SatelliteGirl

I have the sense to recognize that I am waiting for things again. I am not living, just waiting. Waiting to build or repair, waiting to tear down or clean away, as to where this relates to me, I am not sure. Feelings of displacement and sadness ebb and inch. I try to sing and to snap my fingers and turn my cheek the other way, as if it will undo all that has come, will come but it can not be done. I try to find something in myself, or in my friends, or in the person on the other side of the pen, the page, to prove to me that this existence is anything more than a trifle. There are tigers tearing people apart out there and brave ones, dying from war bullets and I bury myself in pillows, in words and dust. 

 This is a diary to myself, so that I will remember that once in a while I was untouched by the cloudiness and the silvery tasting words. That, every now and then, I remember something beautiful about who I was or wanted to be, or something sweet about my mother, grandmother or grandfather. I will recall nights of poetry, stretching across my bed in lamplight, swimming in the  the coverlets adrift on words and the sound of my voice in the room. I remember running off for the afternoon to B-town just to buy a newspaper and a beer or spending all day on my knees in thrift stores looking for records.  I remember sitting in the rain in my little red car, just to hear a U2 song I liked. If something were to change me in the next few weeks, if my personality were to be erased, these were little traits of me.

I  am learning about myself, re-defining who I am and what I want or don't. 
What to do before I die? The list should be long or should it be short. I think of B. who used to say, "Three things, A, three things." 
What is it, girl? What are my three things?
I tore down the trail today with the two questions, "Who am I now? What do I want?" Running, running, running, listening to my breath, my feet on the path. I was deafening.
love, peace, stability, safety,clarity,confidence
I suppose if I had peace, clarity and confidence would come. I used to have those things, but they got a little lost.
If I had safety, I wouldn't feel the need to abandon the trail when another runner is behind me, I want everyone on my scope.
Days where my  body, my skin, seemed good enough, where I wouldn't tear off a limb to be  thinner.
I want too much love. Not just enough, but spilling over me and radiating-me-like-a-sun love, to lay in my own light- love.

I ache for this crush.
I ache for him.
I used to be someone, something.
 Now I am a whisper.

 There is something about operating on the fringe, even the fringe of your inner-
most self, that can be so conspicuous.
Perhaps want to hide from prying eyes and annoyances but you feel that you are
displayed. The cutting judgements of
people's stares and questioning glances are breaking your casual exterior. You
run the scissors along the only seam
that covers your nakedness. No one knows the reasons for their madness in the
moment. And when you are struggling
and a close friend slights you, however innocently, it can feel like the
witness of  a thousand angel' torment. 


Today, I had the displeasure of a psychiatrists appointment. Waiting in the lobby I see a very handsome
young guy, my age. I can tell its his first appointment by the pile of official paper trail 
he is creating. Little does he know he is documenting his differentness. I wanted to laugh
and warn him to run away before the system swallows him, the way it has finally swallowed me,
whole, with a gulp. I wonder if the very beginnings of my madness was ever worse than the new 
madness the whole process of being a child of the Mental Health system has included for me. It has painted 
a colorful belly on my madness, a slimy green one that moves and undulates with: papers, documents,
phone calls, samples, prescriptions, therapies, insurance companies, referrals, HMOs, side effects, black
boxes, dependencies, self-injuries, eating disorders,  feelings of hopelessness and dangerous fairy 
circles.

I felt him sizing me up as I sat there, trying to demurely read my novel. I knew he wondered what kind of crazy 
I was. I remembered the Sex in the City episode where Carrie Bradshaw met Jon Bon Jovi in her therapist's 
office. He turned out to be a great lay but crazy as a loon, no duh! I wasn't going to even go there. But I knew he
was wondering it, just as I was. 

Anyway, depression still on but medication has been induced and heightened. Although, am strangely proud and driven by the torment I've put on my body lately, I know I should be more gentle with myself. But really, what one of you is?

Thank God, this is my *only* life. And at the same time, I sigh, because this
is my only LIFE. Can this r e a l l y be ?

They said she cried everyday. Not because she was sad or pained but because
life was so goddamned beautiful and oh
so short.. ::Bites lip::

I'll curl up with my solitude and listen to the sound of your voice in my head.

I am swimming, dipping further and further beneath the surface so no one can find me. Gliding deeper to a place where no one knows, holding my breath, until all this will end.

Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem with me, A. You are right, it touches me v. closely. I want to share it with other people so that may ripple outward. You, by the way, have a beautiful heart and are the smartest person I know.



My Song
--
This song of mine will wind its music around you,
my child, like the fond arms of love.
The song of mine will touch your forehead
like a kiss of blessing.

When you are alone it will sit by your side and
whisper in your ear, when you are in the crowd
it will fence you about with aloofness.

My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams,
it will transport your heart to the verge of the
unknown.

It will be like the faithful star overhead
when dark night is over your road.

My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes,
and will carry your sight into the heart of things.

And when my voice is silenced in death,
my song will speak in your living heart.

--Rabindranath Tagore

To quote my favorite childhood heronine, Anne Shirley, I am "In the depths of dispair." I feel like I am in glue, I hew, without motion or logic. A dullness slips along my body and into my mind, as the last of what was hope is eaten by the supressed ideas and emotions. That's what I hate most. The useless words that I type. The empty pages and stolen words. The block. The block. The block. All the words that go unpenned and sucked into the place where medicine swims in my blood, the gluey poison pit.
Alkaline and tail pipes and metal rims and fallen trash bins, the rusted and crusty places of my block is where I lay, prone and unabsorbed.

Together we learned
how to undo
the sad songs the gulls
had woven in the air, an
unraveling like unwinding
a shaft of wheat, how
peeling back the husk, the taut
skin, revealed the pearled
berries. We learned to read
the widening rings
of water, echoes of movement and how
to time them—anticipating their
disappearance into the margins
of the marsh, the grasses.
You showed me a walnut shell—brown
and smooth as a belly, calligraphied
with streaks of black, hollow
as an unlocked safe.
We slept in the shapes of shells—fan
folding over fan—hugging
patiently as water. The tiles in your bedroom
are the color of clay, the color
of dried blood. And yet
somehow there was no
warning for the trouble made
by the moon, that shifting
body—how the tides narrow, how a wave
rises and builds, curling
upwards, which is to climb towards collapse.
A water flute closes on its own
throat. Wise one, what happened to make you
so afraid of me, and before—
so afraid of yourself
-- Michelle Detorie, Undertow