The courage to reach out (again).

Dear JP,

My name is Fatima, I'm 35 years old. I stumbled upon your YouTube videos by coincidence (although there is probably no such thing as coincidence), I was so inspired by many of the things you said, I was blown away by your wisdom and you kind, sensible sense of homour. I have been slipping in and out of depression for several years, my struggle has been a fierce one. I sought therapy, medication and spirituality without avail, I seem to regain some strength and confidence then quickly relapse again. I am tired, I am tired of my suffering, I am tired of enduring my pain, I am tired of the mammoth guilt I feel when I take my loneliness and anger out on my ten year old daughter whom I love more than anything, more than anyone. I know that what I need to improve is already inside me, I know that no one can save me but me, but I need a helping hand. Please, will you help me?

Kind Regards
F

Just as we begin to go they begin to arrive – Sharon Olds

Something about the world after a heavy rain fall;

the kind that falls urgently as if to extinguish a fiery morning,

the kind that flows like severe black ink in darkened lanes.

I let the sky have her terrible tantrum before I opened the door,

having said her piece and hysterical tears, she seems to rest

I walked, treading softly on the tired bending blades of grass, soaked in tragedy

while the old trodden earth lets loose her familiar (after rain) smell of gratitude

“everything must calm down now, all must retire”

I brush her long black hair, last chore of the day

“Mummy! Do you think I look like you?”

I look up from my task and find my face in her mirror, her thick glossy hair

like jet black ink, and mine slowly turning grey.

Why is it that they begin to come just as we are begin to go?

Prayer

In the silence of night something cracks open,

A light, a prayer, a heart…

Dear God,

You know everything; the measure of the immeasurable, the bounds of the incessant, the sadness I’ve carried with me all those years, the weight of my loneliness, heavy as a dead body, dragging and deformed. My pain, which rises as mountain waves, drowning and crushing me. Take them, please take them from me, I can’t carry them anymore, I suffered and endured and now I beg you, don’t turn away from me, help me find the peace I desperately long for.

What isn't

What isn’t, all that isn’t; the people no longer alive, their names less and less spoken, their numbers deleted, medicine bottles left silent and untouched on tables. The dandelions unblown, the wishes not made, taken now by the wind.

Are the trees not tired of it all, dying then living then dying again? What was the meaning if it all? What was the purpose? The old rose bush ceased to flower, giving it all up, not wanting this tiresome repetition over and over again.

Life is but a moment I thought, it wasn’t the myriad moments I had looked outside to the garden wondering whether my Peonies had bloomed yet, it wasn’t the moment when they finally did, ravishing fuchsia blooms as big as saucers, drooping lavish colour, seduction and delight, No.

Life wasn’t in those moments. Was life the moment I decided to gather a few of my magnificent flowers to place on my dining table that sunny warm June afternoon?  No, no life wasn’t that moment, life was the fleeting moment I walked to the kitchen to fetch the scissors, full of intention, full of knowing, assertive, that this is what I will do, I will cut a few flowers to place on the table and the room will light up with colour and life and beauty, that very moment when I knew, holding the hard, rigid, cold pair of scissors in my hand, unrepentant and willing. That moment when I knew.

Darling! Grief is too vast.

Driving, I see the narrow road widen and stretch as if materialising right there and then before me, a path, a direction laid just to carry me, a world formed anew. There is more road, there is an endless road for me to travel and there is you, there is you at the end of this endless road.

In the gaps of things there is so much. In the little gaps of things; a keyhole letting through a flood of light, a universe of darkness. In the small gaps of things life is gently but surely seeping; in the gaps of people’s conversations, the words unsaid, the phone calls not made, the happiness that could have been gained, the misunderstandings that could have been unravelled, but no.

People don’t get closure, they don’t overcome, they don’t even move on, they live with holes, like old timber houses, full of holes, termites and rats. They take pills, they go on holidays, they laugh; loud, sad, dishonest laughter, they sleep, they eat, all the while a hole grows inside them.

Darling, words are too clumsy, grief is too vast, too complicated for the lucidity of language to fathom. Darling, I’ve lived with you a thousand lives since you’ve left me. I sleep with you every night.

Thursday morning

The loud noisy rumbling of the rubbish collection truck outside. This is how day after day passes, though time is an illusion. The last thing I did last night before going to bed was put the bins out, the domestic waste and the recycling, and here is the truck now, slowly moving up the road demanding to be heard, urging me to wake up, to start the day, as if without opening my eyes the day will not start, as if by not rolling up the blind the sun will not rise, without opening the creaking window the birds will not sing. I must get up, I must pull the bins back inside, I must prove that I am alive, that the day may start and the turning clocks in my mind and the rush of blood through my veins and the millions of heart beats and the breaths that must be taken. Time is an illusion, life is an illusion, I have willed this day to happen, I have made it happen simply by pushing my bins outside for the collectors to take in the morning, pushing my wheelie bin outside I suggested that there be tomorrow, another morning, a new day, another life.