And You May Ask Yourself - "Well, How Did I Get Here?"

Do you talk to yourself? I don't mean the tapes-in-your-head so-low-you-don't-even-realise it incessant droning of your inner bastards telling you stupid things.

And I don't mean the type of talking to yourself that my Mum does in the kitchen and which I have taken to doing too. "Now, where was I? Oh, okay, here we are. How much butter? Three tablespoons," etc etc.

I'm talking about the sort of stuff you do in psychologists' offices where you sit an empty chair across from you and talk to whichever mad Gedarene of your soul (see previous poem) you are trying to understand. It's something I have begun doing quite regularly (although I skip the empty chair bit, trying as I am to keep myself out being admitted to the psych ward if possible). It goes sort of like this:

"Hmm, okay. I see you've slipped back into this feeling that there is something inherently wrong with you. You know, I can understand why you feel like that. Honestly, when I see what you built when you were young to keep yourself functioning, it's all quite impressive really. But you know it never really was going to survive forever. You know that. But it's okay, really. It's scary not knowing what will be built in its place. You don't even trust half the time that anything CAN be built in its place. Something out of nothing. You will just have to wait and see and hope. And hey, you know what? That feeling you have that there is something inherently wrong with you? It's a lie. It really is. It's a lie. Watch and see what God does."

And blah blah blah. This ongoing, spelling out obviousnesses to myself, has become quite a lovely thing for me to do. Do you do this with yourself? The comfort I feel, it makes me feel safe, you know? As if I'm on my own side. The things I see when I do it, it's like how I feel when I sit down and write and realise that I know and think and remember much more than I thought I did about a particular subject. This is the same sort of thing. It's like conversing with my dreamscape. It's as if the kingdom of heaven is within me.