Five minute Friday - Remember.

As it's Friday I am sitting down to write for 5 minutes with Lisa-Jo Baker. Today's prompt is 'Remember'.

My challenge? Writing about remembering when I just don't want to. How can I paint my lovely memories in words, smear them all over this page, when a lot of stuff I just want to pretend never happened. Sure I've got my good ones, pleasant, bright, sunshiny thoughts that pop into my mind and make me smile. But the crap? That can stay right in the back of my brain, in a small, dusty cardboard box marked forever with 'do not open'. I like to think about the good, my wedding day, my children's birth, my baptism and the day my Husband strolled into my world. I do not, however, like to remember Fright Nights at Thorpe Park, freaky conversations with seemingly non-freaky people and the dark edges of living that scratch a creepy feeling across my shoulders.

Scary films leave a blueprint in my 'do not open' box. When they edge into my mind I have nightmares, convincing myself of horrors unknown. Crap from my past, rather than reminding me how strong I am now reminds me how weak I once was, how I was that way once, how I could be that way again.

 

Poultry

Todays prompt for the link up at ruthpovey.com (she lies and says there's links when there isn't really ones) is poultry. As in birds. As in big, running, giblety horrors that most probably will chase you across a lawn. I do not like poultry, I do not like geese, I do not like chickens, I do, however, like ducks, particularly when their all upright and racing.

My friend (the fantastic Ruth) quite often has chicken visitors in her garden. My son loves them, tempts them into her kitchen (using a series of animal shrieks and interpretive dance) then makes Ruth panic leaving me to wrangle said chicken and send it on its merry way. I pretend to be brave, I pretend to try and pick the beast up, in my head I'm thinking 'please just go away and keep your weird red jowls away from me'. I DO NOT LIKE YOU CHICKEN.

That being said, I keep threatening to create a chicken hutch in my garden, along with the fictional duck pond (for the racing ducks) and an alpaca pen, they can all be friends in some big, lovely farm where the sun always shines and no animals ever poo. As long as the chickens have fluffy legs and no weird dinosaur scales we're ok, oh, and no weird head bobbing. It freaks me out.

Today I've laid on my friends sofa watching my children play. I've barely moved, barely spoke, barely bared any of my savaged insides. I've healed minutely, my wounds stitching back together,  my mind shredding a little more as the reality sinks that little bit deeper.

I will mend.  I will sip tea and cry. I will scream at the sky and think angry thoughts about strangers in the street. I will cuddle my boys and tell them off. I will clean and dust and vacuum.

But I don't think I'll be the same.