university

University Sleep

/ Kait King / 97 Comments

University sleep

It’s time for me to close my eyes

the sleep – she calls me in

tempting me with promises

of dreams from deep within

Happy to drown in fluid darkness

my lungs relaxed and full

spiralling soft, my body jumps

but still I feel the pull

And so I slumber deep and long

my dreams are all but lost

as I pull myself up from this sleep

to be chilled by morning’s frost

My bed, it lies like a crumpled body

it’s death, by noose, my sheets

I pull on my jeans, headphones on

and head into the streets

The bus stop frozen from icy glares

the wind a second best

We glide and jerk through glistening streets

I know I’m not a guest

My homework lies upon my lap

I want to turn around and go back home

Even my music has lost it’s colour

and bleeds into a drone

We fall out of the bus in an untidy crowd

the Subway reeks of cheese

I feel broken and somewhat heavy

Would they notice if I fell on my knees

My iPod turns into my lecturer

and continues in a monotonous tone

My brain has surpassed this walled in campus

I fall back into my cool dream zone

My liveliness is so inspired by friends of sweet love and sweet dreams

this shining light of laughing free

and left splitting at the seams

We say adiós and walk away

our paths cross again tomorrow

I find myself doubting myself

is this the path that I should follow?

I stand in the queue, the bus pulls up

we file in like a production line

stamped and paid and sit if you’re lucky

the sun’s shining and every thing’s fine

I walk briskly home, it’s getting dark

I walk in tune with a song

And wonder at ideologies like…

why can’t we all get along?

It’s warmer inside and my little friend

turns himself inside out to see me

I talk, I eat, I study hard just to go back

to be soft, warm and dreamy

© Kait King, 2015

Foot in mouth disease

/ Kait King / 47 Comments

foot in mouth

I loved university. I loved being up to my eyeballs in something I was fascinated with. The challenges and deadlines were all bonuses on top of the actual subject and I rose to greet each one. Anyway that’s by the by, so I’m in the lecture theater and the lecture is about to end. I know I’m getting a phone call very shortly so I excuse myself to go outside to wait for the call.

I get outside and there’s a kid doubled over, sitting pretty much folded over on the side bench. I wander to the bench, my phone out, texting and looking up as I walk. And I sit down on his right side. He shuffles over a little to make room. He is not moving much and my curiosity gets the better of me and I surreptitiously glance sideways at him. Yep, he is totally bent in half, but I do see his phone in his hand and he’s got his left hand side of his face plastered to his phone. Not the left hand side as in, his ear and talking, I mean like with his eye and not talking. Possibly taking a picture of his eye? Or the pupil of his eye? So without thinking for another second I pipe up with “I think you need glasses by the looks of things!” and chuckled a little, breaking the ice and everything. And this is my problem – my brain doesn’t engage with my mouth or vice versa – they work independently (against me!) so this is where I have ended up with this Foot in Mouth Disease – I’m a a frequent flyer.

Well, this kid looks up at me and one eye is covered with that cloud, the cloud that means that they can’t see much of anything out of that eye and the other one is scarred too.

He says, “It’s the only way I can see my texts – glasses won’t help…” I’m sitting there like an idiot. But I did what I usually do and chose not to ignore the elephant.

“So what happened to your eyes?” I asked.

He looked up from his phone again – well, as best as he could, and explained that he had been walking down Queen Street and it was winter. A super stormy day, and Queen Street can become like a wind tunnel on days like that. He had a jacket on that zipped up and as he grappled in the wind with it, the zip sliced across his eye, blinding him totally in his right eye and severely impinging on his sight in his left.

“I’m so sorry dude – really impressed you’re at university…I didn’t mean to be rude by the way….” I trailed off. He smiled, “It’s OK,” he says to me, ” at least you didn’t just walk away – that’s the worst. Everyone knows something’s up with my fricken vision. Lots of people don’t know what to do when they’re confronted with something unexpected…”

We were silent for a split second.

“I’m sorry this happened to you…. but I see in spite of a universal fuck-up in your life, you’re still here, still givin’ it all that!” he laughed at me and I laughed too.

“Often people so let the wrong things define who they are, or the worst things. The fact that you rise above this defines who you are.” He looked at me with a serious frown, somewhat created due to his lack of vision.

“Thank you for that, I needed to hear that right now…” he said.

I didn’t know his name but I did know much more about him than just some letters to identify him to his friends, family, fellow students and work colleagues. Not only that, but I found out even more about myself, or maybe about people. We all share commonalities – common likes, enemies, feelings, injustices etc. We all share bonds and those deeper threads of what make us who we are are far more interesting and important than your name, your clothes, your home, car, bank account…we truly are here to fill our souls and not our wallets. I take my soul with me when I go – I will leave my earthly belongings behind.

© Kait King, 2015

The Real Zombies

/ Kait King / 29 Comments

the real zombies

I live on an island and we are very much an outdoors crowd, particularly water sports – besides swimming; I loved horse riding, kick-boxing and wrestling. But now I find I’m pretty much a forced recluse due to the inoperable and permanent nerve damage from 2 failed surgeries, which affects my left side in a chronic-acute-neuralgic-pain-syndrome kind of way :\

I call myself a cave bear as I really am just hibernating…. or am I in a cocoon ready to show the newly morphed me? Instead I am left with what feels like a bad experiment. So I don’t go out much – you don’t when you deal with chronic pain – it’s exhausting. It’s just too painful, hard, embarrassing and awkward to go out.

Anyhoo, back to the story. I went to talk to my shrink for an hour today – she is lovely; spiritual, intuitive, and…. hold onto your hats, she does not believe in CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy). Instead she believes in the meta-conscience, an intriguing concept and much more of a fit for me.

So I understand it’s all about identifying myself now – not who I was, but who I am now. I am not sure of what defines me now – in all entirety. I was absolutely convinced I had found my calling when I joined the police with the goal to help our kids. So my faith in me is shaken and I’m finding out who I am as this other me. I know I will get through this because this is my journey – somehow there will be some sense in all of this pain. I was on enormous amounts of methadone in 1998 along with gabapentin, fentanyl and a dozen other medications. I couldn’t even shower myself or brush my teeth. For years I was a zombie until something inside me said “Kait, this is not you – this is not who you are and this is not what should define you.” So I took a long time weaning myself off the medication and I survived when I was supposed to die, I managed to have a life when I was told my life was over. It’s a horror story and not one I want to write but I got through that – dealt with pain on a daily basis through no help of anyone else and carved a life for myself and my son, who had lost me for nearly 5 years already.

Then I give up everything to go to get my degree in Criminology. My son is grown up and doing his own thing. I graduate in 2011 – start my job and slip on my front step. Need a discectomy – it goes badly wrong and triggers old pain syndrome from lung nerve damage of 1998 into its rabid self. I’m in the high dependency unit again – major drugs. I begged everyone around me that if anything should happen they are not to put me on that poisonous methadone. They put me on morphine instead and so the hell has rolled on for the past two years with no positive outcomes. There has been a barrage of medications again and I don’t want to have to take them. Sometimes I feel like a failure when I have to succumb because I am in so much pain but I don’t know what else to do. And the knives I put in my own back become innumerable in this too.

So yeah – I use self-hypnosis and breathing techniques – I do my best not to take medication. It dumbs me down and kills any motivation toward anything. It kills you on the inside too so you don’t have any spirit to feel human any more or to fight for a life – it consumes you in a rolled up carpet, a dark cupboard and deaf/mute existence. I see so many people who are left dependent on heavy medication and with no existence – these are the true zombies of the world. These are the walking dead, the emotionally unfeeling, uncaring and unknowing. It’s almost a way of keeping things quiet….Don’t let them get you 😉