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.

November 30, 2024: "Elusive," Bouts of Sadness, Stupid Masculine Stereotype

I tried to keep myself busy today.  Worked on a Christmas essay.  Watched a documentary on the life of Flannery O'Connor.  Took my puppy for a few walks, freezing my ass off in the process. Took a picture of a snowperson.  Played pipe organ for a Saturday evening Mass.  Had dinner with my sisters.  

If you can't tell, I'm trying to keep my mind engaged to avoid the blue mood I wrote about last night.  Now that I'm settling down for the night, however, it's sitting on the couch beside me, begging for attention.

Billy Collins thinks about the person he loves . . . 

Elusive

by: Billy Collins

As I was wandering the city this morning

working on my impression of Michael Caine,

I began to think about her again--

which makes it sound as if she were far away

or lost in the past or possibly both.

But I was with her only an hour ago,

and later I will sit in the kitchen

and watch her hair hiding her face

as she stirs some onions and butter in a skillet

and I pour us a glass of frosty white wine.

Still, she has been known to vanish

as if in a mist as we walk past

a row of store windows, or she will disappear

behind a hedge or into a side room at a party.

And often no aisle of the supermarket reveals her.

Like the fox, she is nowhere and everywhere,

a tail of fire out of the corner of my eye,

one of the corners she likes to turn

just as the streetlights are coming on

when I am searching for her in the evening crowd.

Would she and Michael Caine hit it off,

I wondered as I emerged from an alley

only to see her staring at me from a spot on a public bench.

My wife once told me that she has to read my blog to find out what's really going on in my head.  I guess that means that I'm sort of elusive, too.  

It's true that I don't often talk about my bouts of sadness much, except with my therapist.  I've always thought that I don't need to burden my loved ones with my mental health problems.  Too many people depend on me to be even-tempered, happy, and in control.  I don't like letting anyone down.

I've learned to mask these struggles really well, perhaps out of some stupid masculine stereotype that a "real" man needs to be strong all the time.  Usually, only those closest to me know when I'm in the throes of one of my depressions.  It's harder for me to concentrate and be around large groups of people.  At night, I withdraw, become uncommunicative or short-tempered.  I don't even want to be around me.

So why am I coming clean this time?

Because I know that the holidays are difficult for lots of individuals out there.  Think about it.  Every famous Christmas movie or book or TV special is about family and togetherness, taking care of the less fortunate, angels getting their wings, Ralphie receiving his official Red Ryder, carbine-action, two-hundred-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. 

But for most folks, this version of the holidays just doesn't exist.  To paraphrase Charles Dickens, at this time of the rolling year, want is keenly felt.  So are grief and hunger and isolation.  Maybe by me writing about my own particular experience with sadness, a person who happens on this post might feel a little less alone this holiday season.  

At least, that's Saint Marty's hope.