I from pain, I am from loss, but it created relief it created strength albeit going back and forth like yin to my yang, like night and day!

I hate reliving and bathing in the pain but seem to love it all the same. Why would I continue to allow myself to live in a world full of pain and loss? Why do I feel comfort in a place that offers none of it? It’s a trap it’s a trap that continues to lure me in. The strength my pain and loss has created is immense but still not strong enough to keep me from walking back to the other side. One day it will one day I will become strong enough to challenge my pain and loss head on and not falter.

Relief will come and flood me with strength. I want it so bad I can taste it. Yet I know deep down today is not that day. I need to grow I need to forget, to forgive, I need to let myself want to live again. I will live again.

I am from a small town where everybody knows everybody. I am from a small town surrounded by woods. I am from a loving family who helps everyone no matter what. I am currently battling drugs additions that could kill me. I am in NECC cuz of the mistakes I’ve made in the past. I have a beautiful fiancé who lives the sober life and wants me to be sober. I am thankful for my family and fiancé. If it weren’t for them I’d be dead on the side of the road from overdosing.

I couldn’t hide it anymore. I masked up for so long. I painted on makeup. I stitched a smile onto my face so that I wouldn’t bring anyone down if they saw the tears welling in my eyes. I pushed through all of my feelings and poured myself into school and work for as long as I’ve known. I stayed busy so that I couldn’t feel. So that I didn’t have any time to sit in silence and let the reality set in. To let the overwhelm take over and take me under. To chug another coffee to hide my exhaustion from decades of playing this game. Of fighting these battles. Of surviving but not living. I was tired, and not in the way a good night’s sleep could fix. Or that a vacation could even rebound me. I was drained from all of the angles, and I just couldn’t hide it anymore.

It was that red and black flannel

Coat he wore

No fashion statement - just warmth.

It was the uniform of every daily chore

Garden variety wool

A nylon liner

No more.

It was that old coat

A little worn but never rent

Grimy ‘round the collar.

It was his old coat

Carrying his particular scent.

It was as if he still wore it

Even after he went.

“You need to go on a stress leave.” Those were the words that started it all. Wanting to die wasn’t new but someone finally acknowledging that I’m at breaking point was. That another could see that relief was necessary for me was unique and novel. Simultaneously a sigh of relief and the gasp in response – this could not be possible. I couldn’t possibly take a break, every other attempt made it clear this couldn’t be a realistic option. Yet now the professionals were saying it was the only option or I wouldn’t make it through the day. Asking so many questions as I always do, thinking that I need to be fully prepared of what my next steps would be and the next intention on getting back as quick as possible since I couldn’t get out of this. These instructions merely got me through the day, but as we are now a year passed – I repetitively had no idea what was coming my way. Clarification was continuously requested along the way but led astray was my reality. The complications of systems and policies, that drag out the process instead of extending a hand up and out of the darkness. A series of one step forward, ten steps back – requiring one to get sicker before we will help. I understand why it’s called a stress leave as my absence has only brought more tension and pressure. There’s no way to go back or return, so I continue trying to move forward without a clue where I’m headed.

We had a long talk. There were many suggestions about how one may buy icecream for your inner child. How not to be defined by a lover or a disability or an excuse. It may be time to learn how to breathe again, and move, and enjoy. It may be time to claim myself or get a job, or head for the hills. I already quit my job, paid my rent, and someone is watching the dog. The sky is indeterminate grey. Like a photosynthesizing protist, I need both the dark and the light, and the grey feels like a roof that is caving in on its own weight. I have never experienced seasonal affective disorder in Summer. This is where the literatures of childhood come from, a grey sky mirthless, leaden, and unending. This is where the hero’s journey’s setting out point may be. I have written to one of the inquiries. I have started another. I had all day, and my skin was cold. Zanner asked if I had considered putting on pants. I like to complain of the cold. I spent the whole day my host was at work being cold, and letting the intrusive thoughts gurgle like the lurgy. Pants. Another sweater. Existential reality and a different vantage point. Yeah, I am considering it.

Please join us in Montpelier on Sunday, July 24 for a celebration of motherhood, music, and healing. Scrag Mountain Music will perform songs written by new and expecting mothers as part of the Lullaby Project!

It didn't seem realistic to me. I'm really struggling today. every day if I'm honest. I feel like crying. I was so determined to keep sober. but Friday tequila was on sale at the grocery store so I picked it up. and a bottle of rum. I drank the tequila on Friday when I cooked the lasagna for Saturday. Sunday I drank the rum. yesterday I walked to the corner shop and got a litre of vodka. I don't enjoy drinking anymore. I wake up in the morning feeling like shit. but wanting more alcohol. I can't seem to string weeks together to get a month of sobriety. I need help. but I don't know where to go. I feel like I'm letting my kids down, my sponsor down, my friend. I miss my kids so much and I want them back.

Getting sober in San Francisco was weird. So much of my geography of the city was built around places I drank–even neutral zones like parks and a bus line here or there were colored by memories (or lack thereof) of bottles and cans in brown paper bags…

When I started AA it was like wearing a new pair of glasses. Now I was going to meetings in places where my previous experiences were blurry memories, but trying to reorient my brain to see them differently. There were whole new networks of people where the boozy friends once were. I had to learn how to interact with humans sober–how does one exactly start a conversation? How do you show you're interested in what a person is saying? What do people, um, do when they aren't drinking? 

On top of that I had to interact with my old friends in new ways. Maybe go over to my friend's house who just had a baby and give the baby a bath, maybe show up for a (sober) writing group. There was a lot more to life than sitting around at a bar refusing alcohol while everyone else drank.

I still feel like a stranger to my old self in some ways, still learning to walk steadily in my new land. Maybe it will always be like this, but I hope it won't.

Am I the only one who sees

The way she glances at him when she thinks 

No one is looking?

Am I the only one who sees

The way his hand lightly brushes her back

When he first passes behind her in the crowded bar?

Am I the only one who sees 

The flush of pink on her cheeks 

And the knowing smile on his lips

When his hand lingers longer the next time he sidles by?

Am I the only one who sees

How her eyes and his meet

And hold for just a heartbeat too long 

For two people who are “just friends”?

Am I the only one who sees 

Him whisper briefly into her willing ear

As he buys her one more whiskey

And the bartender announces last call?

Am I the only one who sees

How her unguarded gaze follows him

When he leaves by the side door, without a backward glance,

And she finishes her drink in one smooth gulp, then slips out too?

Am I the only one who sees,

In the shadows of the back parking lot, 

Two hazy outlines in the dim streetlight -

His truck, parked so close to hers?

Am I the only one who sees 

Two silhouettes merge into one?

Does anyone else see -

Or is it just me?

Cracked

When I got the call

When she said head-on collision

When I heard no feeling below his neck

When I got in my car, drove across the country, got there in two days

When I saw a cross on the side of the road with your name on it

When I prayed harder than I’ve ever prayed

When I had to wait four days and take two covid tests just to see you

When I finally saw you

When I sat by your bedside and let those machines breathe for you

When I listened to the chug and whirl of the liquid being pumped into your stomach

When they said things like very slim chance and five percent survival rate

When I waited for news that wasn’t the colour of vending machine coffee

When I finished another vending machine coffee

When I called my sponsor every day for eighteen days

When, on the nineteenth day, I didn’t

When I walked into a new meeting in a new city in a new church basement and didn’t say a word

When I drove circles around the liquor store parking lot before going in

When I knew I shouldn’t do this

When I saw no other way

When it burned my lungs going down

When I needed relief so badly

When I fell asleep in the bathtub

When I lied for the next two weeks

When I blacked out and missed them wheeling you into surgery

When you lived

When I celebrated by scoring an eight ball

When I went back to that church for a silver chip

When I cried the whole damn time

When you came to and I had to tell you

When I waited for six months to tell you

When they finally took the tube out of your throat

When I got the call

And heard your voice

And my heart

It just went crack

“For god sake leave me alone” she said. “I can’t do everything.” She felt guilty about yelling at him because in fact he had commanded her to get the fucking fridge clean. She was a bit ashamed, drooping under the weight of broken promises to do better, to operate on a more adult organized level. Damn it all anyway there were more important things to ponder than the moldering mildewy smelly creatures living in the fridge such as why am I here why am I in this suffocating marriage why must I forsake Camels and bourbon those were the really important things on her mind.

My people are a crazy mixed can of nuts laughing at unimaginable tragedy kind very kind no bullies nor brutes, no guns concealed or otherwise, emanating warmth…welcome home we know your heart aches for missing mother and father for aunt Carm and uncle Harold for James for Paul for fried chicken potato salad picnics and homemade blueberry pies my people are that sense that permeates my being that there is a Peopled world living inside me.

“Meditation helps to de-accelerate the brain interrupt rage transmission
before it strikes,” he thinks
as he walks into the house, breathless
having weeded and pruned his alternative self, yanked out sprouts of plant destruction chopped up thistles before

their bite became too sharp.

“I did it,” he yells to no one in particular for his house remains vacant
of any species of mammal
that understands the linguistics

of spoken human words.

His hound dog, assaulted
with the scent of the sweat
from his armpit and forehead empathizes with the exhaustion, and plops to the ground

beside the chair he slumps into, and his coffee - cold in its cup on the otherwise empty table
in his otherwise cared for cabin - waits patiently for him to drink.

His woman left long ago
scarred and defeated by his curses and blows.

She ran off with a neighbor’s son
half her age and of tranquil disposition,

and he wonders

while drinking his bitter coffee

if she would come back - if only she knew him now.

I look like hell. Not the usual put together ready for roll call snob I prefer to present. I’ve been sleeping on a fellowship friends couch, locked out of my own house, suitcase left on the porch. Spent the night in jail, again. Here we go, down the stairs to face them in the oh so hot basement. Ay, yay, yay. Who the hell is that? Look what the cat dragged in this week! Lo and behold, my support has stayed by my side, told me I don’t have to stay but try my best. Take what works, leave the rest. They have rescued me from myself. From tough love once again. From the crowd that doesn’t recognize me. Does it matter what they think? Does it matter what I think? Here’s what they are probably thinking-you’re in the right place.

just now

what’s next

perhaps the reverse

even with the pact

sure within this spell

found lost again gone

is this the way really

the keen asking shies

the groaning

use a still listening branch

the stones know

the wish maker smiles

I alone dance in the

ashes

would you please pass the garnish

I am really hungry

for a moment I am split

not cracked with jagged edge

more like a ---fade

smooth

no demarcation

no calendar blocks

boxing in my day

coffee fresh, steamy hot

white cup on white mat

same Diner..

same table as always

chitter chatter rising

buzzing around my head

but I'm some where - else

cosmic hang gliding

no one noticed my escape

but the coffee - the coffee

hot and steamy

brought me back

to this time in this place

I’m not sure where you’re going

What do you want to be when you grow up?

What a stupid question, the expression on your face said,

and I agreed.

You came into the world, eyes on fire like onyx, and a soul to match.

Quiet observation of all around you, me, us, them, all of it, you were taking it in, processing it in that little head of yours.

Comfortable with ladybugs, Belgium horses, kittens’ needle sharp claws, goats with spiky horns, great dane dogs taller than your tiny 3 year old self.

I hesitated to push you into the world, you turned at the door of the school with confidence telling me, you can go home Mom, and you walked bravely into the future.

You made comfortable visiting babies, unsure toddlers, insecure little boys, curious parents, and leaders in the community, all before you even reached the 5th grade.

You could have moved ahead without waisting time as a senior, but insisted that it was important to have the full high school experience, and did not let them rush you.

My heart broke and I cried all the way home after settling you into your dorm room. You only told me months later how afraid you were to let me leave, but you never let it show.

The photo shows a confident young woman, in red heals, black graduation gown with ropes indicating "graduated with honors", degree in hand, rental lease signed, jobs offers to choose from, life partner in the wings.

I should have known, from that first moment I saw those onyx eyes,

you are going far.

There was that X-Files episode, where the antagonist would “push” people’s perception. He walked through a hospital with a piece of tape on his shirt that said “nurse” and to everyone he encountered, he was perceived as a nurse. Don’t remember what he was up to, surely no good, but ever since seeing that show I think about “pushing.”

How much do you strain to create a reality or... restrain yourself and let events happen? Some of the most irritating and famous just push push push. Pushing into a persona not earned through action, compassion, acuity, skillfulness. Push push push to be rich, to be most handsome, to be the name on the university stadium. Push push push to the front of the line.

I seldom push. I’m content that way. What would I push for if I knew where it was going? And now, oxymoronically, I am my own pusher, pushing towards an unknown, must-be-better-reality. Pushing for a life free of the bullshit lie that we actually know where it is going.