At Some Point
(May 15, 2008)
Anxious, chaotic thoughts
My fears unexplained by logic or even a specific memory.
I am caught in the tangle of what happened long ago.
This story is about what didn’t happen.
Undetected was your love.
Like a puzzle missing pieces,
a puzzle that can’t
be finished.
Suffering the affliction of neglect.
Anguish is something difficult to define.
It hurts.
It brings toxic thoughts.
Why am I unclear? Do you love me?
Why is it that, continuously, it seems I return,
To anxious, chaotic thoughts.
Confusing, violent, soul-crushing dreams.
Undetected was your love.
Like a puzzle missing pieces,
a puzzle that can’t
be finished.
Again and again, year after year,
no matter how hard I work
Always back to this again,
Do you love me? Why am I unsure?
Boundaries crossed, again and again,
you take me places a child should never go.
And then, you push me away (that’s what it feels like) but it is
More like indifference.
Boundaries crossed, and you share
From your life things I was never meant to know.
Perhaps that is the only way to be your child;
The only open place in your heart.
I must go there, within my own discomfort.
Must I allow you to take me down those twisted paths
That only led to mortification.
Boundaries crossed. I am uneasy.
Distressed.
Nervous.
Unsettled.
Why that’s how I felt growing up!
Undetected was your love.
Like a puzzle missing pieces,
a puzzle that can’t
be finished.
No longer a child, when will I
let you go?
An anxious, chaotic life is no longer for me.
At some point, I must walk away
And find within
what I need to survive.
Acceptance of who I am,
lovable, genuine, predictable.
Moody, insecure, doubtful.
Pulled in two directions,
it is time to Become.
At some point, I must grow up.
Daily, I choose.
I choose the path I will journey down.
Will I walk the path of anxious, chaotic thoughts?
Or will I walk away?
Logic & Imagination 
So many thoughts are stirring in you today! You are like a cannon of honesty and sincerity. I think my facebook page had about 12 articles or updates from you in a row!!! And I hope you feel privileged that God is evoking all these things in you and causing you to question and leading you to DO something. On my bike rides I pray for you (and your family) daily and I guess I’m just not surprised that you’re feeling so angsty. And I don’t know if it’s coincidence or divine or maybe there’s no such thing as coincidence… either way, but a song came to mind today and feels right to share after reading this:
How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That he should give his only Son
To make a wretch his treasure.
Love you Mel…. so amazing what God is stirring in you… keep pursing it!!!
-Andrea
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Beautiful. Thanks Andrea.
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First, let me say I’m sorry you are hurting.
Second, as someone who went to college when “authenticity” was all the rage in my campus fellowship and was then in therapy and urged to share the shame to release it of toxicity, I find the passage about going to (emotionally?) uncomfortable places with one’s children very…disconcerting. Where is the line between honesty and oversharing? Do your kids read your work? Obviously, I don’t know what you went through, so I can’t compare it to the way I am raising my own kids. However, I do have a strong memory of a time I brought my own emotions into a conflict I was having with my then 11 year old. It was too much for him. He needed me to be a sounding board for his pubescent emotions, not in a therapeutic dialogue of “I” statements. Maybe it’s that kids need to be immersed in our unconditional love for them for a long enough time that their souls can “take” our otherness (including our woundedness).
You always make me think.
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This is not a current poem. I wrote it four years ago. And it is actually about my relationship with my Mother. And I am not going through that right now, I just recirculated it.
As for me and my own kids, they don’t read my blog (that I know of) though I suppose they could I don’t think at this point they are all that curious.
I am so careful with them. I want them to know how I was raised a certain way which has made me the way I am. But I am also responsible to be something Other Than That; g=that I am a growing, evolving person who is capable of change or better put of Being Changed by God. My willpower and His Will powerfully at work is the way I like to think of it.
We talk in our home about what we all went through with my depression because it impacted everyone but especially Emma seems to have ripples of effect — Anxiety and an über-strong need for control over things, people, circumstances. And there is no way that my alcoholism doesn’t impact them, but at this point my approach is completely honesty about what I know of addiction in families. The risks.
Emma is the Truth Slayer in our home. She asks me questions that cut me to the quick. Once recently she asked “Was there anything good about your Dad?” And I was of course utterly convicted that I have a responsibility to help my children know the total man that he was, even while I work through my shit. They have no memories of him. “Do you like your Mom?” “Do you like your sisters?” Things like that, which I know/hope/need to believe she knows more than that but still she had some need to ask the question — so, I have work to do!
Honestly is a sword that one must wield with care, caution and a sense of our grave responsibility!
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