To Struggle

To struggle, to experience pain – be it physical or emotional – to feel the sting of hurt or the breath of despair. To question, to turn away, is all part of the journey. The most important thing is to not become all consumed up in your pain and anger. Find a way to control it, to harness it, direct it. Find some sort of outlet. Don’t make the same mistakes I have. It is not the way to go. If anything, it makes it harder because it creates new obstacles that you have to overcome. And further down the track, when you look back on your life, you will see how strong you have become.

Something I need to remember, we all need to remember.

Kirsty xxoo

The act to beat all...

The pain is so real, but no one can see it. So many things built up – one on top of the other, performing a balancing act. You are the performer, trying to keep everything in its place. Nothing can slip. Nothing can fall. Who knows what might happen if, even one thing was to fall. It doesn’t get easier. Sure, you become very talented at balancing, but for some reason, more and more things are piled on top. Like someone else is controlling the show, almost wanting you to fail. It doesn’t seem to end. You decide that it’s time to manage things, one at a time, put something down, decrease the number of things you are balancing.

You choose your first task, a nice, easy one to start off with. Gradually you begin to make progress. You somehow balance your tower of things in one hand while you sort out one thing with the other, then put that to one side and skilfully pull out another thing at random. You begin to relax a little now. Your heart rate eases. The things you are balancing suddenly don’t feel like they are going to topple over. You pause for a moment, take a breath, and admire the things you have achieved. You are proud of yourself, happy for the first time in quite a while. Then you look at the now greatly depleted stack of things. You grin, knowing that the end is in sight.

You reach in and pull out your next task. This one isn’t quite as easy to work through as some of the others, but you are capable. Your right hand begins working through this particular task when all of a sudden your left hand begins to feel a little weaker. You glance up to the top of the pile. There are more and more things building up on top - another, and another, and another. You drop the task in you right hand and support the now wavering stack. You struggle. Your arms are tired, you are tired. The column sways from one side to the other. It’s like watching a domino in slow motion - to fall or not to fall? Balancing everything suddenly becomes too much. Your legs give way from under you and you collapse to the floor. Your thoughts, feelings, things you wanted to keep private are scattered all over the floor. Everything you had been balancing is now visible for the world to see.

You become aware of people around you, staring at you, whispering. What are they saying? You start crawling around on the floor, brushing up all your bits with your hands. The people stand around watching you, following your every move. You scoop things from the floor, but there are just too much. You drop to your knees and begin to sob. Despair washes through you. You feel worthless, useless. Your brain has stopped working. You can’t think what you should do next. This only makes you more upset.

There is a soft voice – a little voice. You lift your head and meet eyes with a small child. She smiles at you then wraps her arms around you. When she finally releases you, your stomach doesn’t feel quite so tied up in knots. The young girl begins to walk away, then she stops, bends down and picks up one of your things. You open your mouth to say something, but instead decide to watch as she bends and picks up another thing, then another and another. She turns and walks back over to you. She holds out her hands and gives you back the things she picked up. She then grasps your hand in hers and you rise to your feet.
Together you gather the scattered pieces and make a pile on the floor. When you place the last thing on the pile you look down at your little angel. She smiles up at you and you smile back. Strangely the pile doesn’t look as big anymore. Perhaps you can do this after all.

Kirsty xxoo

Brutal Assault

Sitting on the shore, she watched the waves in action. The confrontation between waves and shoreline was intense to the extent of madness. Her heart ached as she shuddered to think, “One fights for survival, the other for power”, a conflict she knew all too well. She watched the angry tormentor – it lashed the shore in all directions, hit and subsided ready to strike again with more fury and determination then the time before. Waves curled and stretched, crashing with force on mutable earth, submerging everything. In her mind they formed angry faces – expressions filled with horrifying sentiments.

Kirsty xxoo