In my new house there are cupboards and boxes
where I put the makings of my new life.
I am looking for myself in them.
I find I have paint and ink, brushes, charcoal
pastels, and paper of different types.
Apparently I was an artist in a previous life.
I have a sewing machine, bobbins
and many spools of different coloured thread,
scissors, needles, and, already,
a suitcase full of pieces of fabric.
I said yes to someone’s dead mother’s
store of cloth because one needs
a lot of pieces of fabric that one will
never make into anything.
It’s what a sewer does.
Apparently I was a sewer in a previous life.
And books. Oh yes, nowhere near enough
but, already, too many to read between now and when
I need to buy, or receive from a friend, a new one.
Or three.
Apparently I was a reader in a previous life.
I have a box of seeds and another of the tags of plants.
I have a rake, a spade, hoe, crowbar, trowel,
hoses and their fittings.
Apparently I was a gardener in a previous life.
I have a number of poetry books, innumerable
notebooks, far too many pens and pencils, erasers,
folders, loose pages, a printer, and printer paper.
Apparently I was a poet in a previous life.
I have some crystals and herbs, a book of remedies,
a shaman’s drum, a jaw harp, and some singing bowls.
Apparently I was a whatever that is in a previous life.
I’m not sure if that was a healer, a musician, or a crank
but no matter. I like those things.
Of course, I don’t know where much of it is.
I tried to give them their forever home but
the seed box is in the poetry
and the white paint in the sewing gear.
There’s band-aids with the salt,
and books among the garden tools.
Of course, I can’t find a needle or a rubber band
when I need them, but never mind.
At least I’m piecing together what I was
in my previous life.
This poem was first written within the first year of living in our new house after the fires. It got lost as so many things did in that first year.
Eventually I discovered a process that helped me find things. Once I had found something that I had been looking for, I would put it in the first place that I had looked for it, even if the dressmaker’s scissors lived in the kitchen drawer.
And at the time, there really was this feeling that I didn’t know who I was anymore, that I couldn’t remember what I like to do or what I like to eat or any of that stuff. I don’t know if this is normal with trauma. It took me a long time to feel even remotely comfortable in my skin, and just when I was getting comfortable, a whole heap of other traumas happened. My husband had a hip replacement, it got infected, the result of two extra general anaesthetics really didn’t help his 85-year-old memory, I couldn’t get him out of hospital because of distance and Christmas, so he went seriously backwards.
I feel like I have been lurching from one disaster to another. I have been diagnosed with complex PTSD. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone amongst the fire victims.
And on the subject of the word ‘victim’, people ask me, wouldn’t I be better to say ‘fire survivors’? Sure we have survived, but so many of us are still in major trauma. I’m not sure how to think about the word ‘victim’, but somehow the word ‘survivor’ doesn’t quite cut it because it is not over.
Very soon after the fire there was an information night, in which a woman, who had been burned out in a previous fire, spoke. Of course, we were all still running on adrenaline and thought that we’d be okay in about two years maximum, but this woman said to expect things to be difficult for at least five years. We are in our fifth year now so here is hoping that things start feeling better soon.
In any case, the dressmaker’s scissors have made it to the drawer with the sewing gear!