hear me roar

I am a woman.
I am a daughter, sister, lover, and friend.
I am a nurturer, a caretaker, a hand holder,
and a macaroni and cheese maker.
I am a fighter, a strong resister, a risk taker,
and a loyal protector.
I am an animal watcher, a dog walker, a belly scratcher,
and an aquarium and bird cage cleaner.
I am an honest soul, an honorer of good deeds, lost souls,
and drunken sods.
I am a lonely girl, lost in escapism and fantasy, caught up in make-believe
webs of tears and twine.
I am an artist of worth and talent, a person of interest, a human being
of a versatile mind.
I am a person of amicable face and personality, welcoming love from
anywhere I can find it and sharing love with anyone I can.
I am a woman.

ccccourage

these past few weeks have been hard for me because was judged, (not for the first time) but perhaps the most blatantly, by my appearance. to be comforted i was reassured again and again by the important people that i am more than such visual consequences. that i am independent and strong, empathetic and loving. i am a person worthy of much more than cursory judgements. then i whimpered to a counselor of the familial kind who has always had a comforting ear and heart and was slapped down into a spiral of shame and depression to hear her words of judgement on my appearance as well. we have since mended bridges as she swallowed her former words and admitted that my arms make a sadness rise in her because to her, they represent a pain that went unrecognized for so long.
needless to say, i have been through a whirlwind of emotions, brutal, shameful, full of rage and sadness and finally empowered in these few days. and all for something i rarely think about. i'm usually more concerned with the permanent ink on my wrist proclaim my belief in myself than the wreck of rough skin tissue that precludes it. so i have made a decision. these marks across my body and heart are signs of courage and survival, not pain and sickness. so here is the story of a few of my scars.
the red keloid that screams the loudest is from a kiss with a hot iron that happened on a day i was afraid to cut. on a day i needed to express my pain but was so low i didn't trust my hand to be steady with the razor, i let the hot steam scorch my skin until it didn't hurt anymore. as heinous as it is, it's a giant reminder of a day i chose not to die.
as for the assorted slashes up and down my tender forearms, what can i say? they were my bright red screams. a proclamation of despair i couldn't put into words. i was finally stitched and stapled together until the horror lessened in my head. each mark is a pill not taken, a rope not hung, a call for help made and answered.
and now i bear these scars forever with my tattoo reminding me to believe that i am more than them but at the same time knowing i would not be me, or here, without them.

purple haze

The things that confuse me about life are...
so i could make a list
or write a poem
or i could tell a story
but all of this is hiding
behind the wordplay
that protects me so often
from the barbs of
confusion i'm supposed
to be describing.
so i'll just share
an uncomplicated truth.
Existence confuses me. Specifically my existence. There are so many facets of me and my life that i just don't understand. Obviously i don't understand my illness but not in a " why have the fates dropped this in my lap" kind of way. Instead i wonder if i invited this into my life. Before i was ill, i ran with a cynical group where words like "crazy" and "suicide" were often a punchline. i know the environmental, biological, and situational basis for my bipolar but i can't help but wonder if whispering those incantations of insanity when i was untouched opened a window somewhere.
i am confused by my writing. some call it talent, some expression, but to me it just is. sometimes words flow from me so independently that when i look back on it, i feel like i can hardly claim authorship. and i know the inauthenticity of it all, how i choose words or phrases to elicit emotion and reactions in the reader or listener. why can't people see the hypocrisy of it all? am i really that good of a liar?
forgiveness confuses me. i have expressed this before but my parents, close friends, my brother, aunts uncles, i know they are meant to love me by rote, but when i look at my scars and remember the harsh falsities i hurled at them in the midst of symptomatic madness, i am confused by how they let me back into (some) of their homes and lives. perhaps that's why i accept so many pains from them. i'm attempting to repay a debt that never can be. i can be used up entirely and it still won't be enough to fill in the hole i gouged in their collective psyche.
finally, i am confused by my survival. i tempted God to take me so many times, yet He didn't take the bait. my mother has told me that i don't know how many lives i touch in that scolding tone of "so shape up" that all mother's have. so am i meant to be this shining example/role model of recovery where i have come from the pit and see how shiny squeaky clean i am now? is this despite small relapses, look how far i've come...is that the clarifying truth to my life?

rude awakening

I never became when I was
supposed to become,
lost in a wood
of what I should be's
no speeches of eminent
changes,
life cycles,
the motion from
childhood to adulthood
was a mystery to me.
perhaps that's why
I put it off for so long.
my youth dwindling
while I lingered doing
childish things with
children of the like mind.
I did mature though-
in an even field...
surprising myself
with my own precociousness,
breaking bonds I had tied
myself with,
thrusting myself into
the arms of startled lovers,
hoping my fantasies were true.
They weren't of course,
and I was alone again,
less innocent,
disrespected,
a bit ashamed.
but this is what it means
to be a grown up, I guess.
The pain out weighing
the silliness.
I do not begrudge
my lack of warning,
the absence of,
"this is how it will be" speeches
make sense now,
because really,
how fair is it to
sit a child down and tell them
that the future is going to
break their heart?

pontific ponderings

i have often thought
of that kernel,
(you know what i mean)
that bit of God's love
that preacher
pastor
priest
tells us is the essence
of our soul.
it is what the "us"
or the "we"
is shaped around.
-the beginning of our being
before we began.
so sometimes i wonder about this
uncontaminated little sprout,
this piece of God inside me...
i can resent it one minute
and rejoice in it the next,
but i think i am forgiven these petty thoughts,
because God knows my brain and the kernel
glows brightly still.

personality grocery list

i can:
-spell world backwards
-give the best belly rubs in town, nay the county
-listen without judging
-judge without listening
-be joyous and giggly
-be sad and morose
-keep to myself
-shout out to the world (dlrow)
-read
-write
-sing
-pray
-wish
-believe
-imagine
-betray
-ignore
-respect
-be the most empathetic person in the room
-be the most oblivious person in the room (what?)
-be pretty
-be ugly
-be clear
-be confused
-treasure my intelligence
-pray for the cloud of ignorance
-be a loving sister
-be the family albatross
-be an honest and loving friend
-be selfish enough to crumble friendships
-be flexible
-be rigid
-be loved
-be resented
-want more than anything to have the idealized "normal" life
-honor my individuality and wear my unique eccentricities like the brightly colored bits of armored personhood they are.

i will:
-open myself up to healing
-take care of and honor my physical body
-work towards emotional stability
-work on eliminating compulsive and obsessive thoughts
-be strong and personable
-help without being manipulated

the reason why

why do i write?
a slight gesture;
a smile,
a sigh,
a grunt,
a grumble
all of these things
take on their own lives
when they leave the body
of the utterer.
A stammer magnified tenfold
can disappear grace,
leaving a muddy heap behind- no longer the item of profundity
it began as.
such configurations are confounding;
some malignant,
some benign,
all different from their intention.
this is a unique horror-misinterpretation,
when one, such as i,
am often caught up in
the simple wonderment of
communicating.
So that is why i write.
my thoughts and feelings
are suddenly concrete and real,
no longer hidden or
subdued in some
silly place behind
my tongue and teeth
where propriety and
sublimation reign.
Here, on the blank page,
I can be as raw or as delicate as i like
without fear of misunderstanding,
(or understanding for that matter)
-as this can be a complete conversation with myself.
i can invent, implode, rejoice, reject, fume, have fun, cry to, and cry about-
i am the hero
and the villain,
the princess
and the dragon,
i am the creator
and the relator.
as i write and heal i have a voice that will not be silenced.

Harmonizing Clutter

when music trickles
from your fingers
as easy as words
from your lips-
oh, i would like
to learn that trick!
but the angels
impetus of muse
do not sing in my ear,
they only talk in a
blathering drone.
-incessant really-
if i listened all of the time
i would go insane,
but i have a filter that
allows me to grab only the important words
(at least that's what i tell myself)
and that's the poetry
that stains my page.
i wonder if God works
the same way,
adjusting His filter
to only answer
important prayers
(at least that's what He tells Himself)
and maybe that's why
we offer Him hymns.
-songs in the darkness
to break up the drone.

VIP List

Dear friend Jenn
who has settled
her rebellious mind
into the role of
mother so lately,
has really been
nurturing me for years:
her kindness
compassion,
loyalty
never ceases and
feeds into my own
goodness,
banishing the darkest moments,
to bring me home.
Dearest brother Shawn
who keeps his own counsel,
keeps his own morality
keeps his own idealism
You are my anchor and
often my chiding reminder
that saves me from the
riptides of selfish obsession.
you present to me reality
and in returning me to that
confusing place,
you cushion its pitiless
glare with love and
sweet understanding.
Dearest Mother and Father,
i cannot consider
one without the other
with the yin-yang
effect you have left
on my person hood
each mark of my character
has been imprinted by you
as :my shining friends
my fierce protectors
my loving reprimanders
my closest critics
my dearest loves
and so Friend, Brother, Parents,
most vital to me
my strange and beautiful loves,
you change how i see the world
and how the world sees me
without you i would
be lost,
a missing piece,
less than myself.
thank you for keeping me whole.

My Apologies

i apologize for all the pain i cause
for the trouble in your heart
the racings of my mind
leave behind.
their rumble rumbles
sometimes overflow into
the real world you know.
and i do my best to stop it...
my inconvenient madness that i
try to suppress,
so bothersome to you.
your heartfelt tears as you
describe the distress of:
the impulse to cure
and to heal that is
for naught
as if my only impulses were to
run naked in the streets
declaring my broken illness
but i understand your
love and frustration,
because it is frustrating
to be me too.
and if i luxuriate in the parts
of my intellectual strangeness
that make you uncomfortable,
please accept my apologies.
because in my general dreariness
i tend to suck the marrow of
joy from wherever i can find it.
and if these words seem angry,
i'm sorry again,
but in hearing you speak
when all i could do but nod and agree,
(silence being the quickest way to end
an uncomfortable moment)
thoughts birthed and festered,
leaving behind this bitter verse
that i put on paper
instead of in my mouth.
so i express my extreme regrets
if you find these words
and they cause you upset;
just know it is my truth
as you have expressed your own.

a poem for fieldy

i watch my little one
bunny hop through the snow
and can't help to wonder,
"will this be his last winter?"
the thought stops me cold
and with a catch in my throat,
he wants to pull forward.
he is oblivious to my thoughts.
(at least i hope he is)
as they come
more frequently now,
almost as frequent
as his new penchant
for napping.
Oh! my little old man!
what will i do without you?
without your
salty, foul breath, kisses?
and your body pushed
so close to mine
in sleep?
who will share
my joys and my woes?
who will share
my meals and treats?
who will share my soul,
my true spirit friend?
these thoughts,
fleeting, cruel,
pass through my mind
when i see
a hesitation of step
or hear too many snores
in a day.
then i just hold him close,
his little doggie heart
so strong,
beating fiercely
as if it knows my fears,
and i am reassured
that my sweet companion
is far from ready for
my teary elegies yet.

early to bed

I huddled in the
corner of my
apartment
last night,
nursing some,
dangerous thoughts.
yet, the order of my walls
with their pastel colors
and framed joy,
and the bookcases overflowing
with chaotic happiness,
both failed to stem
the evilness that
crept in and squatted
in my brain.
I was scared
in my little fort
between the couch
and the heater,
at a loss of what would happen next,
of what i would do next,
images flashing of past hurts
and future could be's
that left me so uncertain,
that i chose oblivion as the
safest recourse.
My hands shook as I counted
out night meds.
knowing how easy it would be
to take an extra one or seven.
So i tucked myself in
embarrassingly early
to escape from myself.
And when I awoke,
the uncertainty was
less uncertain,
but the inkling was still there.
So i must keep busy.
Church, Computer, Reading, Writing,
But what will happen when
i am alone again after i
exhaust these tasks?
Am I destined for a 7:30 bedtime
for the rest of my life?
So now you understand
this poem,
perhaps the impetus
behind all of my poetry:
i am afraid of what will
happen when i lay down my pen.

You Just Don't Know

you just don't know
how hard
the tight fingered grip on
my darkling instinct
has to be.
it is relentless,
even now
in a time of relative neutrality.
between my louder demons
and lesser angels,
i still leave a mental crimp
at the impenetrable door i've
erected between myself
and everybody else.
if i create bloody brambles
of my own self loathing,
imagine what damage others
can do if i allowed them near
my poor fragility?
and then when i let go
confident that all will be well
and it is not,
the madness greets me again
taking the words
(my best friends)
on a rambling race
becoming jumbled barbs in my head.
so no, i cannot, i will not
be free;
a laughing jester
with new friends and lovers,
because with freedom,
comes chaos
and i can never live madly again.
i can still cry though,
in my rocking chair,
because quiet loneliness
is a bitter prize for sanity.

When God Whispered In Uncle Walt's Ear

Loneliness is a place that does not
exist in God's world.
Hopeless, formless, desolate,
these are fearful things
hurtling through our hearts so
painfully as to stop a breath
and that is their purpose,
to stop
a life, a choice,
to make one ignore
sweet faith.
But in the universe of creation
where all that fly be they
atom, or bird, or galaxy,
a joyful reunion occurs
where we re-introduce
ourselves to The Creator
one God, Our God,
one of poetry and light
who despite Universal Duty
once stopped to teach
a lonely, bearded, bard
to sing the body electric.

Tinker

instinct
mother of my own invention
or is it something more?
So many questions i have...
intellectual leanings,
passionate leanings,
spiritual leanings,
Are these the
lessons of my mind
or something greater?
I know I have free will
because no omnipotent being
would carry the battle scars
I have imprinted
on my body
on my soul.
So what to make
of these casual whisperings
I sometimes catch
within myself?
Is it precognition
gleaned from a rocky existence,
or maybe a sympathetic Savior
unable to resist a little
tinkering on his most
troublesome creation?

Rumi Inspirations

Companions in ecstasy,
we weep at the feet
of our faiths in joy.
Our God of many names
hears us and laughs
at our passions
and our pains-
Our worship
in each other echo's
Our pride in the
Great Higher Power-
creator of us all.
We are joined
hand over hand
culture through culture
until one voice
one song
rises up to reach
Divine ears.

A New Psalm

Within the thicket of my sorrows, you find me oh, Lord.
A love everlasting, penetrating through my wooded fortress.
You care not for the pine needles that cling to my knees
and the muddy dust that blankets them.
For they are in You as I am in You.
(A filthy reminder of my own holiness)
Hosanna in the most high as angelic voices
tickle my ears and take me home.
But in truth there is no movement,
No ascension, for even in the most low
the wind, Your voice,
cools the fires of my existence and allows for
my modern passions to transcend.
so that this wooded place,
its thorns slashed by the princes of my mind,
is no longer a pit of woe,
but a sanctuary where with to find a peace within.
You have lain there since the dawn of time.
I wish for violins and trumpets with gem ridden streets
to greet me at Your miraculous gates but
the trees are my guardians and the birds sing out,
"Gloria in Exclesies"
A sweet song of mortality that You, oh, Lord remind me of,
Our heaven on earth.

Wisdom From a Dust Mite

Trying to fathom the universe
i paused,
waiting for the dizziness
to pass.
My mind is not always concerned
with such gigantic ideas.
(actually it is
usually bound tightly
by the petty and the mundane)
But today I stretched
out across the cosmos,
seeking
great answers to
great questions
and I was confounded
by the vastness
of it all.
I was surprised by
the cloud of loneliness
that had formed over my heart.
Insignificant is too large
a word to define my feeling,
small, tiny, speck,
that is me.
So I wonder how
throughout this cacophony
of creation
does God recognize me
hear me
love me
or is me selfish ideology
based on coincidence?
Then, in my mind,
I hearkened back to my childhood;
A bitter cold day of
frost and snow,
filled with the dread of
trudging to school in
cumbersome snow pants
and unfinished homework,
when suddenly the radio crackled
in the early morning hours
that echoed a command
from God that
answered
a hundred children's prayers: Snow Day

carpet burns

so what is the hardest thing i have ever done? I could write about triumphs, about supreme achievement, about scuba diving and scaling (small) tropical mountains, jumping rooftops, quiting lifelong addictions, or a multitude of other exciting, bombastic activities. but this is a different kind of story. a story filled with guilt and pain, that's ending doesn't lie in the present but in the past, on a carpet smelling of antiseptic and apathetic tears. this is the story of how i came to get off of the floor.
when asked to explain the difference between mental illness and feeling bad, i can best explain it by saying being depressed, you lose a few days work, having depression (or bipolar in my case) i lost my twenties. there are a myriad of agonies that lie within that statement. the drugs pumped into and out of my body in so many variations and doses that when asked these days what i've taken in the past and how it has worked for me, i can't answer.
my body reflects now these early aggressive treatments with migraines and facial twitches and spasms that have lessened through homeopathic remedies.
i was so disconnected from myself that i allowed other, more drastic treatments to violate me. The ECT series done not once but twice in two different hospitals. It was just empty hope that these destructive electric surges that while contorting my body would release my mind from its deadened state. i was left only with pounding headaches and an apathy so strong that treatment was finally halted before i drifted away permanently.
and then there was the cutting. self-mutilation, my scream of body that i couldn't articulate in any other way. it's sadly, the most interesting star on my chart that enthralls every eager medical professional almost as much as the vile criss-cross and keliod scars capture the eye of those whom catch unintentional glimpses of them.
to look back now from a better place does not make it an any less bitter time. i hope to convey at least with the physical situation of myself the utter emotional desolation i was immersed in. i didn't care what was done to hurt or heal me. i felt i deserved it all. a guilt too personal to share engulfed me so entirely that no light shone through. i made attempts but did not succeed. i simply did not have the energy to die. this was my despair.
so this is how i found myself, weeping into the carpet of a mental health facility common room
asking a Chaplin, "how i could go on?" "Why would God care for me, if He knew what i had done?"
The Chaplin, who i'm sure had heard this weepy question many times before told me that, "God knows what i had done and will do and has already forgiven me-isn't it about time i forgave myself?" what a staggering thought, forgiving myself!
looking at bandaged arms, lace-less sneakers, and foggy glasses, i eventually got off of my carpet burned knees and took a breath, many breaths, and forgave. i wasn't magically cured and it wasn't my last time in a hospital, but it was the first time in the history of my illness that i felt hope. and that glimmer of hope remains with me, these years later when my strength of personhood would be unbelievable to that creature of the past. and i use it when the darkness revists me and am confident that i will never find myself broken like that ever again.

about this God fellow...

so i think God has been talking to me lately..not in a take your pants off in the back-yard and proclaim the second coming kind of way, but more subtly. small things have been going my way where in other times, well chaos would have caught me. lost keys and journals have been found, car accidents have been near-misses instead of fender-benders, and i have been feeling better physically where i should be according to all intents and purposes been run down and lost. i suppose there could be a hundred other reasons for my sudden turn in luck, coincidence, better driving skills (yeah right) and that icky fish oil i take every day finally kicking in, but i prefer a more metaphysical explanation. i think this way because each good thing that has happened has caused me to turn my face upward and say thanks.
now lately my prayer regime has improved simply because i have been trying to make a good impression on the youth group kids as i got a sage piece of advice from a great mentor that said to never do anything i didn't want the kids to see me doing and to do what i wanted the kids to see me practicing (thanks john!). so i have been cleaning up my slightly salty language ---stone of a peach, jiminy crispies, that really grills my cheese----and praying not just with a shopping list but trying to start an on going conversation with God. and it has been working. i find myself talking about my day with the Supreme Deity instead of the Field Man..ok i still talk about my day with my dog but now God is included in the conversation, and i am sharing my woes AND joys...saying thank-you more and more rather than gimmee gimmee gimme all of the time.
so have these little miracles been a reward for this more appropriate attention to the Universal Watch-Maker as the Victorians thought Him to be? i certainly hope not. i don't want to be given a gift for being a more vigilant human being and faithful spirit. i'd rather think that by being a more vigilant and prayerful person i have just become more aware of the spirituality that has always surrounded me, the brilliance of the universe that reveals itself every day in the revolution of the earth and the finding of parking spaces close to the entrance of Wal-Mart.
this new consciousness surprises me because i always shied away from any sort of this sense of being before. i was always afraid that there would be an awful payback, that all of the pain and horror of the world would hit me tenfold as i gleaned the nectar of love from the universe. but it has not been so. yes i am aware of of the bad, but the good has made me so strong that i feel powerful enough to be able to make a change in the overwhelming bad. so with each little gift, i try to give a little gift myself. lost keys found? i loan out a pen so a stranger can do a crossword, calm day at the store? spend the afternoon with mother with a dvd of our fav show..i think after 33 years i am finally getting a glimpse of the yin/yang give and take of this existential plane we humans find ourselves on. so thanks for the nudge God, i needed it to become and keep becoming a better person.