Butterflies

It is quite raw, so please bear with me and apologies if it is awful, but here is a thing what I wrote.

The girl loved to run and play with her friends. She was still little and knew the simple joy of the sun, the wind and the falling of a leaf. She ran amongst the others every day, through the meadow and down to the woods. She played in the streams, climbed in the trees and looked beneath the rocks. But mostly the girl ran alongside her friend’s, arms wide, mouth open, enthralled by the world.

One day however the girl and her friends came to a dark place, a place they hadn’t been before. The air here was cool but the girl didn’t like the place and sweat prick her skin despite the chill. The air here was damp and stale, but the girl’s throat felt dry and tight. The light was not dappled and playful here, it was dark and uninviting, the girl felt a fluttering, churning in her stomach.  The children stood together, grouped tight, suddenly there was a flash of yellow and they scattered, running again. This time with purpose towards the light and airy places of the world, as fast as their little legs would carry them.

The girl forgot about the dark place and played until the sun started to slip from the sky, one by one the children’s mothers called them home. As the girl turned to shut the door on the world and join the warm, laughter of her family the sky flashed yellow as the sun finished its descent. Suddenly the girl felt a familiar churning, turning in her tummy. Her mother held her and smoothed her hair and soon she was absorbed in family fun, despite there being a funny in her tummy.

The next morning the girl leapt form bed ready to run and play with her friends, but before she could go any further she was pulled back by a tightness in her belly. Her mother smoothed her hair, held her and rocked her and made her a simple porridge to sooth her, but nothing helped. So the girl and her mother went to town to visit the doctor.

The doctor was gruff and grey with a flash of yellow in his eyes. He growled and grumbled at the fuss he was presented with. He told the girl’s mother not to let her eat berries in the wood with her rambunctious friends. He prescribed plenty of rest and sent the girl home to bed.

The girl lay under cool sheets, sipping ice water and listening to her friends run through the meadow, the warmth of the summer sun warming their backs and pushing them toward the cool relief of the woods. The girl missed her friends, but whenever she tried to rise her tummy tightened and ached. Her mother brought her herbal teas to calm and clear her pain but to no avail. Eventually the sun was sinking once again to its nightly slumber. The girl to tried to sleep, but it was a fitful and restless affair.

The next day the girl awoke to find her stomach full and round, reaching out to the world without her, but tender to the touch. Once again the girl and her mother drove to town and visited the gnarled and growling doctor. Even this grumpy, grumbler was perplexed by the girls distorted, double in size, belly pushing her shirt forward. So with more moaning he sent her off to the next town with the big clinic.

The town was big, bigger than the girl could have imagined, the clinic was white and bright, too bright. It was not bright like her airy meadow, despite its brilliance it loomed. The girl held her mother’s hand as they made their way through the corridors, and her troublesome tum, tumbled and twisted with every turn.

The doctors in the clinic were kind but closed, umming and ahhing and looking at her this way and that. The girl held her mother’s hand and tried to think of her meadow, of her wood, of the running streams, the high trees and the low rocks. All that happened though was her stomach began to ache, dull and low. The girl bit her lip and tried not to cry out, she begged her mother to take her home but the doctors shook their heads and made their notes. She was not going home; instead she would have to stay at the giant, white clinic with its lights so bright. She would be prodded and poked, tested and touched, eventually being allowed to sleep, though it was a sleep more fitfully than ever, even with her mother’s protective arm so close by.

On the second day at the clinic the cool and collected staff seemed to be hot under the collar. The girl’s tummy was by now so big and baleful that she struggled to focus on their rambling, ruminations. The doctors and the nurses, the students and the consultants looked and tutted. They scratched their heads, they scratched their beards and they scratched around for ideas. Then a lady doctor stepped forward and said “it’s no use, we need to see what’s inside”. They rushed and they hurried and they got things ready and before the girl could prepare herself the time had come.

The room was hushed; the lady doctor stepped forward with the scalpel raised high. With flick of her wrist and a flash of yellow in her eyes, she made the incision. The girl listened for her scream, but instead came a sigh and from in her insides, fluttered hundreds of butterflies.

The girl soon recover and before very long was back running and playing with all of her chums. If there is anything we can learn from the girl in the woods, don’t run with your mouth open, you never know what you’ll catch.  

Fit to work

"One out of four people in this country is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three closes friends; if they seem OK, then you're the one." - Ann Landers

I am contemplating going back to work. I don't want to go, but I really should. My job isn't that bad, I am sure someone would love it. Unfortunately it's just not me. The people I work with are lovely I couldn't wish for better colleges. Although jokes when the heating is off, again, don't always go down that well.

I've been off for a fortnight, viral exhaustion. Get a virus, add a bunch of emotional stressors, lack of sleep, bad eating and boom you find yourself whacked out. It's not just that though.

I'm being stalked by the black dog and lately he's been hanging around, not for a game of fetch. I wish I could put my finger on what attracted his attention, but that's the problem isn't it. If the cause was obvious, the symptoms would be much easier to deal with.

I am lucky, I have a great counselor, an amazing family, fantastic friends. I know that balanced food, sleep, exercise are important. Sometimes though it doesn't matter how hard you fight, how hard you try, it still creeps up on you. Drags you down.

So I am contemplating going back to work, but I am nervous. I am nervous about adding something extra to my week. I am nervous about where black dog might lead me, who I might become. 

Scared of who you are.

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

Sometimes being white, middle class, and from the home counties can be scary. Not in a fear for you life way, not as in how am I going to survive tomorrow kind of way, but never-the-less scary. Lets not forget that as with most things of this nature, the essence of fear is relative.

Being who I am and where I am from with my lifestyle and upbringing makes me hated. It makes me a target for a lot of vitriol. In that sense I feel a strange kinship with those who seem are very far removed from me, but who are the target of the vitriol of the flip side of the same coin, so called benefit scrounging scum.

Privately educated, you are clearly up your own arse, with a sense of entitlement the size of Jupiter  Comfortably off, clearly you are tax cheating, thieving, scum who hides white collar, unspecified crimes under a layer of Prada and Channel. From the home counties, clearly you having everything and more and would rather kick a tramp than consider "giving back". Goodness forbid that you try and express and opinion, that you try and share your experiences, no-one can hear you because of the silver spoon in your mouth.

Maybe everyone who is shouting, be it about benefit cheats or toffee nosed rich kids, should just stop for a minute and consider the human beings behind the stereotype. Maybe if instead of relying of caricatures we should be thinking about how to turn people towards one another instead of away. Maybe we should look at the stories, not the generalizations.

But then I am spoilt little rich kid, so I am not entitled to an opinion.

It's about to get weirder

"You're traveling through another dimension........ Your next stop...the Twilight Zone."—Rod Serling

Welcome, it's late and I've had a long day.......consider yourself warned. I am currently sat in bed duel screening and munching wafer biscuits. I have been to the gym and the endorphin's are flowing. Expect nonsense and limited punctuation. 

Sometimes the way I approach thing exasperates even me. I hate waiting, really hate it. I think it is because once I have made a decision I want whatever I have chosen, now. I need to know if I was right, what the next step is, exactly how things are going to work. I am a kinesthetic learner, (yes, I did just do that to use a long word) I learn by doing. Sure I might be able to grasp the concepts by watching or listening, but unless I have got hands on, down and dirty, I can't be sure if I understand. 

I guess that is probably my dyslexia, I often wonder how much of the way I am is just every day weirdness and how much of it is my kinked up brain. My Dad is just as weird as I am, if not more so. I am fairly sure he is a bit spectrumy as well. That's not PC is it,......is it OK if you say it in reference to yourself and others? Bah your are all geeky creatures you know what I mean. 

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation about being clinically thick dyslexic. Someone shared that it is something they keep to themselves, that they worry about, that they think they hide. Which is something I find hugely alien. My darling parentals, dear old Mum and Dad, are as nuts as a welly full of bats, they are truly wonderful, but boy did they land me with some baggage. Not however when it comes to my dyslexia. As far as my parents are concerned the yes dyslexia explains why my brother and I can't spell,and why my brother writes in the most difficult way possible, but also gives us so much that other folk don't have. Sure my brother and I joke about being clinically thick, but really we see ourselves as having something special, something that makes us different from you normos. In our house it really is the gift of dyslexia. 

To be honest most of the time I don't think about it. The only time I do consider it is when I am communicating in writing and then the thought is, I hope they don't get so caught up on my spelling and punctuation that they miss seeing me *waves*. Not that I am anything special, but I am a whole lot more than my inability to work out where the u goes. (color, coulor, colour, cuouluour?) I'm a bit odd, several shades of special, but there a some folks out there who like, or at the least tolerate that sort of thing. 

I guess all of this really begs the question, if dyslexia can be viewed so differently by two people who suffer/enjoy it. What other "disorders" might we need to reconsider. It is the age old question, is it the mad man who is really mad?