December 2, 2024: "Central Park," Self Pity, Jody

I apologize if my posts these last few days have been downers.  Some people might even say that I'm wallowing in self pity.  

Believe me, that is not my intent.  I'm simply trying to write my way out of the deep valley in which I'm currently stuck.  It's no fun to feel overwhelmed as soon you open your eyes in the morning.  Or to wake up in the middle of the night and cry for an hour or so.  How about feeling inadequate in just about everything you attempt to do?

I'm not looking for attention.  I'm just just trying to survive.

Billy Collins feels sorry for himself . . . 

Central Park

by: Billy Collins

It’s hard to describe how that day in the park
was altered when I stopped to read
an official sign I came across near the great carousel,
my lips moving silently like the lips of Saint Ambrose.

As the carousel turned in the background,
all pinions and mirrors and the heads of horses
rising to the steam-blown notes of a calliope,
I was learning how the huge thing
was first designed to be powered
by a blind mule, as it turned out,
strapped to the oar of a wheel in an earthen
room directly below the merry turning of the carousel.

The sky did not darken with this news
nor did a general silence fall on the strollers
or the ball players on the green fields.
No one even paused to look my way,
though I must have looked terrible
as I stood there filling with sympathy
not so much for the harnessed beast
tediously making its rounds,

but instead of the blind mule within me
always circling in the dark —
the mule who makes me turn when my name is called
or causes me to nod with a wooden gaze
or sit doing nothing on a bench in the shape of a swan.

Somewhere, there must still be a door
to that underground room,
the lock rusted shut, the iron key misplaced,
last year’s leaves piled up against the sill,
and inside, a trace of straw on the floor,
a whiff of manure, and maybe a forgotten bit
or a bridle hanging from a hook in the dark.

Poor blind beast, I sang softly as I left the park,
poor blind me, poor blind earth turning blindly on its side.

Unlike Collins, I'm not walking around, quietly singing, poor blind me.  In fact, for most of today, I put on my game face.  I taught, answered emails, interacted with coworkers and students.  And nobody noticed anything amiss.

This evening, one of my oldest friends taught a needle felting class at the library.  Jody and I have known each other for over 30 years.  We worked together at a local bookstore.  That's where we first met.  Tonight, before her class, when we were visiting in my office, I told her about my current struggles and started to cry.

Jody came over to me, put her arms around my shoulders, and just held on.  She kept saying, "You're going to be alright.  You're going to be alright.  You'll get through this."  It was a healing mantra and made me feel a little less alone.

I know Jody would do anything for me, and she knows I would do the same for her.  That is the kind of friend everyone should have in their lives:  someone who just loves you, even when you're at your lowest.  

Saint Marty might be lost in a dark wood right now, but he has a friend who has left a candle burning in the window for him.