Monday Musings: Three and Twenty Part 1

It has been two whole weeks since I have done a Monday Musing, I have missed doing it! In that time Christmas has come and passed as well as 2016. It is a new year and people always feel like they get a clean slate, a fresh start to do things differently, to do things right. I never have the chance to feel that way, my body is a constant reminder that things will always be the same for me and that I will have to fight the same battles I fought last year, this year and every year until I die. Now I don't mean to sound gloomy, I am just being pragmatic about the situation, so since I realize this, I can take in the new year realistically and make the best out of my situation as I always do. I am going to discuss my poem called "Three and Twenty" today. I was reading a lot of Jane Austen at the time or writing this poem, so this is why it is called "Three and Twenty" instead of simply "Twenty Three"...Three and Twenty sounded classier to me, if Catherine de Bourgh asked me how old I was I would proudly have proclaimed "I am three and twenty" and she would have made a remark about how I am so old and unmarried...and this got me thinking about the ages of people in Pride and Prejuduce (and Emma etc.) and how they were thought to be old maids at my age. I had this thought in my head for days and then came a night where I could not sleep, so just like every other sensible person on the planet (I jest), I grabbed my pen and pad and began to write. The poem "Three and Twenty" is what escaped from my soul that night. I have decided that this poem is so long and has so much content both thematically and metaphorically that I am going to do a discussion of this poem in two parts. Part one of my discussion is below:

Three and Twenty talks about how futile I feel, how sometimes I just want to give up and let my illness win, how I just want to not care anymore and stop fighting. Three and Twenty is a commentary on how I am a young woman, but I do not feel like one. I feel simultaneously like an old lady with all my medical problems and also like a teenage girl who won't be given the chance to grow up and make her own way in the world. It is very strange to feel this way, I know that when someone is 23 they should feel full of energy, that they have gone out in the world and made something of themselves, I however at 23 and at my age (25 almost 26) now have not done so. I still live at home with my mother, I still can not drive myself, I still have all the same medical problems and all the same pain that holds me back and if I didn't feel futile in this situation then there would be something (more) wrong with me. The first stanza of Three and Twenty contains the line "only 23 and I am already made of rust", this is a statement on how I am young and yet feel like I am already just some rusted junker sitting on the side of the road as life passes me by. The second stanza starts off with the line "I'm a child, I'm just a child!" and as I wrote this I felt as if I were screaming out to the world at how unfair things are (I know life isn't fair all too well). I was angry and I was sad when I wrote this poem. I ran with the thread of that line and used it as the first line for the other stanzas (every other) for the rest of the poem. This poem also has a theme of war and fighting battles like a soldier. I wake up every day to a battle against my own body. I never know when one of my symptoms is going to act up or how bad the pain will be. One of the lines in this poem is "at a moments notice I am trained to take a battle stance." which portrays the feeling I have of being in a constant, life long war. Another line that portrays this is "I must march to the silent drums of war, until my feet are bruised, bloodied, and sore." This is one of my longest poems, if not the longest in my book The Bright Side of Dark, so there is a lot to deconstruct that I am not even going to get to today. I would however like to mention this line "A piece of me dies, you must see why when 'I'm not feeling well enough' becomes my default reply." This line is pretty self explanatory, I often do not feel well enough or am in too much pain to go out and do anything. I have often missed out on doing things with friends that I would have loved to be doing. It hurts me so much to have to say to them "I am not feeling well enough." it hurts because I want to be with them so badly, but it also hurts because I don't want to disappoint anyone, I am in constant fear that my friends will get tired of even trying to invite me anywhere, I am afraid that they will move on without me and I am afraid that people think I am using it as an excuse to get out of doing something. I am never ever using it as an excuse to not go do something, this is why I always apologize so profusely to people whenever I have to cancel plans.