Putting on the Clothes of the Living
These past few months, the depth, the deepness of them, the depression, the fear, the anger. How it buries, how one sinks into it. The depression. Since last September, the shifting to this, to that, try this. Let’s try this drug, this combo, let’s take more of this. Try this, try this. Maybe it will work.
Months, months of it, slogging through concrete, through hot ice, through worms and death. The depression of it. The fog and mists, the dark, the want for blood, the bright red, the real, the life, the life left outside the self. Crawling, hand over fist over hand over stacks of pills and words, words on top of words meant to help, meant to heal. Crawling over the motions of living, going, moving through them, the patterns of life. Putting on the clothes of living.
Since last September and only now am I better. Finally, a whole month of betterness. Not just a day or two, not just a two week reprieve but a whole month of better, of out-of-the-woods. I seem to be healed and so……….back to the life or back to what has become my life while I was sick, while I was checked out and into depression.
Since I posted here last, so much has happened, in spite of the depression, in spite of the hardness, the bitter taste of it all. I’ve been accepted into the Vermont MFA program (I was also accepted into New England) and have chosen to just dive in and go for it. My first residency starts June 26 and as the date approaches, I am becoming eager to get started, eager to bite down on life again, wholeheartedly, to be a student again, to learn new things, to probe, to be. Though I haven’t written any prose during these months except for my livejournal, I have written some good new poems and I’ve begun to submit again. I’ve set more modest publishing goals for myself this year, two pieces of prose and perhaps ten poems. Publishing goals are part of my own agenda for myself as well as part of my expectations for my job. I do teach creative writing, though I don’t have an MFA or a PhD and the publishing helps, so I will continue to do so even while I’m in school.
Recently I’ve had fiction come out in Orchid and Relic, a new magazine out of Memphis, and at LONG last, my story “Stories in the Shapes of Objects” has come out in Quarter After Eight which I got in the mail yesterday. I’ve waited over two years on that one but the magazine is a good one, it looks great, and I’m in good company. I have another story coming in Relic and a poem coming out in the next Margie, but other than those, I’ve got nothing coming out, which is a little scary. But surely some of the submissions I’ve sent out will bear fruit and I can now turn myself to writing again, and the serious study of poetry which I welcome.
So that’s the update, the newness after the long winter, the fog and slag and ash and suffering of the most major depressive episode I’ve had in years. But now I’m on the other side, the new meds have taken hold and are working and as I look back on what I’ve just been through, I vow to never, ever, EVER go through it again. There are better solutions than suffering. I will act more quickly and push back harder, I will push and push and push the doctor with her vials of pills until a solution comes sooner rather than later. Actually, it’s possible that I did the very best I could under the circumstances but I’ve learned much and will do better.
So that’s it and I’ll be back sooner rather than later with updates about my writing, the MFA program, and publishing and fretting and oh, just all the things I used to feel were worth sharing with you guys. I’ll be back sooner and regularly.
~r.
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