passiontide

another wave of psych med withdrawal symptoms hits #crappypoetry

passiontide

When it hits you on a random Monday,
you know exactly what it is,
and you know not to panic,
but maybe you panic a little bit anyway––
Because two months was enough.
Enough to start believing you could go for walks again now,
and book your first massage appointment in over a year,
and sign up for an art class that might actually happen this time.
Maybe even enough to forget what it felt like––
the way every cell in your body used to scream in pain each morning,
the nonstop vibrations in your torso no one else could ever feel,
the hours of nausea and crushing fatigue,
the fear and the darkness damn near suffocating you at night.
Suffer well, we say.
The symptoms are the healing…

The evening erupts into violent thunderstorms.
A tornado warning is issued.
Somewhere north of town, 
a camera captures the moment a car is hit by lightning,
as people take refuge in damp basements,
but you’re miles away,
up on your hilltop––
phone off, headphones on,
obliviously contemplating the metaphor of a wave…
You decide that this one perhaps feels more like a flood,
the way the symptoms just rise and rise,
or perhaps like the tide.
Passiontide.
Except you never learned how to pray––
All you could ever do is sing,
and there are no songs inside you now.
Just the rainwater dripping from the leaky gutter as the storms pass,
the drip drip drip drip like waterboarding,
like all this grief,
all this unholy suffering.
And you don't know how the fuck you're supposed to keep going.

No one should have to go through this alone, is what you had said.
Not even the strongest person everybody knows––
Which you're so fucking tired of being anyway,
because it only meant that everyone assumed they were off the hook,
even when you tried asking for help,
for support,
for care,
for love…
It never came.
Not in a way you could count on.
And their inconsistency landed in a familiar place inside your body,
that place deep down, with the broken scoreboard––
The numbers don’t go that high.
And so this aloneness was the only choice you could make.
To withdraw,
to go silent,
to run...
And the one human you hoped would ask you to stay never did.
And now you have no one.
And you belong nowhere.

But the moon's pull is strong.
The tide always shifts...
You survive the night, and the next three,
and now it's Good Friday.
Another thunderstorm has just passed through,
and the sunset is glowing through a gash in the cloud cover.
And you walk outside to witness the dying light, 
to listen for a voice arriving on the damp wind,
to feel the memories swirl softly around you,
to hear it all melt into the polyphonic composition of spring peepers,
evening birdsong,
warm air moving through the stark branches that will awaken soon––
Singing, 
always.
No matter what.

“Suffering well” is part of the healing mindset for psychiatric drug withdrawal I learned from Angie Peacock, MSW, CPC – thank you, Angie 💜💪

“The symptoms are the healing” comes from Sam Miller, who is a chronic illness coach (and total badass) on Youtube. Link to the video that helped turn things around for me this week: “Why It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better”

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