Refuse to sink

It was another day of sabotage. I panicked, I swallowed pills, I tapped every meridian point in my body – my skull, my collar bone, under the fleshy pad of my armpit. I looked to the framed sketch that I had dragged around since 2016. An eagle gripping a ship’s anchor – wings spread wide, talons locked. On it, were the words refuse to sink. The eagle is a kindred spirit – the second incarnation of Scorpio, but I rejected its mantra almost immediately. As a child I was always told to rise above. Bullying? Rise above it. Ghosts in the wallpaper, rise above it. Night terrors, asthma, fear of my father’s looming shadow, rise above it. Later it became the mantra for bypassing forgiveness. Aren’t you over that yet? Can’t you just rise above it? When my half-brother visited him in hospital, his almost-dying words were can you rise above it? He did not die, not then. Later. Later after he had recovered and I had visited him over eatery fish and-chips and I, self-made, newly minted, self-re-parented, held him to task. Gently. Do you remember hurting us? He didn’t, shovelling forkfuls of food in his mouth with a small tremor in his hands. Swallowing the last of his tea, he relented. Och, well, did ye maybe do something to deserve it? Just fucking rise above it, already. Anyway,

I wasn’t there when he died. There was a phone call, then the frame leapt from the wall and clattered on the floorboards, with all its folkloric weight. I downed the last dregs of scotch from a salvaged bottle and rearranged my funeral clothes. Get out of my house, I snapped at the air. Two years later I was the sibling who took his remains back to Scotland, but after I had traipsed up hill over stones and through thick brush and hoisted his ashes over a cliff-side castle wall, all I could do was turn around and work my way back down again, shuddering through whisky-ragged breaths. The pain racked my body for two days. sink. sink. sink. sink. sink. I bought poetry books in Waterstones, and scribbled my dim thoughts in their margins, I climbed the Scott Monument, cameras clunking around my neck, stabbing pains in my stomach. I was just as bereft as I was before I scattered his dust and bones into the ocean, refusing to sink, and every day since I have been marching back, and—

before I sold my piano, I could not find words in the void, so I wrote music instead. I played a piece to my husband—sorry, it’s not very happy, I said. But, does it make you happy? he replied. Bless his Sagittarian heart. No, I said, carefully. But I needed to make it. I only want to make art that aligns. It’s natural I suppose, to want to be happy doing what we love, but some of us are full-spectrum feelers, and by making happiness the only goal, it sends a message that dark and or bittersweet art is irrelevant, something to shove aside, grow out of. I don’t think art owes us anything. Not joy, not happiness, not resolution or restoration. It is a vessel. And the only way out is through. Actually, that’s not true. Sometimes there is no out, there is only another vessel.

Years ago, when I was coerced onto the medication that would quieten my frontal lobe, I asked if I would still be myself. You’ll still be you, the psychiatrist nodded, clicking his pen, but better. And so, I proceeded to atone for my invisible crimes. I folded myself neatly like a hospital corner, took my meds and slowly began to wilt. Clinically stable but so numbed I couldn’t stand myself. Nothing about this was better. When I eventually tapered off, the world went by in flashes. Brain zapping migraines, nausea, memory loss. Sadness grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me under. Kicking my way to the surface became a full time job. But, at least I could feel again. I dropped my shutter, and began to see skin as motion, defocused my lens and dragged my saturation sliders down, hearing music in the grain and the dust. At last.

Every time Mary Oliver tells me that I don’t have to be good, I want to weep with relief. Mary Oliver doesn’t need me to rise above anything. But she likes it when I scan for good things. Like, lighting up at nostalgia memes and travel vlogs or when I find my favourite snacks in the aisle of the Asian grocery. Or pointing at sunsets and sending videos of golden retrievers to my family. And clapping like a small child whenever something blooms in my potted garden, and marvelling at the sharp yellow eyes of a currawong, or a perfect horizon of cloudless indigo. I begin each day with the words thank you. And I mean it. But joy doesn’t sustain me through the long hours and I’m not sure it’s supposed to. If joy was ever-flowing, always on tap, wouldn’t we miss the nuance? The saudade? The shade?

I’m not trying to be inspiring or empowering here. A lot of pages of DSM have been thrown at me, as if I was something to be fixed. I do not need to be fixed. My life doesn’t suck. You won’t find that here. Even when I’m depressed, I can find something to love. Some days I go dark and I lose direction. I am a tidal creature. I am not a constant. Every time I pour myself into the ocean, I take a different form. I don’t know what anyone wants me to be, but I can tell you that even if I did, I would reject it. I have been called a maelstrom. I have been ghosted and cursed. At least three people are stalking me right now and each of them are afraid that I’ll expose their sins. I hope they subscribe.

A Certain Slant is an ongoing collection of micro-essays & visual diary about the human experience, the stories we inherit and the spaces between them. If you’ve found something worthwhile in these posts and would like access to the full archive (or to simply pay it forward/lend your support for a little while), a few dollars a month keeps this work alive, and it would mean so much to me. ♡

More reading:

I absolutely swear by Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) / Learn more about the Scorpion, the Eagle & the Phoenix / My short-lived piano affair: A Doing Word / Last year’s obsession with Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese (also mentioned in The Season of the In-Between) / Morning mantra: How to Find the Light . ♡