In Utero

I thought once I uncovered all my brokenness. 

        Flashed every scar. 

Dusted off each moth ball formed on my shoulders in those dark closets, I would be cured from my depression. Depression, I believed, doesn't take up residence with one who is not hiding. It will not swallow dancers of wholehearted happiness. 

        Ooo, Child. 

This week has debunked those theories. For, in the center of my open hearted living, mid-happiness-embrace, my depression showed me it can follow me anywhere. Anytime. So much so, that I can only do the illogical, logical thing: own this depression as my dirty gold, and allow it to be seen. To offer myself anymore shame on its behalf, would only give it power.

                                                                          In Utero

I can feel it: that wide hole welcoming me to slide right into it and hide. It's hanging out with me. Propped right in front of each day I skid on my heels into. My heels have never worked as breaks. I'm not sure why I exert the effort to keep attempting to use them as such. 

It's so normal, but every time it comes, I'm never less afraid, feel more equipped, nor strong enough to survive it. I can only curl up inside of it. Laying down into something that dark makes me feel more naked-legs-splayed-open-at-the-gynecologists-office than I can endure. So, I knee chest tuck up into it all fetus like, as if I've never left my mother's womb. I bet even as a fetus, I never wanted to emerge from that dark, orange glow of fluid motion. I'm so comfortably uncomfortable in here.

Mom calls. It's as if she can feel me reoccupying her womb when I get into this in utero state. She speaks in rambles. Inviting me to attend a church lecture with her from some depression survivor. She literally uses the words "this bubbly, little thing" to sell this presenter to me as someone I would like to hear from right now. As if I can stomach listening to anyone. Let alone, a self declared conquerer of this darkness I am currently taking shallow breaths under the blanket of. 

I don't need words. I need someone strong enough to hold me in this darkness. Occupy the complete silence with me. Grip onto my body and will it forward. I'm too tired, and afraid, to breathe this night into tomorrow. 

The great aloneness in depression is having so many people love you. Hundreds of names glowing on your contact list. Yet, being too crippled and proud to make the outlandish request to "Come hold me in this silence."

I decline the invitation from Mom. Shift in my fetal curl, and feel more alone than when I picked up the phone. She doesn't feel me taking back up residence in her womb. If she did, she would have come over. Scooped me up in silence, still curled up in this ball, and swaddled me into the tightest hold she could muster.

I used to think that brave meant ignoring that pit of darkness. Courage was pretending I wasn't in it. Or acting like I don't see it when it's the sunglasses I'm squinting behind. Tonight, I realized bravery is really just allowing it to happen. The darkness purges those shaking shoulder, loud sobs from my belly. The sobs that need a vessel of words to extract them from their deafening silence. 

It's courageous. Even if. Especially if. I feel weak.

- A Cool Grandma's Granddaughter

Unmasked

Gay. It may be one of the top, emotionally charged words in society today, but it has been the most emotionally charged word for me since I was that awkward, silly girl in 4th grade, who had no interest in boy crushing with the rest of her girlfriends.

Gay grabbed me by the ankles when I was too young to understand it. Pulled me thrashing and hyperventilating into the icy world of shame and isolation. That little, label word, made me feel like I was unloveable. The social aversion and intolerance for it in my church circle, school, the grocery store, weighted me down like a boulder tossed into the ocean.

Gay didn't take long to talk me into hating myself. To punishing my body with sharp edges. To swallowing whole bottles of pills in hopes that one gulp would be the fatal bullet in my own game of Russian roulette.

Gay cast me out of my life and onto the outside of the fish bowl that I lived in. I have many memories peering into that dome world of denial and self hatred, crying with the rest of my family while we could do nothing but watch me gasp for air, flail, and drown. 

Gay was painful to feel, but worse to watch. That beautiful souled, blue eyed girl, allowing one little word to take her life away. With years, came coping. Resolutions. Decisions to breathe.

Gay prompted me to fabricate masks. I casted molds for them repeatedly until I made them comfortable enough to live behind. Masks of kids, a $28,000 wedding, a husband, a Facebook news feed to advertise it all. My masks were straight and lonely.

Gay fueled my fire to live out everything else I knew myself to be. A writer. A nurse. A mother. It made me furiously stand for the love, acceptance, and light of others strong enough to live out loud. I can't tell you how badly I wanted to march from behind my masks with all of those proud souls instead of just alongside them. I wanted to be strong enough to stand vulnerable and brave with them.

Gay broke my heart. Spiraled with me down the slide of my 2 year long separation and divorce. Twisted my soul into knots. Brushed against my self worth until I was so bruised and raw I had to listen to it. Start standing for that drowning soul from my adolescence, and be real in a world where gays are bullied, beaten, and thrown to their deaths daily.

Gay. It is my neighbor. My cousins. My friends. It is me. Unmasked. 30 years old, and finally loving myself enough to jump back into the fishbowl with that shame stricken little girl, and save her life. That fragile, intense, inappropriate, goofy, wild, humanitarian spirit who is me.

Gay has taught me so much about who I am. The way I love. Who I love. What brings me authentic joy. What I am worth when that word is hidden away, is exactly the same as what I'm worth bearing its label.

Gay. I finally figured out I would be crazy not to love myself. All of me. When the world is stripped away. The trails have all been hiked. Love has been had and lost and had again. When the rest of the world is sleeping and my eyes flicker open, I am who is with me. And I don't love me any less for being gay.

Gay: to love myself deeply, completely, and know I am worthy of being seen, is the bravest, kindest, most humanitarian thing I can do for me, and all of you who dare to love me still.

- A Cool Grandma's Granddaugter

Delivery #169

I feel your rawness and regret before I even pull back the curtain to move you to your labor room. You are timid. Jumpy like a beaten puppy. I walk cautiously to you as you tear at the stretcher during a contraction. The color palette of bruises on your body give me a glimpse of your broken story. One I'm sure you want desperately to numb again as you slip down this mountain of your last high.

"I'm your nurse tonight."

You won't look me in the eyes, but you confess your illicit drug use as I sit perched on the stool next to you. "How often? How much? When was the last time?" I wish you knew how brave you are right now. How many mothers I wish were strong enough to strip down to the truth in these hospital beds.

Your apologies flood the air as the contractions crash in and out of your abdomen. You mean them. I know a very real, raw part of you, wanted the strength to stay away from the meth you abused this entire pregnancy. Desire isn't always strong enough.

You are judged. By yourself more than those of us you have surrendered to receive medical care from. Trust me. I know you saw some of those scrubs ignoring you, eye rolling, and shame talking about your choices in the middle of your remorse filled room. But what you missed, as you recoiled under your sheets in all that shame, is me quieting them. You didn't see my eyes warn them in your defense.

I am not here to judge you. I try to make your room a safe space. Maybe the only safe space you've ever known. We all are artists of bad choices. Numb our stories in destructive ways. I have numbed mine in ways you'll never know. Our vices are just different.

 I help you deliver a little boy into this unfair world. Witness your courage when I call you sternly by name, and tell you he needs you to get him out of your belly in that last push. Peer  into those small windows of your courage and see fragmented, sober pieces of you. Maybe one day you'll see them too.

He is born wild, wet, screaming. His hands clenched tight mimic your own. You cry in unison. I place his tiny pink body against your heaving, bare chest. You chant "I love you" as tears roar down your cheeks. Most do not believe your words. I do: you're signing custody over to his adoptive parents tomorrow.

We are all love's teachers,

A Cool Grandma's Cool Granddaughter

Nursing Home

A multitude of arms open wide to embrace us. Hands clasp together in prayer on our behalf. We are held by the loving energy of a community I have grown by both being truly seen and revealing only disjointed, fractured pieces of myself. 

My son's horrific screams fill the air. His body trembles in fear. Dodges each quick movement of my hand in pain. He recoils in my care as I undress, clean, and redress his wounds.

My insides twist and wrench under the burden and honor of being his mom today. My heart screams, but my voice refuses to serve as its platform. No matter how I am held, I feel so mercilessly alone.

Perception of time has escaped me. A disconnect from reality that I can neither stop nor care to. Each day my feet move underneath me in the throws of the deep and muted suffering. I breathe out of consequence. I move out of obligation.

I am alive. Life is in the suffering as much as the ease.

Depression is cuffed tightly to my ankles. The clink of its chains clank dragging as the soundtrack to my every move. The ankle cuffs run smoothly along the callouses they've formed beneath them on my skin. There is some relief in their coolness pulling tight against me. The heaviness of my step almost welcomes the familiarity of them. I am its prisoner who may never quite be exonerated.

You look to me for Hope.
Strength. Inspiration.
The healthy, immortal parts of my soul sparkle out from my eyes to you. My hands called to move your pain, rub tension from your shoulders and soften your suffering.

I am the guardian of your birth story. 

You will never know the pain with which I move yours. The light your unfolding story bursts into my darkness. The home of my work, which I seek refuge in. A home made by you, a stranger, my patient, melting under my care.

- A Cool Grandma's Cool Granddaughter