Real Life, Shona Clingham

People have been condemning me to this hell, keeping me locked in by fear and reaping what comes of that. I didn’t have a choice then but to accept that. I’ve made a choice since to keep going, having accepted it, seeking all the while a change of those circumstances alongside personal change, remembering how unacceptable the onslaught actually is; remembering that the abuse it enabled either side of that onslaught is a personal lesson to bear like a prickly bedfellow for the trauma I was and am yet to heal from; remembering that those who dealt abuse against me might be in the habit of keeping their lessons locked away from themselves, might never make attempts for peace, might never apologise or see need for apology; remembering that the truth (concealed or vague as it might be for others) cements the pieces of myself, as I recover from what I’ve endured and make amends for that which I’ve inflicted. Some would rather see me burn than face the truth. Some sit by with fuel for the fire. There was a time where I joined them and looked on stony-eyed as bits of ourselves caught alight. As I put out the fires, as those around me help to extinguish what should not have come to pass, we’re reminded daily of the ways in which each of us contributed to it… and each of us have a choice to hang on to the fuel we carry still and channel it somewhere else, in another way… a better way.

Resilience is key. Safety comes first but one cannot ensure that without the other. Resilience is key to maintaining safety.

My resilience wavers beneath exhaustion. The kind of power-grabbing exhaustion that comes on the back of the same emotional turbulence that doesn’t go only one way. Stoicism or some variation of that has helped me to stay objective and steady enough beneath everything that trembled. The lack of response from me as I remained stoic (ish) with others became a subject of scrutiny. My change in response awakened enough of me for others to then shine a glaring spotlight on my animosity*. One way or the other, there was fault to be found. How odd… an imperfect human?

Absolutely natural. I’m allowed. Let’s consider all things…

Of course, people want to know if I’m taking liberties with that so they take liberties of their own to find out. What they find is not always what they expected simply because it reveals more of who they are than what they sought to fix. That’s been true, throughout.

*Interesting that the word animosity comes from Latin meaning spirit and courage, and time has distorted this, demonised it…

I’m so tired. I find myself wanting to stop life for a moment. I know I can’t. I want to pause. I want to pause without reflection for a moment simply because there are those who just skip on by and point fingers at me, and they do so without realising the damage it does, without realising they’re contributing to a bigger problem and they’re making themselves a part of it, prolonging something which is otherwise in hand.

I want only to be left to live my life without interference and without undue attention and somehow, my guilt about a lot of rather normal things gave way to speculation and pitchfork donning; my guilt over finally giving in to my feelings after a lifetime of being too nice had me burning at the stake like a witch, justifying the actions of those with pitchforks and flamethrowers, and lighting a beacon for those wanting to throw fuel on the fire, as I (lay dying) locked in my mind, burning with the fire of society’s fears, knowing the unknowing in those who condemned me and giving in to the condemnation because it feels deserved—because I gave in where I shouldn’t have, because I’m human, because I’m not perfect, because I’ve spent too long weighted with those unrealistic expectations, because I’m ‘one of the good ones’ and I have to give hope and not take it away, because I have to see the goodness and spread the goodness and try to be better—

—and you know what, that responsibility as others sail on through life with careless disregard, makes me want to set myself adrift. Still.

In the burning, I thought once, maybe I’d find that. In the ashes, there it was.

Freedom. Unmoored, untethered. Adrift. I was a little more free.

It’s within this desire to be free where challenge looms. I’m not alone. I am connected. I matter. You matter. We matter. A tug on one of my threads serves only to knot, unravel, choke, if we cannot make the time to pause when we need to, sit with the threads of ourselves without becoming entangled in them.

(I’m tied down just enough, and still they pull the threads that bind as though complete freedom is a sustainable way to live.) I’m acknowledging myself enough to understand those deeper childhood fears, and its accompanying present-day fear of loss.

It’s easier to steer this boat now that it isn’t on fire. (Thank you, people, for no longer playing with matches.)

p.s. Three metaphors on the go here but this is a work in progress, much like myself. I’m being patient with myself. Are you?

Header image via Pixabay

Change

Posted 1 month ago by Shona Clingham

An overlooked but vital part of becoming a well-adjusted human is space for those changes to occur. When there is no space in childhood to do those things, it creates an unexplored aspect with the mind of a person; for me, this has been preyed upon. Those things which should have been corrected in a safe space, changed after having been accepted, was doubly reinforced as wrong and unacceptable. It created something of me that was not authentically who I am or ever would have become without abuse.

… [This is the part they call the ‘messy middle’. This is the part I am yet to edit enough to reach a shareable nugget of truth without perpetuating an already complicated process of the human experience. This is the part I’m only just coming through with my authentic self tucked safely at my core.]

What I can tell you right now is this:

I accepted the responsibility of cycle-breaking along with those who are going through those same changes. I accept where we are and our endeavours so we can keep striving towards a better future. Change cannot happen without acceptance.

We should always try to remember that for ourselves and others.

Green

Posted 1 month ago by Shona Clingham

I was not digging around in the past. It was enough to know where something was buried, that there was something buried to begin with. The tangibility of it gave my pain acknowledgement and having that, I was able to admit and address my issues without as much fear.

I had to trust that between the time that thing was buried and the unearthing of it, I have grown enough so that the buried thing might quake in my shadow, might wither, and fade, so that I can finally have the light, so that it cannot choke the roots of who I am, so that I could blossom and bear fruit.

It took me nearly forty years to be well enough to have a child. When I did, too many people saw only the twisted external remains of who I was when that buried thing finally let go of me. They could not see beyond the battle, only the battle itself. They could not see beauty. They could not see the fresh hope at the centre, and they were too arrogant to simply let me grow.

I grew, anyway.

Header image via Pixabay

Too Much

Posted 7 months ago by Shona Clingham

What’s wrong with you?

Maybe I’ll one day tally the times I’ve been asked this and maybe I won’t. What I can do is simply ask myself and finally (if given the chance) answer it without judgement and with compassion for myself. If compassion isn’t to be found outside of myself, I have to offer it. I want to. I’ve never thought myself worthy enough even if my ego had other ideas. I have never had authentic freedom to be exactly who I am and with each little repression of a real piece of me, I twisted with shame at having been rejected for it. I draw trees and have always studied trees because with each twist of the branch, there is more growth and more beauty. I’ve always been too much. I had to keep planing pieces of my soul to fit in the box I was made for.

Acknowledgement

Posted 8 months ago by Shona Clingham

My silence has lately been mistaken for acceptance and blind obedience. In essence, I’m direct. I’m honest. I’m unafraid to stand up for someone in need—but I suppose by the time I had to defend myself, I was spent, and tangled—utterly undone—and utterly convinced I was worthless.

When I finally redefined my boundaries on my terms, it inevitably led to a freedom of sorts, and with it an eventual resilience, but before that terribly unglamorous transition back into womanhood, my efforts were met with outrage from those no longer holding control over me. Those people were quick to point out my mistakes and flaws, quick to redirect attention to issues I’d already addressed without them. I’ve since learned to reject their deflection.

It wasn’t an easy lesson.

It is somewhat ironic that those who noticed the oddity of my quiet compliance did not notice that same compliancy while with them over time, and those who saw only snapshots as I tried to establish new boundaries and deal with pushback saw none of the struggle and all of the harshness, blinded in turn by their own flawed lens.

It reinforces me positively now that I know and understand the dynamics at play within most of my relationships. I understand better where I fit within them and I’m no longer despondent about what it tells me because I can more clearly receive the true message.

Back then, I took on too much. Eventually, I broke. I reflected behaviour at the people I love. I matched their energy. I suppose I subconsciously gave myself permission to respond to their mistakes with the same abandon they chose to respond to mine. I had a point and I made it.

I feel equal parts pride and shame about my behaviour but I own it in its entirety and one aspect of that is simply showing up for myself. I stood up for myself when it fucking mattered. Finally.

…But I’d never had genuine confidence before and it went to my head.

It was difficult to move past that. The shame I felt and the shame piled on by others triggered other old wounds and fears.

I broke down, again. I couldn’t speak up. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t function.

Despite having endured a heap of traumatic crap throughout my life, one of the worst experiences was having so many people dislike and judge me for a speculative version of events.

It’s odd because I’d previously been in a place where my own conviction was enough to get through the day and then I was hanging onto encouragement and criticism alike until there was nothing of myself left. It brought despair as it reinforced a deeply held belief (school of life link).

That has since been eclipsed — losing loved ones can have myriad effects; the resilience I’ve rediscovered, new strength I didn’t know I had, means simply, that those who once drove the fear wagon no longer have the power to run me off-track.

With fear in check, I’m a (mostly) sane woman. Hell, don’t take my word for it—stalk me. (No, seriously—STOP stalking me.)

Despite stalking and harassment, I had to stay on task; I was dealing with internal trauma and having a roof over my head no longer equated to having a safe and private space to heal or grow and yet, years later, I’m transitioning once more into a new phase where I have a little more courage to freely be myself. I’m allowing myself to be who I am. I am handling myself well enough. I am helping to raise a wonderful little human and I’m no longer afraid to place a little trust in those who genuinely want to help. The tricky part has been overcoming those trust issues—trusting too much makes a person an easy target for opportunists; trusting too little hinders authentic connection with others.

How does a person re-establish who they are, be who they are and live with pain without shutting out the world or throwing cruelty back into it?

For me, it began with acknowledging myself.

Header image via Pixabay

Dark

Posted 8 months ago by Shona Clingham

The shadow at the edge morphs with the light,

it tricks the eye.

It swallows sunshine, harbours sinners, blurs the lines and stretches night.

It rages through the forest on a whisper, stealing sight,

We are hostage, blind and naked,

— birds have wings; they all take flight.

I am grounded, rooted, tied down —

my bark has little bite.

I only know: look upward — keep reaching for the light.

Out of the Fire…

Posted 9 months ago by Shona Clingham

In the same way that an off-handed comment from a stranger is easier to handle than a personalised remark from a close friend, it became too much to withstand when he began rattling the foundations I walk upon. Little by little, he took each of my carefully and painfully honed improvements and systems and beliefs, even memories and traumas and relationships, then held them one by one beneath a secretly-scorching magnifying glass like so many unassuming ants and my entire infrastructure went up in flames.

It was subtle in the beginning.

I, blind with infatuation, burdened by grief, walked blindly alongside him with a trust almost infantile in its immensity. I weep for that version of myself—desiccated, dormant, deranged, demanding, docile, do-gooder, daring, in reverse order—as events accordioned one after the other, over and on top of the other, with a tuneless whine as I deflated and inflated and deflated myself again and again to make myself unbecome what he didn’t want.

I weep, still.

Only now he tells me—yells—not to cry. He’s tired of seeing me cry. He’s also irritated when I cry privately. He doesn’t much care for my happiness either.

Subtlety is gone but I’m still here.

Impure

Posted 9 months ago by Shona Clingham

Fear

darkens the days;

the storm, the rain —

heavy, slow.

Need, desperation

blur the edges,

spilling, smudging,

one

into the next

and the next

and

the next.

Sunlight fleeting,

glaring

in its scarcity.

— Afraid?

No.

Too concerned with glow

and grace

to let itself be glazed

with rawness

of rain

like acid

burning

through golden

sugar grains.

How did it all

become

so…

Unsweet?

Lens

Other possible titles:

Not Good Enough

Be Nice

They’re Not Sure What Happened—She Used to Be So Obedient

Did I Disappoint You with My Humanity?

Dare to be. Dare to hope.

Posted 11 months ago by Shona Clingham

It starts with Nova… Overcoming fear and doubt and learning to trust myself again helped to lift that feeling of censorship. It helped me rediscover my strength, my words, my voice, and a truer sense of purpose. I simply held my daughter tonight and told her things I’ve wanted to express since she came into the world. I told her I love her; she might never know how much I love her until perhaps she has a child of her own. I hope there is no obstacle in her life so terribly great that she ever doubts what she means to me.

I told her I want her to have space and freedom to be exactly who she is. I hope she is happy but when she isn’t, I want her to have courage to explore that. I want her to push the boundaries while she has the means to do so safely, so that when she is grown, she’ll have the means and motivation to deal with everything life throws her way.

I told her I am here to help her learn how to do that—and without her knowing as much, she is, in turn, helping me to cope and to grow; she gives me strength to find new ways to be a better person.

I told her that I named her Nova Grace because Nova means new and is an event within the cosmos which gives light and Grace is a virtue. Together, her name represents new light and grace in my life. Whether she lives by her namesake or not won’t change what it means for me and I know this in the same way I know that there is nothing that can ever sever the connection I have with her. There is truly nothing quite like it; if there is, I’m yet to experience it.

At thirty weeks pregnant — not the magical time everyone said it would be but a miracle nonetheless, I knew I wanted my child to grow up with the kind of freedom that allowed them to be whoever they chose to be, with the ability to withstand judgement and not let it change them unless it was authentic.

Wherever my daughter takes her place on any spectrum in life, I am always going to support her. I only hope that she will where she can, choose right over wrong and kindness before cruelty. I want her to know that she will make mistakes, as we all do, and that she should not feel ashamed of them, but view them as lessons to take with her into the future, the way I wish I had had the strength to do every time in my own life, even when other voices were louder than my own. I hope I can show her how to have the will to speak up without shouting, to be strong without throwing her weight, to be brave without recklessness. I want for her to learn how to do this without enduring hardships but I will prepare her for the inevitable hardships she will face.

My hope for her is that she will come to understand as I have that adversity hones us. My hope for her is that the resilience she has coursing through her, and the generations before her, will stay with her as she navigates her way through the world.

She is the light of my life, and I can only hope that I can help her see how brightly she shines.

From My Journal 08.01.2023

Judgement

Posted 1 year ago by Shona Clingham

As a person, you are judged. Regardless of where you take or make your stand on any spectrum, if you’re alive, you will be judged, try as you might to avoid it. You’re judged when you’re too straightforward and judged when you’re too vague. You’re judged if you stand up for yourself but you’re also judged if you simply let someone take advantage of you. You’re judged for taking yourself too seriously and judged for not taking yourself seriously enough. You’re judged if you’re too fat or too thin, too well-groomed or too unkempt. You’re judged for what you appear to be.

What about what goes unseen?

I don’t mean the stuff that happens behind closed doors but rather the deeply-rooted cluster of pain inside a person that spills over into their waking life. Does it appear as it is? A molten, stinking mass of unresolved issues and barbed despair? Or does it look like random sick-days due to mental exhaustion? Or a binge session on a Tuesday to escape suicide? Maybe it looks like an empty shell, a vessel without a captain, someone who tunes in and out of a conversation without meaning to. Maybe it’s posing as a bubbly and vibrant presence, polite and pleasant and holding it together, only to fall apart catastrophically when finally in a safe space.

Where have all the safe spaces gone?

‘Why the fuck do you need a safe space, you pansy?’ boom the voices at the back. ‘No one ever mentioned a safe space back in my day.’

Is it possible that a lack of such a space is what bred generations—an entire culture—of misguided social expectations, which led to an overwhelming proportion of the population being riddled with anxiety, laden with trauma, and filled with a sense of self-loathing that many traditional so-called ‘values’ only serve to perpetuate?

Is it possible we’d need less of a safe space if we’re allowed to be who and what we are without so MUCH intense pressure? Is it possible that the pressure that fuels change and innovation for some is the same pressure that overburdens the so-called weaker members of society? Maybe innovation can show up in other ways for other people? Is it too much to comprehend that we don’t all need the madness of competition to drive us to great things? That perhaps, stability and routine and sameness and simple peace and quiet and privacy are just as effective when it comes to productivity or creativity.

Maybe peace and madness looks a little different for all of us. If we’re not hurting anyone, why should our methods and choices be any less significant? If we are hurting someone, we should be removed from the situation. In all cases, we should be assessed for the right support and course of action. We should not be burnt at the stake without trial. We should not be penalised on assumption alone. We should not hear only one-sided testimonies. We should certainly not lose our autonomy or have our entire identity dismantled and rebuilt according to someone else’s instruction.

Do we not all matter? Are we not all human? Are we fucking accepting diversity or are we not?

No human is better than another; conditions are what shapes us and if those conditions were not desirable in early years, we spend the rest of our lives trying to reshape ourselves, all the while standing miserably in a mould that doesn’t fit, all the while listening to the messages the world sends us about how misshapen we are, all the while being expected to fit the new moulds they hand out—and be thankful while we’re at it.

Does anyone care if we don’t fit the mould? Does it matter?

When we are called inappropriate to a degree that it changes us internally, we become different versions of ourselves. Not all of those versions are better. Not all of those voices claiming improper behaviour are correct. Not every opinion counts or holds merit. When we take onboard the advice and feedback of others without paying attention to who we are as a person, we can become so internally disfigured, so unnaturally modified from our true self that we begin to fracture. We split and splinter and unravel; we follow different threads of ourselves: one for our parents, and one for work, one for going out, and one for going out out (which is really only possible with social lubricant and lots of it), one for the quiet group of friends and one for the rowdy group of friends and one for the group of friends who wholly ‘get’ us, one for our partner and one for our child and one for the person on the other end of the phone who has you pacing the floor like a warden, and somehow, in the midst of all these loose threads, there’s that last little knot, holding it all together, but incapable of weaving the threads into something whole, something worth looking at, something worth having… or at least, that’s the truth I’ve accepted.

Time, and place, context be damned, there is always someone, somewhere waiting to judge another. It’s hard to remember that our lives are our own. Our shape is ours to take. Our tapestry is ours to weave. Yet, we spend so long caught in an endless cycle of pushing expectations onto one another, from parent to child, partner to partner, adult child to elder parent, peer to peer, round and round, consistently overlooking what is true and right for the individual.

I don’t want to make this mistake with my own daughter. I want to have a view that is wide enough to see who SHE is. The things she does will differ from day to day and moment to moment and this should not be a full reflection of her character but of her ever-changing capability in ONLY THAT MOMENT. She will choose who she is, or perhaps she will simply BE who she is if she grows up in a world that gives her the freedom to do just that without unreasonable and unfair expectations.

We are expected to be flexible in a rigid system that does not allow for the nuances of the human experience.

When we burn out from trying too damn hard to lean towards what society demands of us, we are called lazy and good-for-nothing and when we fight our bodies’ needs and try to focus on even a single aspect to make up for this, we’re called obsessive or workaholic or pedantic or anal.

We are told our thinking is too transparent and when we try to counter it, we’re called manipulative.

We’re criticised for having idealistic views and when we try to see only what’s in front of us, we’re called cynical and tactless.

We are called childish, and weird, ridiculed for having obscure and/or intense interests and hobbies and humours, and when we repress these aspects of ourselves, we become lost and are called useless.

We internalise those labels. When we see that behaviour, we reach for our most primary experience with it and hurl those same cruel labels at another person and they scoop them up and hoard them around until they have a chance to throw them back at someone else. We end up hurting one another because we’ve been hurt. We see ourselves as a bundle of inadequacies and have it reaffirmed over and over and over again only to go on and reaffirm someone else’s inadequacies further along the line, creating a web of broken humans laden with the self-belief that they are beyond repair.

When the world wants you to toughen up and be resilient, it really is difficult to do that and stay just soft and kind enough to see suffering with compassion and without hasty judgement. I may never get the balance exactly right with any of the other things society has us believing is all-important — but for myself and those around me, I have redoubled my efforts to fine-tune this and rebuild trust within myself.

Lens

‘How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgement upon that which seems.’ Robert Southey

Header image via Pixabay + Canva