Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

 

Therapy Break #1

I am not in your presence

but, oh

how painfully aware of your absence I have become.

 

Time and distance

stretch

out

endlessly

between us…

 

You are so far away.

 

The holding place in my mind

struggles hard to keep you whole

 

Are you merely a figment of my imagination?

A hologram, perhaps?

*

Even when within my reach

you always feel so very far away

 

I can see you,

feel you, but

I cannot touch you.

 

That small space

opens up like a vast ocean

I stand on one shore

you on the other

 

You beckon for me to join you

promise to be my guide

and to witness the lessons of the Self

that only I can teach

myself.

 

For the longest time I have waited

warily watching

assessing the dangers that might lurk hidden

in the deep.

 

I believe I will reach you –

eventually

(is it misplaced confidence or simply wishful thinking?)

and so I begin the swim.

 

My muscles relax into a familiar rhythm.

The hardest, aching parts of me begin to soften

as the distance between us lessens.

 

It’s farther than I thought, though, and

sometimes cold

sometimes silent

sometimes strange –

The horizon keeps shifting.

 

I tread water a while

rest and catch my breath.

I look up and discover that

I can no longer see you.

 

Panic.

 

a sudden shiver

a lightning bolt

 

Both sea and sky shift rapidly

calm blues now rage-filled greys

Angry, turbulent clouds roll heavily in

raining hot tears down like shiny silvery bullets.

My fear rises alongside the storm-whipped waves

 

I am exposed

I am scared

 

Is there still safety on your shore?

I can’t be sure.

But it’s swim or drown

and so I keep moving.

 

There’s no going back.

I must have faith in what I feel

And trust in what cannot be seen.

 

***

I’ve posted this poem at the bottom of a blog post before. I wrote it last year when on Easter therapy break. Right now it completely sums up where I am at (again/still!). I haven’t got much time to write at the moment. Time off with the kids is full on. I am putting on a good show on the surface – doing lots of activities and outings but inside/emotionally I feel stuck in that horrible place, stagnant and numb but underneath it’s only hanging together by a thread – not even my usual rubber bands and chewing gum. And so right now I don’t even know what to say in a blog post.

I will find my way out of this fog eventually, so long as a I keep swimming. At the moment I have lost sight of both shores and am tired, cold, and want to be rescued…. and there’s still two more weeks of this break to go. Ugh!

I hate therapy breaks 😉

Oh woe is me! lol!