Discombobulate.
Out of confusion, there are things I cannot find words for, and thoughts I process through language before meditation.
Once a week, we meet and make meanings for the Word of the Day. We don't share the word's definition but attempt to interpret it in our own way. This is how we start the session. Where we begin is the ritual of arriving at the page.
To begin, we first come down a tiny one-way route off Birmingham Ring Road to a tiled Georgian Quaker Friends building that marks a full stop at the end of Moseley Road. A small charity shop operates out of the dated community kitchen with stained velvet suits, baby blankets, and art from the 80s. Hand-painted murals of tropical English summers decorate the walls, and a side door with dresses hanging on it is hidden behind a rail of coats. It's a pauper's Narnia that leads to a run-down corridor reminiscent of an asylum for the poor mind rather than a song of snow with a scarfed fawn waiting with tea and honey toast.
Once through the tiles, coats, and corridor, we settle in a room with coffee, snacks, anthologies, writing materials, and caffeine spilt on the table. We've arrived at the page, and I tell them the word of the day to get started.
D, a participant in Friday morning's Friends Institute Poets, a former Birmingham City Council mental health hub that will cease to be funded after March (more on this later), said he wanted to learn more words. So we play this game every week and have done so for almost two years.
This week's word was DISCOMBOBULATED.
SYNCHRONICITY
In the chaos of completely uprooting myself from a seemingly comfortable existence that didn't feel right, moving out of the conventional and into a doting pursuit of the heart, love often looks at me longing and says,
"Oh, baby, you're so discombobulated."
It's not a word I've often used, but it accurately describes how I often feel. This word has entered the dialogue. In its appearance, I've received an accurate validation of a regular internal conflict of feeling confused out of fear of being and doing wrong.
Like many of us, I get paralysed by the over-used socially prescribed condition 'Imposter Syndrome'. Not only this, I am regularly on edge, waiting for an enquiry to prove that I am imposing or that my lack of knowing is a cause of anguish for whoever I'm with.
I feel more than I think. I feel my feelings are correct until, without invitation or immediate awareness, I think about them. Then, in thinking about them, I question them as if interrogating their validity. Because I come from feeling and not from logic, the two entangle before I've found the words / the parts I need to articulate myself.
What is thinking if not questioning?
If someone asks me a question with an obvious answer, I find it hard to respond because they wouldn't ask if the answer was obvious. Surely, they would know the answer immediately visible to me, which would mean my answer is incorrect, too simple to be right, and I must find the solution that aligns with their reason for asking.
I dismiss myself before speech but speak before I've united a true thought that defines what I feel is right. I am still determining if I am editing what I say before I say it or finding the right words for my understanding. Words leave my mouth before I've caught the thought because I fear leaving the respondent waiting too long; they could lose their patience with me. I need to react quickly.
Naturally, I tend not to finish my sentences because the thought has yet to materialise. My thoughts are on such a tangent at the moment. Everything is happening at once, and I'm stressed. Though I have a safe place to stay, I am somewhat displaced. Though I have a decent income, I am freelance, and the future's uncertain. Though I am a mother, I see my children half the week. Though I practice my work, I feel all I do is channel other people's theories and deliver much the same; I am merely a pointless messenger with no original thought (What is this decimating ideology wrought with hierarchical judgement on what roles are worth more than others?). Though my work comes from research, I have yet to complete my degree.
At the same time, I am constantly pursuing insight, searching desperately to make meaning out of everything. I overanalyse, overcomplicate, and get anxious about simplicity. This is DISCOMBOBULATING, and such a stress on relationships, I've been told.
THE ORIGIN OF MY CONFUSION
You Hayley are
'too much', 'too sensitive', 'too analytical', 'too worrying', 'too snobby', 'too emotional', 'too thoughtful', 'too distant', 'too loud', 'too questioning', 'too whimsical' 'care too much' and 'try too hard', 'fixing things that you weren't given the right to fix', 'not paying attention', 'not listening', 'constantly daydreaming', 'want too much', 'expecting', 'so stressful', 'twisting things', 'remembering it wrong'.
There are moments from my upbringing that I am told did not happen. I experience emotions from others that they say they do not feel. My observations are unique to others, and I repeat myself in alternative ways to reach understanding. There are teachings I understand but get corrected in terminology and rephrasing. As mentioned, there are things I cannot find words for and thoughts I process through language before meditation. As I figure out a feeling or notion, it escapes my mouth before I've had the chance to understand myself.
Lately, I've become aware of this. The torch that's found me through the word DISCOMBULATE has noticed the parts of myself that were confused by interpretation and tried to fit into another person's perception. In my head is a reception of multiple moments, memories, and conversations; I sometimes feel like drowning. As these revelations - long waiting - are floating to the surface, as I try to recollect myself to make sense out of confusion, I sometimes cannot finish my sentences, on even the most mundane request, or in conversing nature.
THE POEM
I cheated in this game because I knew what DISCOMBOBULATED meant when I delivered the word of the day. We're supposed to come from 'unknowing', making the game perfect for my battle with needing to be right! This is what I wrote;
Not sound with small talk, I opened up to the simple How are you? by unzipping my chest to rescue my head, a buoy bobbing in liquid iron. I held my head in a bowl of my palms and said, There's this sink in me full of liquid iron. Not a sink like a bathroom sink or kitchen sink, but a sinking, sucking feeling in the form of water rising to swallow me up, a shadow that paddles at my toes; that descends as well as swell up my legs, and I'm treading to escape. Sun rays separate the iron from water, and my body writhes in the oceanic sunlight in the shallow at the top, like a torch in the ocean has caught me to show me out, and I keep swimming to you to get to the surface. I put my hands forward to present my detached head. I've been bobbing, you see, I'm all separated, like a memory snapped in the dispersion of violence. My body is all doors, limbed, screwed together at the hinges, slammed so hard I jump at almost anything, all the swimming is rusting the screws, and I'm stiff from the cold, but look, I'm still breathing, keeping my head above water, that's why I can't finish sentences, you hear?' as I'm gasping for air, trying to make sense of myself before the deep / the iron / the wrong catches up with me.
THE DICTIONARY MEANING
discombobulate
[ dis-kuhm-bob-yuh-leyt ]
verb (used with object), dis·com·bob·u·lat·ed, dis·com·bob·u·lat·ing.
Informal. to confuse or disconcert; confound; bewilder: The speaker was completely discombobulated by the hecklers.
To confuse someone or make someone feel uncomfortable.
Characterised by confusion or disorder.
HAVE A GO YOURSELF
Open the dictionary and write in response to the WORD OF THE DAY without looking at its meaning. Give it a definition from your imagination, and let that meaning become the centre or impulse for a poem.
There are things I cannot find words for and thoughts I process through language before meditation.