Reaching Out of Your Mind.

 Tis the season 

when sadness looms, when despair overwhelms, when the light is literally gone or going, when life becomes filled with dark, cold, empty spaces.

When many of us retreat so far into ourselves that the corridor has closed behind us and we are stuck in a place with no door, no window, and no way out.

All we can see is the can'ts, wont's, don'ts. 

We do not want anyone to know how far, how remote we've become. We pretend we're fine. We smile and make jokes when with others so they won't know how bad things are with us. 

It's a time of year for joy and love. For literal warmth. For family huddling together in their caves until the world grows back into light and warmth of its own. 

As happens when this season rolls around, there are many suicides and suicide attempts. Sometimes the mind collapses in on itself like a pile of so much rubble.

That Which Survives is buried, with pressure pressing all around. Pressing, pushing. compressing, making us smaller and more ineffective.

Recent suicides in my area have sprouted a lot of conversation on social media. 

The messages are, or should be, hopeful, cheering, encouraging, optimistic. 

For the most part, that is what they are --

to the ones not reduced to rubble in the dark places of their own souls. 

Depression is a disease with many forms, many and varied symptoms, and a whole lot of unknowns. We, as a society, are finally acknowledging the disease aspect of this, and we even think we know how to help. 

All the patient needs to do, is reach out, ask for help. Anyone can do that, right?

Well, no. 

No one expects someone with a high fever and delirium to be walking around and talking sense. 

No one expects the starving man or the thirsty child, so ill that any movement exhausts the energy in their muscles to the point of pain and unconsciousness, to get up off the floor and walk to the nearest kitchen and fix themselves. Shouting at a pneumonia patient to just breathe (or cough) is NOT going to make the air go in any easier or more effectively. 

Yet this is exactly what you are asking of the lost souls buried in the dust, pebbles, rocks, bricks that are the rubble smothering and shredding them into components.

You ARE wonderful, opening yourself to the ill and offering to be their go-to when they need help. All they have to do is ask, or tell you of their need. 

Their disease prevents them from doing so. It is a symptom. 

They cannot ask.

They cannot reach.

It is not a matter of will.

It is not something they can do. 

It is a symptom of their disease. 

If you want to help, to prevent, to heal, YOU must be the one to watch for the symptoms, to reach out, to do the asking.

And it can be a helpless repetitive job. 

You may not get answers. 

You may get lies instead of truths. 

You may be ignored and you will probably be shut out.

Darkness does not allow the admission of light, because when light enters, darkness is no more.

Look around you, at the people you live with, work with, deal with. 

Are they being more quiet OR more noisy than is normal for them?

Are they preoccupied or often not occupied at all?

Are they just not themselves? 

Ask them.

If they don't answer, or return generic answers -- "Just got a lot on my mind" or "it's been a tough time" or even "I'm tired; that's all. -- ask again. 

Tell them you are here for them. 

Then be there. Helping hand extended.

They cannot ask. The disease prevents that.

They may not be able to respond, and you are going to have to wield the shovel and shift the rubble. You are going to have to use an ice pick to bore a hole through a solid wall to let in the ray of light. 

You will have to administer the treatment.

And they may fight you. Resist by non-response. That first beam of light can be painful to eyes that have too long endured the black blankness. Effective antibiotics can make an infection seem worse by declaring war on the invaders, who increase their numbers until the drug cuts off their reinforcements.

Do NOT say, they could've -- no, they couldn't. Their illness does not permit this.

Pay attention to behaviors, words, attitudes. 

If YOU care, you must, must, must be the one to reach out. 

Amidst the Mists: The Bridge (1)

He opened his eyes and they looked out at the nighttime darkness of a cozy room, but he didn’t even see that.

The image before him was that of a bridge.

The most beautiful, unrealistic bridge he’d ever seen.

A fairy bridge. Made of lights, colors, and threads.

And he had seen it before.

He had run from it before.

That night…

He steadied himself in his mind. No more running.

Besides, what was frightening about a bridge? Even an unworldly one? Even one created by fairies and woven by spiders with spider-thread? Ones that caught the silver-and-gold light and turned it to dancing rainbows of dancing color?

He looked the bridge over carefully, in his mind.

He had seen pictures of bridges built that way, he knew with certainty. Huge steel behemoths, towering over waters, the bridging held up by what looked to be fine dainty fibers but were actually metallic cables somehow spun together to bear great weight, but with flexibility.

He thought maybe he had actually seen one, without the colors and the soft focus. Real ones. Or maybe only one.

But where? He’d had to travel, at times, but those times he tried to keep few and far between, and also short. He had never liked being away from home for long, even before he had married and started with the children.

Home was everything, and the best part of traveling for his work was when he could return home, whether as a success or a failure. It all worked out.

It always worked out.

After he got home.




It didn’t really matter where he had seen such a bridge (New York, maybe?), he just knew that he had.

There was some comfort to be found that an actual bridge designer, working with real and modern materials, had seen such a bridge and figured out how to build one. He’d made it real.

It was a real thing, in the world.

Not, he reminded himself, made of cobwebs and moonbeams, but still real. The cobwebs and moonbeams were for the future. Something for the young to aspire to.




The thing about the bridge – he studied the mental image once more. The bridge didn’t end. It arced, and it faded into the distance, the bridge lights mingling with the stars. The bridge wasn’t swallowed by fog, or obscured by scenery. It was there, and you looked as far as you could see, and it was still there, and then there was a point where you could no longer separate it from its background. The words ‘blur’ and ‘fade’ were inadequate to this great light-based phenomena, but they were the best he had.

The important thing about the bridge wasn’t its style or even its existence.



The important thing about the bridge was its load.

Amidst the Mist 5

“I am always with you. Why don’t you understand that?”

The man answered slowly, thinking out loud as he had so often

done with his friend. “The memory of you is always with me. But a

memory isn’t you.”

“Who is it then?”

“It’s an it, not a who.”

“Whos aren’t its? What are they then?”

"Whos are whos. Persons. Its are  things.”

“Well I like to think I’m some thing. Some kind of a thing.”

“I like to think you’re a person. Even when you aren’t anymore.”

“Yet here I am.”

“Here you are.”

They fell silent. 

They waited, together, in a place that didn’t (shouldn’t) exist, where their

presence together was as tangible as the strong friendship (love) between

them.

Both bodies and spirits seemed made whole out of the fog, by the fog,

and they rested as part of the fog. 

The fog itself swirled and rippled around them, lightening and darkening,

and in general deepening and entwining, until there was nothing to be seen but the

glimmering light and the embracing cloud.

A slice of time.

It's been a grayish rainish day today and now that night is creeping in, the sunlight has taken on a misty mystic haze of almost-but-not-quite-a-rainbow light.

The air glows like golden dust.

The sun is behind the trees now. The trees are haloed in the diffused light. Not quite colors quiver as leaves tremble.

Along the alley, a long lazy ray of white light makes its way down the pavement, perfectly placed evenly with the edges. At those edges, where the light meets the grass, the color blossoms into golden fizz, dancing above the ground.

I reach for my phone, my only camera, and try to capture this ethereal moment that was already fading.

I cannot, of course. The magic is beyond both my skill and the phone cameras abilities.

I hope my words have helped you to see it. A slice of time such as this is meant to be shared,and i am sharing it with you.

Hints of Spring

It seems the winter may never end.
It will never stop snowing.
Snow will melt and freeze.

But, driving down the roads, one sees the signs of spring.
Not, as you may think, in the clearing, brimming ditches, or the yellowing of the willow limbs.
Nor in the increase in road kill or the presence of predators.

The real clue is in the garbage at the curb.
There are mattresses and couches and pots of desiccated plants.
There are outgrown toddler toys, often with a free sign taped on.
There is an old door there, and a busted window frame across the street. (Wonder if both or either of those homes houses any type of ball player?)
There are paint buckets and piles of tree limbs.

Gliders are being painted and left to dry on porches.
Cushion covers are being washed and cushions are fluffed and filled.
Swings are being rehung  -- or new swingsets  are going up.
Windows sparkle and doors stand ajar as in welcome.

Spring cleaning is a sure sign of spring, as all creatures leave their dens and begin to ramble, sometimes half-blind and half-starved (for what? Light, food, companionship? Does it matter?).
Winter's waste is being cleared away.
Light is being let in.
Life returns to bursting-at-the-seams.

Welcome Spring.
You old slowpoke, you.