Can you hear the silence?

On Thursday I had a breakdown.  Which sounds very melodramatic.  I am not myself now but I have to be back by Sunday night, or Monday morning.  Or Tuseday at the very latest.  I have to be well enough to pretend to cope.

And now it’s very quiet in my head most of the time.  Except for the screaming.

It’s not usually quiet in my head.  I don’t mean that I hear voices in the schizophrenic sense or that I have a head full of personalities struggling for control of my body.  I mean that there are always narratives and observations going on in there.   I’m always thinking about stuff.  And I can always hear that thinking and the other thinking about the thinking.

I suppose that means I really am a writer.  Weather I like it or not.

But at the moment things are different.  It’s very quiet in here.  There must be thinking going on but I don’t hear it.  If there’s a narrative then it’s hiding from me.  The only thing I do hear, and I don’t hear it all the time, is the screaming.  And the comentary on the screaming.  Because some things don’t change.

The screaming breaks out occasionally.  Most of the screaming isn’t words it’s just noise. It’s just an incoherent cry of rage and pain.  And a quiet voice talking over it telling me that a part of me is screaming.  The occasional words break through the scream but it’s mostly swearing and seems to be directed nowhere in particular.  I am angry at everyone and everything and especially myself.

Being angry with myself is nothing new.  I usually am and I have been for as long as I can remember.  Even as a small child with some adult screaming at me for some bullshit, as angry as I was with them, I was angrier at myself for my weakness.  I wanted to stand up for myself.  I wanted to be big.  I wanted to be big enough to talk back and make them stop.  But even then there was another voice.  The one that was angry with me for having got myself into whatever situation had led to the shouting.

Well I succeeded in making myself big.  But it didn’t really help.  Talking back only ever seemed to make things worse.  And I couldn’t stop making mistakes, doing things wrong, being the wrong person.

Because I was always the wrong person.  I was never who people thought I was.  I was never the person I was supposed to be and I was always coming up short and I didn’t understand why.  To me it seemed like I was only being myself.  Why did people keep expecting me to be someone else?

I still don’t really know the answer to that question.

I know that I was always a disappointment to my father.  Worse than that I was proof of his failure.  It was painful for him to look at me and it hurt me to see him feel that pain.  I’m not entirely sure what he wanted but it certainly wasn’t me.  I suppose he wanted me to have his work ethic.  He wanted me to be the way he thought women should be.  Maybe he wanted me to be more like my Mum.  Or his Mum.  Or just less me.

He wanted me to be thin.  He wanted me to be sane.  He wanted me to have a job, or a husband with a job.  He wanted me to be normal.

I don’t know what normal is.  I don’t know anyone normal.

My Dad’s dead now.  So I’ve lost my chance to make him proud.  I wish I could have told him that he wasn’t a failure.  He couldn’t make me the person he thought I should be in his lifetime but the fight goes on.  One of the voices in my head, which is currently strangely silent but I’m sure it will be back, was his.  So even now he’s dead there’s still a part of him pointing out to me how I’ve fallen short, or been selfish, or asked for too much, or been lazy.  And you can’t punch a dead man.  So I’ve lost my chance to do that too.  Sometimes I feel like digging him up to have a crack so it’s probably a good thing I can’t actually get to his grave.

Did I say that out loud?

I think my Mother’s voice was in there too but it always sounded more like me.  I only knew it was her because it was the one telling me that I’m my own worst enemy.  She always used to tell me that.  I’m sure she still thinks that thought it’s been years since she said it to my face.

It’s true enough though.  Almost all my problems are self inflicted.  Most of the ones that aren’t are exacerbated by my inability to withstand them properly.  She is sure that I am not my Mother’s daughter.  I am not enough like her.

Do I want to be like her?  I wish I felt certainty like she seems to.  I almost never feel certainty.  Doubt is far more my thing.  I do a good impression of certainty but then I do a lot of impressions.

What passes for my personality is really just a bundle of impressions.  It’s all just me pretending.  I pretend to be sure about things.  I pretend to cope.  I pretend to be organised.  I pretend to be competent.  I pretend to be interested and interesting.  About the only thing I don’t pretend about is writing.  I really do write.  All the time.  I have done for years.  Most of the time I don’t know what I think about something till I start to write it down.

So not only am I still not the right person, even according to my own standards, I’m not really a person at all.  I’m a bundle of voices suspended between a mobile phone, a netbook and a moleskin notepad.  I write therefore I am.  I’m just not sure what that is.  What was the question again?

Beware the Pigeons

People think that intelligence must be some big thing imposed from on high and unique (on this planet at least) to humans.

It’s clearly not.  It’s practically a certainty.  Chaos theory suggests that intelligence, or at least intelligent behaviour, is everywhere and in everything.  Complexity arises spontainiously out of apparently simple rules and we would do well to keep an eye out for urban pigeons suddeenly developing a hive mind and taking over our cities.

Unless that’s already happened.

In our own case we like to think that intelligence is a huge big deal and that it’s what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom but actually it’s just one of the adaptations that put us at the top of the tree.  And it wasn’t even first

Walking upright freed up our front paws to develop oposoble thumbs.  Sweating kept us cool on the plains and the two combined meant that we could loose most of our hair and still keep cool.

The sweating and the nakedness gave us great stamina and made it possible for a weak animal to hunt much stronger ones because we could just chase them till they dropped.  All that protein and that excellent cooling system meant our brains could grow large.

Walking upright was the biggie.  And it was walking upright that gave us our elevated point of view.  It was walking upright that let us think that we were somehow better than all the other kids in the playground.

And that’s why the pigeons are taking over.

I’m working, I’m working. Look at me type.

So here I am again in lew of proper work.  At least I’m still fulfilling my resolution.

Today I’m going to talk about death and ask why I am so crushingly, brain gnawingly terrified of it.  There’s not much that scares me these days.  I don’t care about embarrasment and I’ve largely made my peace with failure.  Pain is just a fact of life and physical injury comes and goes.

I have fears for my children, as does any parent but they’re fears that I need and I understand and I can deal with.  They are normal fears.

Death on the other hand scares me so much I can’t even think about how much it scares me.

I try to have faith in an afterlife but that doesn’t really help.  Partly because I am one of nature’s sceptics and partly because while it’s easy to believe that my Father went on somewhere and is still around somehow I find it hard to believe that I’ll be that lucky.

I try to do that mental magic trick of thinking of my death as being an event that doesn’t concern me since, by definition it is not an event in my life.  When it gets here I wont be here any more.  It doesn’t help.

So I’m stuck with a terrible phobia of an event which will certainly happen to me sooner or later and which is a natural part of life.  I have a duty to my children to face my fate bravely.  That’s my job as a Mother.  I just wish I knew how.

I’m here, I’m awake. What more do you want?

So here I am blogging again like a good resolutionist, or whatever the word is.  I should probably be doing proper writing but I have decided to re-define blogging as proper writing and therefore work.

Much to my own surprise I’m keeping an old-school diary.  You know with pen and paper and everything.  I have no idea why.  It’s nothing interesting to anyone but me.  It’s barely interesting to me.  It’s just a list of events and notes of things the kids are doing, my continuing struggles to get the boy to sleep in his own damn bed, the latest stupid thing the Social workers have done and what I made for supper.

I’ve also been thinking about change and death and memory.  I don’t have any big conclusions.  I barely have any thoughts.  I may try to put them into a blog when I’m feeling a bit more coherent.  Don’t hold your breath it could be a while.

Resolution

It’s been far too long since I wrote anything here and I’m told that blogging Resolutions is the thing that all the cool kids are doing this year.  So I thought I’d blow that theory by joining in.

1. The first resolution, obviously is to blog more, and probably tweet more too.  With the proviso that I’m only going to do it if I actually have something to say.
2. I sit on my arse too much and therefore I will try to get some exercise at least 3 times a week.
3. I keep claiming to be a writer so I will finish one of my novels and send it to an agent.
4. I will be more organised around the house.

And for an encore I will heal the sick, feed the hungry and restore sight to the blind.

New Hat News and University Blues

I have a new hat.  It is excellent and I think I look rather good.  Of course this is probably not true but at the moment I don’t care.  I may even post a pick of my new hatness.  The new hat inspired the thought that I am now a ‘proper’ witch since, according to Pratchett, every witch needs a hat even if it’s invisible or, like my hat, not even slightly pointy.

On the other hand I am not feeling very witchy at the moment as I am feeling very indisive.  My trip to the Centre for Life Long Learing at the University yesterday cheered me up but left me with a dilema.  I could do a degree peicmeal by picking up degree credits from courses done through the centre.  I could also do Access courses that would guarantee acceptance into the MA course of my choice.

I have no idea which I prefer.  I’m not sure which degree I’d like to do and I have to get the forms in by the 20th of August.

Yet another pointless bloody crisis.

You know what the trouble with me is…

I’ve been thinking hard about why the rejection from the University hurt so much and what that means for me and it occurs to me that I am particularly sensitive to rejection.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I get rejected a lot.  You’d think that I’d be used to it by now and that I wouldn’t care but I clearly do.  In fact the more I think about it the more sure I am that I care a lot.  I’ve been assuming that my problem is a fear of failure combined with chronic laziness but I now realize that I’m not lazy at all and I’m scared of something else.

Look at my record at NaNoWriMo.  If I was scared of failure then why did I ever try?  Why did I keep going when it got tough?  If I’m lazy then why pick something that’s such hard work?  Why do I relish the work?  Why did I seek out the extra challenge of becoming Municipal Liaison?  NaNoWriMo is like an exam.  You either pass or fail.  You either hit 50,000 words in time or you don’t and it’s entirely up to you.  Success or failure is not subjective, you can’t be judged by other people and they can’t take it away from you.

I like exams and tests and puzzles.  Maybe I like them because they can’t reject me.  Either I’m right or I’m wrong.  Either pass or fail.  I succeed or fail because of my ability.  It doesn’t matter what I look like or how I dress or who I know or my social ineptitude or my past failures or successes.

But writing isn’t a test.  The quality of writing is almost entirely subjective.  I love the work of William Gibson but my husband, who has very similar tastes, can’t stand him and that’s the problem.  Even the best writers get rejected.  They get rejected a lot before they find the right agent/publisher.  And you don’t find an agent/publisher unless you put your work out there ready for rejection.

I think this is the real reason I’ve never finished any of my novels to my own satisfaction.  It they were finished I’d have to send them off for someone to reject.  And reject.  And then reject some more.  And because rejection is so common I wouldn’t even be able to throw the towel in and say “That’s it.  I’m a terrible writer.”

So how do I deal with this fear?  How can I truly be a writer when I can’t bare to send my work out to face rejection?

Yet another kick in the teeth

What I really want right now is not to be thinking about food.

I can’t eat.  I’ve eaten enough today and every time I try to eat more I fill up almost immediately and then feel sick.  And I want food now because am so very disappointed and tired and not even about anything that’s important.

I made an old mistake today.  I allowed my Aunt and my Mother to persuade me to apply for a degree course at the University.  The terse and barely polite refusal was waiting for me in my e-mail in-box by the time I got home.  And I really shouldn’t care.

I didn’t want to apply.  I didn’t think I’d get accepted.  And I was sure that something would cock it up anyway.  So it shouldn’t really matter.

But it does matter and I do care.  I suppose it’s partly because of the speed.  It’s like they waited till I was out of sight, had a quick giggle at my 4 measly Highers from 20 years ago, then sent off an e-mail saying thanks but no thanks and good luck with your doubtless pointless and empty future.

And it’s the depth of the rejection.  They didn’t just reject me as I am now.  That doesn’t matter – I’m old enough to be used to that rejection.  They also rejected the me I was 20 years ago.  Back when it still looked like I had promise and possibilities and I might actually have a life.  That’s the rejection that hurts.  That and because I know it’s not just 20 years ago and right now but it’s lurking in the future waiting for my children.

It’s like I have some horrible social disease that I passed on to my children when they were blameless infants in the womb.  This terrible tiring awkwardness and impossibility that I’ve been wading through my whole life is out there waiting to pounce on my two beautiful, wonderful children.  It that really is no-one’s fault but my own.

New Article

Not much to tell just a picture I took and some words about it. Don’t feel you have to follow this link but if you haven’t already you should check out some of my other articles because some of them are actually quite good.

Aberdeen Interlude

Word Festival

Back home after spending time at the Word Festival at Aberdeen University.

It’s a great little festival and the second largest book festival in Scotland. But it seems to be largely unknown in most of the city.

There’s a fascinating selection of talks and events but for me the best thing is the Word Cafe.

More later. Tired now.