You get in life
What you settle for in life,
Often the fire inside, fades or dims.
Waiting for it to reignite
lets the dark in.

When you realize this could be
the strongest you will ever amount too,
but you get out of bed regardless,
putting one sock on at a time
like the rest of the world.

All aboard the straight and narrow train that rides into forever

We get off at different times but we end up altogether

In a place above us, with many mansions prepared

For us to live in mortgage free with new bodies to wear

Returning to my first home, wear I lived before birth

Which is why I felt as if I was a stranger on earth

Just trying to find directions to the train station

That would take me back to my Father's house where he remains waiting

So I can reunite with Dad and all his perfect glory

Not to mention Ms. Mills who got off the train before me

And we'll find each other worshipping Christ

Because we couldn't afford the ride back home, so he had to pay the price

I was just remembering today about one of the hardest times in my life. It brought me to tears.  My estranged brother—the second brother—had committed suicide, shot himself in the head out in SeaTac, Washington. He was pretty isolated from my family, angry for a long time about his upbringing and was also hiding a secret about his sexuality. As I see it, my brother always tried to act macho, and gay was not macho. It was obvious he was very depressed, and I think he was running out of money due to being out of work.

I recall my father calling me on the phone, and asking, “Dottie, are you sitting down?” Then he told me my brother killed himself. “I expected that”, I think I replied, as if I could ward off the shock, the fear, the pain and the guilt. The tidal wave was yet to come.  

I never tried, made no attempt, to **** myself. I was far too fearful of what was beyond that decision.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to do it. I surely thought of it as a way out, a final solution.

They told me in the hospital that I didn’t want to live anymore, not that I was directly suicidal. I believe they were right. I had a death inside, a sinking hopelessness that I could not believe would ever change. It unnerved me so that my brother could have easily been me.

I had checked myself into the psych ward, and it felt I was locked in and the key was thrown away. You would have thought that I was in for three months instead of three days.

This all took place almost seventeen years ago. In spite of feeling like I had nothing to live for. Instead of dying, I lived on. In two, easy words:  I survived. I could never adequately describe—really verbalize—how low that I had felt, at times. Words don’t do it justice.

I never dodged a bullet. I never felt my life flash before my eyes. Nevertheless, I feel like a survivor. I did have a few close calls in life--as a pedestrian in an encounter with cars. But what really makes me feel like a survivor is going up against the great wall of depression. What really makes me feel like I've made my way is fighting with that emotional giant that has threatened my very being.

No one need have a story like mine to feel like a survivor, either. Life isn’t easy for plenty of us. And really everyone comes from survivor stock—people who came before us that had to struggle to make it. With such things as slavery, high childhood mortality rates, and so on, one can get the gist.  

And one can surely believe what they want, but I believe in God and in heaven—of much more than meets the eye—of a purpose. It might not be a purpose shining in neon lights, but it’s a purpose, nonetheless. I’ve fought with the concepts of having meaning, and in my faith, at times. I mean I really struggled, intellectually as well as in gut wrenching form. But if this world is it—and then lights out—I would view my life as no more significant than a swarm of mosquitoes or a grey rock in a pile of other grey rocks. Some might scoff at that. I beg to differ.

That’s what gets me through the hard times, and keeps me going.

She was a volcano waiting to erupt;
She was a hurricane barely kept off the shore.
And when she fell to the ground,
And shattered into a thousand shards of hurt,
They did not understand why
Because she had become so good at hiding.
They told her to keep it together
And she followed their orders well.
She kept her feelings hidden from the world.
And after a while, it became too hard,
So she started to keep her feelings from herself.
And after a while, she became confused.
She didn’t remember how to feel anything;
She didn’t remember if she could.
And everyone else thought she was fine.
They applauded how well they thought she was doing.
But they did not know what they had done.
They trapped her in a cage and bolted the gate,
Not caring if the rusty bars tore her flesh,
And she sank along the wall as she tried to catch
A gulp of air polluted by the words of others.
She listened as they chanted their rhymes
About stick and stones as she thought about
All her broken bones.
They didn’t understand why she was lonely
When a swarm of people came at her
From every side of her body.
But she felt like a whale in a school of clown fish.
They told her to be herself
But she knew deep down that
That was the last thing they wanted her to be.
She let them pour her into a mold
That they wanted everyone to fill,
But when she got worn out of being numb
She couldn’t remember how to feel.
She tried to feel something, anything,
Even if it was pain,
But she couldn’t remember how.
It had become too late.