POSTCARDS FROM BED - Charlie Thorpe

RESTING SPACE

Daddy, why is that lady on the floor?

She wore her ‘nice’ clothes for this: swishy velvet skirt,

statement heeled boots. Grey lips cleaving to burnt red

lipstick. Weary eyes propped wide open by a few careful

strokes of a magic wand. She painted herself well,

masking exhaustion with layers of bright colour. Making

herself acceptable to the onlooker.

Even so, uncomfortable Dad eyes up the Strange Stranger

lying on the floor.

(Drunk, in the Tate of all places. On a Sunday at 11am.)

She watches – horizontal – as pairs of feet pace the

gallery. Uncomfortable Dad pulling curious child away.

But curious child sees things with a new perspective.

Daddy, is she a piece of art?

FATIGUE IS A MEMORY OF FRAGMENTS

Fatigue is a memory of fragments. Splashes of colour,

snatches of half-remembered conversation. Flashes of

intense, intrusive memory. Everything else having an

underwater quality like swimming through thought-soup.

Waking sleep-starved in an unrecognisable body.

Words become inadequate. She is reduced to that which

remains: this body, these parts, fleeting moments of

stillness, everything in flux. (Something under the surface,

something unsayable and dangerous.) Grief washes over

her in unexpected waves, and she finds herself drifting in

a tide of rage-acceptance, rage-acceptance. The back-

and-forth rhythm of adjusting to a new body. Loss

intrudes, laying her bare until – numbed – she is at the

very edges of exhaustion.

Little pockets of joy are salvaged. A gentle contentment

felt deep in the bones like the first warmth of sunlight on

skin after a long and brutal winter. She begins to move

with a freedom previously unknown.

Other times her head is fizzy, colours bright and all she

can see is possibility. Her unbounded enthusiasm far out-

strips anything deemed sustainable in this new body. She

tight-rope walks the brink between burnout and living her

best life. Compromise and payback become the new

norm.

All this inner experience is rendered invisible, unknowable.

Look at her. What do you see?

THE COLONY

Crucifixed on the bedroom floor. Bare skin against cool

earth. The AC whirring in the corner as she comes back to

her body. How did she get here?

Feet dragging – body stumbling towards the bed, not

making it. She remembers sliding to the ground,

embracing this strange new earth – unknown and

unknowable.

Her shoulders are tight, holding every exhaustion and she

turns her head. Sharp left, delicious stretch. Pleasurable

pain. She watches a line of fire ants parading under the

bed. Her skin prickles, anticipating their bite, but the

earth clings to her back. Lifting her head is an

impossibility. The ants crawl towards her hair. Disgust

isn’t strong enough to counteract exhaustion.

But don’t tell my heart, my achey breaky heart. Flash of

memory: lifting heavy legs to dance in a tropical soup,

forcing herself to cooperate against the panicked advice

of her body. Step forward, heel taps. Turn. Fixed smile in

place turning into a grimace. Coercive line-dancing.

After, standing under a cold shower emptied and aching:

how did she get here?

Feet dragging down a smoggy highway as she is frog-

marched through unfamiliar streets. She is paraded

around this city until – disoriented, dizzy, legs shaking,

heart pounding, back aching – she lies cruficixed on the

bedroom floor.

There are blank spaces amongst otherwise vivid memory.

Whole periods of unknown time broken by sudden bursts

of remembering in horrific colour.

She is coerced up mountains real and of capitalist making,

all the while berated for being unwell. Have more faith.

Make more of an effort. Blank stretch of time. How did

she get here, crucifixed on the bedroom floor?

But don’t tell my heart, my achey breaky heart. Burst of

noisy memory. She watches the ants out of the corner of

her eye, creeping closer. Vision blurs. She blinks heavy

eyelids over scratchy eyes.

This body does not feel safe. Unknown and unknowable.

Hostile and uncooperative. Just make more of an effort.

Believe and be well.

She awakes shivering. Floor-bound. Glassy-eyed.

The ants have diverted around her, an unexpected halo.

MADONNA AND CHILD

Lagging behind. Left at the edge of the group. She stares

at the portrait of a mother and her child. Does this

painted woman know the unique pain of being parted

from those we cling to? Does her body ache with the

knowledge that her child is missing?

Jet lag weighs her body as she shuffles round the gallery.

Somehow, she can’t draw her eyes from this portrait:

mother and child. One body emerges from another. The

onslaught of homesickness is visceral: cold and sweating.

She feels it rising in her body, stomach dropping out as

the reality of the distance between what she knows and

how she exists now sinks in. Panic washes over her in

waves. Fault lines riddle this unfamiliar body, and she

forgets how to breathe, to be. Existence continues only in

short, shallow gasps.

Her body is an orphan.

It is not homesickness for place or people. Those have

been cut out of her like some used and useless organ.

Safety is severed. Ties to the familiar are fraying. She is

homesick for a way of being, a way of existing in this body

– once friend, now stranger.

Vision blurring. She’s back in the gallery. Kneeling on the

floor, slumped forwards against the tyranny of the

upright. All this in a moment. As the group moves on,

there is a rawness in her throat that stops her from

making a sound. Saltwater cheeks flowing for a mother

clinging to her child.

Unpredictable, untameable grief. These unacceptable

feelings mutate, attaching somehow to her shoulder

blades, a raw and invisible ache. Scar tissue. She carries it

around, counting the cost in her body.

Six thousand miles separate the body she knows and the

body she becomes.

THE ADVOCATE

Some days, she is fearless. An assured professional, she

slips on the advocate mask. Steps up to fight another’s

corner.

Tenderly, she unpacks another’s pain, holding space for

stories that rarely make the light of day. Together, they

do the work of sweeping away cobwebs and dust,

uncovering hope. She marvels at how shame scurries back

to dank, dark corners when exposed to sunlight.

This wisdom is missing in her own life. Busy day after busy

day. Detoxing from hanging on to the hustle, she lies on

the sofa, feeling the cost of these stories knotting muscles

into tight fists. Experience demands to be felt. The pain

begins to nag at her, whispering, a playful lilt: I’m coming

to get you.

Sometimes, pain slams her from the side into semi-

anticipated collapse and she can’t ignore it anymore. She

lies on the office floor, all worn-out carpet and ground-in

chewing gum matting into her hair. The strip lights flicker

overhead, and she screws her eyes tight, no longer caring

if anyone intrudes, finding her prone on the floor. Being

horizontal is a gift.

Some days, the mask slips. Her smile falters when they

tell her how well she looks, when they choose to dress up

their tokenism as ‘support’, when they choose not to see

her. They act surprised when she breaks: wearied self-

advocacy unravelling to sarcasm to shouting and

screaming, to throwing fistfuls of curses across the desk

until others come running down the hallway to check that

everything is okay, and it isn’t it isn’t it so obviously isn’t

and… she silences herself, aching with embarrassed

exhaustion. She puts on the mask – (un)professional –

ready to tenderly unpack another’s pain.

Other days she yields to gradual neglect. She becomes

passive in the face of ‘advice’ from doctor, therapist,

loved ones, colleagues. Her energy is consumed by the

barbed wire tangled inwards, sudden knots snagging on

jagged edges and she struggles to speak, to ask for what

she needs.

Later, home. Arms, legs, spirit: all numb with too much

feeling. Until you call and unpick all the ways she feels

erased. She unfurls herself from the sofa as you remind

her: it will be okay, it will all be okay. You and she are

bound by late night crackly phone line. On a dark Tuesday

in February, you break her back open to hope.

INTOXICATED

A different day. A party. Friends drawn from far flung

corners of the world and somehow meeting again under

the same ceiling. Her back protests at the journey,

carrying the impact of 4 hours’ train-standing. Even so,

she throws herself into the party, earnestly advocating for

all bodies to know the simple joy of kitchen dancing and

everything being a little too loud and a little too much and

a little too beautiful. Delirious, unsweetened joy.

She staggers to the sofa and sinks into rest. Pitstop at the

centre of the party.

Paranoia bursts in for a moment as she wonders if the

DWP will accuse her of being under the influence of too

much impossible joy. She can almost see them sneaking

in, reminding her how to play the good crip – the

misguided belief that being ill is misery sweetened only by

the consolation prize of state welfare so slim you can just

about survive. State-sanctioned poverty. Fuck the DWP.

She pushes the paranoia down with loud music and

wearied dancing. A protest of sorts.

Because today is a good day. Fuck the DWP. More

dancing, fewer drugs.

She is twirling now on a dancefloor in Camden and the

world is spinning, reeling. Colours and lights bend into

one mass of sweaty, sticky humanity and for once it’s

because she is moving. Living. Arms drooping, slower

moving. She is discovering new ways to move with her

body, not raging against it.

But later stumbling through suburbs, the cost of it hits.

Her legs are weighted again, ankles caving inwards in

collapsing shoes. The taxi driver refuses to take her

‘intoxicated’. This man does not understand the best high

comes from being well enough to live.

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE

Fatigue is a memory of fragments. They are woven

together by flashes of bright, brilliant pain like the first

chink of sunlight bursting through the curtains when you

just don’t want to wake up. Holy breakdown after holy

breakdown, her body learns to speak up rather than be

silent and endure. She is fractured, cracking down familiar

fault lines then gluing the pieces back together and

coating it all in glitter, a self-portrait in therapy. (Nothing

to see here.)

We hold these memories deep in our bodies. Fragments

of a life well-loved amongst frustrated attempts at rest.

We inflict violence on our bodies without even knowing

and call it survival capitalism.

Trapped, our bodies begin to panic a language of their

own. A nagging whisper: something’s not right.

Something’s not right. A persistent clicking, joints askew.

Taut shoulders, a rising ache travelling up the spine,

rippling down one arm, then the other: something’s

coming.

Please, just listen.

She has learned to listen (eventually). She has learned the

hard way. The crashing-out-in-the-middle-of-the-office-

way. The lying-down-on-the-train-floor way. The smiling-

smiling-all-is-well-until-she-lies-down-and-the-pain-takes-

her-breath-away way. The numbing-with-alcohol-twirling-

on-the-dance-floor-joyful-arms-above-your-head-and-for-

a-moment-eveything-else-fades-away way.

Let her give you some advice for a gentler way: learn to

befriend your body, to recognise and even celebrate its

unpredictable rhythms. To speak over it with kindness.

Live lightly.

Learn to live through, and around, and beyond. To

embrace, befriend, to tend to your body with the same

care we offer each other, even at our weariest, most

reluctant moments.

Learn to breathe deep and long and often. Be still like it’s

going out of style. Scrap hustle and start to rest. Protest.

Rest. Repeat.

Call your body by her name: the beloved.