Skyfall

or

Stop ignoring your subconscious,

its really trying to tell you something.

 




A few days ago and at about a year on from being entirely No Contact I was wallowing in self pity a little. Ok more than a little. For some inexplicable reason the image of a coin in one of the coin push arcade games was stuck in my mind like a mental tic.
As the image of the moving plates, covered in coins worked through, over and over in my mind I was certainly blue enough to start thinking of the coins as all the "stuff"  that just piles up in my life, and no matter how many coins you keep adding they never actually seem to fall over the edge like they really seem like they ought to.


I wondered if you stood on that edge, where the coins hung over but never fell, would they crush you or would you get pushed over and spin away, falling into the darkness?
I tried to picture this and falling away from the increasing wall of coins seeing them get smaller and smaller as I fell then suddenly the whole image tilted, and I wasn't spinning away in the dark - I was stood there looking at the coin push machine rising away from me - falling upwards whilst I stayed where I was.

The sky was falling away from me and I was stood
on this totally firm surface.

 Everything had been back to front. I was stood on firm ground and the image, the coins, the pressure, the problem...span upward and away, untethered when I was no longer part of it.

It was odd an odd and slightly unsettling set of images and obviously stuck with me because later in the week I found myself in another of those mental movies. You know. The ones you play in your head  when you're stuck on an overcrowded train and your trying to pretend your anywhere rather than stuck in a confined space with you face jammed into a strangers armpit.


I this one I was on an out of control aircraft - outside the window the sky and landscape lurched back and forth - suitcases tumbled by.
Breathing masks batted back and forth as screaming weeping people clutched their seats, or staggered by.
and then, the oddest thing..
The door opened, the pressure one - the one that should mean (at least if you believe most of the films you've seen) that all of the passengers and cases and lots and lots of stray bits of paper ,get sucked out.
Except that dint happen. Instead, outside the door was a glimpse of polished white floor and strip lights.
A head peeped in, then popped back.
Suddenly the tilting didn't seem to be the same.
The speeding images at the windows of the plummet through the clouds didn't match the static flat floor outside the door.

There, amidst the screaming an siren sounds, was a light smattering of applause from outside.

People inside the cabin carried on behaving as if they were on a crashing plane - but the head - the perfectly normal looking head peeped in the door again and a waved urgently at me. I could see more people stood outside as I unclipped my seatbelt and started making my way towards the door.

I found myself thinking,  "It wouldn't be possible to sit down again, after all, who would strap them self back into a seat and carry on when it all wasn't real...?"

and I realised

Things have been back to front! Again.


I had thought I was on firm ground,
sacred ground, protected by infallible gods,
but I wasn’t.
I was small and abandoned and looking after myself.
My gods were fallible and human and largely uncaring.
They were capricious and randomly punishing.
I was far from safe.

I thought I was protected, wanted and part of a bigger thing.
I thought I was cherished and equal.

But I wasn’t.
I was a toy and a scapegoat,
a useful way of them unburdening themselves of whatever they need.
Work or emotion, I carried what they didn’t want to.
I was a slave to their needs.

I thought I could grow up to be anybody I wanted to be,
any thing I was capable of,
and that my family supported me and wanted me to be better.
That they tried to help me by showing me any badness they saw in me,
so I could be perfect and make them happy.
I had thought I would be living my whole life out as the best person I could be,
But I couldnt.
I wasn’t good enough to do much at all.
I couldnt even be good enough to make them a little bit happy.

They could tell me what I was thinking,
when I didn’t even know I was thinking it.
I wasn’t even safe inside my own head.

I thought I was wrong,
all the time.
Everything I did.
Everything I said.
I tried to set a guard in my head to stop being me because I was so bad.
I couldnt make a right decision, never the ones I should have made.
Nothing I did was worth anything.
When people said anything nice about me they lied.
I didn’t deserve anything nice and I would never have security without them to fall back on,
but it turns out
I did.

The ground is right here underneath my feet.
I can reach out and touch people who love me and can say 100 nice things about me,
and they are telling the truth.
I have people who will catch me if I fall,
and people who will help me not to fall.
People who think its o.k. to love myself,
why not?
They love me.
I love them.
Then I love them some more, because its not, after all, a finite resource.
I can help myself too.
I can catch myself and say its o.k. to fall.
See how I pick myself up and learn
and how I pick up others,
and am not any smaller, or less, for having done so.
Other peoples fears do not eat me, to share them they grow smaller,
as do mine.
But even were I alone,
in darkness,
I can rock myself to sleep
in my own arms.
I am fierce,
and I am comforted by just being me at last.

oh.

and I wont strap myself back into a crashing aeroplane  so I can provide the drama in someone elses life.