A Former Ghost Writes

In former times I half-knew it, when I went to places
where conversation did not happen, no words described
what I, and others who were present, were there to find. 
My itch was observed, and reduced in the sharing of it.
Silently, for the duration of each frequent short visit. 

The place I went to quietly passed itself off
as a place of temporary mutuality
of a type I, otherwise, could not find. 

Even as I knew there were names for where I went
and what I did there, the blanket of silence fell heavy
on those I lived with who bade the words not be spoken.
Which was why I had the itch that made me seek such respite.
The life I led using the apporved of unhelpful language
could be survived but would not cure me of my itch,
where the lack of words made me seek temporary relief,
and left me seeking temporary relief seemingly forever.

After over a decade in this silence, and a few years
away from family, I started writing to myself - to ask
where the blanket of silence began, tracking it back
near and nearer to where it started, along with how
different absences of words meant different things.

From a place of unconscious isolation
I wrote about my then present situation
to find, for seemngly the first time,
a wider conscious sense of choice.

What I did then is now called Journaling
When I was writing I called it scribbling.
Over eighteen intense months the weight
of the blanket of silence slowly lifted from me, 
revealing the language of taboo underneath
most of  which began with a new reading of my family.

Was I any less of a ghost at the end? Sort of.
I was not the ghost my family wanted me to be.

The old itch pressed far less,
such that I felt nearly no need
for the silent/secretive respite
I had needed in the past.

But I did not feel complete as a person
in average ordinary, inclusive, conversations.
I was also slow to grasp that 'restored' as I was
there was no compensation for where the silence,
and the years of seeking relief from the itch, had left me.

The best I can say is that I have a renewed respect
for those whose sense of care for others extends
to mental health and personal development matters,
shared in taboo-free vernacular terms: a wide field
of care that I now see as being sorely neglected. 

Safety Through Self Doubt

It is better to be confused
about male sexuality,
than it is to be consumed
by it's potential for toxicity,
which by the time it is done
will leave the typical man
not knowing who he was
or who he was meant to be 
amid the chaos that panned out
from his unplanned lack of planning.
  

File Under Mental Ill Health; A History

When I was a child I was never just a child
I was also labelled 'maladjusted'.

At the time I could never work out what the term meant. 

Whoever I thought to ask, asking seemed invasive,
it invite being rebuffed and the subject of the question
changed in front of me to save who I asked embarrassment. 

Going into adulthood I remained privately confused.
The nearest I could get to the term 'maladjusted'
was to write of my youth that I had 'mixed feelings' 
whilst everyone avoided what those feelings were.  

A second problem was having no idea
how the label had attached itself to me, 
and not knowing what my mother
-the person I felt cared for me most-
thought of how the label stuck?

I dare not ask. I knew that if I did
and time was set aside for me to be
paid due attention, the conversation
would be so 'confidential' and laden
with twisted similes that neither she nor I
 would understand what we had said
before the four walls swallowed whole
the conversation we had to deny we'd had
after it was over and I was none-the-wiser. 

I guessed that my father had dismissed the phrase
before he ever heard it; he dismissed most ideas
and all mental health labels out of hand. 
He would suggest nearly no ideas himself 
but consistently damn others given the chance. 

Did Mother reluctantly agree with the label? 
And in whose stars was it more the fault? Hers or mine? 
And why were adults never 'maladjusted'? Why only children? 

In the 1960's mental health provision/definition was scant in adults. 
In children 'maladjusted' was the most common term to describe 
the character of a child who displayed any number of behaviours 
that openly disrupted the limited adult attention span
or tested the tight adult social order where such behaviour
was not criminal, just difficult for adults to understand. 

I drew the conclusion that it was a term about children 
designed by child psychologists for social workers 
to use on the parents of the children who were disturbed
by bullying in school and beyond, where the psychologist
had ideas about what was 'normal' that parents did not.
But the alarmed parents had to be given a label
that justified putting their children 'in a boarding school'

Some bullying children were also labelled 'maladjusted'. 
But mostly it was bullied children who attracted the label, 
and got the dud schooling/lack of understanding 
that went with it in the England of my childhood.