List

Well, if anyone remembers my grand un-slumpification project, it is still (ahem) on-going. Long after everyone else has packed up and left. Yes, admittedly, that is rather slow progress. It's a relapsing, iterative process. I can be walking along, nonchalantly, jauntily even. Possibly whistling. Then SLURP with a suck and a twist and here I am. Back in the slump. And the slump isn't even much like grief. It's just  . . . . kinda slumpy. Like grief's boring, miserable second cousin once removed.

And I feel so guilty. Horribly guilty. A great deal of the time. When Jessica cries because she's tripped or when she gets frustrated because she can't communicate, I see her eyes fill with tears and I hear the echoes of alarms beeping and the slap of feet running down hospital corridors. Her skin changing colour, becoming bluer. I feel as though I'm falling and I can't breathe. 

When she smiles, I feel another hand tugging at my clothing. A very small hand. Cold. And I wonder how long I can keep this up? Trying to make her happy. Ignoring that small cold pressure at the periphery. It just feels so very desperate and heavy, the love, the sadness, pressing down on me. And I need to feel less. Because this feeling stuff is all very well but it isn't productive. It is getting in the way of practical things like sewing name labels in clothes and batch cooking. Stuff I actually need to do. Stuff I should be doing right now as a matter of fact.

Guilt. Guilt that I'm sure would have come to rest on my shoulder regardless. I've always been one for self recrimination and I'm sure that motherhood just on its own will do a number on you if you are inclined that way to start off with. For me, Death and motherhood came along at once. Bony hand on one shoulder, plump, ring knuckled hand on the other. Pressing downwards. 

Sit. Back. Down. 

I feel as though the world is leaning to one side, as though the externals are listing because of a leak or an unbalanced cargo. I'm not sure what the leak is, where the imbalance lies. Death? That time in hospital? The threat of further death or illness, now that my cover is blown and I know that they can come a-calling any time they like? 

Sometimes, I feel I am just waiting for them, reduced to a trembling pile of jelly, pressing myself against the earth and hoping not to catch their eyes. At other times, I feel that I am defiantly dancing about, daring them to come and get us. Flipping the bird at Death and his cronies. 

Either way, at this point in time, we are out of joint, the world and I. Nobody else I know in real life is either quivering on the blasted heath or dancing around giving unfathomable semi-deities the finger. Well, not as I far as I know anyways. 

Even states that were once comfortable, peace, happiness. There is often no contentment to be found in them now. They are too, too sharp, with hooks that stick in my flesh. Frenetic. Manic. Because I know what it is like when they vanish . . . . poof. And you are left wondering if you will ever come across them again. 

Everything seems laden with significance. Portentous. But I don't know what the significance is. I'm just baffled, bewildered. Someone signalling, miles away, through overheard conversations and encounters with strangers. And I'm either high above the clouds or sitting at the bottom of a well. When I just want to stand with my feet on the ground.

I know it won't last. I'll un-slump and be fine. For a time. I'm just slumping because my maternity leave is about to finish and I have to leave Reuben. That's probably the truth of the matter. But everything, everything always seems to come back to the girls for me.

Constant monitoring of feet to check that they are on the floor. Constant monitoring of hands to check that they are doing something useful instead of falling to my sides, instead of covering my face, drifting off to the computer keyboard, balancing to stop this listing, to fake the stability so necessary for spending the majority of one's time with small children. Or anybody at all. Not many people want to spend time with someone who sits on the floor, head tilted to one side, trying to correct the world back to the way she thought it was. Or the way that she feels that it should be. 

And I suspect that this angled world, that upsets me so is the way the world truly is. Probably. That whole humankind cannot bear too much reality schtick. It's true. But I need to see some vision of the external that is compatible with ploughing forward, be that outer world imagined or forced or otherwise, just one that will accompany me whilst I am making sandwiches, smiling, with friendship, with posting photographs of four of us on facebook with a jaunty "all of us!" caption and not feeling haunted by that possible fifth. Or the two who flicker in and out of focus. 

Of looking at other people and not looking for a tell tale motion in the corner of their eye, for signs of their own muscles straining to tilt the world to a respectable angle. To be able to hide that motion in my own eye. 

To be square with the world. Standing in my proper place.

To look squarely at the world. Eyes up. No flinching. No looking away.

To be the bow that is stable. 

Any tips?

Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.