Inertia, or whatever the word is for not being able to move much… poleaxed, flattened, stuck, still, stopped, immobilised, paralysed … how many words for another lost day?

I do know this… that I have to forgive myself for letting time run through my fingers like sand. I’m guessing it’s a lifelong project, a daily practice, a repetition of forgiveness, over and over like washing the dishes. I do mostly wash my dishes, and mostly forgive myself for being depressed. It has taken a long while though, to travel from self hatred to kindness, paradoxically a hard journey to a soft place.

There is a wide divide
between an idea of me in my life
and the truth
and I have tried and tied
myself in knots
with medicine and meditation
to make a better fit
and rearrange the pieces into
much more satisfactory shape

I did not understand why I kept failing
and falling, or see the hopeless, helpless
circles and cul-de-sacs of trying to make
a brand new cut out of old cloth.
I had to unlearn the tyranny of healing
and find my own
that didn’t have so much to say
about healing and transformation
rebirth and renewal
and especially about surrender
oh, how I had to stop trying to surrender right
the pitch perfect surrender
like chasing an impossible orgasm

Somewhere between a daughter being born and a sister dying
I have found that I can love life
and long for death, at the same time
that both are true and I am as full of tenderness
as of despair.