Liberating poems on Hello Poetry

betterdays Apr 2014

my father died alone.
in a car by the side of a busy road.
a young couple,
returning from a day at the beach found him.
they thought he was asleep,
he had, had a massive stroke.

i went to his funeral.
as a stranger
and heard the eulogy,
of a man i barely knew.
we had been disparate
for over twenty years
and before that sporadic
at best.

i did not weep.

five weeks
and two days later after breakfast and feeding the cats.
i went to open the front door. to begin my days toil
my hand on the lock began to shake.

i broke,

i just broke.

and fell against the door in keening, sobbing, rending sorrow.
i slid headfirst down the white painted surface,
opening a cut against the doorbell.
collasped in on myself, huddled into a heaving heap,
pressed into the corner.

i cried pinktears.
all that day.

i stayed in that corner
staring, crying,
beyond thought,
beyond comfort.

ummovable.

beyond .. .

at that point in my life
i lived alone.
with the exception of my cats.
my misery, abject, so complete. so dark, so ink jetblack, so bereft of life, so remote from love so deep in repression, unlocked. so ferocious in attack, so outrageous in it's anger and sense of defeat had hold of me.

i had lost myself.

it is with pure hearted certainty.
i say these two furry little souls.
with plainitive crys of need and slinking warmth, curling heartbeats and insistent nudge of feline body.
saved my shattered, tattered, beaten soul that night.

i got up.
i fed my friends.
and then went to bed.
turned inward on myself
for two days more
this was my path.
bed.
cats fed.
toilet.
water.
bed.

i gave no thought to the outside.
to the phone calls,
doorknocks,
work,
family,
friends.

my apathy bordering catatonic.
i was locked in chains in stygian hell,
inside my head.

they broke the lock.
my two samaritan friends
and found me
a weeping shell.
guarded by two hissing cats. shocked beyond words,
they instigated help for me .

this was my descent into clinical depression

my acsent
back out of the bomb crater, triggered by my fathers death, was arduous and long.

two days heavy sedation.
two weeks close observation 3months at a sanitorium
years of medication.
months and months of dedicated therapy.( i still occasionally do therapy.)

crawling over jagged glass feelings
and rusted tin memories.
that would lock my jaw and break my back.
through slime and muck and crap.

i would crawl,
mentally, forward
and then fall away.
it was, excruitingly, painful.
but also,

redeeming and liberating,
to fight my way up,
back.
to open new doors.
to learn new ways
of thinking, seeing.

another 6 months,
a completed PhD
and an eventual move
of towns.
had me standing tall.

re-invented, restored more complete than before.

that is my history of depression

now eight years on:
i am no longer on medication.
(5years free weaned under Dr's supervision)
i met, married and had a child with the love of my life.
i have great career doing mostly what i love.

i am no hero, just a survivor.

i have a small ragged scar at my hairline,
a rememberance of less than betterdays.

i want no sympathy,
my life rocks.

i live life,
with love and gratitude,
in the forefront of my being,
each day an adventure.
some are blazingly good,
some mediocre
and some are bad.
but always,
tommorrow, is a chance of sunny.

i write this to encourage
those in the mental fight
with this disease.
to show that, there is a bright, enduring light.
beyond....

and to thank those,
who guided me toward,
it friends, family, doctors,
and furry ones.

this work is now a couple of year, old. still doing fine.

— The End —