Loneliness

Anyone who has struggled with depression will recognize this, so trigger warning on depression. I wouldn't have wanted to read this years ago. By the way, all of this is a 10 minute read.

If you would rather pass on this one, here are some very-easy-to-love roses:

https://westonpparker.substack.com/p/rose-of-all-roses

While I have left the bottomless despair behind me, I will never forget it. That I can write about it is progress. There’s a lot of drama in this poem. I could say it’s “over the top” but it would be more appropriate to say it’s “below the bottom”.

The first time I ever heard the term “ideation of suicide” was from a therapist talking to my wife about 6 years ago. “Have you ever had ideations of suicide?” she asked as part of a series of questions on the intake interview. Involuntarily, I laughed out loud. Other than the one specific time when I had picked out a car to walk in front of in 1982, I never acted on my “ideation” but some form of it had been with me all my life. Many times this world seemed a bad place to stay, and the “lies seemed without end.”

I suffered from chronic childhood abuse from early on to 17. It shaped a good bit of my life, wired my growing brain for danger everywhere all the time. I can’t say how large an influence it had because it’s interwoven into the fabric of who I am. I can spot an abused person 15 feet away. I am certain I understood hatred before I knew the word for it and I felt hated and humiliated most of the time. The verbal, physical abuse and the occasional life threatening event, all from one brother who was never well, even as a child. He was clever enough to hide his actions from the rest of the family and they were too preoccupied with their lives to give my complaints any real credence.

Bouncing around Europe, with five sons seven years apart in age, three of whom were giving my parents real troubles, they simply did not have time for a little boy complaining. I stopped complaining very early because not being believed is such an offensive experience, it’s almost as hurtful as the abuse and in a way, becomes part of the whole experience of abuse. Not being believed, being told that you are making more out of this than it really is, being told to toughen up, learn to roll with the punches more, get a sense of humor, don’t be such a “pussy”. So, we grew up in a household where fighting was common, emotions were not recognized, opinions were never asked, and, in my case, statements were not believed.

In that environment you develop a bubble around you. You learn to hold things in and to hold things at bay. I went through life, from earliest childhood memory, holding a bubble around me that threatened to crush me if I didn’t maintain constant outward pressure. I was not aware of it and I probably thought everyone lived like this. If a therapist had asked me then if I ever had ideations of suicide, I would have said, “Do you mean that force field I maintain every moment of my life to keep the soul sucking, soul crushing universe from imploding into me? The one where the moment I don’t have the strength to withstand, I collapse into a blackness from which I think I will never emerge? Is that what ideation means?” Being outdoors always helped me.

Well, I got better. I worked with my hands and my back and I worked very hard. Nothing like extreme fatigue to take the edge off decades of suppressed anger. I married a very good person and eased up on drinking. I learned from a shrink who specialized in PTSD that I was the highest functioning PTSD patient she had seen in her 25 years of practice. What can I say, I’ve always been a high achiever.😉 Mine is not likely a chemistry problem, more of shitty wiring occurring early in life and often. Enough to bestow upon me a state of chronic alert and emergency. I am never surprised when I or someone nearby is injured. I am expecting it which is handy on the job site. It also affects the ability to form long lasting relationships, thus loneliness and the poem below. Anhedonia is part of the package of PTSD as well.

I think Substack has some useful purposes and to take any of the stigma, however little it may be, out of suicide ideation and depression is a good thing. So I want to do my part, sharing my story for whatever it may be worth to others. I decided years ago to be a man of service. On the positive side, I am sure that it was in that pressure cooker of my life that so many poems were born as a way to pierce through, to communicate somehow what was happening inside, to leave breadcrumbs so I could be found, be seen and heard.

While I much prefer, as a poet and a person, dwelling on joy and beauty, I can’t ignore the ugly, so every now and again these dark bombs come along and this one nudged open the door while Laurie was away for seven weeks. I would be really pleased if this were the last of the sad ones. I can’t imagine that any poet could enjoy writing things like this poem below but what we enjoy and what we must do are sometimes far apart.

Here is some high drama music to read this by. Three minutes of reading, so a very long poem and the music is 3 minutes, 30 seconds.

                        Loneliness

          For something so sluggish,
          loneliness can bite deeply,
                working you slowly
         from side to side in its jaws.
                  You hope you live
                   to see the scars.

            It never shows up alone,
         always bringing depression,
   sadness, regret, confusion, locked
     in an unhappy dance around you.
      It forms a ring around your soul
        with a weight that is beyond
          your imagination’s best lift.

                You pray with what
              remains of your heart 
              that you will not forget
           the lesson brought by this
            sorrowful pain, this ache,
        this goddamned slow poison.

                When you do finally
                 gain your freedom,
                 you wear the smile
                 of a freed hostage.
                A cackle of hysteria
             might escape your lips.
  
            I only want for one thing
                  when this misery
                    sits on my soul.
                   Please show me
                  what I have to do,
            show me who I must be
        to rise above this desolation
              and when I have risen,
                how to remain here
                and never fall back.
            I might not have enough
                 to climb out again.

                     I won't forget
                 the intimate touch
            of desperation and how
          whisperingly close it came
            with the threat of return.
            “Nice life you have here.
  Shame if something happened to it.”

                   It is the memory
              of those dreadful days
              that compels me now.
         I will strive with a fine smile
            such that my fellow man
     will see an accomplished citizen.
          This may not be sufficient
                   to play in heaven
             but it might be enough
                  to avoid this hell.


       Oh no, no, no, don't look away.
                     While we may
                  be done with him
              and his plaintive pleas
                   for the hereafter,
        we are not yet done with you.

           Approaching the scaffold
           you recognize your work;
      good wood, cut right, overbuilt 
 with excellent fasteners everywhere.
       That well braced gallows arm,
        sporting a handsome noose,
         won’t give an inch.  Shortly
          you may regret the quality
              of your workmanship.

               And yet you did not
              take those last steps,
        well laid and beckoning with
         wide treads and easy risers.
                 Was it the breeze
         that sent you walking past?
             Would it last till sunset
                 even if you didn’t?
                It was hard to resist
                that stout platform,
                so perfectly hinged
                 to drop like a shot?

           We can be overwhelmed,
           each and every one of us,
      by the sheer number of things
    in this life that appear substantial
                       but are not.
         The lies seem without end.

    Must our loudest shouts for help
     always return as pitiable echos?
               It is the indifference
                 that undoes us all,
         and the loneliness it brings.

      This is when you might choose
         to join the soothing breeze,
                and keep company,
              if only for a short time,
                    with fine hemp
            and that gorgeous knot,
              swaying hypnotically,
        promising at least cessation,
     bespoke for your unkempt neck.

       But not me, not you, not now,
                   not at this time.
                   At every sunset
      I can still see it gently swinging
               in the fading breeze,
            in my rear view memory.

          Let us instead look ahead,
  explore that far horizon, promising
          if only because it beckons.
          Let us see if there are any
         truths yet to be discovered,
                 beauties to behold.
            These are the treasures
         and the magic of this world.
            Let that prospect alone
                    be the antidote
            upon which we shall put,
         place and pin all our hopes.