I've been looking over my posting history over the past year or
two. It reveals my state of mind. Patchy. I can't say more on the why now. It's
tricky, since, as artists know, what floats to the surface is the truth of the
state of being. For various reasons I can't currently write what I am still
grappling with, not least as I have a court case pertaining to truth, and I am
unable to speak until things become public, as the court case will shortly
be.
My abusers forced this court case upon me, but what will come as a
result of it will be freedom - for me - at great cost, but the cost of silence
in the face of abuse is a greater cost. What cost freedom? For those that do
not speak truth, there is never freedom. To live in denial, in its many ways is
to live, and act out of a lie. If we live in the light, truth will result: this
is a challenge. It is easier to hide in the dark and we all have that
compulsion. We are all haunted, and seduced, by darkness. It's a quick, but
tricksy fix.
I've been in a dark season, as some of you know, since December
2015, thanks to the unconscious hatred of me by my mother, whom I loved deeply,
but whose emotional torture of me, I don't miss. Her legacy (in both senses),
in life, and left for me by her death, has been unspeakably cruel, but I will
resist what she intended. As will my children. But there is antithesis,
antidote, to cling to:
There are other truths despite the above and much else that has
been visited on my family and me: There is light and life and love. This week,
there has been so much unexpected sunshine that has banished the bite of
winter. I watched it light up and halo the blonde beauty of my three young
children's heads as they ran and danced within it. I've laughed over dinner,
and sang even, with friends. I've watched the fortitude of friends whose
daughter is suffering with what I like to think of as a curable illness. This
time last year my middle son was almost taken from us by septicaemia. The night
I prayed all night in the ICU as I circled his bed, is worth remembering for
the faces of the many nurses at the doorway proclaiming a miracle: they had
told me he might not make the night and there he was, no longer delirious, but
sitting up in bed. He made the day.
I have been making art where I have been unable to write - in the
longer form at any rate, though I have been encouraged by a review of some of
my poems. And this week, a revelation: if I collude with the enforced silence
of my abusers, I enable them further. Yes, I know you're reading this. My
writing and my art are acts of protest. They will continue. As will I. There is
a God and I believe that he he/she is good. I also really do believe that love
- and the source thereof - is really all we need. I thank God for those around
our family that love us; for the doing of love and the being of love. I am
coming out of the woods. The light is all around me; I just need to keep
seeking it.
