You thought all I had was bad blogging in me. I just wrote my first poem in over 20 years. I used to be good at it but am novice now at best and that is being generous. My head used to actually think in poetry so it just came out like a full on unclogged pipe in the old days. I went through journals so fast. In fact, I have kept them because they remind me of those desperate moments where I would be walking across campus and just have to stop and sit in the grass to write. I could always catch another bus. Granted, I was not on antidepressants of any kind back then so my unabridged mind was just a jumble of vocabulary making poetry of my life. I can’t really explain it very well. I just know it went away when I started taking medication. And with it, any self esteem I had around creativity.
I went corporate for 20 years and assumed I could never write again. No wonder my struggle all these years trying to be someone I am not just because I was able to pull it off. All that chaffing against establishment while being able to pass as about 75% establishment myself. And they hate me, they really hate me. This is why….because I am different like this. Because I know who I am and who they are. I know where we intersect and precisely where we don’t. And they hate me for it. I hate me for letting it get this far. But I didn’t know. When your brain was as bad as mine was in my early 20s, it can really scare the shit out of you and make you pack your journals far into the basement because they have evidence of your crazy …and your beauty. The price of mental illness was to stifle creativity, anything which stank of instability and, instead, figure out how to have a mortgage because that would prove my stability and comeback.
It’s time to integrate. I’m back. I’m on antidepressants. I’m drinking decaf. I’m dressed like a soccer mom. I’m not starving. I’m stable. I’m writing. I’m so freaking alive! I’m me. I love it.
The poetic thinking hasn’t exactly come back. But I do think it can be something I do with more deliberation. Last night, I told myself to pick an object and see what I could build around it. Being at the Cape, I thought of a fisherman’s sweater. In the spirit of bringing you through my journey, I will share my bad poetry because I am not looking for accolades. I just want to show I can do it. I can take an object and make something out of it. This revelation has blown the doors off my inspiration right now. What it tells me is given the right conditions (environment) I can be the girl I always wanted to be….even if it’s a couple decades later and I won’t have the “starving artist” credibility behind me. At least not yet….
Home is somewhere in the cable knit of
Your navy blue fisherman’s sweater
The roughness of the fabric against my face
Which does not repel
Before the labor of the day
After the secrets of the night before
Before the icy perils of a crisp winter sea
After the leak in the hull
And the pumping out
To make room for an extra passenger
My unmoisturized hand grabs at the elbow of your sweater
Chaffing
Against my home
As she nestles in
And you let her
My Misfit Life 