Earth Mother, a Carer called Hope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Regular readers will know that many years ago, when I was in my early thirties, I had a severe nervous breakdown and became suicidal. I overdosed on paracetamol and was unconscious for thirty-six hours. I awoke in such pain that I somehow found the resolve to make my way to my nearby GP’s surgery but only recall telling a receptionist I had taken an overdose before I passed out again to wake up in hospital the next morning. 

It was stupid thing to do. Yet, desperation rarely if ever recognises stupidity. 

In hospital, I felt guilty and ashamed for taking up a bed and the nurses’ time. The nurses were brilliant and could not have been kinder, which made me feel all the more ashamed of what, after all, is a very selfish act. 

Yes, selfish. Yet, desperation rarely if ever recognises selfishness either.  

For the first and only time in my life, I saw a psychiatrist who was actually very helpful. [I have seen several who have been a complete waste of time.] It would be several years before I recovered sufficiently to think about finding another job, and years more before I began to feel all but fully recovered.  I have looked upon every day since as a bonus. 

I survived all this with the support of some good friends and a faith in Earth Mother of which I had  had temporarily lost sight in a maze of feelings to which I could scarcely relate, and where I had lost all sense of identity. Various factors contributed to this sorry state of affairs, not least growing up in a gay-unfriendly environment although this was but one of many; a significant hearing loss no one appreciated, including myself as a child and an appalling relationship with my father played their part. Even so, I was an adult and needed to take responsibility for myself instead of playing the blame game and sinking into self-pity. I like to think I learned that lesson as time passed and I got a life. 

Anyone driven to despair, whether or not they contemplate suicide, will know that it is hard if not impossible at the time to rationalise either cause or consequences. It is an illness for which the only cure must come from within. Yet, so often, those in despair fail to find the strength they need to go that last mile. But if strength fails them, so too does human nature. Even these days, mental illness is regarded with suspicion and scepticism. 

I was lucky to have some good friends and Earth Mother looking out for me.  My despair had been a long slow burning fuse that was bound to ignite a powder keg of sheer chaos in me sooner or later. There were casualties other than myself, and I can only hope they, too, survived to continue making the best of life, people and circumstances; a philosophy that saved me and taught me a valuable lesson. 

So if you know anyone caught up in a downward spiral of depression and despair, please don’t give up on them, but lend a helping hand to being them back to mainstream life. There are no shortcuts, and the journey is likely to be a long one; in my case, years, and I’ve still a way to go yet. I have travelled a long way along that road, and am grateful for all the help I’ve had in making every step. But among all the good memories, there will always be bad ones that will try to pull us down and sometimes succeed however hard we resist. 

When I started to recover from my breakdown, many people thought I was ‘cured’; as if I’d had a bad dose of flu and was now okay. 30+ years on, I hear from and about other people in much the same position. So much for progress in real terms; that is to say in human terms...

Earth Mother image taken from the Internet

EARTH MOTHER, A CARER CALLED HOPE

I sat by the sea contemplating suicide
when a woman in green came and sat by my side.
stayed quite still, didn’t say a word;
my head, it rang with a gull’s shrill cry
as if echoing the heart’s screaming to be left to die,
no hanging on to this useless body

The woman in green didn’t look at me
but continued to exude that youth, life and beauty
I’d once loved, become my enemy;
following her gaze to a misty horizon,
I entered into a way of seeing altogether unknown
where the sea wore a green velvet gown

Grey hair streaked with a sunset’s glow
above eyes as teasing a blue as those I used to know
and pink lips urging me not to follow;
where once the sea, now a patch of grass
beneath an old tree on whose leaves of painted glass
nature would work its magic for us

Vanished, just as suddenly as it came,
knowing memories will keep murmuring your name
(sea of grass, leaves of glass, the same);
suddenly, I am bursting with a desire
to live (even love?) again, like an autumn leaf on fire,
its story all but told, waiting on another

I laughed aloud, forgetting the Woman in Green
and turned to explain, but she had already gone

Copyright R. N. Taber 2011