Stepping out into a hail of bullets
Sometimes, it seems like my life is like stepping out into a hail of bullets.
During the invasion of Iraq, I remember seeing an image on television which has remained with me, as some kind of metaphor.
A metaphor for my life.
I saw a British soldier crouched behind a pillar, somewhere in Basra, sheltering from fierce incoming fire. I knew that at some point he would have to come out from behind the safety of the pillar, out into that maelstrom of lead and death, face up to his fate whatever that might be.
I thought of the second before he moves…and the second after. The last second of safety, of the continuance of what went before; the next second, the next fateful, heart-thumping, brain-numbing, cold-fear-running second when what cannot be faced is faced, when what comes next…comes next.
The second before…and the second after.
I have been a reluctant and unwilling soldier in this life, cowering behind a succession of crumbling pillars, not-living in the eternal second before…. Before decision, before action, before consequence, before result, before what comes next.
Nine years ago I came to an acknowledgement: that my life was not my life, that my death would not be my death. That I would lie on my deathbed with the thing undone, with my life unlived, dying someone else’s death after a lifetime of not-living someone else’s half-life.
I acknowledged my transsexualism; I acknowledged that I was somehow, someway, some incontestable, unavoidable, ultimately inescapable, refusing-to-go-away way, female. In the core of my being, in the depth of my soul, in the very fibres of my heart and mind…and brain.
It took another six years to get me out from the hiding place that is no hiding place, kicking and screaming. Mother, if it be thy will, let this cup passeth from my lips.
It wasn’t. It didn't.
Three years ago, finally, I stepped out into the maelstrom of reality and consequence. I transitioned. This is your joy…you enjoy it; this is your pain…you suffer it. This is yours…all yours…only yours.
At first, there is only the enormity of what you have done. The adrenalin, the fear, the exhilaration, the release of action, the imagined release of imagined freedom.
Then the bullets start hitting. The realisations, the realities, the consequences. And all my pouches and packs are empty. All my resources were dreamed, all my preparations were made in fantasy…for a fantasy world.
My real hands are thin…and old...and empty.
I used to have a deluded sense of invulnerability, of immortality. I was the reigning queen of distraction, Miss Ostrich 1952-2001.
I was eternally nine.
Now I am middle-aged and my pillars are crumbling, crumbling, fast, oh! so fast.
Once upon a time there was a would-be-if-she-could-be hippie chick who KNEW if she ate enough brown rice she'd live forever...and nothing would ever go wrong.
Once upon a time the future was so big I couldn't see it. Funny how the future shrinks, the gossamer becomes gritty.
Once upon a time I drifted in dreamy currents. Now I strain at the oars, navigating mid-life, tiny safe harbour by tiny safe harbour, dark jagged reef by dark jagged reef.
Then, I tripped flippantly along the cliff-top of my life; the eternal delusionist, pulling eternally painless rabbits out of an eternally blameless hat. The eternal Aussie, “She’ll be right, mate. No wurries! No fuckin’ wurries!”
Now I’m worried.
A light has gone out; the only light I knew how to keep aglow. The light of enforced, obligatory ignorance, of assumed innocence; the light of illusion and delusion. In the dark, damp womb behind my closed eyelids, I lit an imaginary match to light an imaginary path to nowhere.
Now the weight of night, long night, is palpable, pressing hard on the thin, dim end of day. The future is what happens to other people until one day, shockingly and unthinkably, impenetrably and irrevocably, it becomes your own.
Oh! Don't get me wrong! There is joy and wonderment aplenty! Bright precious stones found in the bottom of pinafore pockets. But now you run your fingers over the rough-burred surfaces of both sides of life. Feel them for your own. Gritty, real.
When I smile at you I wear melancholy as a brooch.
How loud is that clock ticking, woman, how loud is that?
Not as loud as the silence that follows.
It's little things. Like sore, old neglected paper-thin feet, like a mouth half-full of neglected decay.
It's big things. Like glaucoma, like blindness waiting in the wings to sing your swan-song. Like the slow, persistent creep of muscular dystrophy, laying claim to the love of your life.
It's irrevocable. Like the criminal record of a lifetime of betrayals, deceits. Stamped, recorded. On your deathbed, or mine, you will remember what I did to you. And so will I.
It's intrinsic, endemic. Like the fear that's knotted tight and hard into the structure of your being. For always, for ever...you.
How could this life happen to that young girl, I might have been, in the Annie Oakley hat with the fake plaits, sweating in the damp summer swamp of her cowboy tent?
How could this life happen to that girl that I never was, who was never a girl but woke up one day in middle age, whose might-have-been menarche went unrealised and unbled until it withered into a quasi-menopause, barren and dry? Like discarded driftwood. Unblossomed and unborn. For ever more.
When I was young, I could run, god! I could run! Could outrun my crimes; and my sins. Greased like a hillbilly hog, I slipped the net of consequence and accountability; pulled off stunt after stunt.
Yeah, I was the stuntwoman - nothing was real. Now someone has stolen away my hidden mattress; now falling is hard, REAL hard.
When I was young sometimes I attended AA. I wasn’t alcoholic – that was someone else. I was the helpless, hopeless one, instead. No that’s not true, they were helpless and hopeless, those men and women who got up and faced us, faced themselves and did the first step. I never did the first step, took the first step.
There’s no hope until there’s no hope.
They gave me a gift, though: “One day at a time, sweet Jesus”. Sometimes I have my own version: “One second at a time, sweet Jesus”.
Life is what you live, clinging to the edge.
Thank god for Alex!
2 Comments:
If it wasn't for the dark times I don't think we'd appreciate love. If it wasn't for the hard times I fear we'd take happiness for granted. But as you say, it isn't death that is the tragedy, but the life we left unlived. And when we see if from that perspective we really haven't got anything to lose by following our dreams and being true to our hearts, even if others think we're completly mad for doing so. You have a beautiful heart Paula.
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