Wide-a-Bleedin-Wake: On Being Different-ed

Awake since 2.45 am, having spoken to someone else who’s awake on WhatsApp, another cigarette, with good-intentioned hot chocolate in my hand.

I’m supposed to go back to bed and settle down like a good writer, put the phone away and maybe listen to some white noise, but I can’t. I am here at the desktop PC, wishing the other goodnight, and am wide-a-bleedin-wake.

I am up early, so that’s good – let’s get some assessments done on my social media marketing work for my day job. That’ll be productive before 4.00 am. And it’s OK; truly, it is, to be wired before dawn.

I blow smoke out the patio door with the fan on, mosquito-checking and upping the speed. Nothing worse than one coming in, when it’s silent apart from the come-near-me hum while I clack-clack away at the keyboard.

I post my Homemade Beef Ravioli blog and poem to Facebook. Because although I love watching reels on how to cut wood to fit in corners of freshly painted homes, or industrial sewing machine tips, or even those glorious painter’s ‘it’s-easy-mate’ cutting in finery, I am no more able to complete these tasks than I was a year ago, five years ago or by eventually giving it up and delegating it to my husband.

There is less fresh anything now: fresh paint, logs, dinners, linen, ideas or fruit.
I am entirely different-ed. Yes, another unusual word. I come across these like bras I don’t wear anymore and say, “ah,” use them once and then find something more comfortable.

I am writing in association with words and not the world.

Words, comfortable bras, Charlie Dimmock, youth, the garden, the flip-sake-garden, flippin cheek, dancing cheek to cheek, heaven, I’m in heaven, death, dying, dead husband, David.

There! That was a little run. Now let’s begin the speed, like the fan, and write until it stops dripping.

5.07 am – I am altogether unable to let these thoughts fly, as they should; I incarcerate myself and them inside the walls of my own home and mind. I keep them locked up and not able to speak in freedom, in the freedom and utter choice to roam as they could and should; I am silenced by circumstance. Silenced in a way that is barely understood after so long, but this is a prison of my own making and my own thoughts that have enabled this to occur. What will people think? What did they think? Why do I care? What are the consequences of speaking and letting it all come out? What are the downfalls in these situations for people and their lives, livelihoods, reputations, and more? What consequence to me? And what to others connected to me?

I am, too, mini-skewed, minuscule-skewed by my own concerns over speaking freely. I am unable to start up this motor mouth, as the crank that turns the thingamajig is just not oiled or something mechanically unsound in its positioning, not quite lined up, not quite ready to make this old car get back on the road again.

It’s 5.12 am and I have written 201 words in five minutes. So, this is what occurs when I let loose. I write at lightning speed, and I can free-flow like the tap that’s always dripping. Even though I overtighten. And maybe, just maybe, that’s where the problem lies. The over-tightened corset I put myself in. Just speak! God darn it.

Speak it out, let it out, get out and stay out. This hurriedness to become, when there was maturing to do, when there was an entirely different wardrobe to wear and fit into. Bras are not comfortable; they never were, but are necessary.