A New Year Begun

It seems a very long time since January 2004. An ocean of months. This time last year I was wading through a dark treackle of despair that clung to my skin and sucked my body into a failed oblivion. I had thought there would be no more new years eve's for me. Yet here I am, twelve months later, further foward and yet at the same time trapped like a fly in amber.

It is not a subject suitable for polite conversation., suicide. Especially the failed, attention seeking sort (that is how it is explained, I have seen the unspoken words hovering behind smiles and eyes that slide sideways avoiding contact with that which must not be acknowledged). My crime stays with me. Not forgotten . The memory, the thought walks beside me every day. It sits next to me, holding me close and whispering its siren words in my ear. A call I must refuse to hear, not because it does not entice but because I do not belong to myself. My failure closed off opportunity for freedom.

Instead, I have each day to fight through. Daily victory piling into weeks, months, another year passed by. I have made some good things with my battle. Two weeks spent warmed in Tunisia. Bitter lonliness interleaved with quiet contentment under strange stars. The discovery of paints and pencils and pastels. Colours flowing from my hands. New knowledge, new friends, a new and wonderful voice. Hours spent without thoughts or pain, no need to strive, only to be.

I have written less lately. A paint brush fulfilling the role of a pen. I thought perhaps I could make myself whole that way. There is only one me who paints, it is not as easy to fence off the fragments as it is with words. When I write in each of my seperate journals I can see when one begins to seep into the other. Build dams to keep the dark from the light.

Each needs a voice. 'Diet Coke' must remain. A container for the pain of thoughts that writh along their own peculiar and twisted paths.