Seeds of Destruction.

Are we born with the seeds of destruction already implanted in us, or do we gather them along the way like rosary beads counting out penances for sins past and yet to come? The psychiatrists and allied therapists grow rich with fat purses from those whose "quirks of nature do not conform to what is accepted as the norm. Yet who can say what is normal in a society that measures such things by old-fashioned, outdated rules? Freud and his followers have a lot to answer for. So do the latter-day "shrinks with their Rorschach tests and personality tests designed to show a predilection to neuroticism.

Let them take their inkblots and the A or B personality types and put them where the sun doesn't shine. (You see how restrained I can be when I choose to?) Once I decided to stir them up, by answering each question completely opposite to what I felt, behold, I am a genius, too rare by half to put into one of their padded boxes!
Slot A cannot be put into slot B, stand it on it's head and it might just fit into slot C, but the inkblots tell another story of a warped and twisted personality. How then to read the riddle? Fix the head with wires and read the alpha and beta waves, how the ancient Greeks would hate to know what their alphabet became used for! Place the subject on the couch and shine lights into their eyes, don't they ever think that a vivid imagination can cause peaks and troughs they are unable to read?

Once befuddled and confused then it must be upbringing or failure to fit into society, a good stock answer for all who cannot or will not conform. Click, click, the rosary beads are counted and hang in the balance.

I hate labels; I refuse to be pinned down like the Rorschach butterfly, arms spread like Christ on the cross. (I told them it was a women's cunt, the word labia would have given me away.)
So I don't sleep at night, choosing to listen to the night trains and making up stories about those shadowy travellers. I would doze off in school or look out of the window, the clouds making fascinating picture-images that I can shape, as my mind will, the stories are better than real life.

I won't swallow the drugs; I can hide them under my tongue and spit them out quickly before they get into my bloodstream.

My imagination has no boundaries; I can leap across the mountains, a mountain lion with skill and speed, the wind tossing my mane as my paws flee the earth's hold. I hunt with the eagles, bright-night keen my eyesight spots its prey and swoops for the kill. Under the blue-green of the ocean lies a different world. Rainbow hues from coral reefs, diving deeper, ink-black water, looter's gold glistens. My body sleek, I drift, or with a gathering of endless joy thrust upwards to sport and play chasing the fishing-boats against the tide.

I cross the deserts of my mind, a traveller on a journey to distant lands. My breath is grasped by the cold as I conquer the mountains and the snowy drifts. I walk where none has gone before, through temple-ruins and jungles vast. Now treading the earth when the stars were still new and life but a glimpse on the edge of time.

Nighttime fascinates me, that rich plethora of lights, which are dead stars and planets enshrouded in mystery. Once I walked out in the middle of the night to a high part of my town, where I could escape that pinkish glow and see the sky more clearly. Identifying the clusters were no problem then, but I gave them the old names, not the ones learnt from books, but the ones the ancients used. Who can make a story out of the Plough? Not me, I preferred then as I still do now, to imagine distant ancestors keeping warm by the fire and naming the constellations after hunters, animals, and mysterious gods.

I think I would love to time-travel back to those days when life was much simpler, even though my life span would have been much shorter. I wonder what my totem would have been? Maybe a great cat, I love the little cousins of the larger breeds. Perhaps I may have been a shaman, or a wise-women, yes that appeals to me. Mixing bones, reading from them the will of the gods and telling the tribe where and when to hunt. Of course I would lead them in the hunt, my hair streaming behind me as I held my spear ready to throw. To bring down a deer for my tribe, or maybe a large bear to provide both food, skins for warmth and fat for the burning of torches.

I was just ten when I walked out to see the stars. I stayed out all night and caused my parents a deal of worry. Back I went to the shrinks who could never have understood the need in me. More tests followed, I found it easy to circumvent their pathetic questions, the gods had touched me.

Then I had to stay in the garden at nights, no more jaunts under the threat of more tablets to try and hide. Sat on the wall with my cat Tom, we stargazed but it wasn't the same. Under the town fog they were veiled from clear sight. I learnt to sit as quiet as Tom, I could feel my tail twitching and my ears pricking up with every rustle of the grass, each leaf falling in slow motion. My eyes grew sharp so I could see an insect move mere paces away. This stillness crept into my life and was duly noted as yet more abnormal behaviour. The cage became smaller until I felt I must scream or go mad with the longing to be free.

I smashed the glass out of anger and pain, the stitches were nothing, but I still have the scars.

Once we all went on an outing to the Cheddar Gorge in Somerset. I enjoyed the caves but despised the guide who clearly knew little about magic and made a farce of it all. If I could have wandered on my own then I wouldn't have behaved so badly afterwards. We had a picnic in one of lay-byes that were allowed back then. Cheese and tomato sandwiches gone soggy from the drive, hard-boiled eggs like chewing rubber and cheap lemonade with bubbles that made me sneeze.
I lay on the grass and looked up at the steep cliff. What an adventure it would be to climb it!
The afternoon sun was warm and my parents were dozing in the unaccustomed heat, we didn't go out that often.

The climb was easy although there were places where I had to stretch and place my feet carefully. I was Scott of the Antarctic battling my way up treacherous slopes. The view from the top was wonderful; each way I looked the rolling hills opened up fresh sights. I lay on my back again, chewing a stem of grass and watching the sky change colours. Our car was a tiny speck by the roadside, I turned away and thought of the people who once lived here, did they watch for invaders from here while the women and children took shelter in the caves? I could almost see and hear them. Was it a hawk that screeched before the alarm was sounded?

This time I was grounded for a month, not that it bothered me that much, by now the stories had filled three exercise books and if I needed a break then there were plenty of flowers to sketch in the garden. Getting out at night was easy, climbing out of the window and skidding along the coalhouse, the drop to the ground was only about ten feet. Tom would be waiting on the wall and the night would whisper its secrets.

This time the shrinks came up with a good suggestion, I needed to expend excess energy so I was taken to the swimming baths with my older sister to watch over me.

I had no fear and soon outgrew the baby baths. The adult baths were much more to my taste, while my sister eyed up the lifeguards I plunged headfirst into the deep-end and became a swimmer that day. The bottom of the pool wasn't like my dreams of coral caves, but it would do for now. Soon I could swim 100 yards underwater, gliding as the dolphins in my imagination. I soon found another way to put my new skills to use.

The next summer we had a rare treat, my aunty paid for a caravan holiday at a nearby seaside resort. It was a good ten minutes walk across sand dunes to get to the sea. The adults went in cars to the beach but since it was a squash with twelve of us, then I was allowed to walk with my sister and my older cousin. It was easy to dodge them while they talked about boys and pop records. Now I had a real desert to cross, trudging up the sand dunes I became a nomad tribesman separated from the tribe, my goal an oasis that had to be reached although I was parched with thirst. The sand got between my toes and the heat was terrible, but reaching the sea my story changed and wading out I swam like the sea-creatures I only knew from books and imagination. Of course my parents, my Nan and my aunty had a blue fit, but this time I had an ally in my sister, (although she had no idea how strong a swimmer I really was.)

In one week I became as brown as a berry, my skin tanning easily although the rest of the family suffered from sunburn. It was an idyllic time for me as it meant a rare freedom. I was allowed to scramble among the dunes, dip in the sea and search the pools for crabs and (in my mind, lost pirates booty.) Even the cramped caravan was an Aladdin's den with its quaint gaslights and pull-down beds. I'd be up with the dawn, cramming a slice of bread and butter down so I could get out as soon as possible. My mother seemed to have accepted that she couldn't stop me; I turned up for meals on time and even helped with the younger children. All too soon the holiday was over and stark reality set in.

Grammar school started that autumn, despite my dreams I was aware of the real world and had passed the entrance exam with ease. My body started to change and there was nothing I could do to stop it. My imagination was as keen as it was before, but the doctor's notes followed me there and made my life a misery. I made few friends and although I got by in most subjects, it was only in English and Art classes that I really excelled. I won prizes for my stories but it soon became clear that a career as a writer meant starting out in a new direction, university first and a job afterwards. Maybe then the pressures of life would have ground me under; I couldn't face that and so took the easy way out.

The shrinks had been right after all; I was ill, sick of trying to be what people wanted me to be. It took me many months to recover and by then the seeds had been sown, or had they been sown long ago?

All my life I have been self-destructive, when things go well I'm waiting for the axe to fall. When things are bad I tell myself I have deserved them all. The peaks and troughs of life have worn me down, no longer can I tell my dreams from reality. The butterfly was pinned after all, I did it to myself.

© Lisa Fuller. March 2006.