DEAD GIRL WALKING 13
Life and Death - a synthesis
A few weeks ago, I noticed that my life was feeling determinedly out of balance. I had been spending way too much time at work and not enough in ‘my world’: walking, writing, taking pictures of dead things – you know, doing all the fun stuff.
So, I gave myself permission to take some time out. I hijacked my best friend to come with me for a “walk”. She really wanted TV time. I went all Amy Winehouse on her singing Nooo Nooo NO. I say WALK - she hears HIKE.
We walked to Broadstairs and back - some 20km or so. A walk in the park for me but for my friend – well… Ok, that killed her off. Walked and talked her to death, actually.
Speaking of death (I know, here we go again) during our epic ramble we happened to meander past a cemetery. A REALLY old one.
I was captivated. She not so much.
My friend indulged my morbid curiosity - as if she had a choice - patiently waiting as I wandered around the crumbled and eroded head stones. Caught in my own world as I attempted to read inscriptions that had long since faded to mere shadows.
Huge parts of the cemetery had been reclaimed by nature. Nothing brings me greater joy than seeing nature ‘fight back’ - shrubbery and skullduggery all at work. I was intrigued by the shadows that had been cast onto those tombstones. How through the sunlight, nature was being ‘photographed’ through the lens of the sun. The dancing shadows of the ferns and ivy imprinted onto the bald headstones.
The hostage (see friend) was craving to be released. Me being inspired, decided to set her free, and went about planning a ‘photo shoot’. I went back to the crumbling tombs and began ‘shooting’ the shadows - the dancing darkness on the ‘stones.’
I was beyond excited by this new layer of my obsession. I could not wait to take it to therapy. (NOTE TO SELF: NEVER EVER GET EXCITED ABOUT TAKING ANYTHING TO THERAPY KEGS – YOU IDIOT)!
The therapist listened semi-attentively, as I verbally vomited all about cemeteries and sunlight. I was so proud of my clever metaphors – “oooh the shadows dancing on the graves of the dead’. The metaphors were tombstoning alright, right through the shitty therapy room carpet. The therapist muttered something about me being obsessed with death. Er, no shit sherlock. He recommended that I watch some old school noir romance/comedy film called Harold and Maude.
HAROLD AND MAUDE – a synopsis.
Harold – a teenage boy so obsessed with death that he would often act out varying methods of death/suicide.
Maude – an eccentric 79-year-old hottie, with no fucks left to give. Determined to make the most of her ‘last days’.
The two meet at a funeral - they are professional funeral goers. They enjoy attending cremations and burials together just because. He falls in love with her. Mortality dilemma – while being obsessed with death, he does not want her to die. She welcomes death, through living life on deaths edge.
What does this have to do with me? FFS.
LIFE AND DEATH – a synthesis
Umm – thinking this through on another one of my walks – I could see there was a symmetry in constructing a platform or system of safety by hiding in the shadows.
Most of my teens were spent in baggy dark clothes, that could hold the whole of THE CURE and their roadcrew in them. Roberta Smith in a hoodie. I did so because I wanted – needed - to remain invisible. A byproduct of being in too much demand by my parents to do the job of parenting on their behalf: look after 4 boys – the brothers inc. It was as if I had BABYSITTER tattooed on my forehead – or etched into the fine print of my birth certificate. So yeah – the silent shadows were a good space to lurk in. I got so good at it that I made it into a permanent character feature.
Upside – no one bothered me.
Downside – no one bothered me.
See what I did there.
HIDE AND SEEK – a reckoning
The teenage me big’d herself up by playing dead. Adult me, made myself mostly unavailable by working graveyard shifts. If that did not work, I just worked and worked some more. I feared civilian life. Days off. Spare time. Aside from the years when I was married – I feel like I spent most of my time in hiding. Then, my husband suddenly died - out of nowhere - I burrowed myself deeper into hiding.
I hid with a passion.
I hid with a purpose.
I went deep. Deeper dead.
I now see my Inner Harold and the price I paid.
No Maude cons. Relationships are so RARE – they are BLEU.
UPS AND DOWNS – the price we pay
Carl Jung was another guy that hung out in the Shadows. Psychic Shadows - where we ‘hide’ all the things that we cannot tolerate about ourselves - ‘the thing a person has no wish to be’. He believed that we needed to take the time to look into our shadows. To get to know our ‘other’ selves. To shine a light – consciousness – into our darkness. To make whole what has been fractured – separated.
For the longest time I had no wish to be alive. I did not want to be a ‘dead girl’ walking – I just wanted to be DEAD. But I kept walking - was it Nietzsche that said, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?
Great. Sure.
Maybe I’ll just go compete in the local Iron Woman competition.
Somewhere along the way – time passing and ‘healing’ as it does – I began to see that I had paid a steep price for my hiding.
I do not have children.
Have no real prospects for a romantic relationship.
Made some questionable career choices.
Cut myself off from compassionate connection.
Deprived myself of love.
But hiding kept me alive for years - somehow. And yet, hiding is not living. Go figure.
Here, nature nurtures me once again. I am learning – thanks to my walks in nature, noticing it’s shadows – to take notice of my own. To integrate life into my ‘deadly’ demeanour. To cast a light into my shadows and to allow it to breed some aspects of connection and love – even if today that looks like two crazy cats and a flat by the sea.
THIS WEEKS RECOMMENDED:
SONG: Amy Winehouse – Rehab
BOOK: Carl Jung – Psychology and Alchemy https://amzn.eu/d/197yEyN
FILM: Harold and Maude https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B00FYJC9T2/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r