I saw my therapist last week and for the first time read some of my stuff. Most of it was poetry but there was one essay. She seemed impressed and encouraged me all the more to pursue writing as more than a hobby. This is all fine and well except for one little hitch, I can't seem to write like that anymore. All of my best work is old, really old. Almost all of the poetry is pre-medication which makes some sense if you think about it. Poetry is about conveying emotion. Painting an emotional portrait with words. While often dark in nature many too glimmer with some hope. There is fear in them as well. Fear of what the medication that has freed me from the pit and robbed me of the flights would leave me with. Finally I am able to be someone who can provide a stable and loving home for the son I am so lucky to have this late in the game but the price seems to be my poetic voice.

So much raw emotion lurks in my poetry. Nights like this when sleep eluded me I would be filled with emotional turmoil, prose would spill from me with little thought or plan, rising fully formed like Venus from the sea. Now I suffer disappointment at my loss but even that emotion is rounded with no sharp edges to cut me and spill my poetic blood. Words still entrance me but I can no longer make them dance. I am left often struggling for the words to express the blandness that has filled the space where emotions once roiled. Love for my son is intense and My Darling holds my heart as no other but I wonder how much deeper might those emotions go if I where a little more of what I once was. But that is a slippery slope. Not long ago I was visited by some of the misery that tempered the joys this condition can deliver. My heart ached and fear and doubt ripped at my spirit. I suffered a depth I thought I had left behind me. A change in my medication reinstated the blandness and I am happy to be lifted from the pit but my pleasure is also diluted by the same medication that frees me from the pain.

That is the rub, is it better to suffer the agony and ecstasy for this gift of my voice or muzzle myself for my families sake? I have chosen my family and I don't regret that choice. I do however miss my voice.

My therapist didn't understand what I was trying to convey by brining in my work. While she wanted to use the exposure to encourage me I was trying to get her to see how writing, especially poetry, cuts me. The wound is painful but not enough to bring the words. Even the loss of my voice sits blandly on me.

*sigh*

I never sing anymore either, why is that?

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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