tension of the tightened bow

I feel like Yeat's tightened bow. like something is waiting to break. i think this has always been a part of me but a part that has laid dormant in me, waiting, like a hunched shadowy figure in my own shadows to come and relish in the agony it which it gratefully finds me. the noises of children; people...brings out this tense impatient angular creature that just longs for stoppage and for silence and for stillness.
i feel inhabited by angles and agony. i feel inhabited by tense misery that sits comfortable in me and relishes in my lack of desire to wake to the day and instead coaxes me to abandon myself; to leave my hair unwashed; to shy away from the sun and cherish the damp dark of solitude.
only when all sleep do i feel free. and like the last breath of living it takes so long for sleep to come and bring
 some kind of solace and peace.

dragging feet

times are pretty tough. not just for me but for everyone i know. and days for me are sludgy and horrible. things have altered so strangely and i have grown changed.  I have been walking through a thick fog and days have turned to weeks and weeks to months. people say you need to carry on now. but it isn't like that. it is a sludgy and horrible. i feel like i am falling apart and don't know how to glue back together again.

existential agony

I know not if I use this word correctly however I feel it suits my current feelings.
I am drinking a glass of beer and I am smoking a roll up as I  type this. 
I am itchy and I feel covered in an eczema-like rash. My eyes itch; my legs itch and then my back itches. I feel irritable and irritated. I just want to scratch my legs. And then my neck itches. 
But I think this itching is not anything but psychosomatic..... my shin skin feels too close to the bone and sensitive. My children today- the youngest two, have had this strange desire to be always touching me- that makes me sound strange and makes me feel autistic (in fact maybe I am autistic), but I mean wherever I am they seem to be there, clambering on me and pivoting around me like small creatures always with one hand upon me, fighting over me. And yes they are (small dependent creatures), but I feel crowded and itchy in response. My son of fourteen is like an argumentative ferret - one of which he now possesses, and even my little toe itches, though I must state the ferret lives in a ferret safe shed outside with mod cons and blankets to keep it warm, so the itching is not ferret related (for the record). To top it off I believe I have something called trichotillomania (a real mouthful for 'a compulsion to pull out ones hair)- think classic mad woman scenes and your half way there. I mean how bad can it get. It began in secondary school some 20 years ago as I deeply hated the walls that bound me into school and all it carried with it, and here I am today still yanking out strands of hair to appease in some way the existential agony in which I so frequently seem to find myself. The way I feel is a bit like a Laurel and Hardy day which my late sister -coined the expression-  called days where the universe seems intent on hurting you. It may be amusing to be met with small moments of incidental disaster (like getting a ladder in the head as you stand up, or walking into a door) but in reality these are days which hurt; where you stub your toe; raise your head and bang it on a shelf or catch your hip on a table or your pocket on a door handle or manage to knock everything down as you pass thus creating an avalanche of misery and irritating inconvenient distressing anger.
i will soon to bed as the day has nothing left for me ( i must have autism- 'a tendency to view life in terms of one's own needs and desires.... from Greek autos self+ ism' online dictionary). I mean I accept that I am pretty self obsesssed; navel gazing and wallowing in my misery, but this is all part and parcel of my existential nightmare and the ties that bind me so strong and so invisible to my psychological make-up. 
I have a piece of bedroom furniture from my darling late sister's home and I had to screw it all back together to put in my daughter's room. I mean, what the f*** happened? What is this all about....What am I doing? I think as I tighten the screws. Why is this not in my sister's room, where is she? What happened? 
And so the wheel goes spinning round unfairly and relentlessly. 

MISS YOU SISTER

Sister

I miss you

like the lungs would miss air

and the heart would miss oxygen.

I miss you like the tongue misses water

when it is dry and sallow

and parched with thirst.

I miss you like the grass misses the wind

and the dark night

misses a glass of red wine and the

company of a girl who knows how

to laugh.

I miss you like a cold morning remembering

the warmth of yesterday

like a a table covered in empties

longing for the party which is over.

Like the desert misses the rain.

I miss you

for all the yesterdays are but a memory on my tongue

without your reassuring compliance in the tale;

your laughter is missing from the story

your agreeing eyes are not here.

I miss you like a finished conversation

when the phone is hung up

and the warmth but a memory

setting into sharp relief the present.

I miss your sweet company

your salmon fish cakes and perfectly fried egg

your constant understanding

and your view of trees and things.

I miss your delicate feet and your vibrant love of coffee and all things nice.

I miss you like warm wine misses ice.

I miss your hospitality

and your sweet encouragement

your belief

your indomitable spirit.

I miss your funny

I miss your innuendo.

I miss your ocean depth.

I miss you.

diagnosis

2010 October i think, i had been painting the sitting room. i got a phone call that day that my son had had a fight with another kid and this was quite stressful. I saw my sister the day before. we had bumped into one another in Greenwich. twice over the last few days. in the library. i saw her looking far off and distant. i drew closer but she still did not see me. until we were nearly touching and then she saw me. she seemed so dreamy and far away.we talked and then we went to the charity shop together. she helped me look for things that would be good for my pregnancy. she said she wanted to find a pretty shift dress. she said she had a feeling she would not be wearing a pretty dress for some time. i didn't really understand this. but she sounded sure. she had been having back pain. she had dismantled her bed thinking it was the bed's fault. i offered to have Dylan that night. she was grateful and agreed. that night she was called to hospital following the results of a blood test. the following day she was diagnosed with acute myoloid leukaemia. i was in catford in the car driving when i got the call from another sister. it seemed like i already knew.  the shock started. some little time later i was in the queen Elizabeth hospital haphazardly surrounding the bed upon which lay my sister, all laughs and disbelief and lithe petite body; slim and well so far as i could see, in jeans and sweater my sister relinquished to this cruel disease not yet showing  the ravish it would bear upon her. not yet revealiong the horror of what was to come. so brave she was she had us virtually laughing so light she treated things; light hearted and generous with her loving humour. god bless my big little sister. xxxxxxxxRIP

i paid for my freedom

while i was home alone i made a chilli for dinner and subsequently have burning hands- i react badly to chillies, plus the chilli itself was way to hot to enjoy. i did a few other things too. i drank a beer and did a bit of gardening. but oh i paid for my time off.
on arrival home the kids came in first followed by significant other carrying the baby who was asleep. he looked peeved. five minutes later him and my fourteen year old son were at loggerheads and fighting verbally and it seemed nearly physically. a neighbour- who is a social worker knocked on the door worried about what was going on.
oh my god. what a nightmare.
any way all was really okay but also not.
but hey ho. this is my lovely life.

guilty spade shopping

i went shopping this morning and felt like a secret criminal as i wanted to buy a spade to dig up garden stuff and put crazy (and i mean crazy) paving down instead of having a mud lawn with the odd tuft of grass here and there. i am trying to minimise mud in the house.
because financially  things are fairly pinchy right now my other half laid down the law the other day...'we can't afford a spade' he said ???. well anyway there was one for six quid in asda on the old Kent road so i got it and then snuck it into the garden to avoid an argument, i mean for gods sake..... so my institutionalised paving is underway, haphazard uneven but full of character. and i am not doing it 'properly' with cement, i am just digging, putting sharp sand down and then placing any bit of paving/ brick lying round my garden and putting sand and gravelly stones around it. i like it like that and i don't mind if grass or wild things grow between the paving. it is purely to minimise mud. i want to create an outside studio in my garden to do some painting etc.

quite groundbreakingly, i am all alone at home. my other half has taken all the kids including baby to woodland farm at shooters hill to a open day. yipppeeee. i am terrified they are going to come back soon and i am drinking up the time alone greedily and getting hiccoughs with the sudden freedom. i might even pass out. cept i don't want to do any housework or any thing. i just want to bathe in being alone with time to call my own. long may it last. i made them a picnic and hopefully they will be gone for hours so that when they get back i might actually be happy to see them.