Deeper into sensitivity
I fall into the stream of life
Torrents force off
All that is not supple
Brittle screams
Screech from my
Putrid stomach
Drowning with the old.
I endure the pain
Of flayed skin
Ripping through my psyche
Only because
I have no choice.
After the storm
Raw naked skin
Gleams
As I birth into
The new unknown.
I had planned to start the three positives on my birthday a few weeks earlier. All was going well then. I had just returned from the states having loved and been loved. I returned to my homeland. It wasn't easy. Culture shock is not easy in foreign places,but within the place I have been calling my country for 15 years while living abroad, it affects my self identity. Am I English? Who am I? What am I? And why won't this debit card go in that slot? 'Face down madam.'
Meanwhile, my alien presence is affecting where I have been invited to live: my brother's. He and his wife, coming out of several difficult years, find that they cannot cope with another in their house, and in panic, decide silence over overt aggression and give me three days to find a place to live, by email. I am thrown out. Guilty without trial. It is hard to stay quiet. But I do. John my companion through life at present, explains a Buddhist therapist once asked him 'Life is not fair. What problem to do you have with that?'
I become homeless for the first time. Really homeless. Like I don't know where I'm going to sleep each night. I have no friends or community to call on. I have reduced my suitcase to the minimum. Nothing of value, just in case. In case of what? I dare not let my mind go there.
Meanwhile I have started a project to send out gratitude to the world. And it is saving me. My mind wanders around positives, sniffing, savouring, recognising. They are sparks of light in this dark night, through stomach clenching fears, through this passage of life.
Welcome home.
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| Don't worry England, you're guarded. |
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