Joanna Barnard's Blog, page 3

Need

The streets, the trees, even the bees

slept when we met.

Where they’d teemed, beeped, bled,

they were meek.

We felt free, fell knee deep:

Peeled sheets, bed.

See me next week.

I used to worry about quicksand

I used to worry about quicksand;

Spontaneous combustion, that was a big one.

UFOs, poltergeists. The seven deadly sins,

Father Woods. Hell.

I used to worry about my skin, my hair;

Other girls who fancied my boyfriend,

Whether he’d be faithful,

Whether I’d be faithful,

Whether I’d be found out.

I worry now about big things:

The state of the world, 

The planet, the people on it,

Corruption and conspiracies,

The rise of the right,

Fascism, fanaticism.

I worry about medium things:

Can I pay the rent, is everybody healthy,

How is school, are we still friends,

What’s next, am I enough?

I worry about little things:

Did I put the bin out?

Where are the football boots, are they clean?

The fact I broke the special glass,

Lost the necklace,

Still haven’t cleared out the cellar.

I worry I don’t remember everyone’s birthdays.

I worry about the enormous things

that I can’t even put into words,

because doing that makes them real,

gives them weapons with which to skewer me,

bludgeon me, fell me to a state where

I can’t breathe, move, be.

You know what I mean.

You know the unworded worry,

You feel it too.

We all do.

Let’s just call it loss,

and gloss over it.

And instead worry about:

The bin

And the boots

And the rent

And the right

And the hair

And hell.

And tell ourselves, well,

If I keep on top of all that,

It will all be alright.

Freedom

December is a good time of year to leave a job you no longer love. The twinkling lights of my old workplace seem to wink at me as I drive away for the last time.

It’s been a gradual, nagging feeling, this idea that I could do something else with my life and that nobody would miss me if I did. It’s a bit late for me to have a midlife crisis, the wife said, but she didn’t try to stop me.

I’m getting on a bit, it’s true, but you’re never too old to follow your dreams – isn’t that what people say?

They also say things like, ‘they would replace you tomorrow – everybody is replaceable’. I admit that for a long time I didn’t believe, deep down, that this applied to me. I’ve been in the role so long, after all, and I’m good at what I do. I work quickly and efficiently and I’ve never missed a deadline. But you do get tired of doing all the work and never being seen.

I’m also tired of the travel – it’s exhausting, and the unhealthy food that goes along with it isn’t doing anything for my waistline.

I feel a twinge of guilt as I crawl in holiday traffic past houses lit for Christmas. I’ll miss the company vehicle, that’s for sure – this one’s nowhere near as fast. I catch a glimpse of a hopeful young face pressed to a window, and then it’s gone, lured by the promise of hot chocolate, or blurred by the fast-falling snowflakes.

Maybe somebody will miss me, in the morning. They’ll have to notice the empty stockings, the space under the tree. 

Without me, maybe they’ll find their own kindness.

Maybe somebody will finally step up to fill my boots. I hope so.

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I like you more

I like you more than the morning cuppa

I like you more than cheese toast supper

I like you more than Sunday papers

And anchovy pizza with olives and capers.

I like you more than walking up mountains

Than cola bottles and sherbet fountains

I like you more than chilled champagne

And rainbows and getting in from the rain.

I like your smile, I like your style

The way your hair grows, I like your nose

I like that you say ‘barth’ not ‘bath’

I like that my accent makes you laugh.

I like you more than flowers and chocs

I like you more than cosy socks

I like you more than Christmas lunch

And afternoon tea and Sunday brunch.

I like your kindness, your gorgeous looks

Yes, I even like you more than books.

Next to fresh brewed coffee and hot buttered toast,

I love you more, I love you most.

Homage to my belly

(After Lucille Clifton)

This belly wobbles.

It is warm and soft as dough.

It has rolls. It’s proved over time

It is a great place for resting a brew, this belly.

This belly held a baby. It birthed a boy

Better than any beach body bikini.

It now fits nicely into the hand

Of a spooning man,

Or into the small of his sleeping back, relaxed.

This belly is not flat. It won’t be held in.

Photo by Monika Kozub on Unsplash

Belle

I tried to leave, but my freedom was no such thing.

Can you be said to leave someone when you carry them with you everywhere? I could hear his cries of rage, it didn’t matter how far I ran.

I missed him. Missed the heat and rawness of him. He’d been hurt and I understood what that was like. We connected.

He showed me something I’d never found in books. It wasn’t just that he gave me palaces when all I’d known was provinces. The castle with its high walls has an endless library and a bountiful garden; the village with its open meadows has whispering snides and closed minds. Which of these is the prison, anyway?

There was more than that: he showed me a new part of myself. Like the roses he kept, I blossomed, blood red. I grew thorns. We fought, tooth and claw.

I gave as good as I got.

Of course I would always go back. 

He knew it the first time he covered me with his paw. I was his. He needed me.

There was osmosis between us, a shape shift. I made him better, you see. More palatable, more beautiful to the outside world. A prince.

But what does that make me?

I look in the mirror now and see a beast.

Photo by Ameen Fahmy on Unsplash

This life

This life is an empty picture frame.

It waits for a wedding day, the blur of confetti, the slice of the knife.
It wants a dribbling baby, with fat cheeks and tufts of new hair.
It misses a group of friends, arms slung around necks, fishbowl cocktails and filthy secrets.
It needs a parent, their smiling approval, their smothering kindness.

My life is fancy at the edges.

Its ornate curls are carefully painted.
It is light and beautiful and it matches the room.
A stranger might pick it up and admire it.

An empty picture frame could belong to anyone.

Sleepwalking

Each night she walked a little further. She didn’t know she was doing it at first.

It started in the bedroom. She knocked over a lamp, and in the morning the cat got the blame. She whispered sorry.

The next night she went downstairs and tried to make a cup of tea, which unsurprisingly didn’t end well. Her husband entered the kitchen the next day and stared at the broken mug, the spilled milk. He didn’t shout or get angry, only said her name softly.

On the third night she made it out to the bottom of the garden and sat in the flowerbed, not feeling the damp earth underneath her. She looked up at the stars, looked back at the house.

The next day she heard the slow approach of a car and took the longest steps yet. She walked down the path, and joined herself in the back of the hearse.

Hands

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His hands are like mine. They were chubby and used to have wrist-rings, but these have unfolded as he’s grown. His nails grow at an alarming rate and with the strength that comes from youth and drinking all your milk, so they say. He prefers to eat with his hands but will use a knife and fork if there is gravy. His fingers move deftly over computer keys, gaming controllers, mobile phones, but it’s not so long since shoelaces were a fumble. He folds over the pages of books to mark his place, he picks up conkers and plucks blackberries in the park, he grips the handlebars of his bike, pedalling easily up the hill. 

He strokes the ageing cat with great tenderness, strokes my hair sometimes, too, and he will still, every now and then, slip a hand in mine when we cross the road.

Writing is good for you…

In 2015-2017 an All-Party Parliamentary Group found that engaging in the arts is good for your mental health, and there has been widespread research since the 1980s on the value of expressive writing in helping to heal trauma. Writing groups exist now in prisons, in care homes, in hospices, as well as the educational establishments where you might more readily expect to find them. And in therapy, creative writing can be a powerful tool.

As well as being a writer, I trained a few years ago as a hypnotherapist and counsellor. Although I haven’t always consciously used writing “as therapy”, in recent years I’ve come to personally appreciate its benefits in that respect. So I brought together my two interests, writing and self-development, and now run classes in writing for wellbeing in a couple of different settings.

Why writing for wellbeing?

Writing is relatively accessible, inexpensive, and requires very few tools. It can enable us to order our thoughts (how many of us derive satisfaction from making a list?), view our experiences in a new, possibly more detached and rational way, or give us a safe opportunity to vent difficult emotions like anger without anyone else necessarily being affected. There seems to be a physiological effect on people who write therapeutically, too; studies have found that participants who regularly engage in expressive writing make fewer visits to their doctors.

So given all the apparent benefits, why don’t more people write?

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Common fears and barriers:

o “I can’t spell / what I write won’t be good enough”. A creative writing for wellbeing exercise should be focused first and foremost on self-expression, with no expectation of great literary merit, or even spelling and grammar. There is no right or wrong way to do it, no red pen or grade scheme. Good writing is subjective, anyway. Think of the best book you’ve ever read, the most widely-acclaimed prize-winning novel you can think of and look it up on Amazon – there will be plenty of one-star reviews! And while we’re on the subject, that brilliant book or poem didn’t fall out of the author’s head fully-formed; it started as a few words on a page – and most of us can muster that – and went through many iterations and months or years of work before it became ‘good enough’.

o “What will other people think?” Nobody else needs to see or hear what you write, unless you choose to share it with them. You can put it away somewhere safe, read it to someone you trust or send it to them to read, or you can destroy it. Sometimes the act of whatever you do with the writing later can be almost as therapeutic as the writing itself.

o “I might uncover something painful if I start to write about emotions”. Tread lightly. There is therapeutic benefit in writing just for fun, in being playful for its own sake. Even if you want to write about difficult feelings or experiences, the chances are your own protective subconscious mind will only let you write about what you feel ready to address. Don’t use creative writing to try to ‘uncover’ things you think might be repressed; work with issues you are aware of in the here and now. And if something feels too difficult to write about – don’t!

 

How to start: free writing

The simplest way to start is just to start. A fixed period of time can be helpful; try 5 minutes to begin with, and maybe 10 minutes next time. The only rule with free writing is you must write for the whole period and you mustn’t stop. You write anything and everything that comes to mind, it doesn’t have to ‘make sense’, it doesn’t have to be true but it doesn’t have to be fiction either, it can be anything. If you get stuck you can just write ‘I don’t know what to write’. The idea is to keep the pen moving and get your writing brain warmed up. It can sometimes be quite surprising what emerges.

Some exercises to try:

Free writing with a prompt: set a timer as above and complete the following phrases: ‘I am…I think…I want…If only…What if…’
Reflective writing – for gratitude: make a list of things you are grateful for, under 3 headings: the wide world, your surroundings, yourself. As an example you might choose ‘sunshine’ or ‘the internet’ (!) under list one, list two would be more about the things and people in your immediate life e.g. family, pets, something in your home that you’re thankful for. List three is about YOU so maybe there are things you are grateful for that are physical (like your heart that beats, your feet that carry you around) or in your personality (e.g. your sense of humour).

Try to put at least 5 things in each list.
Choose one, from any of the lists, and write a letter to it / them saying thank you and telling them why.


Creative writing – for fun: write the letters of the alphabet down the left and side of the page. Go down the list and quickly write a word (the first one that comes to mind) beginning with each letter. Write a story including every single word. It’s up to you if you have to include them in order! Sometimes this works best if you set a timer e.g. 10 or 15 minutes – and try to get to Z.

 

Above all, try to enjoy the process and if you have a go at any of these prompts, feel free to tell me about it in the comments.

(photo credit: helloimnik, Unsplash)