Grasping the Nettle

GRASPING THE NETTLE.

Five years old, suddenly alone; in a Childrens’ Home.
He was cared for, as one of many
which crushed and confused his identity
and meant a little boy grew, without self-value.

Eight years later and his mind is full of
self-loathing imaginings intertwined like bramble.
Dispiriting thoughts, tangled; like the curls on his head,
as if tousled and twisted around barbed-wire thread.
Tongue-tied and timid, only safe in his bed,
eyes lowered, heart downcast for whomever he met.

Described as ‘shy’, he thinks he’s evil.
Teachers say, he has potential.
Such intermittent kindness, he meets with distrust.
believing he’s not worth other people’s efforts.

On his fourteenth birthday
a makeshift mother gave him a diary.
A fitting chalice for his angst.
In it he scrawled, typically teenage – overwrought,
“Once, my mind flashed with instantaneous reflections of intersecting rainbows and raindrops”.
A little later he wrote, in his suicide note,
“My thoughts feel like thorns, shredding my brain cells into chaos.”
With moist eyes and a stone in her throat, she read,
“If I was dead right now, I wouldn’t have to be me, here.”

He survived both the angst and the therapy, emerging with a skin deep recovery.

He was tired when they met, yet a young Miss respected
the only authentic part of him – his vulnerability.
A lady, who called herself a therapist,
had been clipping and hacking at the metaphoric mess
of briar and thistle. To no avail.
The harder she’d flailed the thicker
his weed-like thoughts and memories had conspired
like sanctuary-seeking vagabonds.

He reckons the times his Miss and he picnicked by silver streams
while tramping mountains cold and huge,
she taught him trust, while he showed her skimming stones.
Such faith encouraged him to venture further from refuge
than he would ever have dared, alone.

Yet he then endured his
‘annus excellentium et humilium’.
Tired of stalking redemption, and
in a desperate impulse to cure himself (or self-harm?)
He grabbed the strongest bramble,
(representing self-esteem) and
its longest, sharpest prick,
(“hopeless, worthless, nigger shit”)
impaled his palm.
That strongest bough was thick
from a lifetime of self harmony ,
yet with skewered hand he drew it hard
from his head via his ear. At least,
”that’s how it felt,” he said.

As he wrenched at the shambles
the tearing spikes that were insights
and the razor shards of recollections
ripped the membranes of his mind apart.
With each revelation and confessional tear
came lacerating relief and affirming ideas.

Now, though the Miss is a long time gone,
he knows he could look her and anyone
in the eye, and beyond.
He’s uncovered those self-betraying avowals
and, though they judge him harshly,
he keeps them close
and confronts them, dauntless –
he need not cower from them again.