Anxiety

Sometimes anxiety wants to dance with me. Most of the time I'd like to sit this one out.

Sometimes anxiety

Is just

Stray synapses firing.

Sometimes anxiety

Wants to dance

With me

You know the moves,

She says,

You know the steps.

I tell her once I learned the box step,

Tried to learn the cha-cha-cha,

But mostly I make up the steps

As I go along.

Sometimes I am rather hard to follow.

Anxiety says

You’re telling me!
You never let me lead!

Roller Derby

I almost didn't post this.  But hey, here it is.  I think we are, all of us, several people.  The idea is to get everyone together, on one team.

I am peopled by bitches

With short Roller Derby names:

Gert

Flo

Pru

Ang

They demand to be called

By their shortened names

So they will be named out loud

More often,

Held and cherished

And part of me.

Gert is my Depression:

The black dog with her red spiked collar.

Flo:

She Who Must be Indulged

She will take some time

To love

But love her I will.

Pru:

The Small One Who Must be Heard

She has been waiting for years

With bows in her hair.

Ang is my Anxiety:

The pit bull:

She goes for the jugular

With even imagined threat

So I may lay even lower.

I am peopled by bitches

With Roller Derby names.

They are part of my team.

There is no “I”

In team.

There is only we,

All of us together

A pack of bitches.

We demand

To be recognized.

Discombobulation

I would prefer to have other things occupy my mind.  When something vital, like a professional calendar, goes missing, all the creative spots go missing as well.  They are taken up with anxiety. My daughter and I leave this afternoon with a friend and friend*s mother to visit schools in Boston. We all have different ideas of what such things mean: trips and college visits et al.  Meanwhile, the floors are being cleaned downstairs.  I cannot locate my calendar, which has our flight arrangements clipped into the front of it.  I think I must have put it somewhere safe.  Right.

I sit upstairs

While the floors are being cleaned

Underneath me.            

It began

It continues

As a day

Of discombobulation.

I try to settle

In an upstairs chair,

Green,

In the bedroom.

This room is already clean.

My calendar

Has gone missing.

I know it is somewhere

Downstairs.

Perhaps I can blame

The cat.

I consider the implications

Of a calendar

Lost in thin air.

I reconstruct it

In my head.

Again I settle back

Into the green chair.

I would like to write creative things.

Not this.

Anxiety in the rocking chair

This is one of those times I wonder what defines me, what the future holds.  My fear, of course, is that it holds nothing.   In these moments Anxiety sits across from me, stares me in the eye.  I have given her my father*s sweater jacket, the one he used to wear on his farm in Wisconsin, and my blue and white sweater socks.  She and I will go for a massage next week, get our shoulders back into place.  Right now we*re drinking tea.

Tonight I sit with Anxiety

Across from me

In the rocking chair.

She rocks

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

She wears three mismatched sweaters,

Red and purple,

Moss green knit

Fake fleece inside,

Moth hole chewed into the left sleeve,

Her father used to wear it

On the farm.

Blue and white sweater socks

Hold her feet.

Anxiety*s shoulders

Hunch up around her ears.

I promise to call tomorrow,

Make her an appointment

For a massage

Early next week.

She wonders out loud

If tea would be a good idea.

What a good idea

I say

Let me put the kettle on.

Remains

I am wired anxious.  It seems to be the way my brain is wired.  A natural predilection which does not make staring at what remains to be done, to be seen, to be heard ... well... it does not make it a comfortable place.      Yes I do believe that God is in charge of that big pile of remains in front of me.  Some of the pile is mine to consider more carefully.  Most has been allocated elsewhere.

It remains to be seen.

It remains to be heard.

It remains to be discerned.

So much  

Simply

Remains.

I gaze at the snow,

Consider what I must do,

Consider what I must leave

On someone else*s plate.

If it is not mine

God has surely decided

To allocate it

Elsewhere,

For whatever reasons

In that unfathomable pile of things

That are not mine

To decide

To do

To wrestle with.

I gaze at the snow.

I offer the remains.

I watch the ducks.

It seems I am doing

Nothing

Ok

Almost nothing

But consider

The remains.

They are not mine.

They remain to be seen

They remain to be heard

They are in the pile

The pile

Remains.

This too will pass

Often I find myself counseling someone who is anxious.  I am no stranger to anxiety.  Often I need to take my own advice.  Sometimes I even do.

I remind people every day

This too will pass.

Take a breath

Find a quiet place

Shut the door.

This too will pass.

I remind myself

Again and again,

Particularly now,

This too will pass.

Breathe.

Find a quiet place

Shut the door.

Post the sign that says

In session;

Pull down the shade.

No one has to know

I am in session

With myself.

God listens with every breath

I take.

No money changes hands.

God does not charge

A fee.

Dry wall people

The contractor is also here, along with the dry wall people.  We like the contractor.  I hadn*t quite realized the anxiety that comes along with such a project.  Now we are going to work out.  I do not know what we will find when we return.  

The dry wall people,

The ones who broke our house

Last week,

Have returned.

Perhaps they are extra good

At dry wall,

Certainly not so good

Around water pipes

Or holes in the ceiling.

The dry wall people

Have returned.

They have returned.

Did I say

They have returned?

We leave to work out

In five minutes.

The dry wall people

Are upstairs.

The ones who broke our house

Last week.