Raw 2

Raw and sore

Body hurts

Feeling like

All my skin has been peeled back

Every nerve on fire

The description ‘panic attack’ doesn’t cut it

Could never really express what I go through

When old traumatic pain is retriggered

The longing you carry for connections

That are torn apart and frayed

Burns your deep being

Like ice fire

Its very real

And unless you go through it

You would never understand

Thank God for you Katina

You affirm my pain is real

I think you have been retraumatised

By what you shared last night

Yes I was back in the darkest hellish place

As they spoke of the pub full of gangsters

Only streets away from Holloway Road

I wasn’t there

Maybe God protected me in some way

By keeping me in Switzerland

But I was living with an addict

And there was no place for true feeling

No comfort

It was like living without skin

In a burnt out bunker

Later in Sydney

The cruel hard nights

Dance party days

Chemicals that opened my heart

To artificial love and then tore that feeling of love away

Leaving me a hollowed out shell

Empty phantom artifice

Drowning in ice cold emptiness

Alone

How can I fully describe that

This though I am coming to know

All that we endured lives on

Underneath the skin

It reveals its truth with time

We watched at one time as everything turned to ash

And lived so long amongst the soot and wreckage

With not one companion

Today the pain was so bad

I prayed to God

Feeling I could not make it through another day

I am not asking him to take the pain

I know I must go through it

And there are so few places I can really share

This pain, these tears

But here I have to be real

I just can’t live any other way

So I must find a way to bear

 The hard days

Knowing I have so little to give

And yet today there is

Your loving kindness

A life raft in a storm

It hurt so much to say goodbye

I need this holding, Katina

I need this help

I want to cry

Please don’t go

But I must not make demands

June is always the most painful month

My body remembers

What transpired in June

Memories so obscure

The body of my sister

Lying on the floor with a photo of her sons

Following her suicide attempt

I know how it feels to want to die

To feel that the heartache of the burden

Of all that has been stolen is entirely too great

But just for today I will find a way to live with the pain

 I must remember that being raw

Being real is all I have

And you may leave me anyway

Drowning in this alone

You may not understand

But still

These words

This pain

Needs to be what it really is

R.A.W.

Today this is me