I’m separating from myself. It’s time to go, as in leave, move to a new house and save my friends from my existential self.

My Arawa, my bounty, the vessel that keeps me afloat. For too long she’d remained an imprisoned voice. I was in my forties when I began to repossess her, through this, my writing. I hoped by exploring Arawa I’d be able to abandon the pains of my past, but she eternally fights through. She’s here in what I write.

The name Arawa, like Renée, has built many meanings over the centuries, but once she was the boat that carried migrating tribes to new lands.

“Arawa – a Maori word for a great ocean-going canoe.”

Arawa wants to hide away, contain our perpetual madness, but to our discomfort she can’t stop unravelling. She expects me to dress things up, lie, exaggerate, for your entertainment, but I no longer want to.  I’m going to put a stop to her, strip off and appeal to your honesty. Can I reveal all, whilst writing things out nicely?  You see; we need to do this together, as one. Because when I’m criticised, she makes me feel that old, familiar scorn. She’s here. She remains. Her grim realities perpetually leak. She’s that small stupid voice within. I hear her now, slanderously commenting.

“Your efforts with words, rubbish.”

That’s how she hinges herself on to me.

“It’s not fair.”

“No. It’s not fair. Arawa I’m doing my best for you and you’re loving it, you’re learning.

“You’re laughing.”

“No, I’m not.”

Well, just a little

“You’re trying to write about me, as if I’m bad.”

“I’m doing this to heal you. To heal us.”

“But you can’t, you need to stop. I own you.”                                                                                                             

“No. Now I own you.”

“My dark torch, endlessly flames, but that’s all your fault.”

Yes. This time she means you, you on the outside.

“Arawa, please, we’ve come together in our yearning to learn this craft.  Let’s be one. A team. With the support I get today, I can force people to read beyond the need to place their harsh red corrections.”

“But what about our jumping around and our poorly constructed sentences?” 

“Arawa, we enjoy playing with words. Let’s write for pleasure. Let’s not care. People’s expectations have changed. Nobody cares any more. Anyway, unexpectedly we create meanings that reach beyond our grammatical mistakes.”

“What, so we’re lying to them?”

“No. I trust them to grasp the complex leaking of our pain.”

Do join me on Where Memories Splinter, where I’ll continue to, I apologise for the rawiential elements to my writing. All my life I’ve been dependent on waiting for the other to correct it. Those little red marks. I accept now my work will only ever be 95%, but one day soon I may sit down with someone capable and let them edit all this nonsense. Adam, my son, loves words, he can do it, and does a bit. We read my rants together of an evening, but he gets so much pleasure, out of my confusion and I love his critique. I leave my words quirky to please him. He indulges in his embarrassment with his mother, but he often decides, ‘no leave it,’ our favourite bits are my mistakes, my biomass index, and the made up words, so I continue to please the boys… x