Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power
-Adrienne Rich
I came across this poem today because I am reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed, a grief-stricken and lost woman who decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail to find catharsis. She is completely unprepared and ends up carrying a ridiculously heavy pack. Later on in her journey she is given some help on what items she can get rid of to lighten her load. She relented on most things except her copy of The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich. She brought other books as well, but was able to burn chapters as she read them. But there was something in this book that she safeguarded and there was some reason she carried it thousands of miles. I wanted to know why. I felt connected to Cheryl a few pages in because she was a female backpacker, choosing a poetry book as her lone companion. It had to be pretty special.
After no luck in a used bookstore, I decided to cross the street and search in Barnes and Noble. Lo and behold, there was one copy left. Too curious to find a table, I plopped myself down on the carpet. Tall bookshelves rose above me as I turned to the first poem. It was the same poem Cheryl turned to her first night on the trail. It was perfect.
Friday, July 13, 2012
digging through notebooks
I found this entry in one of my notebooks, dated 2/25/12 and wanted to share it.
I have been gone a long time. Updating is getting difficult for me because I find I'm distancing myself from past horrors. And even though there are still health obstacles to overcome, I find it easier not to write about it. I want to enjoy life and relish in this happiness. For months now, I wake up in the morning feeling happy. Truly happy. For a period of time, the joyous emotions were so overwhelming that I would cry. Not just a few tears either. I opened my eyes each morning, and felt such a dramatic reduction in pain that I bawled. It was a right I thought I'd never get back.
The crying did not stop there. Life became dramatic- the sunlight caressing a tree a certain way would move me to tears. One day I was walking down the streets of Philadelphia with my sister and started crying without any sort of trigger. Luckily my sister was used to these reactions and told me to pull it together because we were about to walk into a pizza parlor to meet all her teammates. And it's best not to meet twenty girls on your sister's crew team when you're bawling your eyes out. Because then they'll want to know what's wrong and you'll have to tell them that nothing is wrong. In fact, things are wonderful. And they won't believe you and then you'll become that weird older dramatic sister that they try to avoid.
Luckily I pulled it together and no one was the wiser.
The frequency of these episodes has greatly been reduced over the past months. But they'll still happen if the trigger is good enough.
Many people have been writing to me asking me if my pain is gone. I'm still undergoing intense prolotherapy treatments, but I feel they are helping. I am being patient and putting faith in my doctor and my body to heal itself. But I don't want to talk about that today.
I remember years ago being so frustrated by all the depressing stories of women I found online. I realize now that writing is very therapeutic when you are struggling. People tend to stop when they are doing well. I think we just want to forget this ever happened to us and are anxious to go back to the way things used to be. This is of course impossible because we have been forever changed.
I wanted to write this post to give strength to anyone fighting a difficult battle right now. I remember how hard it used to be. I remember hitting my arms, bruising them repeatedly to try and distract myself from the pain. I remember driving in the car and thinking how easy it would be to turn the wheel slightly and escape from the pain.
I remember specific nights, crying on the floor, wondering how I was going to get through another day. If I only knew the happiness, the elation that I would feel just a year later. I couldn't whisper in my ear back then, so I'm whispering in your ear now.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever your battle, however long it's been happening, keep going. Keep going. You can't give up when you don't know what tomorrow will bring.
I have been gone a long time. Updating is getting difficult for me because I find I'm distancing myself from past horrors. And even though there are still health obstacles to overcome, I find it easier not to write about it. I want to enjoy life and relish in this happiness. For months now, I wake up in the morning feeling happy. Truly happy. For a period of time, the joyous emotions were so overwhelming that I would cry. Not just a few tears either. I opened my eyes each morning, and felt such a dramatic reduction in pain that I bawled. It was a right I thought I'd never get back.
The crying did not stop there. Life became dramatic- the sunlight caressing a tree a certain way would move me to tears. One day I was walking down the streets of Philadelphia with my sister and started crying without any sort of trigger. Luckily my sister was used to these reactions and told me to pull it together because we were about to walk into a pizza parlor to meet all her teammates. And it's best not to meet twenty girls on your sister's crew team when you're bawling your eyes out. Because then they'll want to know what's wrong and you'll have to tell them that nothing is wrong. In fact, things are wonderful. And they won't believe you and then you'll become that weird older dramatic sister that they try to avoid.
Luckily I pulled it together and no one was the wiser.
The frequency of these episodes has greatly been reduced over the past months. But they'll still happen if the trigger is good enough.
Many people have been writing to me asking me if my pain is gone. I'm still undergoing intense prolotherapy treatments, but I feel they are helping. I am being patient and putting faith in my doctor and my body to heal itself. But I don't want to talk about that today.
I remember years ago being so frustrated by all the depressing stories of women I found online. I realize now that writing is very therapeutic when you are struggling. People tend to stop when they are doing well. I think we just want to forget this ever happened to us and are anxious to go back to the way things used to be. This is of course impossible because we have been forever changed.
I wanted to write this post to give strength to anyone fighting a difficult battle right now. I remember how hard it used to be. I remember hitting my arms, bruising them repeatedly to try and distract myself from the pain. I remember driving in the car and thinking how easy it would be to turn the wheel slightly and escape from the pain.
I remember specific nights, crying on the floor, wondering how I was going to get through another day. If I only knew the happiness, the elation that I would feel just a year later. I couldn't whisper in my ear back then, so I'm whispering in your ear now.
Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever your battle, however long it's been happening, keep going. Keep going. You can't give up when you don't know what tomorrow will bring.
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