Let it bleed...

I watched the pin-prick of crimson gradually spread out to become an ugly bleeding blotch on the sheet.

I couldn't quite comprehend that the stain belonged in me.

As the blood crept up the bedclothes, I was suddenly afraid.

What if I were dying?

I was feverous, I was not quite conscious of what was going on...

Ringing for help seemed like a sensible thing to do.

How wrong could I be? 

I imagined that they would somehow comfort me. Wasn't that what they do in hospitals?

A nurse appeared, she looked at the stain.

She didn't seem to take any notice whatsoever of my fear.

Without a word she disappeared and came back with unidentifiable instruments.

The look of the instruments made me more afraid.

Her silence, and in particular her rictus terrified me.

When I saw what she was planning to do, I mustered all my strength to shout.

"No, no, stop."

It was too late.

She killed the person that I had been.

She killed the youth that I had had that night.

I knew that I was effectively dead. 

How does one live when one knows one is dead?

I was half alive and I came home.

Nobody would have guessed, but I knew.

To the outside world perhaps I appeared sad.

Death is not sadness.

How do you live after death?

I went through  many metamorphoses over the years, I was like a snake shedding its skin.

Shock at trauma was my first noticeable state.

I couldn't even put words to my distress.

Shock was replaced with a refusal to accept that what had happened was my reality.

This was all a nightmare. 

I would awake from this nonsense.

The nightmare was resistant.

My father said,

"You have been through hell."

He was wrong, I lived still in hell.

I was consumed with rage, with hatred.

Why me?

Didn't they realise that I had a life to live?

How could they have got everything so horribly wrong...the bastards.

How do you sue doctors?

How do you make them understand the suffering that they have caused you?

I will find a solution.

I exhausted myself in my monomania.

There must be a way out of this situation.

I will find a competent doctor,  a man, a woman I can trust.

Each new attempt to be cured was met with hope, euphoria at the idea that I had been clever enough to find the real expert amongst the quacks.

Each time, the energy spent on the idea of a cure was drained out of me when the promise of rebirth came to nothing.

I found love, how could I trust?

How can you trust someone when you are no longer the person that you love? 

I felt always as if I was cheating. I was sure that people would realise that I was simply wearing a mask.

I was doing my best to wear my mask.

My mask of me. 

My mask of me before the rictus.

I felt always that they would discover my truth.

I was undead, I was unmeritting of love.

I refused to love myself, the self that I had become.

Let it bleed

There is still a part of me that is undead.

I will not let the hope of life die.

The memory of what I was has dimmed, but I can go back there now without fear of paralysis or pain.

There is still all that I am, all the rage, all the love, all the fear embodied in this stain of life.

I am learning to accept suffering as part of my story, a part of my story that I can repaint to show a light.
I am learning to accept suffering as part of our story, a part of our story that we must repaint to show a ligtht.

Let us rage over our lost youth, our lost stories, our lost loves.

Let us bleed our life over blank sheets.

Let us weep.

These sheets are tagged with our humanity.

Let it bleed my friends, it is that which binds us.

Let us laugh out loud at this madness.

Laughter gives us strength.

While we may...

I remember seeing a man with AIDS, homeless on the streets, he was brandishing a banner.

"Why not me?"

I got the joke.