vapours

(an expunging of my thoughts whirring ever madly-mainly non-fiction but ah you know yourself)

Victorian ladies took to their beds frequently, they had an attack of the vapours. The smelling salts ensued and bed rest. The ladies in question were all of a household income that could support such frequent repose.

Working class women did not get the vapours.

I took to my bed on Monday with lower left abdo pain again, combined with headaches and a cold. I dodn’t have an attack of the vapours but today all I had to do was drive two and a half miles and I thought I was running it. By the time I got home I was sweaty, out of breath and in need of being horizontal.

The argument of the house then ensues. “Go to the doctor” “there’s no need” “Ha” “I’ll be fine” “Yeah for sure” “Whatever”

In my non-vapourous though nevertheless fully hallucinogenic state I have had weird encounters with my writing mind. I have found a way to experience a situation I never want to experience again. It is all a question of perspective.

If we remove the judgement chip albeit momentarily from our heads to look at a situation from someone else’s perspective we can learn from it. For example a child screaming for chocolate whilst the mom or dad is trying to explain that a healthier option would be better (how likely!) So child stops screaming and ponders that their parent wants them to grow healthy and strong without the addiction to chocolate that they suffer from. The parent sees the screaming child and recognises themselves in the scream – they really want chocolate too. Compromise – one bar shared – twp happy peeps.

Looking at the fiction I am producing, the pure emotion is still there but the “heart on a sleeve” “woe is me” mentality is waning in the stories. I still tend to write in the first person and therefore everyone else is a little wooden, but perhaps there is some Pinocchio too, a little bit coming alive.

Tom said today that my writing was becoming more butterfly-ish, I think the practice is definitely helping with that. Karen wants me to potentially collaborate. Joe made me smile last week about ‘grandfather’ It is all coming together slowly.

But life is passing me by, as I lie down most of the day and night, my first appointment of the week cancelled, the second one tomorrow looming a little too close. The cold is decidedly more chest infection, the toe has to be seen again, the pain the side is like ovulation pain but without the possibility that that holds.

Three times that pain produced results, not results that your average Josephine Showergel would shout for joy over but I did. I wanted a football team, but was cut short. Husbands and doctors and families knowing better. Took me thirteen long years to come to some sort of peace about that. Now with my eggs shrivelled and dead I can no longer dream of football teams.

The dolphins on my ceiling want to shine in my eight foot square room, they want to dance among the stars and planets and so I must adieu and let them to their task.