Behind the scenes: twenty-one - a poem (Part 1)

Two pieces from my book, breaking open...ready for a behind the scenes share in the next Part...please let me know what this stirred in you, it means a lot!

twenty-one (page 31)

21, on a wide river
skating on thin ice
it cracks
sharp edges 
cut through my flesh 
I’m open
vulnerable 
for the first time.

Twenty-one, 2004, is the year I end up in hospital and receive a Crohn’s diagnosis. This timepoint felt fitting for Tanya Markul’s prompt (explored in 2021): point out three decades of your life where you changed, where life happened (11, 21 and 31 – referenced below).

Behind the scenes: breaking open

In the next “Behind the scenes” I’ll dive into exploring some aspects of this poem, but for today, I’ll share the piece following twenty-one in my book.

a diagnosis (page 32):

I’m 21 and lit up like a tissue paper bag, consumed with fire in my ephemeral body, too weak to stand. Too much blood and inflammation and weeks of you’re fine from my GP. At this point, I’m not yet my own advocate. I still pass power to those who I think know more and my body is fading.

The starchy white sheets crinkle on my bare legs, and the blue gown twists slightly around my empty waist. I want to rage at the two doctors standing beside the bed, stethoscopes gently swinging around their necks. They say you’ll have to take these white pills forever, I nod. They say you’ll have to take immune-suppressants for the rest of your life, I blink. They say in time parts of your bowels will have to be cut out, and a flock of crows explode in my chest, crashing into my voice box too scared to speak my truth.

Instead I am frozen like a hare in the headlights. My outside an inauthentic reflection of the turmoil and fire inside. I don’t yet realise the energy it takes to hold your truth inside, bottled up at all costs. To people please. To belong. To fit into a world that you see through different eyes.

So black feathers scatter everywhere as dazed birds fall back down, unable to fly free and express what is real in my blood. The rage boils. How dare they, I think, tell a young woman that this is her future reality. Don’t they know the power of their words! I’m so young!

It is one reality, but there are others, and I am going to ask lots of questions, like I’ve always done. I was encouraged to question…everything.

Just like I’m not going to swallow the white spotted tablets for the rest of my life, I refuse to swallow their story, as much as I feel it gagging at the back of my throat.

It is their story, I keep reminding myself, not mine. I know there is another way, many other ways. And so I set out on a lifelong journey to explore the options, the wider spectrum of truths.

~~~

I walk out of the hospital with an acidic knowing in my gut, burning and eating my insides with anger. This is not my path. I am not here to do this story. You can keep your fucking story and if others buy it, so be it.

In that moment my rage and anger have a bullseye. A point to aim for and try and try again to hit. Fuck them I say. And I dig my heals in, I want to do it all differently. Stubbornly.

I avoid conventional medicine like the plague and I want to scream in their faces. You fucking irresponsible humans. Don't you know the power that you carry? Educate yourself and stop being such a hamster in your wheel. It's not OK what you're doing.

I fight. I push. I try. I analyse. I feel incapable of surrender, whatever that really means. I feel self-righteous in my decisions and it clouds my judgement.

And because of that moment, the years following it go black and white for a while. It's all or nothing and this clouds my judgement in many places. It’s a path obviously I must walk to learn what I know now.

That perhaps there is no black and white, only many shades in between and sometimes one shade works and other times the same shade doesn't fit.

Sometimes still I feel a flicker of rage and I want to unleash it on a one truth doctor or specialist, or anyone for that matter. Don't they know they are dealing with humans! Don't they know the power of the mind!

Maybe one day a peace will settle like a flock of birds roosting for the night. Chattering, bickering, until it goes quiet and a stillness envelopes them with the knowing that it is night time.

Maybe not. Maybe I will always feel a call to stand up to one truth stories.

What did this stir in you? If you have something that popped up, please share it with me in the comments below, I’d honestly love to hear :)

(Image by GeorgeB2 on pixabay)