Tesserae has expressed things I've been wanting to but never found the words to do so with:
"I love coming out of the darkness into the light ... everything is so much sweeter and more vibrant. Little things become stunningly beautiful and that which has been taken for granted becomes unbelievably precious.
"I get so Lost and alone when I'm stumbling around in the terror of my black despair. I forget that the light inevitably returns and illuminates my way. I am an intense person -- I feel the emotions in the moment, become one with the pain and the agony, then rejoice in the overwhelming relief. It is a hard road. I have walked this path most of my life -- radiant glowing highs and cavernous bloody lows. I am learning not to be ashamed of these ways of being, but rather to embrace them as part of who I am. "
Gods. Exactly. That's it. There is nothing sweeter than coming back into the light after spending a week or a month or a couple of years in the dark. There's this feeling of entirely uplifting joy, a sense on invulnerability and invincibility, and just plain overwhelming happiness.
But it's also hard and tiring...the highs are just so intensely high that there's no time for real rest, no chance just to sit and watch the world go by...and if I'm cycling rapidly like I have been recently, going from low to high to low in a matter of days, the highs are just as rough as the lows. And then there's the fear that comes with the joy...the fear of losing the joy, the certainty that I'm going to slip back into despair soon or eventually or whenever.
I'm tired. There, I admitted it. I'm exhausted from these ups and downs and I have this soul-craving to sleep for something like a week.
I got my tattoo. i'm really happy with how it turned out, i need to get someone to take pictures of it (maybe someone work will), and my mom is going to freak out when she sees it. i don't care.
Oh, and I wrote something.
entrance:
for Beltane
the crocus has come and gone, the plum
trees have dropped petals and unfurled
their purple leaves, the ducks nest
undisturbed in the neighbor's yard;
the lake has warmed to the approach of May
and calmed under eastern winds.
behind the glow of their keyboards and mannequins
the word masturbation is misspelled with
frequency alarming but not unexpected.
They're dressing a green man somewhere in Iowa
for the holiday and talking about the year
it snowed, four years and five babies ago
and the spring has finally broken winter
ice, spinning all the winged things free
and whirling the estranged from their solid
foundations to dreams of the things that would
be theirs again, someday--
and the chanting droning, early-mating cicadas
laying Beltane eve's restless sleep
like dark steps on expectant land.
--ksf, 1998