Stargaze

Could we when we find

We take apart?,

Examine until we reign over this empire-

That is Nowhere.

When we take apart,

You steer calmly somehow past

The sluggish mechanics of speech

Through the trapdoor to a dimension with new colours.

Stare into the maddening abyss but pull out, laughing,

Before it looks back.

Could we when we see you

Lend me your exact-fit eyes?,

Swap and stargaze until we discover

Their silent dances and secret patterns,

The diverging and converging and delicious explosions of thought,

We find ourselves Nowhere.

We've been everywhere.

My Depression: Part I: Discovering

In my previous post about depression, I wrote about what I believe depression is. I also promised to share some of my journey, in hope that depression will make more sense to some and that this might be a small flickering light of hope to others. I have been to that dark pit of hell and now I am out. I don't wake up each day disappointed to find myself alive. Healing is possible! Don't give in to the lie that it's inescapable.

Here is my story...part 1...

I was always the happiest person I knew. I had the best parents, the best church, the best God, the best school, the best friends. I kind of skipped the tragedies that often are associated with teenage years and nothing out of the ordinary happened that I wasn't able to cope with, especially because Jesus was my all-consuming passion and delight. Interestingly, when I was 15 we had a Life Orientation lesson where we learnt about depression and I was moved enough to write this poem:

Dreaded
Evil
Place where
Reality has no face, there
Even the
Sun forgets to shine.
So
I
Only belong in the
Noose.

At the time, I would never have believed that would become an accurate description of me.

When I moved from Durban to Pretoria and began university, I made a few bad decisions that, along with circumstance, saw me withdraw into a lonely storm inside my head. As far as I can tell, my thoughts are what triggered my depression.
I was sad and lonely more often than not and I started believing that no one loved me or truly cared about me. One night in November 2012 I was pretty low and on my desk was a whole lot of 'in case' medication we had bought for my trip to Uganda - I suddenly really wanted to take all of that medicine. I wanted to swallow it as quick as possible so that all my pain would be over. I suddenly really really wanted to die.

Instead, I dug my fingernails into my palms, holding myself back and read the book of Isaiah in the bible and fell asleep.

The next year, I began attending counselling with an on-campus counselor. I actually began the sessions because I wanted to know why I was finding it difficult to make friends.
Up to this point: I had not yet realised that I was depressed. Probably because: it is a gradual downward spiral / I don't put much value on my emotions / I have always believed in being strong, and when you don't feel it, faking it. (Could also be a symptom of depression.)/ I didn't have people around me who had known me for long enough to recognise something was wrong with me. If my parents or brother noticed, they didn't say anything. Emotion and mood are not a high priority discussion topic in my immediate family.

After a few sessions with my (amazing) counselor, I told her about that night in November. She seemed taken-aback and the next session asked me to fill out a questionnaire. I ticked yes to all of the following:

• I feel downhearted and sad
• I have crying spells, or feel like it.
• I eat less than I used to.
• I notice that I am losing weight
• I get tired for no reason.
• My mind is not as clear as it used to be.
• I find it difficult to concentrate
• I am restless and can't keep still.
• I do not find it easy to do the things I used to do.
• I am more irritable than usual.
• I find it difficult to make decisions.
• I do not feel useful or needed.
• I feel other would be better off if I were dead.
• I do not enjoy the things I used to.
• I have noticed a change in my sleeping patterns.

She asked me, do you think you are depressed? In shame and shock, my voice caught as I answered, yes.

TBC

I would never.ever wish depression on anybody and I will never say I am glad I went through that long-lightless tunnel. If you are depressed, my heart is for you and you are in my prayers.

You Are.

Some lay poetry...

You are the gold that puts gold to shame
You are the postman that finally came.
You are the whisper whispering my name

You are an underwater dance of grace,
You are the dreamy look on my face.

You are a brightening moon in a fading August sky,
You are exactly and definitely why,
You are the jealous breeze, beckoning me aside.

You are a fire waiting to catch
(You are the spark and the match).

You are the feast that breaks the fast
You are first and second and infinite last
You are the Spring rain, greening the grass.

You are a moment between two perfect notes,
You are a trustworthy boat, always a-float.

You are the fistful of flowers in my sweaty hand
You are a crashing crescendo of the marching band,
You are - surely, surely - my distant Promised Land.

You are an open hand for a dance,
You are my two-hundred-and-twenty-second chance.

You are the holding fibers between atoms half-crazed
You are the centre of every maze
You are the certainty that dawn will blaze.

You are the only treasure worth the keep
And you are the dark that is lulling me to sleep.

(Other Poetry Here)

Simply.

If I could net the colours of dawn
and paint them onto my skin,
would you tell me the address of the cosmos you're in?

I'm dipping my toes into the sky,
holding my breath underwater
and waiting for the why.

<<View previous poem
<<View previous post

BLACK. Depression & Suicide.

This month will mark a year since I was 'cured' of depression.*

Someone asked me this, reffering to a suicide,
"so what's the story?"
"they were depressed."
"well, obviously..."
This common attitude towards depression & suicide annoys me a little. Then I stop being annoyed and am grateful instead that the person doesn't know what it is like to be depressed.

Depression is a reason and a world within itself. It is illiogical, even by standards of emotion. It is a loud, indistinguishable pyschological pain. It can probably only be described by adjectives and poetry (though it is the most unpoetic experience) because it defies all other reasonable language.

Depression is a falling and falling into black. And even 'black' is too sharp, too defined. It's more the idea of black, a general shadowy haze that blankets all areas of life, if you can imagine such, because it alters your filter of reality. Absolutely everything is twisted. When I was depressed, I was disgusted at the ugliness that is the human spirit at it's lowest. There is no elegance, no grace, no silver lining to depression. Life is just a very unfunny, boring joke with death as the punchline. Punch.

Cause
 People ask about the cause of depression. There are no causes, only triggers. I differentiate because when you are depressed, your thoughts do not centre around the triggering event, as normal, 'healthy' sadness would. It centres around you and your unhappiness. And a 'solving' of the trigger will not 'solve' the depression as in sadness.

Some Symptoms
If you are depressed, you will find it very difficult to believe that anybody loves or cares about you. The idea that you are lovable is too foreign. You excuse loving actions with, 'they're just nice people'. And to tell someone you are depressed would be to shame and disappoint that person, burden and embarrass them, and it would only be you feeling sorry for yourself. It is also an utterly embarrassing to be a dysfunctional human being. You want to burst into tears 'for no reason' at the most inconvenient of times, such as the middle of the lecture. I can remember a classmate, after greeting me, commenting on how tired I looked. How could I tell her that I actually got 10 hours of sleep the previous night yet still felt so fatigued (an atypical symptom I later learnt is called hypersomnia).

One has no horizons, no hope for the future. One is blind to every prospect. The future is dismal, a pointless extension of the current meaninglessness of your existence. The only thing to clutch onto in your despair is the hope of death.

Suicide is final, complete, a certaintity of relief, something you can control. It is so different to the uncontrollable whirpool that is being alive, where every breath is pain. Suicide is an escape from your mind, the only escape.**

The End of the Beginning
Thank you for reading this post. I really hope to write more about this scary but real truth, depression. I will maybe share what my journey of healing was, and share where I think the disorder fits into Christianity. I think learning about these mental disorders is important.

Please leave a comment if you have any specific questions about depression.

*Please note that the following is an account of subjective experience, I'm sure anyone with depression would describe their experiences differently.

** Please note that I do not think suicide is an acceptable way of dealing with any life experience, I am only expressing a view that I held in my depressed mind. There is a better way to get better -and stay better!!!

Bonfire with Friends

So Amy & I picked 5 of 20 of these 'little projects' to put into one poem. (See if you can spot them all!)

4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.

I think these whole feeling of mish-mash gave me the idea for the general message of the poem. Last night at Satellite we had an epic bonfire, but every week with these people is amazing.

Bonfire with Friends

We join our hearts under the stars -
           except, not so poetically, understand?
It's more like,
           The fire is the centrepiece
           And the storm of our eyes.

But we're all talking,
about nothing and everything,
Haha, so kiff bru.

It's a brilliant dance of being -
           But we're just chilling, hey,
Futhi siyakudumisa.

And our voices look like a symphony of city lights. 

 

Dream a Little Dream

This is a piece using a task prompt from The Inklings' creative writing workshop.

My interpretation is to write like you're experiencing a dream and all its vivid strangeness and incongruity.

I was standing in my wendy house when a gust of air blew in some dandelion seeds. The floated in through the window, and, when they were close enough, I saw that they were tiny hot air balloons, made with brightly patterned designs. These hot air balloons were carrying tiny girls, one drifted close enough to shout into my ear in a squeaky voice, 'Would you like some tea?'
'Oh, yes I have a tea set just here.' I turned around to get it and then I was standing on a beach of turquoise sand. Dark purple water lapped at the shore, and the sky was a painful orange. Next to me was my teacup except I had no sugar.
Fortunately! there was an island of sugar cane in the water, not too far away. I climbed into my tea cup and the current carried me toward the island. Fish circled my cup, some near the surface, so that I saw they were black catfish with feathered tails. They nudged my cup boat. I put my fingertips to the water's surface for them to brush against me and one of them began licking my fingers with a green tongue.
I suddenly realised I was outside without my hat on, and it was midday, and I don't take sugar in my tea anyway. So I woke up.

Phillipians: This Paul Guy

At my church we're going through a series on the new testament book, Phillipians. I thought I might share some of my personal journey through it with the blogosphere.

This book, as Eugene Peterson says, is Paul's happiest letter. The first thing that catches me in Paul's words is his faith that bubbles over into joy.

I absolutely love this guy. He was a learned, well-educated Jew (when it was the in thing) and an upper-class citizen of Rome (when it was the in thing) who threw all of that away and is now writing from a prison cell. He just can't keep these narrated letters in order, despite all that learning in logic, he gets swept away - in all his letters - with the gospel. This mind-blowing message. All his points seem jumbled up but they are far from difficult to read. They are dripping with the juice that is the Holy Spirit, any discussions on his revelations will, I'm sure, only scrape the surface of their profound meaning for the deepest parts of our lives: our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves and our relationships with the people around us.

This is Paul imprisoned. I wonder if he was confused - up to this point he'd been travelling the world, changing lives everywhere by sharing the good news with any and everyone. And yet now he is in chains? He kept His faith in God's will, believing being in prison was want God wanted of him. He kept his joy. Little did he know that his confinement led to the blessing of generations and generations of Christians to be. Because he kept his joy and desire to share and wrote this letter without moping around.

If it weren't for that prison, we wouldn't have these chapters.

If we keep faith, how many prisons in our lives will God use beyond our wildest hopes!

Come Again Another Day

Do you ever think about soft rain falling over the middle ocean? In the middle of nowhere, for no one to hear: the sound of water falling on water multiplied and multiplied. So far behind you one way is a horizon without clouds, bright blue, and so far ahead of you twilight is dimming the sky. And above, those silver vessels. No one to say, 'this stupid rain', no mud puddles or road accidents, just rain.

Sometimes when sleep won't come, my imagination takes me to that place, though I don't get wet at all.

Better is One Day

"Better is one day in your house than a thousand elsewhere."
David of the Bible wrote this line in poem to God.

A thousand days! That is almost three years.
Stuff I could do in three years:

1. write a few books
2. get a degree
3. have 4 babies
4. write a thousand daily blog posts

The limit is the limit of your imagination (and the time frame of 1000 days).

The other day I was speaking with some friends who commented that it must have been so very boring to be a shepherd, like David was. I'm not so sure. I think he spent every day with God, worshiping Him and writing those epic, intimate psalms. And he said just one of those days is better than a thousand anywhere else. What a strange concept to over-stimulated us!

Who is this God? Who is He that is better than a thousand days anywhere else? Who is He who lays claim like this to being so worth our time and attention? 

Who is this God?