Tairngir tellings

My enemy is the desire to numb. It comes from my sensitive, absorbent nature that sometimes (quite often) leads to my mind feeling too full, too violated, too broken. I make myself sick with anxiety; holding onto the lies and hurt that others around me feel and occasionally direct at me; though it doesn't need to be directed. I feel the brokenness around me like a never failing northerly, an earthquake that has aftershock after aftershock.So the question becomes: how do I (an imperfect live in a broken world of wounded people, with my desire to see them healed, without feeling powerless and numbing myself to cope? I'm currently studying counselling, and am about to embark on the course that will lead me to being able to practice what I've learned in the real world. The thing is that it's impossible to hide  from your broken self as you are lead to delve deeper into what makes you tick, and what 'blind spots' you have, and what prejudices you hold that form lenses skewering your view of the world and others. And as I am to go boldly where I haven't tread before within; how do I hold myself straight without? I can't just crumple into a ball and weep in a corner (at least not too often anyhow). I recently faced a situation that brought all my woundedness to do with rejection and not being good enough and being a disappointment to the surface. My dad and his wife recently went through a crisis and it looked like he was going to leave her. This of course is concerning, but is more so as they have two daughters who were seemingly being forgotten in the midst of the emotional maelstrom. My lovely wife and I tried to remind both my dad and his wife the possible and probable effects that this situation was having on their daughters. But our advice and help in the desperate time was construed to look like we were interfering and were trying to split my dad and his wife up. All we did was respond to my dad saying he was leaving, we offered practical help specifically concerning their daughters and what would happen to them. He came to us for advice and help, and went away to talk to his wife and ended up using us (mainly my wonderful wife) as scapegoats in the whole story. It seems instead of facing up to the lack of love and intimacy within their family they decided it was everyone else around them who was to blame for distracting them from each other. In counselling you do not offer advice, you do not suggest courses of action. As a son and confidant, and considering the situation that had the potential to emotionally harm two young children I felt it was my duty as a son and brother to offer help, challenge the bad ideas that were floating around, and suggest plans of action that were in the best interest of the children involved. If we had taken the stance of a counsellor and not suggested ideas how might this whole thing have turned out? We would have both had no tongues left from biting on them so, and we would have felt like we had let the little ones involved down. But maybe we could of all still been friends (whatever that means without truth). But that course felt false and still does when I contemplate it. I was fed up of being the silent listener who felt so much for the little ones but never uttered a word about their need to know they are loved. I had had enough, my wonderful wife had had enough over a much shorter time, as she seems to have a more sensitive injustice monitor, and she was brought up being able to speak her mind. So the situation hasn't clearly changed: my dad and his wife are looking at divorce but it's all a grey area, I suppose I'm supposed to be glad that it isn't defitnetly over but I don't at the moment (and believe me, having gone through my parents divorce; that there are few situations where I would entertain the idea of a marital break up being anything but an unmitigated disaster, and worse that the alternatives) so even having ambiguous feelings about their staying together confuses and saddens me. There seemed to literally be no love left, and they both confessed that they were staying together for practical purposes only. I haven't shared here why I was concerned about the children in detail as I believe that would be dishonouring.
But I wish them all the best as a family, I really do, but they need love, a lot of it if they are to live in some kind of harmony. But I can share that this latest rejection of us within the family is very hurtful and drudges up many past memories for me and hurts my lovely wife a lot. It hurts more in some ways as I am the one within our family that everyone has always got on with and have been the peace maker in numerous situations. But sometimes you have to tell the truth as you see it and it is possible that the party receiving may not like it and they will reject you, not just the message. If there had been no children involved I for one would have left well alone, but there was so here we are. I am praying for them and us. I want reconciliation and healing, but not at the expense of not being able to be who we are. I do not regret our actions, but I regret that it has come to this. I feel this is a real chance to recall what it means to be forgiven, thus what it means to forgive those who trespass against me.

Beads, drops form slowly
after the burst and torrent
mere memories pool

An artificial, sweet, chemical smell
spell another curb-stone coup

Another has graffitied upon the chipped walls
Joining the marks of artists past
some of which are well crafted and uplifting
others are dark, complicated, and foreboding

Of course also; the cock and balls as a "Fuck you"
to the world (to me?)
then the phone numbers with their messages promising sexual favours.
With homosexuality still this secretive shame or adolescent prank

A "Dave was ere" scrawled over the previous beauty
a name to desecrate the nameless
And others in search of permanency jab and stab at the masonry

Dark subway places, that few dare tread
The pillars that hold up entire highways
The forgotten zones made into art for the few

Where lichen abounds in the damp of unshed urban tears
and moss fills long forgotten cracks; softening those rough edges.
Shattered bottles lie strewn,
emptied of their broken promises.
The shards scattered in shame as anger is doused.

Thrown to the concrete by a tattooed arm
tattooed to get the world onto skin
Grafittied to get the inner
onto the world.

The other evening a small group of us reflected on hunger and fasting for lent, and I wrote this piece about different hungers:



Hunger is drowning in a lake
surrounded by water,
yet still thirsting

Hunger is filling the void within
with the bad; abundant food that is all around

Hunger is looking in all the wrong places
over and over again

Hunger is being surrounded by people
yet feeling alone

Hunger is not caring for yourself
yet indulging the self

Hunger is having to know,
and forgetting to trust

Hunger is without gratitude
and eternally grasping

Hunger is a clenched fist
with white knuckles
and a palm hidden in the dark

Hunger is too much
and not enough

There is a feeling you get after you have sobbed
like you have a bad cold.
You struggle to swallow
and keep air and saliva down.
Often that has happened to me
when the tears won't come.
The body responds as if I have wept,
but for some reason
all that salt water and snot
instead of falling
and cleansing
has collected around the vocal chords
straining speech
and absorbing
the heavy breaths.
Forming a ball
of molten lead
moving liquid to solid
as breaths stutter
in and out.

I marvel that this most vulnerable part of ourselves:
that slender pillar
connecting head to body
can hold all that weight.
Though it seems destined to,
sitting as it does;
at the juncture
connecting body and brain,
heart and mind.
Holding onto
that which has become
stuck betwixt the two.

Stacked, slanted
to form a tower
that leans
as if built upon a marsh
defying sense

Bark and fibre
call to mind
the characters
of stories and flames
long burned out

Dancing with light
and shimmering in heat
this offering to the present
whose memory
warms long after
all is turned to ash

Grown from dust
and to dust returned
recalling all the those flames
extinguished long since

though truly
their energy
can never
gutter, splutter
or truly die.