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An idiopathic shadow

I have been silent on my blog for a while now. Part of that was starting a new job, in a new town, as a trainee teacher. Another part, is my deteriorating health that makes every day a struggle without reprieve. I have been suffering idiopathic allergic reactions and anaphylaxis since I moved to start my new role, which on a number of occasions has left me on death's door, which has been, frankly, traumatising. I still work. I try to pretend that I am coping, but every time I get an itch, the anxiety sets in. Yesterday, I found out that after five months of waiting, and four anaphlactic episodes, my allergy clinic appointment was cancelled and the referral pulled from under me, with no communication from the clinic or my GP, and at this point, I don't know how to continue as I am. I am lucky that I have a partner, friends, and family who look out for me. But with austerity in the UK as it is, and NHS services being deliberately underfunded, myself and millions more people living with disabilities and life threatening conditions are living with this fear and anxiety and any support they had is pulled out from under them. This poem is really just my attempts to work through all the fear and frustration that has been building.

Dark Place

I wrote this on the spur of the moment after for about the 4th time this week I sat down to join my family watching tv and was confronted with yet another rape scene. If like me you're easily triggered, I'd advise that this poem is dark, and, at least for me, the very incarnation of my ptsd/trauma and is potentially deeply unsettling for anyone else going through the same.

Traumatic Hauntings

Ghost stories in the 19th and early 20th century reflect the change in socio-political attitudes to mental health, and specifically in the work of Everett and Sinclair, the attitudes of society to trauma or PTSD as it was reassessed once it became not just the problem of abused and oppressed women and children, but one that plagued men following the trauma of war.