Words From the Wise

We all write songs about life, we just sing 'em different.
- Listener

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

March 30th Thoughts


I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person who feels this darkness working it's way up inside.  I remember soon after that I am not alone.  Everyone has their darkness to fight, whatever that may be for you I hope it's a battle you win someday.

It's funny because I find there are many times when I want her to come forward.  This black and twisty thing inside of me.  I think of her as....well....a her, so that's how I'll refer to her here too.

She's always there, dark, and just staring at me, waiting for her moment to pounce.  And when she gets a hold of me, oh the simple joy and pure adrenaline I feel.  It's a challenging thing living with mania because the mania itself is delicious.  She comes in and starts tearing down walls.  She uses a sledge hammer to destroy everything I've struggled to build because she knows I have absolutely no use for it at all.  She knows that it's all just holding me back from what I really want.  The things I really desire.  Those thoughts that I do everything in my power to keep hidden, caged, quiet.  She comes in and before I even realize what she has done, she has destroyed my inhibitions.  My mind opens in a way that only those of us with the same problem can understand.  But I'll do my best to explain it to those who don't have to fight the beast.

For me the mania comes in the form of creativity, and I LOVE IT.  Even though I'm medicated now and my mania states are much, much, more subdued; I love when it happens.  I can create poetry, paintings, sketches, drawings, it seems like a never ending font of creation.  Every fiber I am made up of wants to take the things in my life that are causing me any sort of pain and use them to create something new.

Sounds great right?  Sounds like fun?  Sounds exciting?
Oh she is, she is, she is!  Until...

Until the spark starts to burn so hot and so fast that I can no longer control it.  She has turned from a spark to a blaze, and I am what will feed her.  This is when I start to lose control and she weasels her dark and twisty way into me.  Thoughts that threaten my marriage come into my mind.  Thoughts that make me question my Lord.  Thoughts that make me doubt everything I've worked for as a human child of God.  I feel guilty about things I want, things I'm thinking about.  Actions I feel I wish I could take....
Actions I'm terrified I would take if offered.

She holds me down and starts to wrap me up in her sick lullaby of ego and promise.

This is where the story changes for me.  Thankfully this time, and the last 326, and hopefully the infinite number to come, the story changes.

My Father speaks to me.  He holds my heart in His hands, my soul is only His to keep.  He loves me still.  He loved me then.  He will love me until the end of time.  That grace I have been given for not a single reason sustains me.  I can make it through the dark times.  Sometimes I may even make it through unscathed.  But even if I don't He is still there, He still loves me.

There are no checks and balances to Him.  One sin, 100 sins, heck even thousands of sins every day will never stop His love.

And no, just like I will always have to take my meds, like it or not; knowing this does not change the fact I need to follow the Lord's example in Jesus.  I need to love my fellow man, and that includes me.  I need to remember that compassion needs to be paramount in my life.  None of this means that I should just keep sinning.  No, it is not a "free pass" as it were.  I should try to do better every single day because He loves me.  If I love the Lord then I should want to do what He asks of me.  But even so when I do fail He will still be there every time with the same infinite love, compassion, grace.

Friday, March 25, 2016

Supernova

There is a universe inside her
An entire universe swirling, and gliding, and growing inside her
She holds the key to everything 

I can lose myself in her
There are no sharp angles, no corners,
nothing hard just swells of soft skin that rise up to me

I could take forever and just trace all her lines with fingertips that are dying to learn her
I have hands that fit to her hips with perfection
She has lips that mold into song

Thursday, March 17, 2016

The Girl

Here she is
I watch her move across the tile
I see how beauty and grace is growing in her
I see how she is blooming right before our eyes
This girl is beauty of the most perfect kind

This seed of a woman is already fierce
She is growing and learning faster than I ever
believed possible
Her footing grows more confident every day

She has fear
She has pain
She has sadness and hurt

But this girl stands back up
She stands back up
She    stands    back    up 
and demands to be seen over and over again

She is all scraped knees and bruised elbows
She is painted in a myriad of colors
sunshine yellow, mossy greens, chalk dust blues and reds
Her laughter creates perfect sparkles in my vision

She is just beginning and yet I can see what is growing inside her
I can see the strength she has yet to unleash
I can feel the love she will one day give
I can hear the song her spirit will one day sing
And I just pray for the faith to help her see it all through

For one day this girl will let go of my hand
She will step into the light
She will walk away from me no longer with grace growing in her
She will be fully opened to the world
Her lines will be soft and full of power

This girl will forge a path that I can only begin to fathom
This girl will show me what it means to be a woman

One day I will have to force her protector to let her go
One day I will have to remind her he never can

And yet she will still move forward and away
I will watch as the knobby knees and messy hair
turn into beautiful long legs and a crown of beauty upon her
I will never be able to hold back the joyful tears
As she rises toward the sky

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Harden

People say I never get angry
I'm not all hearts and flowers
But a rose-colored view of life
That I will lay claim to. 

But don't be fooled by that attitude
Don't assume it's because I'm naive 
I have scraped my way toward rosy
By breaking myself into shards along the way

It is more my seeing again and again 
What the darkness inside me is
More than fully capable of
Where those leathery wings want me to go
What she whispers in my heart
How wonderfully she twists me

So I choose rose
I chose to give control of myself over to another
I choose to listen to a voice inside
That is tiny and scared
Tiny and hidden almost completely 
Tiny and fierce

My hearts
My flowers
My colors full of rose
These things I chose 

If I don't you would only see  what is dark
You would only hear the lies she can tell
You would only know 
Truth

Sunday, March 13, 2016

One Second

This is the longest second I've ever known. 
This is bliss and hope. 
This is joy with excitement 
This will stay with me. 

This look into your eyes will go on forever. 
It will continue into the future just as far as it will emerge from the past. 
It will become the song of you my heart will sing. 
It will spill forth and cut through the darkness and bring me home. 

One glance will have the power to shape me. 
The color in your eyes, the grace of your lashes,
The smile I see in them. 
These things will go on forever.


Friday, March 11, 2016

Husband

Being misunderstood has become a normal
a normal that I believed was a mountain to high for anyone to climb

Everything that I have within 
the things I want and need
the things I never let see the light
These are the things I knew could never be traversed

Except that you did

Reaching in through the rock
Pushing into my very soul until I am brought to my knees
Binding yourself to me in a way that I could never shake you

I am small in this space
broken and shamed
I have kept myself captive in this space all alone
I threw away the key
I made sure there was no way for anyone to ever find me here

Except that you did

You found me and you saw what I could never see
You knelt down in the bloody mess I had created and you worshiped it
You worshiped everything I kept dark
You worshiped my truth and never questioned my devotion to it

You came down into me and pulled out the sticky black pieces one by one
You grasped at them and ripped and pulled them from my skin
one after one after one after one
Even then I was living in fear
Fear that there was no end in sight for all these dank corners of me
I knew you could never make it to the end of them

Except that you did

And even after all this, 
even after seeing all the mistakes and desires I have
you stood above me looking down at my huddled body
Shaking, crying, knowing you were going to leave me
You reached out and lifted my face to your light
You took my hand and forced me to stand
To stand with you

You took your shirt and used it to wipe away every tear I had ever cried
You took off all the clothes I had because they were wrought with shame and sadness
and you burned them
Standing before you bare 
I was finally
not
afraid
or
ashamed

I stand with you now
I am wholly yours now
I never believed there would be safety in honesty
I never believed there would be someone who could see how precious the darkness is to me

Except that you did

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Reflection

Being my own worst enemy is probably my greatest strength
I suppose it could be that I just want so much so deeply
So deeply that I lose all sense of right and wrong
So deeply that I lose all sense of what I should do
What should be done

My confusion abounds, and my desperation 
My self-imposed desperation
Since I can never leave things as they are
As they are is never good enough
Is that because I'm never good
Enough

I'm scared you will let me go on
And on
And on
You will support all of my weakness and encourage it to grow
You will let me continue on this edge
You will help me find my way
You won't give up
You really do understand my unabashed awkwardness
You really do love it

If I had more control
If I had more sense
If I just had
                       more

More

I want you to accept this layer of dust I carry
I want you to accept it and lead me to where I can change it
Lead me to where it is I believe you see me
Away from this mirror crusted over and tarnished
I know it is a difficult task
I know because I have never mastered it
I know because I keep questioning everything I'm doing
Everything I'm saying
I keep.....

In the end I just want to look up
Look up and see you still there
There looking down on me
Looking down on all that I wish I never had said
Never had done
I want to look up and still see you there
Still see what I know I remember as peace


Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Sleep as a Lost Art

I can only assume my attention is needed somehow. I lay here looking into nothing, wanting nothing more than for this nothing I see to be even less of a something. What to do when your mind refuses to shut up, and forcing quiet is not an option. 

Counting sheep - the aforementioned mind is a problem, as I lose count and my sheep just start wandering around and refuse to jump

Meditation - hopeless on oh so many levels

Blogging - apparently does a body no good, but proven (eventual) to help tire the mind 

Yawning has commenced so we are getting somewhere. 

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Sarasvati

peaceful quiet is not at all peaceful or quiet for me now
my heart is aching in ways that make me
desperate
                  dark
                              lonely
                                                                  alone

my head weighs so much more than I ever knew it could
and my heart weighs even more than that

i feel as if i've lost my soul

i
am
breaking

there is nothing left of me
there is no life within me

at least, none that i can feel now

This Is Where I Want You

you hold the key to my smile, you hold the hope from my heart
you protect it in an iron fist that no one can open, no one can break it
you keep me
                               safe

I let you keep me safe

I need you to keep that tiny last fading ember of me

safe

i will lose myself if you don't
i will separate from every place that makes me....me

i need you to take this from me because i can no longer keep it safe
i want to slice it into so many bloody withered pieces
that there is no pain left to feel

so take This,
protect This
       take me
                     protect me
because if you do not
i will choose to disappear

i have lain so much at your control and you don't even know what you have been asked to hold and protect.

but i have the truth in the darkness
I am safe in you


Friday, March 4, 2016

Breath

There is one realization that I know must be shared.  I know my daughter saved my life.  She was a gift from the Father, one I never would have chosen for myself.

She was the last thing I wanted in the moment I found out I had her.  I thought I would never be able to walk through the fear to have her.  This was not fear of a spider, or even fear of assault.  This was soul crushing and paralyzing fear.  This was knock me to my knees giving everything up to the Lord kind of fear.  

Here is where I learned to trust God fully.
Here is where I learned that trusting in God fully did not mean everything would be instantly better, or even easy.

My daughter bore me into the world long before I bore her into it. I had debilitating postpartum depression after my son was born.  I was in therapy, I was dealing well, I was refusing meds.  When she was given to me I knew I had no other choice left.  I could never make it through that kind of darkness again without hurting myself and my children. Those feelings and thoughts are impossible to understand if you've never been close to them in some way.  But I guarantee you it would have ended so very badly.

Except,
She was gifted to me.  I knew I had to start taking the meds I was told to take. I knew if I ever wanted to make it through they would become a permanent part of my life. And because I was terrified of feeling that depression again I took them.

My daughter saved my life.

I can say now with a clear(er) head that she did.  That I know she did.  I am still a person who deals with depression/anxiety.  I always will be.  But I can say with confidence that if it weren't for these meds I know I would have tried to take my life one day.  I don't say this as a "I might do that" statement; I say this as an "I KNOW" statement.  

So many things, to many to go into, lead to my accepting who I am and the problems I face.  But the basis for all of it is that one sentence:

My daughter saved my life.

Rebecca Grace
Rebecca - For my sister and my friend who died far to young but loved much
Grace - because she is my tangible example of God's Grace

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Wane

You are a marvel
Pablo was right
And even though you haunt my dreams
In the middle of the night 
And even though the reality of you cuts me like a cross
You are a marvel
And I'll love you
Though its lost


This piece was written almost 18 years ago I believe. It's one I often repeat to myself when I need to remind myself that happy endings aren't always happy

Core

Photo credit Exit34 Photography 

 If fear were tangible,
tactile,
something far more formidable than thick clouds,
if it didn't seem to flee from every breeze,
would I listen?

Would I find that fighting against what I want,
what I know will make me miserably happy,
would become a fight I don't want to win?
Except that I do.
I want to fight, I want to dig in my heels and bang my fists against the wall.

I want to forget about everything I've worked for before this.
I want to find myself tied and tangled and strapped down
so that I have no other choice,
no options to turn back toward clarity. 

It makes no sense, not even to me,
but I want to take everything I have shining and new,
and I want to cover it with the mud, muck, and mire.
I want that.