Surfacing

I've dealt with depression and anxiety as far back as I can remember. As a child, I didn't recognize it as such. It was just life. It was just how my life was. And to be clear, I'll state right from the start: it hasn't been all doom and gloom all my life. I have experienced many happy, joyful times, and to be honest, that's why I'm still here, because I know it's possible.

Depression really kicked in around the time I hit puberty (and I feel it may be hormonal for me, so I look forward to menopause). I was two years ahead in school, so I started junior high (6th grade at my school) at 9 and turned 10 a month later. I was physically as well as mentally precocious, so I was already wearing a bra and in the full throes of hormonal confusion. It didn't help that I was the youngest, smallest, and shyest kid in the class. I was picked on, and I retreated into my own world whenever I could - headphones on and nose in a book. Music and books were my refuge.

In my freshman year of high school, I turned 13 and my parents got divorced. Huge. I also had my first real boyfriend and stopped being forced to go to church on the weekends my dad had custody. Lots of major changes, good and bad, and that's when I really remember my mood swings starting. I remember crying a lot (at least once most days) and being in religious and sexual confusion. Most of high school continued this way, and I eventually got used to the division of my family and got over the repressive religious crap I was raised with.

Still I was moody, and starting senior year of high school and continuing into college, I had sudden panic attacks. When they first started I had no idea what was happening. I thought I was going insane. I was afraid to tell anyone. I hid it until my unexplained absences from freshman English class forced me to tell the professor that I freaked out in class. He let me retake the final exam if I promised to get counseling. I did, but it didn't help much.

I had a nervous breakdown the summer after my freshman year of college and was put on Tenormin and Klonopin. They helped for a while, for the panic, but I eventually had to stop both when my depression came back. I self-medicated for a few semesters with alcohol and pot, which looked like typical college partying and to some extent it was, but I eventually ended up calling a suicide hotline and being advised to flush the last Klonopins down the toilet and call a doctor in the morning, which I did, and I was put on Imipramine, my first antidepressant. For the first time since childhood, I experienced what it was like to feel "normal" (not constantly sad). It was a huge relief. Eventually though, I realized that it wasn't just removing my depression, it was erasing all my feelings. I was emotionally flat. Great for accomplishing schoolwork, not for actually living life. I eventually took myself off it.

To make a long story short: as I went through my 20's/30's, I had some more hormonal/mood/drug experiments including a pituitary tumor and more panic attacks/depression. I took Paxil (which horrifically sucked for me but may work for some - brain chemistry is very individual) and finally found Remeron, which so far (and hopefully forever) is awesome and minimizes the bullshit my brain chemistry has dealt me.

I am obviously summarizing and leaving out a lot. But I have told you all that to tell you this:

I know what it's like to get up every morning and not want to be here. I know what that's like. If you don't, you need to shut up. Period. If you don't know what it's like to hold a bottle of pills in one hand and dial a suicide hotline with the other, shut the fuck up, and do not judge people for the hard hard choices they feel they must make to end their pain.

I also know what it's like to look at the face of my little sister in a casket, dead before her time, dead for no fucking reason (not from suicide but from a blood clot at 31 that her idiotic doctor didn't catch), and know that it is a waste to check out before you have to, before you are dragged kicking and screaming from this life. I know what it's like to have to try to keep it together while telling her children that she's in Heaven now.

My point is, don't judge. Death is hard to deal with, but life can be even more so.

I wrote this a few months ago, but it seems particularly appropriate after Robin Williams' suicide. I have dealt with depression, anxiety, and panic attacks since I was a teenager. I will probably write a (non-poetry) post on that later, but for now I will just say I have experienced being on the verge of suicide, and though I found reasons to keep going, I can't blame anyone who makes that choice to end their pain.


5/5/14

Spring Prayer

Give me money to throw at
malfunctioning appliances,
fortitude to mourn dead pets,
pick up broken branches,
endure cold salt air, bitter tears,
one-sided infatuations.

Dirt and rot, wet and cold,
sand and sea and wind
are also your gifts.
Teach me to repair, replace, rebuild.
Never let me forget
that green emerges from brown,
that change is always coming.

Hard as it can be,
tether me to this life,
root me in this soil so that
no matter where I roam
I will always know I cannot
escape this body until
I have wrung all the life from it.

Vessel

You have loved much
Mary and for that you've
been called harlot
but that name belongs
to the wives of the rich
not you Mary you poured
your blessings freely
no matter the cost
and drowned those
nagging devils with
the flowing myrrh
of love.



Passion

I let down
my long red hair.
I pour my
precious gifts
at your feet.
I offer myself
to you. Take,
eat, drink.



Possession

What did the devils say, Mary?
That you weren't pure enough,
you slept around,
you were damaged goods,
too worldly, too weak,
too wasteful, too much
like a woman?
And all you wanted
was a man who would
listen, who would gladly
receive your gifts
and bless you for it,
one man who would finally
share your cup.

Dancer

With serpentine grace
she winds and unwinds
her limbs, flowing
and floating on the music.
She is the song embodied,
each movement a note,
the melody leaping
and swirling in her skirts.



Slow (Four of Cups)

Do not dismiss
the lazy pleasure of
drowsing under the fan
to the sound of drizzle.
Follow the cat's example,
stretching languidly,
letting the delicious
heaviness settle
on your limbs and eyes.
The world will wait.

7/15/14

Six of Cups

I look back
down the spiraling stairs
I have climbed so far.
I see half-empty cups
and outgrown masks,
time wasted pouring devotion
into black holes,
people with hollow hearts
that can never be filled.
I move forward,
spiraling up like a vine
to the sun, growing.
Now I will fill my own cup.
Now I will harvest
my own fruit.



Knight of Cups

"Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
that he didn't, didn't already have..."
- America

The grail you seek,
the missing heart,
is already there,
spinning round within,
waiting, bright as stained glass,
ready to overflow.

July

The slow insect crawl
of the hot days,
sweating through clothes
in the brief walk to the car.
The blessed blast of relief
from the air vent,
the freezer door opening,
the gulp from a glass
of anything with ice.
Curse the heat, but
it's still the peak
of the year, the height
of the cycle, the light.
I would gladly trade
the cold dark months
of death for this.

Shifting

I'm accustomed to
seeing the ocean in shades
of blue and green,
mermaid colors.
But the water
only reflects the sky,
and mermaids have their dark side.
Today the clouds thickened
and the sea turned
to quicksilver, flashing
and gleaming, hypnotic.



Two of Cups

My fingertips flow over your skin,
nails tracing patterns in your hair.

I want to immerse myself
in your warm animal scent.

I want to swim eager laps in
the briny lust of our bed.

June in Alabama

Heavy tropical air,
lightning bugs flashing
on the shortest night.
Scent of honeysuckle, pine,
and distant rain, and the
fat white moon glowing
like a promise.



Color of Life

It's the color of change, of metamorphosis.
Wherever you see it, something is
pulsing with life, with growth, upheaval.

Verdant fields, sprouting and bearing.
Eerie storm skies, clouds like old bruises.
The Gulf teeming with seaweed and sharks.

Gilded emerald of a peacock's mating display
(like a human male flashing a wad of cash).
Verdigris of metal, earth turning to air.
Silvered pine needles smelling of rain.

My own eyes, changing reflections
with my clothes, but always some shade
of green.

Open

Sky and sea
stretching ever forward
from where I stand,
rooted in the sand.
Without this I begin
to shrink. I need
to see the infinite
horizon, feel the sun
baking and the wind
and waves stripping
the dead winter from me,
until mind body and heart
are scrubbed clean
and open like the
sea and sky.



Beach As Metaphor

The shedding of clothes,
skin revealed, oiling up,
beginning to sweat and flush.
Reclining to accept
the sun's attentions,
then diving in, riding
the rhythmic rolling waves,
the surf pounding and pounding.
Friction of water on shore,
rubbing, polishing over and over,
and the spray of salty foam
on the damp sand.

Impermanence (Summer of '94)

Late in the afternoon we arrived
with a bottle of white wine.
We got high in the poolhouse,
drank and ate blackberries,
listening to the radio
and distant thunder growling.
It was a stormy summer
with kudzu thick and green
under the approaching clouds,
as we swam all too briefly
while we could.



Mortality (Janet)

Live. Live now.
Don't wait.
It could all end
in a heartbeat
in an ambulance
before you even
get to the hospital.