Thursday 29 September 2011

This evening's dose of poetry

Nothing especially fancy for tonight's post - just a poem I sloughed off a while back and only just got around to editing.

Clear


The storm screamed hour upon hour
Tick... Tock... Unreasoning, unrelenting
Winds howling the same note
An angle grinder cutting a steel chest.

All day the trees lashed left and right
Walls complained a sing-song tune
Solid things seemed to yearn for release
For culmination, for a chance to break.

The sound and the pain gave birth to news.
The screaming lowering as the radio voiced life.
The system was passing and soon, "all clear".
We came out into the grey, windswept light.

Ragged winds tugged at our coats and hair
Playful, angry, harmless, like petulant children.
Trees, rooves and other peoples lives, shattered
Strewn about by a weak eyed and pitiless giant.

The sky began to muster its colour
Clouds haunted the horizon like thugs brought to heel.
We began to rebuild, the greatest of all acts of love.
Tensely trusting in that word: "clear".

Thursday 22 September 2011

Update.

Writing a quick update just to keep the blog ticking over.  I'll try and keep it quick though.  I'm meant to be wading through a file at the moment.

Well, the first thing is that after the last couple of entries (the ones that vanished following a pile-up on the Information SuperHighway), I made contact with a psychologist who I've now seen 3 or 4 times.  If you're in Melbourne, by the way, I'd recommend her if you're in need of getting your head read.  It's a service refreshingly free of guff and gets to the heart of matters.  Which in my case translated into -

  1. Diagnosis of Mild-to-Moderate depression;
  2. A suggestion that I speak to my GP about medication.  I've never been a fan of medication, but I asked Mrs T for her thoughts and she thought it would be a good idea.  I took that on board and am now on 50mg of Pristiq each morning and frankly, feel much better consistently.  Truthfully I'm kicking myself I didn't ask about it earlier.
  3. Some fairly straightforward means of getting on top of the mood-swings and ups and downs that had kind of been running amok.
  4. Now that my day-to-day functioning is more or less stabilised, looking at why I make the assumptions about myself and about the world that I do, and how those assumptions can be rectified where they're defective.

I think I've been benefiting from it.  Truthfully, I haven't felt this normal in I don't know how long, but a very long time.  I've never enjoyed feeling like my old self so much, and I'm hoping it's translating into something Mrs T and the lower-case t's can feel too.

The other update is that I saw my folks weekend before last and explained to them that we're moving to the US.  They barely even reacted.  Two phrases from Mum that stick in my mind are "Yes, well... so what?" and "Colour us not very surprised".  Beyond asking what I'd do for work over there, they hardly even asked about it.  The odd thing is, I'm not sure I can feel myself reacting to their lack of reaction.  I guess this means things are going in the direction they're meant to go.

In all things, trust in God.