If anyone was likely
To die early, it was me.
The black dog brought me close
More than once. But she’s gone and I
Must live, a mother who lives
Forever.
If Anyone
Category: My Poems
New: A Solemn & Ordinary Life. #Self-Care in Living with Depression
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.
She writes
To do:
1. self-care.
{rough thoughts on love and mortality in the middle years}
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.
This is love and mortality
in the middle years.
Organizing and Rearranging
Hi,
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.
{be Light} a poem
be Light.
God spoke and said: be Light.
and whether we wanted it,
when we are trying the least
to be
we are Light.
from inside us comes
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 Church Pulse 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.
A Mother’s Lament {You cannot stop this train. Save yourself.}
These words have leaked out of me, like tears trickling down the crevices of my heart.
It’s been an all-consuming few weeks. I owe friends updates, but it feels as if there’s no space for conversation when I’m taking in heaving breaths of air just to survive and dodging sorrow’s persistent arrows.
At the same time.
Time is in such a hurry, glaring at me as it rushes by. Other’s opinions are strong; swift and sharp like missiles: and advice flows so easily, that supposedly isn’t personal. Then a trustworthy and brilliant doctor tells me that I don’t have to be perfect. Of course I am not perfect, I think to myself. But it’s nice to hear a professional say that “you can stop trying so hard” and acknowledge that we cannot fix anything anyhow. It’s nice to know that I can stop but I’d like to see him try to get off this train. 
1.
I’m a home-grown perfectionist partly from a critical upbringing. (That is no surprise to regular readers.) This has shaped me and made me who I am.
All my life I believed that if I tried harder, sweltered and burned through the workout of life, ran harder and tougher, perspiring and aching with my heavy burdens, then I Would Find God’s love, Feel It Finally.
The assumption was that life is hard. But I sought perfection in adversity. I’d become the perfect person for my husband and for my kids and for my siblings and for my mother. And for my dead Father, and for God, I’d finally Become Worthy. And then I’d feel Good Enough. Truth is, though there is no If,Then kind of promise from God or Life. A promise not really spoken by anyone anywhere, a false hope that a child of a raging parent needs, to believe—if I do this, he will … what?? —Stop yelling. —Stop raging. —Stop his anxious, relentless criticism. —Be happy with mamma, be happy with my sisters, and be happy— with me. Or simply be happy? He was a good Dad; He was bad I wrote long ago. If that’s the case then I am too. Both Good and Bad. My aim was always perfection.
Put your oxygen mask on first should be the advice given to every new parent in those first days when you’re learning the art of diapers and tight swaddling. Save yourself. 
2.
The trustworthy and brilliant doctor asked “how are you both doing” and at the same time, same song with different notes, I answered Terrible and he replied Good. Our therapist laughed a little, allowing Tom to go on. But like a great therapist, he circled back around to my Terrible. I looked away from his piercing eyes, because I haven’t said that out loud in a while.
And I’m afraid if I give it space, a crack in the universe will open and, my grief will come screaming out. I’m in control, but holding in that Terrible makes me numb. I’m doing the job of motherhood and dying of pain inside. I’m not supposed to show my weakness and it’s indulgent to let others know how much I hurt when the others are children. Or school professionals and doctors wanting to help our family cope. Hold it in, if you can.
How are you? I’m asked dozens of times a week and the answer must be fine. I’m holding it all in and then the trustworthy and brilliant doctor looked me in the eye.
Skirting his gaze that is boring into me, I focus on his strange lamp—a clarinet turned into something that no longer makes music—how sad, a clarinet that no longer croons. Wretched, both, the instrument turned lamp and I.
I’m heavy with despondency. My cheeks burn red with heat, the toll of trying to control my emotions. My tears disobey my order slowly dripping down my cheeks. I’m staring at the wall and the sad clarinet that no longer sings.
3.
A person with anxiety or depression, they sometimes get that way from trying to control too much. Believing they can control outcomes, control people, control themselves and circumstances enough to make all the things work out, but real life isn’t like that. Controlling all that is a mind numbing mess. And the more you try the harder it is to feel anything.
Then a trustworthy and brilliant doctor, he said, “It’s alright you don’t have to do anything. There’s no magic answer. There’s no perfect choice nor will “enough” perfect choices make you all healthy and thriving.”
4.
Recently I attended Pulse, a conference for artists, at my church. I felt honored to have been asked to write a poem for the program. It’s here.
I should not have gone to Pulse. Even in the midst of the ache of our circumstances it was a calendared reminder that we were in this crisis two years ago at the last Pulse. And this tidal wave of events hasn’t stopped for a moment; it has been relentless and crushing for all those months, hours, minutes.
I went heart aching, sleep deprived, hurting, spirit crushed and of course feeling critical. Not a great formula. Not a great day. There were no momentous one-on-one conversations or amazing-prophetic-just-for-me-words spoken, only more lonesomeness and sadness in a crowd. But one must choose to keep on living even though you’re experiencing the hardest times of your life. You have to keep pretending you are alive, and it’s not cheating. Be open to healing. Keep going, heartbroken.
5.
Day after day, my depressed brain says lay down. So I get up, again. Night after night, I pop the right combination of prescribed medication to sleep, waking daily at 5:40 am to foggy and desolate despair before I get up again. Get up. Keep moving. But don’t pretend that the casual “Hi, how are you?” is an opening to tell your problems.
Perhaps it is only here, where people are a captive audience, I can let the words and heartache flow. Most people cannot enter into the darkness of our lives now and I’m not totally not sure why. In the improvised dogmas of other’s lives, our anguish is too much. In a way, I get it. I’ve been there knowing people’s heartache and not having the courage to follow-up. I get it. I keep moving too.
6.
I’m not living in the Light but I’m watching for glimpses of it every day. The gift of quiet solitude is time to see the shadows moving across the wall and capturing a moment, beautiful but never to be seen again. My philosophy is see the beauty in a light filled moment, quickly. Before another call from another so-called expert comes. And I lie down again and see in the window, a twinkling that is different from the one moments before. Holding on to these seconds of tranquility, then I get up again, pick up the phone and make another call. Always searching for answers. Then the trustworthy and brilliant doctor says finally, in that quiet hour with just us two, that we can both stop striving so hard for answers. There’s no fix. There’s no answer, perfect or otherwise. A final fixing when we’ll suddenly be done. That’s the heavy grief and the answer for now. And, help yourself and in doing so you’ll become the parent your kids need.
7.
I can feel my heart heavy and tight in my chest. Then it comes to me, the thought that Jesus on the Cross experienced everything real to us humans, including mental illnesses like anxiety and depression and bipolar and all. On the cross, that’s what Jesus did. Jesus took it for us all.
8.
No, I cannot join you in the happiness of Light, enjoying casual encounters or live music, feeling the anticipation of love or joy of birthday milestones, no laughing hard at jokes, or knowing the thrill of spiritual mountaintops – I cannot join you there. I listen, I am physically present, and I might even laugh but I don’t feel it. Even laughter tastes bitter on my tongue. I am living in the shadow lands of unremitting lonesomeness and I sit here. I am waiting for it all to end. But that’s just it. I have to learn that finding my oxygen mask is to save myself and in doing so it will save them.
When the trustworthy and brilliant doctor said it, something resisted. Our lives are on a careening train but I’m supposed to jump off, save myself and watch the crash? No.
“You cannot stop this train. Save yourself,” he said. And,“The only way you can help your child is to save yourself.” And later, “Know that no one around you is going through what you are: no one, none of your neighbors or friends, can possibly understand nor will they ever have any idea of the depth of this sorrow you carry.”
9.
And so I go on. Watching for patterns in the sunshine and shadows, for lessons, for language, for hope, for rhythms that show me God’s order in the midst of this unrelenting sting. Light beckons the heart toward hope.
Lent Diary: The Wilderness of My Spiritual Doubts (Day 3)
I.
In The Wilderness of My Spiritual Doubts
The pull on the soul between belief and disbelief has been the root of much of my spiritual doubt; that I cannot prove my faith, even to myself. This frequent disbelief and self-hatred are two among the many causes for me to hesitate to share my faith story.
Doubt, a status between belief and disbelief, involves uncertainty or distrust or lack of sureness of an alleged fact, an action, a motive, or a decision.
Add to that my melancholic disposition, a cup half empty view of life and a more than slight bent toward negativity. You might say I’m doomed! I would, no doubt.
2.
Every so often, I fear that I’m in a wilderness of my making.
I have written ad nauseam on my recent, lengthy stretch of epic depression—not the worst, but the longest. One might wonder. If I have only just climbed out of this wilderness then why would I choose, with all my spiritual doubts and with the black dog of depression nipping at my legs, to practice Lent?
Perhaps I’m just desperate enough. Or could it be that I am just hopeful enough to believe that these forty days of surrendering “food and fat” from my over full life, creating lengthy spaces of spiritual and physical hunger, will create a fertile environment for the Holy One
to Act.
3.
To realize we are not alone among the hurried and haggard human race.
After reading David R. Henson’s Into the Wild: A Lenten Homily I understand myself better than I have in a long time. A good writer will do that; by exposing the raw and ravaged bones of their story, they relieve us of our own heartache.
Suffering people feel alone. Suddenly, reading this I saw it. A tangible provision that came from knowing there is another person in the universe that has felt my pain. It is such a relief! I feel that when I read Heschel or Eugene Peterson or Nouwen or Kierkegaard (Clearly, I need to read more women!!!!) or brilliant poets like Emily Dickenson or Mary Karr, and so many others. And sometimes, I identify with a sermon.
Talking about a wilderness time in his life, Henson says that his wilderness has made him who he is, and has created within him a greater compassion.
“Stories about the wilderness aren’t stories of temptation, either resisting it or triumphing over it. Rather, they are stories of identity. It’s a story of getting a little lost and scared and finding out who you really are.”
4.
As Jesus rises out of the water of his baptism he is proclaimed the Son of God, BELOVED.
That’s what I’ve heard through out my wilderness years. You are beloved. I don’t always accept it. Or believe it. But when we do choose belief over disbelief, we are saying I choose to listen to the voice of God in spite of the voice of the SLANDERER* clanging. Henson says that’s the great temptation—to believe the lie that we are Not Beloved.
I’m learning to recognize how often I listen to the slanderer (whether it is my voice in my head or the real evil one.) With the lengthening of the days (an extra hour of light on Sunday!) how will I fill it? As I experience the spiritual hunger that comes from a physical alertness of this Lenten fast I am eager. Even expectant.
As we become aware of the wilderness in our heart Christ beckons — Let go of self-hatred and grab hold of being named: Beloved.
How is Christ beckoning you?
Melody
I hope you’ll forgive these Lent Diaries are a little rough. I don’t want to spend a lot of time perfecting them when I can be doing just the things I wrote about above.
- Henson says the word for devil in the book of Matthew is slanderer.
{The Dilemma of Being unHuman—And Becoming Whole} a poem
1.
I want to radiate Light in a worn-out world. I want to face others with joy and eagerness. Glad to share life with one another. Life feels less weighty and onerous, when we are vulnerable with One Another. We all need community. I long for it,
then I open my mouth.
I always seem to be
lacking. For I did not learn to trust
humans.
Friendship by its nature is reciprocal. But all I can focus on, in my weakest and worst moments, is what I don’t have to give, what I am not receiving, how alone I often feel, so alone. Irrelevant to anyone that I imagine to be my friend. The world of relationships is moving around and beyond me. Somehow I am not invited in, shielding myself by saying I’m not a joiner but really likely ignored or forgotten.
On the other hand I am caught
inside myself. It‘s the dilemma of feeling unHuman.
2.
Parenting too is not for the meek, but for people with wisdom and strength collected by watching a mother and father long ago. My parents had many good qualities. But they could also be insular and ingrown. It was from them that I learned to be suspicious and untrusting. The Generous Spirit my Father had for Others often failed to come home. I learned to go inward from his regular correctives and criticism. The love my Mother shared, she didn’t receive unconditionally in childhood or in their marriage. This made it hard for her to pass love on. (She’s different since he died.)
I fear for myself. Together is not something I do well. Community is for Others so unlike me. And so I withdraw even further.
Away from the Light I might
find, the Light I might hold within, the Light I might share with others.
3.
These days I am unlearning Who I Am. Almost every day I work to be more Human; to forget the broken promises and to forgive. Letting go of the anger and resentments that are carving grooves in my soul. Forego the automatic ungracious way I learned to speak to those I love.
I have worked hard to stop being me, the Me I Hate.
Just stop.
If only—
We are named Beloved but I can barely accept it. I need to know Grace, but I’m worn down, the trenches within are real, torrents rushing through pulling away at
the Me I Could Become.
I try so hard to Become, to Be someone you want to be with, worth breaking bread together.
But I am still here. Shaky with sadness, knowing I may never find my way. I’m only forty-seven but I feel a hundred year’s weary. Intellectually I believe in transformation. But in the daily, all I can muster is longing for One Another and I am left with my hollow heart and howling grief.
How do we learn to be Light when our hearts are shadowy, rigid and so very heavy? When we believe we have nothing to offer. All the years of trying and not measuring up, now turning us
up into what kind of person? How do we convey our acceptance and satisfaction to our children when our hearts echo a hollow sounding love?—when “unconditional” was always tethered to conditions?
I want to believe, oh help my unbelief.
4.
I try very hard—to be a Good Mother, a Good Daughter, Sister, Partner and Friend. Every day I am failing, for even when I am told I am loved I don’t believe.The one doing the speaking is never enough to fill the hole inside.
I need healing. I need to set down pride and fear and discontent, take off Never Good Enough and take on my true name—Beloved Daughter.
Then will I feel whole?
5.
I meet so many people who I can see are hurting; opening up just enough for me to see Myself inside their soul. The Me I don’t want to be.
I see you. I know you. I recognize what’s inside. I ache for you.
Let us become Light for One Another. Even though I don’t know how and some days I don’t believe. I have to believe that this Heavy Awareness of myself holds a greater purpose, in the intuitions that lay bare the souls of those around me and make me want to take their pain on myself.
And Perhaps that is an answer. As I take my eyes off my own wrecked heart and look deeply into yours, I will feel your pain more than my own.
May I be a person who can take others pain. May I be A Beloved Daughter who cries with you, your tears collected in a basin that I will hold,
a chamber that is perhaps duck taped together. I’ll hold it close to my heart.
May I forget myself in that Holy Moment and become finally
not whole, but holy.
An Extended Awareness: Some Thoughts on Lent
I.
I didn’t grow up observing Lent. Perhaps this is your story too.
Over time I have come to believe that Lent is an extended awareness and a reminder that life isn’t only about Me and Mine.
The word Lent is old English meaning to lengthen. It comes in the spring as the days begin to stretch and elongate.
Traditionally during the forty days of Lent people give something up and there are lessons learned.
I’ll confess to only dabbling with Lent and usually not making it through to forty days, sometimes “giving up” chocolate or some thing that is more of a sacrifice like caffeine. Once or twice I remember giving up alcohol. (That one didn’t last!) Other times I chose sugar or carbs. Turning it into more of a diet. Thinking maybe I can be “spiritual” and lose weight at the same time. The most pious customarily give up eating anything made of the fat from blood animals.
Abstaining at Lent may be an epochal moment in your spiritual journey—changing your spirit and body forever.
2.
The act of giving something up forces a complete revaluation of self. Suddenly life is not about our incessant self-satisfaction. Bringing a reconnoitering of what is Mine and what is Ours, etching on our soul an openness to greater generosity and community. Hopefully one comes to understand the idea that restraint or curbing of the Self is as important as satisfying Self.
As the years go by, I have come to understand more fully that this experience of sacrifice and repentance could be an important part of what it means to be a spiritual person.
And we join an ancient tradition in religious history that is thousands of years old.
III.
The Lenten fast is a part of the liturgical church’s calendar but that doesn’t mean evangelicals need not engage in this important spiritual tradition. Knowing that it is coming up, I wanted to learn more about this Church tradition.
Observed over the forty days before Easter, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It is traditionally a time of fasting and reflection. The last week of Lent is Holy Week. Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent starts, is a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as it is the last chance to feast before Lent begins.
I found it interesting that in order to not waste food, families have a feast on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday to eat up the food that would spoil in forty days. The need to eat up the fats (meat, butter, eggs and milk, etc.) is where the French name Mardi Gras (‘fat Tuesday’) came from. Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday because they are a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with the addition of flour.
But background should not trivialize out awareness of what this sort of fast might bring to us spiritually. Our bodies and spirits being connected. When we gorge ourselves day-to-day We (the wealthy among us that is.) aren’t as aware of our immense spiritual needs.
IV.
I have been in a long-drawn-out icy season of grief. Not a loss specifically, but a suffering that life sometimes brings; which I have written about elsewhere.
I know intellectually that this dark season cannot possibly stay forever, and joy will come. At least I’m hoping it isn’t permanent. Hoping for healing or at least some movement toward healing. More days than not over these two years (and this decade) life has been filled with depression, fear, anxiety, sorrow and more recently grief. All internal. All inside me.
If you are lost in a Long Winter of Grief, how do you step into the extended awareness and lingering of Lent? When you feel brittle and bent like a reed how do you find Belief again?
All I can reason out is that it is important to make a choice to lay aside this cloak of grief. Though it is obviously not an actual physical entity, some days it feels weighty. Like a somatic struggle of an Other, it is on me, pulling at my flesh and spirit.
The wise and brilliant Joan Chittister says Lent is a growing season.
It doesn’t happen to us. She says, “It is at most a microcosm of what turns out to be a lifelong journey…”
Perhaps what we need annually on this faith walk is to confront our absorption with Self, which is “conscious and purposeful.” If it is a growing season as Chittister says, this must help us handle the rest of our life.
V.
Our lives in the West have become so trivial and pedestrian. We go about them mostly focused on our own pleasures (Or am I the only one?) Perhaps in this next season, whether you fast for Lent or run in the green grasses of Spring or simply experience a greater awareness of life’s renewal, ask yourself–what’s important? Perhaps renew your commitment and passion to that over these coming days.
So, out of a need to declare the end of This Thing Grief. Or to grow into what it means To Carry Grief On, if that is required. I have chosen to take up a fast over the forty days of Lent. I anticipate a great internal struggle, the voice of Self telling me I cannot make it. And even as I fight inertia and hunger and disbelief, I choose to believe in what I cannot see. I resolve that I will find something that I don’t yet have words for and cannot explain.
In the end that is Faith.
Isn’t that all each of us can do? To remain Open, Extended and Aware in this season of longer Light and Hope. For life is not all about joy. It is also about the power to endure and to Believe.
Sources:
–National Catholic Reporter, Feb. 23, 2001. See more.
–The Liturgical Year by Joan Chittister (Thomas Nelson)
–I also read this from BBC.
In 2014:
Shrove Tuesday is March 4th
Ash Wednesday is March 5th
Lent is March 5th – April 19th
Holy Week is Apr 13th – 19th
Maundy Thursday is April 18th
Good Friday is April 19th
Easter is April 20th
Other things I’ve written about Lent.
Lent: My agenda or God’s; Perfect Practice: A Poem; To Lent or Not to Lent: That is the Question; What is Lent Anyway, Besides Strange; {Lenten Series: Winter Slowly Recedes (Poem)}; {Lenten Series: If You Were Homeless}; A Prayer For Lent; {Lenten Series: Thou Mayst in Me Behold}
If Winter is Dying, then Writing is Life
This isn’t my usual type of post. I have some thoughts ruminating into a slow boil. Aching about justice & the Stand Your Ground law and being white and privileged. A response. But I need more time to mull.
I finished the article on loving a drunk for Today’s Christian Woman. Ahem, I know. I’m not a likely writer for them. I don’t read resources written just for women (much). Nor do I like ministries just for women which I’ve written about. The issue is about addiction and when they asked, I started to think about how little this topic is discussed in the Church. I think this topic needs attention.
Still, it was one of the hardest things to write in my life. That’s no exaggeration. I thought this piece for SheLoves was vulnerable because it was to such a “big” audience. Well just leapt larger than life here with being published on a Christianity Today website. My stomach curls in on itself just thinking about it. So I try not to think.
But more than that, it’s just hard to go back there, where I cannot remember. I had to interview Tom about those Falling Down Drunk years. Yes, I had to interview my husband as weird as that sounds. Tell me about that time when I barfed all over the car.
As you can imagine those monster enemies of Shame and Regret hovered around, clouding everything I did for days. Remembering what I put him through feels like hell but I’m hopeful that this will help people. Or I would write it. The mind blowing thing was the good that came out of the sweating blood of this writing. I got to see how he loved me in such a long-suffering and courageous way. How awesome to feel, stone cold sober the love of my husband after twenty years. I’m smitten all over again. just thinking about his sacrifice and love for me.
I blasted out a poem for my church’s Pulse Conference on Worship & the Arts. I didn’t have time to over think. It came fast and I loved it. I am learning to have more confidence in my Voice. And like I mentioned before when things are printed-and-official I usually get the heebie jeebies and completely freak out; telling myself how unworthy I am to be writing a poem for “Artists.” I didn’t go there this time. (Phew, deep exhalation.) I am evolving.
I found a Psychiatrist, meaning—after having the number for five months I finally picked up the phone—I scheduled an appointment. Sometimes it’s the little things that feel unbearable with depression. I have a list of those things collecting Shame. I look at the phone a lot, I mean a lot. Then my chest hurts with anxiety and starts burning. More deep breathing helps.
I feel like I should wear a warning sign these days: KEEP CLEAR of me.
The good news is I like this doctor and today I feel a burst of hope that together we can figure out a better cocktail (of medications). What I take now makes me feel flat like a faded old piece of paper. Everyone else seems to be living in 3D and I’m one dimensional. The current medications got me out of the troth of not wanting to be alive (Which is different than suicidal—an important clarification.) But I’d like to shoot for something a tad higher than flat and undead. Perhaps happy. I’d also be satisfied with sociable.
“My world is so small right now.” I found myself confessing to the doctor. This made me even sadder and I wanted to cry. Crying not something I can do currently, another side effect, but as I said I’m hopeful with a change of medication that crying will come back.
Someone asks: Do you want to get together? (Blank marshmallow filled space in my brain and then panic.) Feel like coffee? a text (I feel nothing if I were to be honest.) Want to go to that concert with me? (No.) You could listen to them online. You’ll like them. They’re really great. (No, definitely no. Milwaukee. It’s too much effort.) Can you host Christmas? (… birds chirping … hell no!) Don’t forget life group is tonight. ( … I don’t think I can go. Two hours of not talking in a group of talking people makes me feel dead and I don’t think I can speak. If I have to give another update saying things are still … bad. I’m so tired of my life updates being so [insert pejorative].)
I’ve been so tired of feeling like this daily for months and months.
But I’ve been making myself do a few things out of the conviction that I cannot sit in my chair alone all winter. Besides motherhood, which doesn’t stop ever.
I’m attending the Festival of Faith and Writing in April. When I made the reservation I thought I’d never be able to go, not in a million years. My brain won’t even compute navigating the drive, let alone attending a conference alone. But somehow, things have been improving. Writing this and asking for help went a long way. I know I’m not alone. And now a break from life sounds damn good. It has been the most awful winter that I can recall EVER and I’m not talking just about the weather.
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable, they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.” – Ernest Hemingway
Remember the hot days of summer, when I was working on an essay on PRAYER and feeling really skeptical about whether I even believe in prayer? That essay is now published in the book Disquiet Time. You can pre-order it here published by Jericho Books in October, 2014. So that’s very cool.
Did I even tell you that I have two poems in the book Not Afraid: Stories of Confronting Fear which is available here.
Lastly, WordPress is telling me I have been blogging six years sending their congratulations. Looking back, I see that my first post was 2008/10/07. That means I’ve been sober six and a half years. Six years of blogging! Wow.
In that time, I’ve gathered TO MY UTTER AMAZEMENT 1,751 subscribed email readers. Not sure how that happened but I can only thank you, for when you pass along my writing. It helps me build traction and readers which helps me imagine one day I’ll be published. So, I’m grateful that Spring is coming.
I leave you with thoughts of summer, which I am longing for — running in flip flops, or curled up with a book in grass, or squinting at the sun by the lake.
As always, thanks for reading,
Melody
As The Winter Is Long [a NEW Poem]
In the dreary midwinter
time is never-ending and merciless.
I chase the shadow’s
bright reflections, brittle patterns
on the silvery snow.
This distracts me from the echoing lament
I woke with today.
Melancholy sits dismally on my chest, like a lethargic cat
As I consider what’s gone wrong with me.
There’s always something and I’m as tired as the winter is long.
I chase the shadows.
Somehow, they hold hope
when I’ve got none.
“Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of god is glue. — Eugene O’Neill
<
p>Ever conscious of the grace of God. As I think and pray about, and write the details of my addiction story, it is heavy. The weight of mistakes, the shame of walking backwards trudging through the broken ways my addiction hurt my family; It’s heavy to carry it. Thanks for your prayers as I finish up an essay on How to Love an Addict.
The Dust Bunnies and the Broken Hearts of Mental Illness
I say the things aloud. It is an effort.
I want to make them come true.
“I will clean today.
I will cook dinner.
I will go to the bank.”
Even as I speak the words I know how unlikely it is that I will be able to do
more than sit here.
Breathing under water
is life threatening.
Looking around the house
I see the relics of our months of chaos and disorder.
How long has this constant been going on?
I count 35 months of circling and spinning at dizzying speeds or
churning, sticky slow moments that seem to l—–a—–s—–t.
Strung together for days.
Sitting here now I recall
our cyclone of shock as we have watched our child suffer, would rather die. As the life killing anxiety and depression threatens to smother
the life
out
of
the little child we
know, we knew. Oh, how we remember.
We are fighting for her.
We are fighting each other.
We hold on tight, we weep, we pray small whispered cries
sometimes full of doubt and
sometimes swept up with outrageous
Hope. Most often throttled by our anguish, at times held by unimaginable peace.
We confess and repent as we scour the past for clues, pulling apart our parenting until it is a skeleton hanging bereft of blood and sinew,
something dead. We resist giving up,
we acquiesce to today, we contemplate our future. Answers don’t come
as doctors, the so called experts keep changing their “plans.”
Outcomes are suggested, how do we know if they are good or bad?
The long and short of it all is that we must let go
of “normal.” We must come to understand that this,
our life now, might be[come] our forever.
Breathing under water
is life threatening.
When someone is mentally ill there are no promises or guarantees, only
Heartache,
Acceptance,
Disbelief,
Resistance,
Fury,
Fear and
[Days and months of] Solitude.
The secrets of the mentally ill
create wide, scorched throbbing universes of heartache, misunderstanding and pain.
We’re so broken apart, crushed down
we don’t even hold on to one another anymore, consumed
we binge on Netflix and ice-creams.
Outcomes seem inevitable.
Breathing under water
is life threatening.
Dust bunnies, in all corners and on the stairs collecting overnight, as if no one lives in this house of relentless pain.
The ghosts of activity –an unread book, the youngest’s week old work left unread after
the bribe—“If you bathe, you can stop reading for now.”
Reading vs. Bathing.
Who knew it could come to this? Only when you’re exhausted by breathing.
The question of why he dislikes reading presses into me like a fork shapes a raw peanut butter cookie. An indent of
memory symbolizing something far greater, as if
it’s an indication that all of life is
Awry.
Breathing under water
is life threatening.
Please tell me there’s no one at the door, when the little fury of a dog growls
to a supposed intruder. My heart rate speeds up, just like it does recurrently
nowadays. Almost everything makes that muscle race.
And even as I lament the loneliness
I am glad it was just a passerby and that they kept walking.
Others are going somewhere
as I look out the window
desk bound and writing.
Breathing under water, alone.
Logic & Imagination 