was bitten by a shark at Oreti beach, and the scar was where its teeth went in. I was thrilled by this story, and I feel sure I showed off my shark bite to anyone who was interested, just to get the attention.

But the true story also came out. The scar was a polio vaccination injection gone wrong. New Zealand had a couple of polio epidemic in the 1950s (and several in earlier decades of the 1900s). It was routine to vaccinate babies. I have just read that in 1960 an oral vaccination was released in New Zealand, but I had the injection variety, in the big thigh muscle on the left leg. The vaccination site got infected, and what should have been a quick healing jab turned pussy and nasty. The doctor came to clean and drain it. I screamed till I was blue in the face. It took a long time to heal, the doctor couldn't come every day, so it was mum's job to keep the wound clean, and keep it opened up. The doctor told her if she didn't keep it opened up, I would get a deep scar on my leg. My screaming disturbed mum so much that she stopped opening up the wound, and I got a scar. Good for mum. There is no way I would have been able to do something like that to a baby -- to hurt it like that.

I don't mind having that scar. I have never minded. I still refer to it as my shark bite. But I do wonder if that was the start of me fearing mum. If for the short while that she followed doctors orders and pried open my infected leg, I seized up and shrank from her. Is it even possible for a baby to react that way? Certainly I had plenty of other reasons to shrink away later in life, but maybe it all started with the trauma of so much physical pain at the hands of my primary caregiver. Maybe. If so, I would really like to know why.

More Coming

There's more coming. Lots I think. I wake up, in my Canadian bedroom in my new Canadian life and the stories are swirling galaxies out to the edges of my mind, forming, floating apart. Always mum and dad, always Invercargill, as many questions and gaps as stories. Fragments and feelings, fleeting bits and pieces of lives bound so inevitably together and yet so clearly random.

The thing I'm still grappling with is the act of writing. The urge, the tide of it, the shame and guilt and fear about it still alive and well. And a gap too, in the why of it. Why write, why want to, why indulge this urge? I feel like a tree that's been hacked back but keeps coming back for more. Can't be stopped. I don't have a handle on the force of it. I think the answer is knowing that it's actually got nothing to do with me. Not personally. Why else am I here anyway? I will write. More. It's coming.