in the light

Vulnerability is a virtue that only the light can teach us.

I was the last person you (or any of my past English teachers) would have ever expect to become a poet.

I started writing poetry about five years ago while suffering through a seemingly endless destructive tsunami of depression.

Every day I felt myself being pulled further out to sea to drown in an untraceable melancholy- and writing poetry was the only thing I could find to bring me back to shore.

During the worst of it (and believe me, it was truly horrible) in early June of 2016, I started a collection of poems that was just for my eyes only.

It was called “During This, My Last Summer on Earth.”

I was fully convinced I wouldn’t make it out of the year alive.

I thought I was about to turn into ash and any trace of me would be blown away by the howling Wyoming wind.

I wrote each day to save my life - and coupled with some outside help - I was (obviously) able to survive the insidious lies depression was telling me.

Each of those poems in “During this, my last summer on Earth.” was written like a desperate love letter to myself.

I was begging my heart to hang on.

I was 43 without a career or any hope to find one. I felt so very rudderless. I was just floating along. I was waiting at a bus stop that wasn’t on any route.

I couldn’t stand the way my life looked. I wanted to throw up every time I was forced to contemplate the image I was giving the world.

I had become an unbearable middle-aged cliche.

All around me were successful people driving fancy cars and taking exquisite vacations - and here I was barely existing. I cursed my life. I wished I would have been born somebody else. I wished I would have been given a different brain and heart. I loathed myself completely.

It was as I wrote this poem in late August that a revelation came to me that seemed long over due:

It’s okay to be authentically imperfect.

Up until that point in my life I had been living somebody else’s life.

I was living to meet the expectations of ghosts and what society was telling me I should be.

I was hiding who I was ~ to keep people from seeing my weaknesses and faults ~ and that showed up in my writing and relationships.

It was all so shallow.

I was quietly living in the fiction section of my purpose when I needed to be banging a gong in the non-fiction aisle.

I was done lying to myself.

I was ready to embrace my journey to be a unique artist. I was ready to drop the act and to start living, speaking, writing and loving authentically.

This poem below and the other 59 from my collection I furiously write over 60 days was called “During this, My Last Summer On Earth.” saved my life.

They are among my most gut-wrenching pieces I ever wrote. Each poem is a scar that still itches whenever I read them.

I will likely never release any of these poems for public consumption - but I want to share this one with you today.