While We Stay Inside

We took for granted many things.

Some we thought we’d never miss.

But now they’re gone, it all feels wrong.

And so, we’ll stay inside.

A cold beer in the driveway with a few neighbors, around the time the sky starts to get dark.

Our children’s t-ball games on weeknights in the park,

Sitting shoulder to shoulder with a stranger, on a bus, that smells like pee.

Fully stocked shelves in stores, where everyone can find the things they need.

We took for granted many things.

Some we thought we’d never miss.

But now they’re gone, it all feels wrong.

And so, we’ll stay inside.

Full pews at church, smiles at the grocery store

and potluck dinners that never end.

Long lines in coffee shops.

Afternoon playdates with best friends.

We took for granted many things.

Some we thought we’d never miss.

But now they’re gone, it all feels wrong.

And so, we’ll stay inside.

Bumping shoulders at the farmers market, with early morning smiles that say “hello”

The neighbor kids’ laughter drifting through an open kitchen window

The roar of the crowd as the buzzer blares and the ball goes through the net!

When my hands smelt of lotion, gluten free flour and dirt from freshly planted flowers

Instead of hand sanitizer, soap and anxiety sweat.

We took for granted many things.

Some we thought we’d never miss.

But now they’re gone, it all feels wrong.

And so, we’ll stay inside.

Traffic jams and crowded, stuffy rooms full of friends on the weekend.

Awkward chatting with strangers at the dog park while our dogs become best friends.

School kids in hallways, lined up in single file.

Campfires on a buggy night with friends you haven’t seen in a while.

We took for granted so many things.

And now they’re all racing through my mind.

So, god, please grant us all the patience and faith

To wait this out inside.

A Poem for a Pandemic

The geese trust their instinct to fly south every fall.

The flower trusts the sun to return again in spring.

The tree trusts it’s leaves to grow back again each year.

So I can trust that this will end, despite this constant fear.

The cat trusts it’s bowl will be filled.

The bee trusts that each day there will be busy work to do.

The stars trust the moon to glow next to them each night.

So I can trust my body to be strong enough to win this fight.

A lover trusts another with their very heart.

The baby trusts his mother to tuck him in each night.

The fish can trust the ocean and ride the currents that pass through.

So I can trust that this strange nightmare will pass for me too.

The dog trusts that his master will return home at the end of every day.

The earth trusts the sun to hold us in her mighty pull.

A farmer trusts the rain to come and quench his parched field in his time of need.

And the birds trust, that even in the fiercest storms, the branch they built their home on will not bend.

So I can trust that we will come out of this ok, maybe even stronger in the end.

-A

Making Memories

I look forward to the day when I can look back at this and think of it,

no longer in the present tense.

I will dust off these old faded memories, the ones that are so vivid in this moment.

The ones that currently scream into all of my senses, igniting fear and anxiety inside my mind.

Hush. I whisper quietly to my own thoughts as the moon peers through my bedroom curtains.

Its ivory light illuminates my shadowed bedroom.

The bed heaves in rhythm with the dogs breath.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

His slumber is steady – save for the occasional twitch of his paw.

Somewhere a rabbit dashes just beyond his snarling reach.

He does not fear what is happening in the world outside these walls.

He sleeps.

Oh, to have a peaceful mind.

Untroubled by the present, not haunted by the past, not frightened of the path ahead.

Simply living in this moment. Happy to be sleeping on the bed, by the people that he loves.

So the dog is the teacher tonight, the tables have turned and I am the one learning a trick.

To stop the racing cogs and gears of my mind and allow myself to simply be.

To allow myself this stillness, and allow this time of rest.

Like the dog, we will live each day in this house, catching good memories in jars and lining them up on a shelf to look at when the days grow darker.

And when the nights seem longer, we will wait for the sun together.

We will wait and the sun will come, as it always does.

Peaking through the heavy blanket of night like a cool breeze.

And when it does shine again, we will be there together.

grow

Quickly the earth turns from crisp brown to icy white

A soft blanket of snow settling over her, while she slumbers through the frozen night.

Her bright colors have been tenderly folded away for now,

Trusting in the spring, they’ll return again somehow

 It’s the type of cold that makes even the mighty pine stand still.

An earie kind of quite creeps, painting ice on every window sill.

While her children all keep warm by a fire snuggled close

The crackling flames dance merrily, happy to warm fingers and warm toes.

Time slips by in the shaken up, snow globe world until

the frozen heaps begin to melt, and trickling streams begin to fill.

And the parts of her that all seemed buried deep beneath the icy snow

Start to bloom again and perfectly afresh begin to grow.

-AE

Healing

My healing comes in steady waves.

So inconspicuous it could go unnoticed if one wasn’t aware.

Like the second hand on an old clock

I tick slowly on, in minute and determined movements.

The forward movement is so small it could go unnoticed by the naked eye.

Until you glance away, and back again, and see how far I have already come.

The Fall

Sometimes I forget that I am sick

My days fly by in flashes of orange and pink

I feel good, I forget that I have limits and I forget what is inside of me

I just feel normal.

And then I fall.

Walking down the stairs like I have done one thousand times before.

To a twenty-five-year-old the hand rail seems more like decoration than necessity.

Until my feet fall out from under me and my stomach drops

It seems to hit the ground long before my body does.

My phone goes flying across the room as my hands forget their previous task and grasp frantically at the underappreciated railing.

Water soaks into the carpet, and the dropped glass winks at me from the top of the stairs where we both fell, daring me to smile through the pain.

Sometimes, I forget that I am sick.

I don’t remember that my body cannot do some of the things it used to

My back hurts from the fall last week and my arms are speckled with bruises like an overripe pear.

I don’t forget to use the hand rails anymore.

When I look in the mirror, I see the same girl I’ve always known

I don’t see the lesions and I don’t see the pain.

Invisible Illness. That’s the name of my game.

The dark circles under my eyes

and constellation of bruises are all I have of physical proof.

I learn new things like to hold on tight when I am going down the stairs,

to rest when I am weak, and to cherish when I am not.

I remember to go slowly; my body can’t always keep up with what my brain has in mind.

I learn to laugh at the falls, and to not worry about the mistakes that I make.

Sometimes I forget that I am sick, but I never forget that I am strong.

-A

Anxiety Lies

I was going a hundred miles down a road that I couldn’t see

I was fearfully and blindly grasping at the straws in front of me

Hoping for a light to shine and illuminate the way

The right choices for me to make and the right words for me to say

When you hit a bump and you’re going that fast it can cause a massive wreck

Standing in the middle of the highway of my mind, I was surrounded by the damage, a haunted feeling creeping up my spine.

My self-confidence was crumpled like the metal of damaged car

A person in a shell of nothing but some bruises and some scars.

Anxiety smacked me in the face like an airbag going off inside my heart

What was meant to keep me safe and well was now slowly tearing me apart.

I was constantly running, inside the dark parts of my mind,

Running from both past and future, terrified of what I might find.

My mind was playing both the roles in an epic game of “cat and mouse:”

What was once a place of comfort quickly darkened into a madhouse.

I was giving all my power to the fears inside my mind

Until the day I took a deep breath, one small step, and left it all behind.

The best part about the fear that can consume you from inside

is once you turn and face it, it always runs away and hides.

It doesn’t matter if you are little or very very large

When fear slips up right behind you, you are the one who is in charge.

Tell your fears you see them, and that everything’s all right.

Tell your worries that it’s all ok, you can focus on just making it through tonight.

You don’t have to face all of your battles in one almighty war.

You can take it day by day, finding peace and joy in small moments that you never saw before.

Anxiety likes to whisper small doubts into our ears.

Small seeds of fear and of incompetence that grow into monstrous fears.

If we focus on the negative, the evil and the sad

We will only see the darkness, not the blessings that we have.

No matter what your mind is telling you, things are going to turn out just fine.

And to truly enjoy the sun you have to endure some cloudy times.

On this journey for peace I have set upon, I have come to realize.

If there’s one thing you can be sure of it’s that anxiety lies.

The Wave

It feels a thousand years ago

I started on this daunting path

With shaking hands and wild eyes,

Still picking up the broken pieces of the aftermath.

 

What had felt like an impossible feat

Has already begun to come to pass

And the healing that seemed so far away 

Came like a wave crashing over me so fast.

 

Once I accepted where I was 

And stopped trying to control the entire game

I found that were I was, was enough 

And my life was waiting there for me to come reclaim.

 

The part of me that’s hurt is still there

It just doesn’t sting so bad.

I’ve learned to trust myself again,

A self-love I’ve never had. 

 

The fear still creeps up on me

every now and then,

It’s breath hot and sticky

breathing down upon my neck 

 

But instead of curling up to hide 

I look that fear right in the eye, 

And tell it to back right off

Because I get to decide.

 

What is scary, what is dangerous,

What’s worth the adventure and the risk.

That anything life throws at me 

Together my heart and mind can fix.

 

It’s a very scary war to wage,

The one inside your head.

It takes a special kind of brave to speak of your demons

To utter words that long have gone unsaid.

 

Anxiety, OCD, Depression

and so much more.

Just the tip of an iceberg of issues

That the world’s learned to ignore.

 

It’s time we change the stigma, shed a little light.

Mental illness does not make you weak.

It makes you very strong.

And it takes a very brave soul

to ask for help when things go wrong.

 

 

So, the woman who feels hopeless,

Or the man who feels so lost but is afraid to say

Are nothing short of warriors

Donning armor and walking into battle every day.

 

 

So, when you feel the weight crushing down upon your chest,

Remember both the bad and good are but fleeting states at best.

You will learn to cherish every emotion your heart has had and each lesson that life gave,

Once you take a risk to swim and learn to love to ride the wave.

Fall is Here

The air is cold, it bites my skin.

And the trees have shed their leaves again.

The colors have changed from greens to reds and browns.

And my footsteps crunch on the frozen ground.

 

Children wait at bus stops, bundled up from head to toe.

The thermostat was switched from ‘air’ to ‘heat’ not that long ago.

My breath turns to an icy cloud in front of my eyes.

And not even the dog wants to go outside.

 

In the evening, the smell of campfire smoke fills the autumn air.

And summer blooms are covered, or brought safely inside with care.

The windows stay shut tight, to keep the cold away.

And the once blue skies settle into a chilly hue of grey.

 

Inside houses start to smell like spices, sweets, and cheer.

As families travel to each other, to hold their loved ones near.

And though outside, the warmth quickly disappears,

Inside our hearts are toasty warm, because fall is finally here!