Waking Up

I took a nap for the summer.

I slept in the wake of funerals and baseball games and hot afternoons. I curled up in a nest of cool basement air, of inconsistency and laundry baskets and evenings on front porches in recliners.

I was in a coma of lust for life and other things, a trance of disproportion and an adventure that took me no where in particular, but home.

And home is where I hope to wake up.

A professor told me near the end of last semester that I was in a funk, and that a trip to DC would pull me out. It did something, but I think I ended up losing part of myself in the capitol's old thick air and its sidewalks, which seem to know more than those of Chicago or Denver. The city has been breathing. The people wake and sleep.

When I returned, I moved out of my apartment and into my vagabond summer, the strangest of my life. And though it had some of the best days I'll ever know, I look back on an October morning and laugh: wasted time and useless motions.

What did I read? What did I write? Where did I spend my weekday mornings? When did I run? Who did I love? Why did I cry?

All just to end up where I began, another midwestern girl in a small town with a wish to get out. But this time, things are changing: Maybe I'll go somewhere new.

In the summer slumber, I fell into some directional blindness. I saw nothing of where I was headed until I was there, in everything I did: where I lived, somewhere new nearly every week); when I worked, checking my schedule only the morning of; who I saw, making plans on my own whims and movement. All these things with no intentionality.

And now I feel invisible. Youngest person in the office and all us little women answer the phones: "Thank you for calling. This is Emily. How may I help you today?" followed by either, "Great, may I have your order number?" or "Alright, are you calling with one of our catalogs today?"

What am I doing? Still sleeping.

But the choice now is to be awake and wide-eyed and ready--for a campaign, for a crowd, for a move, a leap, a change. And I will be.

There is no excuse for the post-graduation summer to linger through October morning moons.

So I say, "Good morning Moon," and Mrs. Hill of Indiana puts me on hold to the sound of country music while I'm waiting for her credit card number, then I laugh, and continue, "Good morning Sun."

I'm waking up.

I Was The Author + Doctor Friend

First, thank you, all of you, so very much for reading this page.

Whether this is your first visit to my blog, or if you've read every post, or if you fit somewhere in between, your simply opening these posts and giving my words your time is amazing.

I'm overwhelmed every time.

And secondly, a special thank you to the dozen or so of you who have commented, Facebooked, texted, and even called in response to my last post, She Said I Lived.

If you haven't looked at it, I request that you do before you read the poem below; you'll understand the context and see how the two relate.

Several of you shared with me that you've faced depression and the darker side of your selves. Knowing that I am not and was not alone in feeling that sadness has been encouraging, and beautiful.

I'm humbled to see others speak to my heart after hearing that I've spoken to theirs.

Thank you each, deeply.

The following poem is about the secondary unsung hero of my high school depression. She was my psychologist starting the week I started as a freshman, fourteen and falling in every direction.

I haven't seen her in over three years, but she's still as much here for me just by existing and living as she was when I sat in her office during my teen years. She was beautiful and kind, and she too, loved me.

My friend's sister saw her first, and then my mother, and then me. But she treated me like my story was the most important in the world--like I was the only narrator--even though the characters had already been written by other authors.
Now I see how selfish I was and how I rambled about my high school indulgences, but her investment in the narrative that came from my heart and my head and my fears--that was all I needed.

My time with her taught me that listening and meaning it is love, and means as much.

This is for her.

Fall 2009

Doctor Friend

It was one hour every-other Thursday at seven
through high school but that had almost
nothing to do with it
It started with my father saying bitch and
didn’t have a definitive end because there
was a job so I stopped
She saw me every time

I sat on a white couch with obnoxious red flowers
and more throw pillows than I could squeeze
between to sit comfortably
I stared at the short legs of the brown leather arm chair
and memorized the simple pattern of the olive green
carpet worn thin by drumming feet
There was always a Diet Coke—with a bent straw
stained by dark pink lipstick—that sat on the glass
side table amid messy stacks of notes
The walls were lined with shelves which were loaded
with volumes on abuse and eating disorders and anxiety
and they all had wordy titles
She watched me every time

She wore nice outfits because she made nice money
but there never was enough color in her attire
to match how pretty she was
She did her makeup in a way that made her blue eyes
look less anatomical and more like jewelry that matched
her diamond ring and silver cross
Her nails were always painted and cheeks were always blushed
whether she was smiling in her joy for me or grimacing with
empathy or something like it as I spoke
She sat with her legs crossed and hands folded mostly looking
quite composed and comfortable but her bouncing
foot said otherwise
She heard me every time

I shared stories of my world and received advice as it was her job
to dissect my issues and hear my joys as our lives were lived
and hour by hour, years passed
She changed me every time

For Stephanie

She Said I Lived

I'm being transparent: I'm sharing dark corners of my heart. So prepare yourself.

It was last night and I felt empty after the words fell out.

These words.

She said, "You lived. There were lots and lots of days when all I wanted was to know was that you’d be alive at 21."

And I am. But she didn't know for sure that I would be.

She was not afraid of car accidents or heart arrhythmias or fires.

She was afraid of the me alone in night hours and quiet depression.

And she didn't know for sure that there were times when I laid in the bath tub wishing I could fill my lungs with water. But there were. And times when I wished my little Bic razors were bigger and sharper and more dangerous.

I love her more than life, and the fear of what my death could have done to her was the greatest motivation to keep living.

This is heavy; you can stop if you want. But I'll keep going.

I wonder now who else knew how bad it was, if my siblings had any idea, if my friends ever thought they'd get a call from their parents telling them to come home because they'd heard from mine. Or if my teachers thought it.

Could they tell by my face or my tone or my walk that I wanted to die?

It was high school. I thought I was normal. Maybe I was.

Most of us have had seasons of dark days, when it seems that maybe it'd be better to sleep, better to fall, safer or simpler to end the breathing and breaking.

We've had pains and wished for their quick release from our bodies, their cages.

I was sad, and angry, and impossible.

But I was a church kid, a youth group kid. I wrote in the school paper. I played basketball. I ran around with the drama kids for a while.

I wasn't sitting in my room in the dark all the time, watching twisted shows or playing violent games. But I'd play solitaire for hours, and I'd fill up my journals with song lyrics and short lines--not quite poems--and pleas for someone to understand what was happening in my head.

I don't know if anyone did back then, if anybody really understood, because they didn't know.

I hid so much of what I was feeling and the blackness of my thoughts, and I read the liturgy at Mass, and I edited news stories about I-don't-remember-what. And I stayed out all night time or two, and got brought home once for trying. I drank and I cried and I wished that I had some idea of what love should have been.

I slept in the basement in the summer because it was darker.

I went to bookstores waiting for an encounter with some person who would change my life, and I thought he never came.

And really, I haven't stopped. I realize every few months that my frequenting coffee shops and book stores has more to do with a belief in serendipity and moments of perfection than it does with my inability to be productive at home.

But really, I've met him, time and again, just not the right one. And I'm doing okay.

He was down the path, and next door, and he was halfway between me and home, and he was in class, and ahead of me, and in my house, and more than once he was a friend of a friend, and in the right place for me at a moment when we locked eyes and I half smiled and probably blushed and felt something for a moment.

But I never needed them. I thought I did, but I didn't.

I could tell you what it was, but I'd rather you ask me and let me take you to one of those coffee shops and share something real, so you can see my face when I say again, "She said I lived."

Because I did and I am and I do.

Now comes the time when I make a point: I was sad and angry and impossible. And a danger to myself.

And now I'm living, talking about the days of the past, that don't hang over me anymore. Of course I experience bouts of apathy as months pass, and sometimes I fear that depression is in my head again.

But I tell you this: Despite the weighty color and clouds, through the most unstable years of adolescence, I lived.

And it was a choice.

I love my mom more than nearly everything I've ever known, and what I know because of her is that love is indeed enough. To save a person. To recreate a life. To resurrect the damaged, and make it beautiful and blessed.

What I know is that love saved my life, her love for me, and mine for her.

Because she is a saint, because she knows pain, and loss, and searing wounds.

Because she knows me and she loves me and she told me that a hand knit me together in her womb, and when I was old enough to understand, I went searching for proof and I found it, and asked that same hand to pull itself into my chest and to feel the contours of my heart and to know it. To test me and know my anxious thoughts.

And there were many.

But I was lead away.

Away from the anxieties and angers and fears and darkness.

All because of love. All from the truth poured out in screaming tears on my bedroom floor.

My mother showed me what it is to love, and she said I lived.

I lived because she loved.

I love because I live.

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."