The swim

The swim

 

I have always loved the water. Show me a puddle and I want to stand in it, a pool and I want to jump in it, and a sea I want to become part of it. I’m not a bad swimmer either, it takes a lot for me to say that as I’ve always thought of myself as bad at most things, particularly sport, but I can thrash along quite happily these days for a while. 

 

I have always been afraid of deep water. The blackness. The unknown. The reverse vertigo of seeing land 10 metres below you but finding yourself miraculously suspended above it simply waiting for the drop. Wondering what is watching you from beneath or if my skill and buoyancy will suddenly desert me and I’ll find myself leaving behind the light and warmth of the surface and sinking down into the darkness, never to return to the surface. 

 

So I would stay close to shore. I would avoid rivers and lakes, where death would lurk waiting for an opportunity to grab an overly confident girl, then woman who really should know better than to listen to the call of the deep. 

 

Because it does call. 

 

The water. The depths. The unknown. 

 

It has always called me. Sang to me. Whispered my name in the waves and the ripples. Daring me to move. 

 

To be risk averse is seen as a good thing. The sensible thing. The right thing. But is it the human thing? Don’t we all feel more alive when we embrace the wildness, when we surrender to the unknown, when we are able to shout to the world, 

 

“Come on and have your way with me! You can’t scare me.”

 

She said, hands trembling, voice shaking, knees a-knocking.

 

The truth is I’m scared a lot of the time, and I used to think that was bad. But now I think that being scared is a super power. It gives me the chance to be brave. 

 

So I started going out of my depth. I answered the call and I swam out. I pushed away the thoughts of monsters and darkness and drowning and I swam. And I did it again. And again. And again. 

 

I’m not reckless. I swim within myself. It just turns out that within myself is immeasurably more than I thought. The depths sang to me because there are depths in me. I need the depths to live. To be free. 

 

It’s the feeling you get when you climb a mountain, or run with the rain in your face. It’s the feeling you get when you go for a job that scares you or when you open your mouth and speak the truth. It’s the feeling you get when you hold someone against your chest as their tears soak through your clothes or when you tell someone that you love them. 

 

We need that feeling more. Cutting through the surface of the black, cold water like scissors through silk. Intensely vulnerable. Undeniably human. Utterly alive. 

 

Mary Oliver says it better than me,

 

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down into the grass

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

 

I’m going to swim. 

 

Free

I think I can remember

though it seems so long ago

like a story I once imagined

a dream that blurs the edges of you and me.

I remember when all was still waters, green pastures

when my soul sang and needed no restoration

when all before me was ready prepared.

A deluxe ready meal from heaven.

I remember you beside me

as certain of your presence

as I was certain of your goodness

your continued goodness; always.

I think I can remember

though it seems so long ago

like a story I once imagined

before the curtain closed and darkness fell,

And I came to the end of me,

to the end of the world entire,

when all the goodness was gone

and all was upside down and darkness.

And thirst.

Horrible thirst.

That held me down and used me up

when all I could whisper was one thing

just one thing.

Where are you?

And all I heard was silence.

You were gone,

and I was going too, melting and hardening

my heart turned to wax inside me

disappearing inside me,

it ran out of me

down my face

down my arms

out and down.

Pooling beneath me, empty now,

then, hardening in the wrong places

hemming me in

freezing me where I stood.

Alone.

Totally alone.

Forsaken, to use a word you’d know.

And still thirsty.

And mad.

So mad.

Unheard and paralysed, now abandoned?

Where are you? I said again

but instead of a plea, it was a challenge.

Where are you?

Where are you?

Where are you?

I shouted, raising my voice,

A final time in angry desperation.

Then I heard four words

Just four words.

Tell me, and drink.

I was silent, my voice dried up

my eyes watching for a trick.

Tell me, and drink.

So I spoke,

and there was no filter, no pre approved language

I spoke and it poured from me

And onto him.

My toes began to twitch,

My legs moved inside their waxy prison.

It cracked and I felt a beat

It came from inside me

The beat of a heart that was not lost but found

Somehow.

Still I spoke, the words kept pouring

and with each fear, each pain, each tear

My thirst lessened, the darkness rolled away.

My soul began to bloom

Like a garden in spring that sneaks up when your back is turned.

This can’t be me, I think

The pain, not gone, but used

Instead of a dark cave

I find myself at the edge of a new world.

The cave at my back

I start out across this new landscape.

Past waterfalls, through valleys

And up, onto the ridges.

I turn and look,

The cave is not gone, but smaller

A geographical feature but only

One part of this great, big world.

Where are you? I whisper

Looking down from the mountaintop

A hand on my shoulder, scarred and worn,

I turn and see

Your feet, your face, your mouth, your eyes

Looking at me, only at me.

I drink you in, rest my head on your chest

Fall to my knees and cry and laugh and smile.

My thirst is gone.

For you are here.

Holding my soul in nail scarred hands.

Always, to the very end of the age.

Gillian Fox 2/4/2019

Keys

Keys

 

Assess the danger

a shorter walk past the trees

or the longer, safer route?

The main road, well lit

passing traffic

but

passing traffic.

A threat, or salvation, or nothing at all, just

more of the same, doors locked at the lights.

Good.

Exactly like their Dad taught them.

 

They say not to walk alone

but I’m on the late shift

drive then

but I can’t afford the lessons

never mind a car.

I have my keys though.

The magic weapon

plunge them into the weak spots.

Groin

eyes

nose.

He can press over two hundred

he could have a knife

he can be on you before you can see him

 

but it’s ok

I have my keys.

 

I have a rape alarm too

it sounds like every other city noise

the ones we ignore

the background

that symphony of modern life that sends babies to sleep

and reminds me in my restless state

that I am not the only one awake.

It went off accidentally in the library once,

people just kept working, lightly laughing after I wrestled

the pin back in beside the journals.

 

I love to walk,

I’d run too, through the park the setting sun

dappling my skin through the trees

leaving the gates sweaty and breathless

casting my eyes upwards to search for Venus.

But I can’t run alone, not now, not there

not since that twilight moment by the canal.

There were three and there was me

maybe none of them had sisters

girlfriends

wives

or Mothers

maybe they were newly sprung from arrogance

and fear there, on that canal path

or maybe not.

 

I did not have my keys.

This was my mistake.

But it is so hard to run with keys,

encumbered

when all I want is to be free.

 

To run in the park

to walk in the dark

to take a shortcut after a late shift

when the rain is pooling in my less than sturdy shoes

to not clutch my keys in my tight fist and pray to go

unnoticed.

 

I thought for a moment the story had changed

but the me too became lost in politics

her story became his

the people disappeared and we became sides.

Divided.

 

I’m a threat to masculinity

I’m damaging my husband and my son with my feminist narrative.

I’m a dangerous extremist

but I just wanted to run.

To walk in the dark.

To live free.

 

Now together we paint freedom

we hope for more

and we create it minute by minute

hour by hour

day by day.

 

We turn keys in doorways and leave the doors wide open

we discover secret ballrooms

walled gardens

and starlit parks.

We give our keys away

making room for more

 

for him

 

and for her.

 

 

 

Gillian Fox – March 2019

 

 

 

Flip flop

Flip flop

by Gillian Fox

 

The snow had arrived late this year. Towards the end of February, when a few brave flowers had begun to reveal their colours to the strengthening sun only to be engulfed in a sudden cover of white. Winter’s final act.

At Christmas it had been mild, yet again. I had wrapped myself up in scarves and fake fur hats that perfectly accessorised the season, if not the temperature. Photos of me from then show me pink-cheeked and smiling. Cold, but happy; festive, like a smiling ice-skater who carries the scent of cinnamon with her wherever she goes. Part Judy Garland at the winters ball, part Caucasian eskimo.

The photos didn’t show that my cheeks were pink from heat. I had spent most of December steaming slowly from beneath my many layers, less festive goddess, more boil-in-the-bag rice.

I wasn’t happy either. I could feel him slipping away from me. My fingers curved around his arm like a vice, white knuckled as I tried to cling onto him. I was mad about him. Madder than I had been about Matt or Joe, even Harry. I tried to contain it, curb all my natural instincts, but I failed again. I was left, overheated and inappropriately dressed with a pile of presents that had no one to open them. They sat, beautifully wrapped, judging me from beneath my perfect tree.

I burned them in the wood burner on New Years Eve. Just me and Boo warming ourselves on the ashes of my mistakes. All that was left was one small beribboned box. Aftershave.

I couldn’t bring myself to ditch it in the wheelie bin, casually discarded among the empty prosecco bottles and the turkey carcass, instead I buried it in the garden in a spot close to my “soon to be returning” rhubarb.

It may have been the gin, but I wanted to use my hands. I wore the rubber gloves my cleaner keeps beside the sink. Their pink rubberiness protecting my nails from the mud, but still allowing me to feel the earth between my fingers as I buried my desires for his scent.

If the snow had fallen that night perhaps it would’ve all ended somewhat differently. Instead it remained dark, drizzly and aggressively mild. The ground soft. Pliable.

Now the snow is here. Two months late but thick and crunchy, exploding with each step I take, like the world is carpeted in bubble wrap. A final desperate push, like my own white knuckles, clinging. Holding. Trying to delay the inevitable springtime.

Life seemed all white knuckles and tight grips. The desperate cling of humanity to something, anything, familiar. The cling to the expected, the cling to the normal, the cling to the lie. The softness had long gone, all that remained was hard. Frozen.

It seemed to me, as I brooded beneath blankets, laptop balanced on my knees, phone within grasp, fingers moving up and down incessantly, that the lost scent of hope had permeated into my home. Snaking its way through the shallow grave and my UPVC French doors.

Lost hope smells bad. And it gets into everything. Curdled dreams in my curtains, rotting plans in the porch, the stink of failure that the Febreze of casual lovers could not expel.

Why not him? Why not me?

Had he not felt it too? The surge as we stood close to each other. The flip flop of the stomach as we ate together. I know he must have. The ring had disappeared along with the onion tart, still two courses to go. Thigh against thigh. Darting eyes. The always yes to more wine had become the always yes to everything.

She came here once. After it was all over. Just before New Years Eve, on one of those nothing days that stretch out in a fog of too much cheese and awkward familial encounters.

Did I know where he had gone? No, I answered honestly. I didn’t know where he had gone.

All that remained of him was the emails, the messages. And that final one. Business-like. Efficient. Cold. Sent ten days before, on Christmas jumper day.

I did not know where he had gone.

All that remained was the scent of what we had lost.

Lingering still.

 

Gillian Fox – Dec 2018

 

We speak in silence

We speak in silence

The wall is up before me,

so close I can touch my nose against it.

It wobbles, swaying like an insubstantial mist.

I move closer, pushing my head into it,

no, not insubstantial, thick like oil, dense and heavy like all I do not say.

“Are you alright?” I hear the question repeated.

I nod.

I live, I breathe, I squeeze hands and smile.

I can still smile.

The roof protects me from the rain.

I have blankets and penguins and Netflix and love.

So much love.

But my eyes throb, heavy with the expectation of strength.

In my weakness

In my weakness

my weakness, my frailty, my throbbing eyes.

He is strong?

Or is he gone? Long gone like all I thought I knew.

My fingernails are gone, bitten off in failed attempts to calm my racing heart.

It thuds within me, racing, lurching, is it trying to outrun me?

Did it leave me that day in Sainsbury’s car park?

Or did it leave me before then?

Is it decaying in the lost corner of the porch, where I forgot to pick it up,

when it took me over an hour to pick up myself.

Did I leave it there?

Amidst the scooters and walking boots, the discarded joy of life.

“Are you alright?”

All of me screams No.

I am wrecked, my soul is ruined, life is too big, too violent, too much.

I remain silent, desperate to talk, unable to speak through the wall of oil.

I speak in silence, wordlessly hoping for a translator,

for anyone who speaks the silent language.

You knock at the door, as I cower beneath blankets of fleece and isolation.

You bring tea and penguins.

You bring bread and warm hands.

You bring me a lost package, bloodied but beating.

You cradle it gently in your hands, my lost heart.

You had kept it safe for me.

We speak in silence.

A language of hands held and tears wiped.

Of big skies and muddy boots.

We speak in silence and write symphonies of hope,

descants of delight,

underscored by understanding.

We speak in silence.

And my heart beats on, a flicker in the dark.

Gillian Fox December 2018

Trust. And the power of a great teacher.

Trust is often one of those things we don’t have to think about. I trust that my seatbelt will work in case of emergency. I trust that the roof above me will not fall. I trust that the sun will rise in the morning. Things get shadier when I trust the weather forecast, or the strength of a tree canopy to protect a birthday cake from a dousing, or the will of the people in a high stakes election process.

Trust is one of those strange things, that manages to be two polar opposites at the exact same time. Trust is easy, I can trust unquestioningly, as easily as I breathe in and out. But, if trust is broken, or we are broken, trust is difficult. Trust in the people around us, trust in the words of friends and strangers, and sometimes, hardest of all, trust in ourselves.

I’ve begun each day this week with writing, the same as I do every week. I’ve made some progress, form is being refined out of a decimated draft. I’m needing to trust myself, my gut, what I have learnt from writing regularly and with discipline these past few years. In this brutal editing process trust in myself is all, and it is hard.

The voice of doubt can scream so loudly. How can you ever drown it out? The doubting, judgemental, disbelieving voice that must be drowned by each of us; or how will we ever achieve anything? How will we dare to live rightly, to step out towards the dream and trust that if we fall and fail and flounder spectacularly, it will be worth it anyway?

I spent a long time believing I was dumb. Bottom table in infant school (despite my voracious reading habits), bottom half of year six. I was always terrified. I never spoke, was deeply shy and if I didn’t understand something, I never had the courage to say. Not dumb, just shy, unconfident, massively unsure and trying to survive without drawing attention to myself or getting shouted at. I always hated confrontation of any kind, even now, a dismissive tone or a raised voice is the easiest way to make me cry; should you ever wish too.

Low to middling in secondary school and sorted into third set for English – the ‘please God let some of these kids get a C’ set. Thankfully, this is when I got Mr Merifield. There are so many good teachers in my story, but there is only one Mr Merifield. Like all the best teachers he taught me so much more than what he was paid to teach me. He taught me lessons that have stayed with me, and that I have drawn on, my whole life. And, wow, he was funny!

I began to speak, to ask questions, to contribute my thoughts and the more I did that, the more I believed in myself. I remember, with joy, how it felt to walk into a room and have someone glad to see you, and eager to listen to what you had to say. It is no small thing, to listen to a child, to make them feel of worth. I bet there are hundreds of north-eastern kids whose lives are better because of his input. What a legacy.

On my final day at school, he signed my autograph book.

Trust in your abilities

Before I walked into his classroom I barely felt like I had any abilities, when I left; I was a different person. I had abilities, things only I could think and do and say; and I could trust them (I also got two A’s and could finally tell the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’.). Would I be writing without his influence? I can’t say. Would I be different to who I am today? Undoubtedly.

Trust in your ability. Those are four of the words that help me drown out the doubting voice. A voice of kindness and encouragement, that gave me the car and the keys and the map to my own adventure. Sometimes I hardly need to think about them, at other times they are my mantra, repeated over and over until they overpower, again, that doubting voice.

What are your words? Words that vanquish the demons and let the light in? What are the lies you need to drown out before you can step forward and succeed, or fail, beautifully? You can share my words if you like?

Trust in your ability; now come and fail spectacularly with me.

The Wound

I’m no poet. I write blogs, short stories and novels. I love to read poetry, but have never felt like sharing any of my small, inexpert attempts. Getting vulnerable and sharing something I wrote in bed this morning, reflecting on the upcoming Easter, and what that means for me; and for all of us. Be kind, I’m a public poetry virgin…

THE WOUND

When I was eight, I ran into a wall

the blood trickled down my neck,

pooling in my collarbone

And I cried.

Then I was ten, and fell down two flights of stairs

running through a Scarborough hotel.

I felt my spine bounce of the wall

And I cried.

So many wounds and cuts, sprains and falls,

that give way to a greater pain.

Hurts and failures, disappointment and grief,

And sometimes, we learn not to cry

to hold it all inside, and cope

‘I am strong enough to hold it, in, and all’ we say.

We toughen up, we harden up,

the wound scabs over, but beneath it still bleeds.

We ignore it, the itching irritation,

the inconvenient tenderness of life

that slows us down

and sends us to bed with a tub of Ice cream and Netflix.

Unsatisfied.

But we can rise.

Shake off the blankets that buffer us

and sing

because the wound is more.

More than the pain.

More than the ugliness.

More than an inconvenient tenderness.

The wound is strength and weakness, like the salt and vinegar crisps of heaven.

The wound is the beginning

and the end of you and me.

The gateway,

To another, and another us.

There was a wound deeper than mine.

A wound that was all my pain, and yours too.

A wound that led to death; but didn’t stop there.

Three days it took.

The wound can be healed,

the scars might remain

but transformed

a source of beauty, not shame.

He is magician,

taking the wound tenderly

in nail scarred hands,

‘I’ve got this’ he says, smiling.

He makes the wound a badge of honour,

a medal of valour for his dearly loved.

He turns my wound into a crown;

to match his own.

Gillian Fox – March 2018

Sing Louder

I’m a naturally anxious person. I always have been. As a kid I spent hours worrying that I was destined to die young because my star sign was Cancer. I would lie awake for hours on a Sunday night, dreading the week ahead, not because anything particularly bad was on the horizon; just because I knew that I would have to leave my bedroom, my books, my Barbie dolls and go out into the world. It worried me.

Sunday nights often still do. It is no surprise that I find myself writing these very words on a Sunday evening, my week already of too an unpredictable start with my eldest ill in bed with the flu and me having to call into work to say I can’t go in. My week hasn’t even started yet!

Anxiety central.

My mind is racing ahead of me, not just out of reach, but out of sight. Miles ahead, turning off the main road and taking detours though dark forests and past abandoned factories. Trying to get ahead of any prospective new horrors. But really, just finding more.

So I put pen to paper. I’m not going to chase it down dark roads, rather I will sit here and wait, pen in hand, for it to return to me, tail between its legs and sit back down beside me.

I can see it coming now, reluctantly, like a toddler who doesn’t believe that you aren’t chasing them, and wonders what you have found that is so interesting.

My breath deepens. Slows.

The pen is a mighty weapon indeed.

I know I’m not the only one. The only one who lies awake and worries. Who has to summon the courage to walk into a building full of people and look them in the eye and smile. Who always makes her husband order the takeaway because she just can’t stand talking on the phone right now.

But I know that with a pen in my hand, or a word document open before me, I wield a power over my worries, my anxiety, over the darkness that lies inside all of us, somewhere.

Honesty.

Authenticity.

Relationship.

Connection.

These are my weapons, and my ammunition is words. Words are powerful. It’s why I love them. Words, whether you write them or read them, can reach inside you, right down to the core, and switch on a light. They can extinguish the darkness and bring hope.

Words matter. What we read. The ‘content’ we fill ourselves up with. What we say. To other people, and to ourselves. In this time of fake news and cringy, empty platitudes, honest communication matters more and more.

Who you are, what you think, how you feel, matters. You matter.

This week I’m going to try and speak over the din. Bring honesty and hope and reality, where there is none.

If I feel anxious, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. I’m going to acknowledge it and know that it will pass.

Fear will disappear, maybe not forever, but for now, and I’ll have some words ready for its return.

Now, I’m just going to breathe.

Be honest.

Be kind.

To me first, and then to my little world.

Peace, and the other side of the coin.

 

 

I don’t like resolutions, but I do like thinking of things I want to learn, things I want to experience, over a fixed timeframe. January is an obvious time to do this. To think of the year ahead, what has happened and what might happen. Over the last few years I have had the year of wonder, the year of creativity and the year of friendship. These themes usually take me a bit of time to figure out, but I’m usually sorted by about the third week of January.

This year my word seemed obvious. In December I was sure that 2018 was going to be the year of peace. Peace; that wonderful and allusive thing that surpasses all understanding. Peace that thing that seems out of reach right now, but is calling my name. Peace, maybe the key to my anxiety and the solution to my sleepless nights.

There will be things that happen over the coming year over which I will have no control. Things that can harm and destroy and rob. I choose peace in the face of the unknown storm. Peace seemed to be the obvious choice.

I have a little, wooden sign that hangs on my bathroom mirror. I see it in the morning when I’m washing my face and cleaning my teeth. I see it in the evening with the day behind me and the prospect of another in front of me. It reads, peace. A gift from a sweet friend, back in the days before life unleashed its painful and beautiful fullness upon me. I don’t think she quite realised what she was giving to me at the time.

Peace has hung on my bathroom mirror for over three years now, reminding me each day and in each storm that peace is with me. That it dwells in my home and in my soul. That I am, in my very nature, a carrier of peace.

The evening I decided that peace would be my word for 2018, I thought that sleep would not evade me, as it had been for weeks on end, but it did. I lay awake, tossing and turning, getting more and more stressed that peace couldn’t be experienced when my eyelids were so heavy and my heart so tired. I felt that peace was making a mockery of me.

Of course, peace is not dependant on sleep, in the same way that joy is not dependant on happiness. I can lie in bed, unable to sleep and still find rest. Peace is in my insomnia as sure as it is in my eight hours.

Peace can seem passive, but the peace that surpasses all understanding is anything but passive. Then I realised that this year, one word wasn’t enough. It wasn’t that peace was the wrong word for now, it was and is without doubt, the right word for me. It’s just not the only one.

You see, peace is simply one side of the coin, and I need both.

So 2018 will be the year of peace and of bravery.

It takes bravery to choose peace. It takes bravery to surrender your heart to the great unknown. It takes bravery to set out in the storm and trust that you will not be irredeemably broken and destroyed. It takes bravery to hope.

I got my eight hours last night. I may not tonight. My mind may find fresh things to be anxious about, my heart might race and my soul might ache, but I’m trusting that I will have peace and I’m choosing to be brave.

And to hope.

For the peace that surpasses all understanding and the bravery to ride out the storm.