"A Million Hours Left to Think of You, and Think of That"

*I am not an expert. I am just a person sharing a piece of my story*

I have only told three people outside of counselors that I self-injure. The counselors, surprisingly, or perhaps not, both had the same nonchalant attitude about it, like if they showed it was a large concern, it would become a bigger problem. Maybe this is how they are taught to treat it? And they always ask: “Why do you think you do it?” and I give the real and honest answer, “To make a physical manifestation (yes, I say that. I’m a poet) of the pain I feel on the inside on the outside.” Seeing blood or feeling a burning pain from the emotional or mental distress, in whatever way, makes it seem less serious BECAUSE it can be SEEN. The pain can be visualized. I’ve placed it outside of myself. 

When pain isn’t tangible, it seems less real. And when what you are feeling doesn’t seem real, you feel insane. So, there came a point for me when I needed the injury, the wound, the blood to feel a bit more ok.

It started small. I’d bite a nail to a jagged edge and run it on my skin until it burned. Then, until it bled. I have a scar from the time an ex-boyfriend wouldn’t let up on a lecture that before I knew it, I was flying to Washington D.C. with a significant cut from digging and digging the night before.

I found myself finding relief in restaurant bathrooms during stressful situations, or what I now know to be panic attacks.

I changed my method over time to get faster blood results and, honestly, the Washington D.C. dig had caused a seeable scar. I had to draw blood, feel pain, and not scar and the new method allowed me to accomplish this goal.

Self-Injury is not about a cry for help. It’s self-therapy. If it was a cry for help, self-injurers wouldn’t work so hard to hide it. This is my own opinion. It is unhealthy self-therapy, but it is what it is: an extensive symptom of my diagnosed depression and anxiety.

According to the Self-Injury Foundation, “research shows that the main reason people self-injure is to regulate intense emotional states; that is, to feel better” and that scratching, cutting, burning, biting, facial picking and other self-harm behaviors are exhibited by those who self-injure.

I haven’t self-injured in a few weeks, but I am glad I found the Self-Injury Foundation website. The information there has given me perspective about why I self-injure. Reading that my self-injury isn’t because I’m “crazy” and am, in fact, self-medicating in an unhealthy way has helped me understand my motives more.

If you, or someone you know, self-injures, please visit www.selfInjuryfoundation.com or contact your doctor.

Dream, Reality, Fantasy

You know, I try to be Ms. Revolutionary and try not to care that I am no longer married, am jaded and accepting of a non-traditional lifestyle, but sometimes this tra-la-la stuff stops and I get smacked in the face with gorgeous engagement pictures on Facebook or bridal showers or weddings of well-adjusted individuals I know. My fear is that I will veer away from this sort of happiness because 1) I feel I don’t deserve it. I had my chance and/or 2) this sort of happiness and stability doesn’t really happen anymore. Yet, there it is in front of my face, this POSSIBILITY of the American dream: someone to commiserate over student loans, to have more children with, to know the ins and outs of each others quirks. Maybe I’m just not built for it anymore. 

I wonder if this is a post-divorce phase? Will I ever be or feel eligible for a real baby shower or bridal shower? Will I ever wear my dream wedding gown? None of those things happened with my first marriage or first child. I feel this is the price I pay for having been a 19-year-old mother and newlywed.

What are your experiences? Have you been here? Did you get out of the slump? Did you embrace the new “fun-loving, devil may care” you? Are you a married lady who thinks women like me are nuts? 

Tell me.

The Poet Game

Where do poems come from? I wish I knew. And I do know, in some sense because I can feel the place they arise from but I cannot manifest it with words, which in and of itself is ironic.

I can try to explain it as the place of contemplation. The place where you work yourself out. Where the poet mind meets the earth. Where the poet mind meets philosophy. Where the poets make their own philosophies.

I find myself writing poems after small moments that feel important. Minute tragedies of living within small moments of beauty. Moments where the lesson learned was in front of me all along.

Poems can come from a plane's wheels leaving the ground. From wishes and nightmares. More likely they arise from the space between the two.

Sometimes, I can feel a poem coming on. This has happened to me since I was young. The need to put words to paper. To let the metaphor of living poor out.

I sometimes forget the poet side living in me and when I don’t have one of those moments for months, like recently, I fear it could be gone forever. The flux of life gives us the small tragedies. The large ones. The whispers of perfection. The continued fall of mankind. As poets, our job, duty, liveliness is to grasp these pieces, make them whole, if even for a moment; to try and make sense of what is real.

How to Date a Single Mother

After hearing about this list of  '50 Reasons to Date Me' in a Craigslist Man for Woman ad, I felt inspired to make one of my own.

How to Date a Single Mother:

1)      Don’t imply anything her child does is lame.

2)      Never expect her to meet you for the first time anywhere but in a public place, undermining her awareness to stay safe is a jerk move.

3)      Treat her like the normal woman, not one who should be lucky a man ‘in this day and age’ would want to date a woman with a child anyway.

4)      Don’t take it as an insult when she insists on the first date being in a public place. That’s another jerk move.

5)      Wanting any woman to meet you in a non-public place for the first time is creepy (OK, moving on from this point now).

6)      Never say you want to meet her children if you are not sure. Make sure this is at least after a few months of dating.

7)      Don’t try to date anyone if you don’t even have enough money to buy your own cup of coffee.

8)      Don’t break up with her to date a woman who lives upstairs.

9)      Always be honest. Seriously, you can avoid many problems this way.

10)  As in all things in life: be kind, have manners and treat her as you wish to be treated.

Poetry Has Been Around the Block

I love slam poetry. The good stuff with some poignant swearing, double entendre and a clear message.

There are poets I know, who shall remain nameless, that don’t view slam poetry as real “poetry.” Poetry is something of academia, movements…LITERARY. Slam is viewed as some sort of bastardized child that resulted from the one night that poetry broke up with nonfiction for a night and slept with rap.

I don’t view it that way. I think poetry took some lovers (and shit, why WOULDN’T it): hip hop, soul, R&B, civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights, and stayed friends after. Birthed a few beatniks and revolutionaries; true poets wandering the line of nonfictional storytelling, musical expression, and filmic scene. Mudblood poets who deserve their full birthright. I think montage and monologue got a lot of action, too. Is there any shame in that? I don’t think so.

Do I have a point? Well, not particularly during these wee hours of the morning, but I will say this, poetry is poetry, whether it sits on the page or comes writhing out of our lips in front of a crowd.

Check out these links and go see The Whirlwind Company perform here in Spokane on April 13^th.

Jon Sands

Shira Erlichman

Anis Mojgani

Andrea Gibson

Karma is Not My Chameleon

I was reading an article in Yoga Journal (March 2012 issue) the other day about Karma and it said that when you are drawn to someone, this is karma at work and that when it ends, you are have worked out what Karma needed you to work out with each other.

To me, I see this as having the same reasoning as “all things happen for a reason” or “God’s Plan for your life.” It’s the same principle, and to me, the same ‘power’ at work.

What I don’t like is that these cosmic meetings or planned life intersections with others are to end. If this is true, what’s the point? Is this some evil form of “it is better to have loved and lost, then to not ever have loved at all?” And I supposed I can see the Karma principal functioning with friends, co-workers or bosses but love?

Perhaps, yogis and other Eastern thinkers would tell me the Karmic meetings don’t have to end. To be clear: my God is a kind one, one who gave me free will and thus, the Problem of Evil is a result of this free will. We are free to love and to destroy each other. Blessing and miracles occur, but life isn’t pretty. And I see that this might be what karma is kind of about, too.

When you bring the word Karma into the discussion, it carries with it the belief of ‘you get what you give.’ The Yoga Journal article says this view of karma is way too simplified. Karma works without our intake/output as its prime source but instead works things out between people as they need to be done.

As a poet, I have always found the intricacies of humanity: the way we treat each other, the ebb and flow of intimacy, the rise and fall of wars (in the human mind to the traditional sense of the word), to be the subjects of my poems. And you can call me a confessional poet, if you want. I am in good company.

But what is important is working through being human and right now this karma dosage is messing with my head. Something like this wouldn’t normally shake my grasp on the idea of a ‘higher power’ but to try and find meaning, in what seems like needless torture between any two given people, doesn’t make sense.

So I go back to the ‘click’ of revelation I had while reading John Hick in Forrest Baird’s Philosophy of Religion course at Whitworth University. The sense of calm I felt in knowing the different Being(s) the world believes in are one entity of power. And that this Being’s name(s) change(s) due to the culture of one’s birth and the familial culture of your life. It was within that “click” moment inside Weyerhauser Hall in which my faith was born.

So I have to take this Karmic piece and look at it through my poet eye because for me, Buddhist thought is just another culture’s view of my faith. And for now, I have to say Karma is the name of Buddha’s view of free will defined as this: As humans we come together, love and hurt each other, and ultimately part in one way or another.

I have to be ok with that definition right now.

As for synthesizing it all with my life this past year?

Wish me luck.

*Brighid art by Renee Thompson

**Article: "Seeds of Change" by Sally Kempton

Which Way Will WIC go?

I loved being on WIC from 2000-2005. I loved the cooking classes, free recipe books and never having to worry about food for my son. My ex-husband and I were very poor college students back then so knowing there would be cereal, milk and other food for our son in constant supply was a blessing indeed.

For me, WIC was pretty consistent. You went in about once a month, had your child weighed, measured and sometime a finger prick to check iron levels (a child can be on WIC until the age of 5 or until your income increases over poverty mark for the family size). Then, you got your folder of checks. These checks were good for specific items and varied in selection with the child’s age.

Once in a while they had me sign up for a class. One was on how to make macaroni and cheese from scratch (white base, add cheese, boil macaroni, put in oven) and another on the number of fruits and vegetables your child was to eat per day and how to make eating them fun and interesting (ants on a log!). Most classes came with government-printed recipe books and handouts. I thought it was fun, and honestly, a bit like junior high home-ec class, which I also liked quite a bit.

But I was surprised to hear that many women have had different experiences with WIC than I have. Reports of “pushy staff” and mundane visits have been ringing in my ears. Some even quit. I think it would take a lot for me to quit a free food program but when you hear that a mother “didn’t feel respected as a parent” that is definitely hard to take. I think that would push me over the edge.

WIC tried to pressure me into breastfeeding but in no way with a heavy hand. In the office, I succumbed to pressure to join a class just to learn about it but then cancelled. I was 19 and pregnant. All my brothers and sisters had been bottle-fed and I wanted my husband to be able to help. I worried about breastfeeding not working out. I could go on and on but I don’t want to make this a breastfeeding post. Suffice it to say, I just wasn’t ready to breastfeed. I was young, scared and had no frame of reference. I gave a sigh of relief when I got my first formula checks without hassle.

So, upon reading that WIC is actually trying to recruit low income families to join, I started to wonder why this would be needed. Isn’t the Right always saying we “poor people” want our free cheese? Guess we don’t if they are all up in our parenting business.

I hope WIC is taking surveys to see why people leave or refuse to join. WIC doesn’t seem to be as well-known as it used to be. Has it overstayed its welcome? I don’t think so. Perhaps there is pressure from higher up Government folks for WIC to produce impressive numbers to report back to those who elected to support and fund the program. I’ve learned in my past few months of grant writing that grantors (government or not) REALLY want to see what you do with THEIR money. Perhaps that’s it…WIC is pressuring parents to churn out super babies so they can keep their funding.

What’s your WIC story? I’d love to hear it.