I'm Here

(in response to a passage from Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology, by Arthur Frank)

I’m here. Not there. Here. All the choices I’ve made, not just today but stretching back over the years, a path leading up to this moment, this place, this time. Here. Now. Here. Hero. Why? I don’t want to go down that track. Stay on track. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. House of Commons, old men mumbling and moaning, jeering. Order. Order. Here. Not there. I spend a lot of time thinking, believing, I should be elsewhere. As if I thought I was laying down another path and have no idea how I got here. Disorientated. Dislocated. Misplaced. Not lost. I am here. Just taken a step off track, found myself wandering around in the fog like some amateur hill-climber in Scotland who hasn’t heeded any of the advice, any of the warnings. Putting others’ lives at risk to come and rescue them. Not always their fault, a lack of experience or preparedness. Sometimes events just overtake. You, unexpectedly, find yourself in a place you never even knew existed. A sinkhole opened up on your way to school and you fell into it. You didn’t have a chance. No warning. Just another footstep taken but the ground wasn’t there. Let down in a big way. Back in Belfast this summer. Re-tracing my footsteps, my regular walk to school from our house at the top of the hill. Down the street, curving round, the rough texture of the pavement, the smooth kerbstones still the same. Across the road, on to the flat now, walking past the bungalows. The knobbly walls painted white, the firm wire still cool and smooth to my trailing hand, the latched gate that will squeak if I poke it with my foot. Now searching, when does the side path come up? Will I miss it? I’ll not know where it is. Oh no! Ah no, there it is. It’s ok. Down into the glen, the glorious den it once was, where I stood high on the mounds and surveyed my private kingdom and felt mighty. Now overgrown, neglected, the pathway narrowed. The wire still there, still the same, punctuated by the same concrete slabs. Unchanging amidst the rampant chaos of change, unpruned growth, a tangle of bramble, no way down now, the valley and mounds covered over, unknown now to new passers-by. But not forgotten. Still there. Under the growth. Still here, in my mind, when I once was king and loved every piece of land I laid my foot on, everything I touched. I was at one with my environment, myself. Here. Here I am now. Still I live in a land of tactility.

Of course I'm here. Always here. Everything always happens to me because this is my life. Sides of my personality are here, always here. And although I try to ignore them, squash them down, the harder I push, the harder they push back. Like a ball flying out of the water. Ping! Bang! I'm here! I'm still here! You're nothing. You're unlovable. You're useless. You're thick. Too sensitive. Too fat. Too ugly. Too slow. Too much. Enough!I'm here. Even when I'm not. Just because you can't see something, doesn't mean it's not there.Fear. Back to the fear. Fear of self importance. Losing perspective. I'm here. Of course you can see me. Of course you know.Hard. Look harder. Look around. Anywhere but in this corner of memory. I don't want to walk back down this path. It never ends well. No matter how fresh my else seem. The outlook is always grim. Scary. Shut the door. Can't go in. Won't come out if I enter.Doom & gloom.I'm still here. I'll always be here... Shouting, slapping, palms on the glass that keeps me separate from the rest of the world...Stop it. Get out. Reset. Rewind.Wouldn't it be great if life was like an old tape recorder? If we could wind it back and record something over whatever went wrong. But how would we learn then? If we went back to listen to the tape and everything is perfect... Maybe the truth is that nothing is ever perfect. My perfection might be someone else's disaster.

Being present. In hospitals I do find people are existing together. There is only this waiting for appointments, waiting for children, mothers, sons, friends. There is a soothing limbo to the waiting and being, the never going, never coming. Often you are inside the belly of the hospital, far from the outside world protected by its cottony walls, muffled. Your phone doesn’t work. You are just there. I have waited in hospitals a lot, it seems. Somehow holding someone’s hand before they have an operation feels like the right thing to do. It just is what happens. The community of nurses, porters, volunteers, receptionists and even doctors seems to hold you. I think the dying boy would have had some nurses to talk to later that night, also some other children. Maybe outside of the hospital he would have had to return to the favela or to the rubbish dump to survive. What is he dying of? SADNESS? No child should be alone on Christmas Eve but no child should be alone, ever. Every child should be heard. Mothers care if they can. Of course they do. This story tells me that I must keep my heart open. I must care and look after my brother. I must listen to him at Christmas. He is still a child. I can’t make him better but I can make him feel loved from time to time. We all have a child inside of us, wanting to be heard.