This week's Friday Theme is Tsuteki: Someone you want …
When I was in Japan I met a woman, Kathryn, who was an English teacher. She had long brown hair, and striking features. She showed me around town, then took me sea swimming. And we cooked together, Thai food, coconut cream soup and satay kebabs. I was convinced I was in love.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with “Borderline Personality Disorder,” a rather dubious label that is often attached to people with a history of sexual abuse. As one counsellor said to me, “they have a lot of names for survivors.”
One of the criteria for BPD is “a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealisation and devaluation.” Also known as splitting, there is some suggestion that this arises in early childhood as a coping mechanism. “The good mummy looks after me, the good mummy would never hurt me. The bad mummy hurts me.”
I used to live in a black and white realm of angels and demons. Kathryn was an angel; she could do no wrong, and I adored her, completely and utterly. But once she became “flawed” (for the crime of staying in Japan when I had to return) I moved on to someone else.
Now I’ve learned to draw out some of the colours that make up black and white. While there are still people who I like and admire intensely, I am able to see them as whole people. I can like them but still see their faults (with the exception of Kim Hill. Faults?! She has no faults, how dare you…)
My life still has an element of intensity that could be classed as a lingering “symptom.”
I prefer to think of it as a gift.
*
Breath
for Tanemahuta, Merenia and Tiahuia
You abandon the ground
as though you trust this web
of light to hold you
air thickened by the gentle
absorption of breath.
*
Shadows trace
the slow
fall of your body
the kiss of bare
feet touching wood
*
The karanga draws
grief from us
stronger
with every breath
until we see them
shadows poised
in air;
a baby
who never cried
a woman who slept
with an adze under her pillow
blade smoothed by ancient hands
a girl who held
a slender finger of bone
always close to her heart
her lungs
one by one
the night calls them
*
Outside
cool spring waits.
We speak in clouds;
life blooms
from our lips.