I smell the stench of death around me, furrowing. But even when I am furious, enraged, I know that you are God.
Even though I hear no answer, I pray. With tears that do not fall, it becomes ocean swells within me. In ancient prayers I remember, and I am drowning in grief.
I search for you in the bird’s morning songs, in a feather found. I search for you in the children’s laughter, bitter tasting not sweet. I search for you in the winds. In the sunshine. I search on.
You would have us love. Even as war is waged love is a whisper, a stream of water flowing away from me. What remains is War. The stench lingers on me every morning as anxiety interupts sleep and I wake to wage war, the terror of the night encircling, I know that only God can make me become Peace. Only transformed can my mortal flesh become celestial. It can only be God that changes me from War to Love. From longing for death to willing to live. From willing to live to joy.
I know that I am destruction. This is me, I have been told and I do not doubt it. And it is why I need there to be God. I search. And I continue to long
I’ve just had therapy, or as I like to say, got my head shrunk, and let me say I’m not fixed. Ha ha, no. I’ve been stumbling my way through years and years of sessions, and though I work very hard to not be a drunk, or depressed, or enraged, or disappointed with everything, I have concluded that something is broken inside me.
My therapist, bless her, is cool, edgy, cerebral, and life-affirming, and clearly admires and likes me. That’s crazy considering she knows me better than anyone in the world. I’d say her starting basis is how amazing I am, and a hope that I would believe it. I sometimes ask myself, do I pretend to be someone I’m not with her? No way. I am my most comfortable, true, articulate self.
So, WTF is wrong with me? I know why I’m messed up. My blog is a testament to my broken childhood. My broken heart. I can’t figure out how to heal.
After Covid, I started watching a local Black led church online. I was drawn to attend in person. So eventually we did after about a year. What I wasn’t expecting was my own tears. I found week after week, at some point in the service, this person who couldn’t cry started weeping, and couldn’t stop. I tried. The more I tried, the more i became a snot-nosed, blubbering fool. Embarrassed, I frequently ran out to the lobby because I wanted to be in control.
And I am afraid. I can say that now. I don’t understand, and I’m afraid. Eventually, we left the church. Lots of reasons. We’re not Pentecostal, but for me, it was mainly fear.
I don’t cry. Tom cries at movies and shows, writing songs, normal, sad stuff, but I’m usually unmoved. I feel dead inside when I see someone crying. The last movie I remember crying at was The Killing Fields. I’ve always been broken in there, and antidepressants make it worse; like pouring cement in the desert.
I asked my son to write about his depression. I am trying to save him.
I want to know what it is like to be inside him. Him specifically because every person’s suffering is different. I know the exercise of putting words down on paper heals.
But I know depression only too well. It chases me. It’s never far. Though it’s been a good long while. The monster has been resting.
It’s been glorious to wake without it heavy on my bones.
If I’m lucky enough to live a while in peace, I fill my mind with other things, books, music poetry, and people who tell a different story one of liberation from the destruction, heavy, crushing demolition.
When I slow down now to remember – for I told him I would write, too and put down the words of depression – it feels like letting a monster out of its cage to play a while. A dangerous game. The monster only wants to kill. But if I visit, like in the zoo, perhaps I can view it from a safe distance.
Depression is dogged, relentless. It won’t let me sleep well, and the more fitful the sleep, the longer the dark days awake. Depression hurts me in my bones. It’s a deep ache, heavy, as if I’m full of sand. Each step, each breath, each thought more difficult than the last.
Yesterday, I heard it knocking, I learned I’ll be seeing someone, a family member, who has declared me unfit, unworthy of their love (and time), and the monster came to sit on my chest. Instantly, I was immobilized by anxiety. Meanwhile, it laughed deeply and ironically and climbed on top of me.
As I drove through the Wisconsin countryside, fighting to stay awake from a long day, a great big, emorphous tonnage of a monster crept up and pounced. I feel it now, the next day. On my ribcage. I can’t see it, only I feel it make itself at home on my ribcage. I can’t fling it off, too heavy, but also like water between my fingers, shape-shifting, magical but hideous.
So I am in danger right now. I’m at risk if i keep it to myself. I’ve never achieved anything important by myself when it comes to this monster.
I can distract myself, but that’s a dangerous addiction for me. I can retell my worthiness to myself, but the monster on my chest is about my value, and I’m no match on my own.
But pride always keeps me from speaking. I’m mute against the danger, the suffering which I know will come in the days ahead if I don’t speak aloud. “I am in danger.”
As I chase something truer than her lies, I’m already tired.
I’m already afraid.
I’m already beaten.
I know one of these times the monster will win.
Do I fight?
For now, she settles in. Ignores me. That is her superpower satisfied with scaring me close to death then slowly crushing the air from my lungs. I know if I don’t fight, she’ll more than ravage. Or maim. More than lay waste.
She will consume and kill me slowly, as asphyxiation finishes the job.
Right here, in this moment, being tired already, I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll go sit in the sunshine. That’s a microchoice toward life.
For months the words have toiled and churned inside me.
The black letters absent from the page.
A heavy, nagging problem. A writer’s liability.
Rather than anguishing over this loss I have lived.
Then with an intimate slow unfurling
I deliberate on these first scarce stanzas.
I feel their drumming.
Echoes in the chambers of my heart.
Still I have a constant awareness.
Sufferings, anxieties and troubles have come to be our life.
Both waking and sleeping.
Still delight and joy are wondrously present.
Each day’s lesson cracks me open bringing a Spirit-filled reliance.
To live, to love, to be, to give, to fear, to hold, to weep, to laugh,
to wait, to hope, to doubt, to accept.
The silence teaches.
Life is lived in the moments in between.
And all together this is a Good Life.
I am spoiled. Wasted. Ruined.
Continuously wondering what is the purpose of this one life of mine?
To love God above all.And love your neighbor. As You Love Yourself.
I worry, I’m tainted, and I am lost. How do I love?
I don’t choose it, but my mind cannot let it go.
The thought is present as I wake. Even now I am defeated and lost.
Depression sucks the marrow of my bones, unhurriedly.
I’ve wanted nothing more than to be useful.
Or have I lied to myself, even now.
Have I wanted importance? Recognition. Esteem. Significance.
Dare I admit motherhood was never enough?
And as I struggled with deep-rooted interior, from childhood grief, in ruins.
My soul further decays.
So I pray. And Prayer becomes a mantra, habitual and constant.
Bursting with the ache, the existential whys.
The catastrophe is long over, decades ago.
He’s been dead
another decade as well.
Still, the Destruction stands on top of me. Crushing daily energy,
Still, I want more.
Where is the freedom that comes from all this mindfulness?
I fell like I am captive to my past, my psyche ruined.
We will not celebrate for various reasons, none of which are as morbid as you’re imagining. It is: no wish to celebrate (yes, I told Tom not to do anything) and being a little broke. I’m content.
Instead of writing my annual birthday post, I’ve listed all the essays and poetry I wrote this year. In case you missed something. I have listed them chronologically from September 2013.
on one level, her day-to-day life had become solemn and ordinary;
awkwardly commonplace, when
{self-care} is at the top of her To Do.
she thinks.
what kind of person needs that to do?
—
a person that deep down disgusts herself. she starves herself all day long until her hungry body confused enough to relentlessly hoard calories. a person that starts smoking in her forties then quit overnight. in the not too distant past was a falling down drunk. she does not remember much of childhood.
her daily heartache now is that she cannot remember details of her baby’s early days
when she was addicted to work, driven. Still, three babies sucking at her breasts for six years were fed by a body starving itself. staying home to be with Them she became unrecognizable to herself, depressed and before long, a decade was gone.
she was a missionary’s kid, a girl that went numb. living in denial of all the fear and heartache at home, her superpower was discovered early, invisibility. a middle child, the peacemaker, and the “sensitive one.” she pretended. always hiding from The Rager, they were all concealers and secret keepers. Mother was ill. it was not a conscious choice to slowly evaporate.
—
she finds herself intensely staring down forty-eight;
the Rager is dead and gone. now she is a care giver to her elderly, addled mother and those precious children grown into teenagers.
she is unable to remember how—sitting at her kitchen table which never holds hot meals,
classical music is jangly and bombastic,
strong, hot coffee,
the summer rain falling outside the bay window is cold.
I lost the month of May
somewhere between watching my mother
suffer extreme pain and mental confusion.
I felt her pass by heavily; Time,
slowed to a crawl
as I was watching.
And now, the month of May is gone.
Time lost cannot be retrieved.
I know this as my friend’s cancer roars in wildly.
This third time more persistent.
And I am heavy with awareness that the months and days of her reprieve, I spent
weighed down with my life.
Gone is the month of May
on bursts of sudden energy, then
languishing in the dark.
Being strong and capable,
as my heart leaked lost time.
I watched the hours tick by at my mother’s bedside.
Time lost forever?
or time spent on forever.
Knowing forever is such a long time.
Friend love stretches on forever.
Mother-daughter love lasts forever too.
Each, a lifetime of forevers found,
to be savored. Still,
the month of May is spent,
costly. On loving.
Or is it simply lost and gone?
We are all lost and found.
I am a friend and daughter.
Love is here, there,
and gone.
As I sit here thinking
my heart is leaking
forever time.
I have no business writing when I need to be packing, preparing, paying bills, picking up prescriptions, cleaning house, and washing laundry, readying myself and the family for me to leave town. These are very drafty thoughts on aging parents, ailing friends, launching teenagers, and being human.
Love and Mortality in the Middle Years
Our middle years—carry
the work of tending to ailing parents
and sometimes losing,
nursing them respectfully and without impatience.
That is love of a child.
//
Our middle years—rambling side by side with good friends,
you and I, fighting illness and the frailty of being human.
Growing into who we were going to become.
That is the love of a partner and friend.
//
The human toll of ageing all the while launching
children to fly! The human ache of
watching lives unfold.
Let them fly, let them flail. Breathing hope into their
youthful lungs. Speaking truth all the while
shaking your head as they roll their eyes in disgust. Wobbly legs
running out and away. Knowing this
is what they are meant to do.
That is the love of a parent.
//
We all need wisdom, grace upon grace and more joy (oh, for more joy!).
In the midst of relentless sorrow and loss,
your doorway remains open.
In this middle space of anticipation, of letting go
in more ways than is reasonable or comfortable,
all of which is profoundly difficult
and is the principle achievement of being human.
//
Middle years: Caring and holding,
loving and letting go.
All this is the Life and Death of the middle years.
After having this blog for six and half years, I’m finally reorganizing. WordPress sends their congratulations. I take the time to go back and look and my first post was 2008, October. If that’s true then I’ve been sober six and a half years. Hooray!
Today I accidentally sent an empty page to you. Sorry for that. I give my word that you will continue to receive updates ONLY when I write something new.The exception is this email and that post that just went flying out to the universe a moment ago, by mistake.
Your readership is important to me and your time precious, so I apologise for wasting them both.
I’m hoping the result of my reorganization will be a more logical site, where newcomers can easily navigate more than 600 poems and essays written over these six years. In the meantime I appreciate your patience and am grateful for your grace.
Melody
P.S. A last thought in the realm of shameless self-promotion, if you haven’t yet would you go to Facebook and like my writer’s page? This helps me promote my visibility as a writer and is another way to know when I write. You can link to it here.
creative acts, audaciously arranging the Light, into
words that move stone mountains,
dances that soar, minds transformed,
images breaking hearts open crushing the death within,
chords shifting hardened souls with their tender tones.
all beings,
women and men in ensemble.
from verses and rhythms heard, ordinary humans all
flinging down pigment, colorful stains;
bent with sacrifice and unrealized possibility.
God spoke and said: Own your Light
blazing and luminous.
Be the light
on canvas, stage, page, seen and heard.
And God sang beside and in human beings
celebrating
the Light in one another.
Toiling in separateness and isolation, breaking
under the weight of creating.
See and hear one another.
Turn, ask, and take heartache’s sting.
Revel in one another’s triumphs.
be
the
Light
in the dark places.
All beings,
Women and men in ensemble
held one another up.
And God was pleased.
written for Blackhawk ChurchPulse conference, March, 2014.
Pulse: connecting arts to the heart of God
Pulse is a one day arts and worship conference designed to help connect a passion for the arts with a heart for God. Be encouraged, equipped and challenged. Whether you’re a worship leader, musician, actor, technician, video producer, dancer or visual artist, Pulse will help you explore how your art form can point others to God.
on one level, her day-to-day life had become solemn and ordinary;
Hi,
Logic & Imagination 