When I went looking for a poem for voodoo, I stumbled across this poem. It resonates within me fiercely. I feel like I can bold underline several of the last stanzas. So for all of us struggling right now, this is for you:
The Madness Vase/The Nutritionist
by Andrea Gibson
The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables, said if I could get down thirteen turnips each day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives.
The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight, said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty and she said, “Stop worrying, darling, you will find a good man soon.”
The first psycho-therapist said I should spend three hours a day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and my ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.
The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth, said focus on the out breath, said everyone finds happiness if they can care more about what they can give than what they get.
The pharmacist said Klonopin, Lamictal, Lithium, Xanax.
The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said.
The trauma said, “Don’t write this poem. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.”
But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi dove into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.”
My bones said, “Write the poem.” To the lamplight considering the river bed, to the chandelier of your faith hanging by a thread, to everyday you cannot get out of bed, to the bullseye of your wrist, to anyone who has ever wanted to die:
I have been told sometimes the most healing thing we can do is remind ourselves over and over and over other people feel this too.
The tomorrow that has come and gone and it has not gotten better.
When you are half finished writing that letter to your mother that says “I swear to God I tried, but when I thought I’d hit bottom, it started hitting back.”
There is no bruise like the bruise loneliness kicks into your spine so let me tell you I know there are days it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets while you break down like the doors of their looted buildings. You are not alone in wondering who will be convicted of the crime of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame.
You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy. I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside.
Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside some days. I know my smile can look like the gutter of a falling house but my hands are always holding tight to the rip cord of believing a life can be rich like the soil, can make food of decay, turn wound into highway.
Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says, “It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.”
I have never trusted anyone with the pulled back bow of my spine the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat screaming for their pulses to find the fight to pound. Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington bridge I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town calculating exactly what I had to swallow to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down.
What I know about living is the pain is never just ours. Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo, so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window, when I can see what I couldn’t see before through the glass of my most battered dream I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.
So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin don’t try to put me back in. Just say, “Here we are” together at the window aching for it to all get better but knowing there is a chance our hearts may have only just skinned their knees, knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming
let me say right now for the record, I’m still gonna be here asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.
You, you stay here with me, okay? You stay here with me.
Raising your bite against the bitter dark, your bright longing, your brilliant fists of loss. Friend, if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other, my god that is plenty my god that is enough my god that is so so much for the light to give each of us at each other’s backs whispering over and over and over, “Live. Live. Live.”
"Not gonna lie; I kind of keep expecting you to post one day that you threw down on someone who clearly had no idea that today was NOT THEIR DAY." ~dontcallmeshirley
Can we burn Arizona to the ground now? I just spent ten days in the hospital being treated for a severe lung infection. Given that I live in Chicago, the docs were fairly sure it was blastomycosis. Nope. Just got my lung biopsy results and it's Valley Fever - only found in the southwest and I haven't been there in three years.
That state blows. Somebody have wine for me because I can't have alcohol for the YEAR that I'm being treated.
Oh that sucks. Really one year for alcohol?! I'm glad you are recovering and have an answer, but that is crazy!
Post by downtoearth on Nov 26, 2014 17:09:18 GMT -5
My random... don't google "tingling pinky fingers both hands!" I've had this for about a week and it's either a lack of B vitamins and calcium or I've slept wrong on my arms for years or symptom of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia or a version of carpal tunnel syndrome in my elbows or a thyroid/autoimmune disorder or a brain/spinal tumor. So I guess I'll get a multivitamin and then maybe find a doctor to check my CBC panels/hormones levels and go from there. I hate/love google diagnoses.
My random... don't google "tingling pinky fingers both hands!" I've had this for about a week and it's either a lack of B vitamins and calcium or I've slept wrong on my arms for years or symptom of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia or a version of carpal tunnel syndrome in my elbows or a thyroid/autoimmune disorder or a brain/spinal tumor. So I guess I'll get a multivitamin and then maybe find a doctor to check my CBC panels/hormones levels and go from there. I hate/love google diagnoses.
Post by secretlyevil on Nov 26, 2014 19:14:52 GMT -5
Mother f... My MRI has been rescheduled for next week. My authorization didn't come through in time. I called "med solutions" the RN on my case decided they needed more information and that delayed things even more. I can't fucking believe this.
"Not gonna lie; I kind of keep expecting you to post one day that you threw down on someone who clearly had no idea that today was NOT THEIR DAY." ~dontcallmeshirley
Post by cattledogkisses on Nov 26, 2014 19:40:53 GMT -5
EFF.
We just drove 5.5 hours in a snowstorm to get to my parents' house. Upon arrival I was informed that mom has the flu. I've been sick pretty much continuously since the beginning of October, so I haven't been able to get a flu shot yet (I tried, honest; no one would give it to me while I was sick). Please please please don't let me get the flu this weekend.
I worked my ass off on an email for our sales director, only to not send it today because she couldn't get the 11th thing she wanted added to it before it was too late to send on the day before Thanksgiving.
I'm waiting to finish a new pie recipe and I hope it turns out... but it's one of those concoctions I think will taste fabulous no matter what it looks like. But it'll have Nutella in it... blech.
Maybe it's my bad taste from sales people today, but I stopped at Tmobile and the dude was so pushy to make me switch over today. Dude, I told you five times we're doing it all together on Friday or after when we can get MIL in to try out phones. I loved pulling the "I can't do this without my husband" line and got some looks.