Rings around the moon.

Corvus. Covid 19.. Between us, josh and I are well prepared for current times. I was a home educating parent, and at the time the government had a thing about truancy. The feeling that we may be stopped and questioned about why our school age kids are not in school was a horrible experience, and worse for our kids. But it was normal. The thrill of panic buying, though in this case it strikes me as sensible to have a two weeks supply set aside to tide a person through their illness... The electric thrill and deeply unsettling unease that runs underneath, fueling the need to over stock is absolutely OCD.   The difference is, simply the label. As we wash our hands repeatedly, as we try to avoid contact, no benevolent therapist asks 'is this a second thought, a reaction to a reaction?' When is your hand washing more than rational. At what point is it a ritual, a compulsion?  Right now, seems to me, typical 'mental health' issues are no longer ...

Mostly it is painting and mending. Gluing plasterboard to replace the damaged sections. I painted the living room dark blue. Our multicoloured bathroom is being transformed into white and lunar grey. The bathroom cabinet, smashed and battered has gone. A clean white and whole one hangs in its place. It feels a little strange though, unsettling somehow. Changes I guess. Change and rebalancing isn't always comfortable.  After the Dudley earthquake (!) our house resettled with a massive crack through the living room wall. It was caused by subsidence, and we got it fixed and it's OK...or not. Have to wait for another earthquake!  In theory better to experience this re-settling, and discover that the foundations need repair than to live in ignorance... 

Yesterday shows how it is impossible to not experience the worst, when one has actually experienced the worst - and a new situation has enough similarity to the first, to create melt-down. But it is OK. It is now, not then. Josh came back later last night. The underlying issues remain, and I'm avoiding them...Secondary fear is up and running!

I don't know how it started - it was just words. Then the expression and venom in his face detonates in me and the world shatters with the taste of porridge and oranges (the breakfast I was eating on that day - when he smashed the kitchen and damaged my car and I couldn't run or not run, just scream and hide). I hear and feel the terror I felt each time I didn't know...and it is here, right now. I'm not it. This is real. This thing that keeps on. The hatred and attack that happens in response to me asking for it not to be, asking for rage to be put aside. I speak because I can't take it...and not being able to take it always gets this response. More. And now my rising panic is magnified because I get exactly the same response from my husband when I ask him to disarm rage..until there is only staring straight ahead and silence. Like death in life, or a life in death. No life, no love. No joy. shut down. Lock out. I lock myself into my bedroom and let my panic...

We sat in a restaurant talking about tattoos. I realised that I'd really like a solar eclipse tattoo. I see lots of moon tattoos - a line of circles, each with the moon growing and shrinking...I've never seen anyone have a solar eclipse; a line of suns, the central one black, spiderweb lines of white, or just black, then the gold returns, increasing. Eclipsed...at that moment, as I said it, I felt it. The sun gone. My son gone. It was temporary.  Only just temporary. Death was that close, my stars fell, my heart stopped. No sun... No son. I was silent. A rush of noise, intrusive music that I didn't want to hear, too many people, too, too close. He stared ahead. He hears, he sees, he ignores. His silence is louder than the end of the world, louder than any scream or cry. I hear and feel every word that has stabbed through my heart since May. Here is where secondary fear lives. My reaction to that physical rush of adrenaline, the iron grip, constriction and...