Hello friends! If you don’t have a J pouch/internal pouch and you’re of a sensitive disposition, you might not be so into this one. This is a no holds barred, frank post about toilets, farts, and poop. If you have a pouch, some of these might sound familiar, and if you don’t, well, you’re about to get some insight into what it’s like. Yay! And if you don’t know where you are or how you got here, an internal pouch is what you get if you have your colon removed, then have a bit of your small intestine turned into a makeshift large intestine so you don’t have to have a colostomy bag. Okay? Cool!
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I visit the local library for the first time in at least ten years. It is no longer my local library, but still my parents’, and still local enough. I go because first I took myself to brunch at a café down the road and
had substandard poached eggs that offered me thin white egg juices on the first incision, and dark orange yolk on the second, amalgamating into mush on the plate. I had wanted to write in the café, but brunch then felt like less of a treat and more of a mission.
I had a bit of a clearout of my wardrobe today. I say a bit, because I never manage to throw very much away. But I have thrown out my favourite dress, which doesn’t quite fit right/look so good on anymore and probably never will again.
my best friend is the one who
not only let me talk about my scars
and listened, but was
bold enough to ask to see them,
sweet enough to tell me they were badass,
and trusting enough to show me his own.
Today I submitted my dissertation, which means my MA Creative Writing is now over! Well, apart from the tense wait for my results. But I finished the thing, submitted it a week before the due date, and refrained from typing AAAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHH into the comments box, so win? I really hope my dissertation is okay and that I get a good grade for it. If I pass the whole course with distinction I will be over the moon, but even just to have completed it and passed will be an awesome achievement. It’s been a lot of fun doing the course, having a purpose and challenging myself, but at the same time I’m way more keen on the creative writing side than the pedagogy, research, referencing, and so on. So I’m glad I did it, but also happy to have some more time to do other things.
I wrote a whole post about honorary brothers and then deleted it so I’ll just let this hypothetical question stand on its own without the gumph and you can send your answers on a postcard with no context whatsoever: is it acceptable to name people your honorary siblings after your actual sibling has passed?
the earth is bone dry and cracked under the shade
of the trees, a desert in this full yet so deserted place.
Three times a year we would come when I was a child,
with plastic flowers or a wreath at Christmas. I filled
up the watering can at the tap and watch as mum and
dad cleared off dead leaves, forced metal plant supports
into the soil, hoped the rabbits wouldn’t come this time.
A vision of dad spitting onto a tissue to wipe the bird
muck off the grey granite. Grandmother visiting once
and declaring that this is no place for a child to be and
me silently agreeing as I stood at the sidelines, hands in
pockets. We scraped our shoes against the pavement
as we walked to get rid of some of the mud on those
rainy days. I wondered what they all felt and what that
was like and I still do, years later, coming by myself,
a visit partly because everyone else is in Spain and even
the dead should have visitors on their birthdays, and
partly because I want to see if I can feel something.
I don’t. I don’t feel grief and I can’t force myself to
feel it no matter how long I stand and stare at my
name and his engraved in the stone, at red and white
flowers I never would have chosen, at the gold cross
and the platitudes I hate. I don’t feel but as a by-product
of that I feel guilty for not feeling and I feel angry that
I can’t feel and I feel jealous of all the people who do
feel.
I have never felt numb and I have always psycho-analysed
myself and I have always known myself, but to not know
him, and to not feel for him – I don’t know what to do
with that so I sit on a bench and enjoy the sunshine and the
grass and think about how emotional I usually am and how
much I have grieved for myself but how today of all days
I can’t shed a single tear for him, not even a drop
to dampen the cracked, dry earth beneath my feet.
Spent a little bit of time this evening adding some blackout poetry to my scrapbook. Clippings courtesy of old Writers Magazine issues, word-twisting by me.
Also, here is the front cover of my scrapbook – isn’t it gorgeous?
This is a quick note about how I tried not to let a bad memory ruin my morning. One of my work colleagues became a dad yesterday, which meant that this morning people in the office were talking about birth, labour, c-sections and epidurals. I sat listening while working (it’s a small office, it’s impossible not to listen), until the bit about the epidural, at which point I grabbed my headphones, went to YouTube and clicked on the first music video I saw. Which, usefully, was Slipknot, but anything would have worked to drown out what they were saying.
This is a guest blog post by Sheryl Chan from A Chronic Voice. Read on to find out why you should write your way through chronic illness, and discover more about Sheryl below!
Why Write?
Blogging about chronic illnesses can be hard work. For some, the exposure of their privacy or the intimacy of the topics can be a
deterrent. Others struggle with expressing their thoughts, or posting content on a regular basis. Vicious, unconstructive trolls who don’t even bother reading are an energy drain. Usually, it is a combination of all of these factors. So why do we even bother?
