do it...

If you don't write it, what will you do with it? Writing it shapes it and makes it real. It gives you some control instead of none. Writing is a defense, you know. It is the truth and a lie, but it is real. Do it!  ~Cafe Selavy

Surreal is the feeling I've had for a few weeks now.  I've watched her descend into the lowest depths of hell that I have ever seen this close. As I watch I feel I am an observer, floating above, watching it all unfold and unravel and feeling helpless to save her or myself. It starts so slowly, just a few signs that I denied were signs of the deluge that followed. "Whatever, clever." Then it starts to become more obvious that it is getting worse and something must be done. Metaphors, lyrics, drawings  became our accepted form of communication, categorizing, analyzing, making lists, trying to make sense, trying to forestall the inevitable crash. The usual platitudes and advice are given but I still felt a storm brewing...a storm that would shake precarious foundations."Put the lime in the coconut"


She left early on a Sunday evening and she stopped before she left, looking deeply in my eyes and I felt a shiver, somehow knowing this was it...the storm clouds so dark and ominous that nothing could stop it. "Check yourself before you wreck yourself." The week before the storm was a swirling dervish of activity and thoughts, so fast, so harried, we both felt dizzy and spent. Our defenses down when the storm hit, no provisions, no preparations had been made....the hatches not battened.  Suddenly everything was hurtled into space and we watched in horror.  Disney figurines, Dumbo with big listening ears,comforting Pooh with his honey and love for us all, handicapped parking spaces, Mickey and Minnie bound in a dance of intimacy and anger...holding it all close, too close to breathe...but if she moved fast enough then maybe she could out run the pain and the fear. "Walked down my back like a duck." She felt as if she was a ghost, a tiny dancing spirit saved her and brought her back. But bringing her back only left her alone and naked in the storm.  Tears of rain fell and she succumbed  to the demons within her and the aliens circling her head. They led her through locked doors and the key was turned, the key was turned.  She was lost, lost to me, lost to herself, broken, undone...and with nothing left in me I went home to the tiny dancing spirit who held me up with her dark 'wise owl' eyes.  Her journey more difficult than mine - she wandered in the sun, sending smoke signals and pleas for help. Those around her became family and she heard their stories and held their pain. LaVern and Shirley sang for her. Tim in his blue blanket sang and laughed and then cried. Clinton in his yellow shirt looked like a duck. But no one held her pain and she suffered and r-u-n-o-f-t further from reality. Churches, people walking, police cars, God, spirits , racing thoughts, cigarette butts, technology and electricity combined in a jumble of Mad Hatter-like madness. And so we drank tea and and tried to find our way back home. "Yep-er Buddy".  And as the sun  began to set the anticipation of sleeping sent her into a confused, incoherent torrent of words and repetitive movements. But mostly she was afraid. "Wired but tired." The fear would grow as the sky darkened, fear of death, fear of failure, fear of falling, of not being enough, of too much information until one night all of the fears combined into one disoriented mass of raw emotion and flung itself about in her mind and body until 12 hours later she expressed her truth and then felt calm, emptied, hungry, and finally sleepy. 11 hours of sleep and now we sit on a wobbly slope of normality. "What is normal?"  We take each moment as it comes, grateful for what we have, cautiously anticipating the future, stepping forward, stepping backward in a shaky waltz of love and fear.  And so it goes...