Monday 19 December 2016

Thoughts on turning 40

The things I know so far are mostly related to birth and death. Everything else remains sketchy at best. Birth and death are the things that have had the most profound and genuine effect on me, changing me entirely. After the birth of my daughter I never thought things would get tipped upside down in the same way ever again. I was a new human holding a new human. None of my clothes fit. I wasn’t a punk anymore but I was more punk than I had ever been.

What could be more dramatic than feeling a mouth feed from your body? We spend hours watching science fiction and fantasy and all in one day it becomes a fact of your life, a tiny wriggling thing that lives off you, that needs your words and face to become a person. The shock of it was worse than electric. The shock was- I exist in this way. Even beyond all I’ve ever learnt and nothingness.

So when my Mum died I remembered, yes we do exist. Because she disappeared so I am pretty certain she was here- I do not think she was a magic trick. Since then I have felt death quite strongly, in everything that I do. These words will stay on this page but the fingers that typed them will soon never type a word again. There are songs that I love that I will hear for the last time, a finite number of kisses. I don’t mind.

Mum’s exit was as dramatic as her entrance- it bent time. It took us all out of our bodies and showed us ourselves as we are. Love forced us to focus, to see clearly that we are simply a strange kind of fighting light. I am 40 tomorrow and just as having a child made me older and younger, so I’ll continue. Real love.


Mum

1 comment:

  1. That was very good to read. Thanks Emma. And have a great Christmas. x

    ReplyDelete