Author: Linda L. Kruschke

I am a Jesus Freak, and I don't care who knows it. I write candid memoir and fearless poetry, and delve into hard issues others tend to avoid. I want others to know God’s redemption and healing are just a story away.

Processing Pain Through Poetry

 

heart

 

by Linda K

I wrote this poem a couple of months ago. I wrote it while trying to process the struggle of dealing with one sister who suffers with mental illness (bipolar disorder and bulimia) and other family members who don’t understand.

I have experienced seven years of major clinical depression myself, and over the last few years have come to the realization that ending up there again is not outside the realm of possibility if I’m not ever vigilant. But that doesn’t make the family relationships any easier, and I often feel like I’m the only glue or buffer holding things together, and I’m not doing a very good job at it.

I share this here to maybe give someone else the strength to keep being that glue or to appreciate the one in the family who is the glue or . . . well, frankly I’m not sure why. It just seems like something I need to share.

A note on the final stanza: I do not, in any way, wish that the person this poem is about was dead. Far from it. I’ve lost too many other family members, including another sister who died of cancer two years ago. But on the day I wrote this, that felt like it would have been easier to take than the present situation.

Impossible Madness

Why does it feel like I’ve lost you
when you aren’t even dead?

Why am I the only one
who wants to make amends?

Why does it have to be so hard
after all these years?

Maybe it’s the tears
mine and yours, and theirs,
that makes breathing and living
loving and forgiving so impossible

I guess sometimes families and madness
can’t survive one another

Because that’s what you are, you know,
mad, or crazy, or mentally ill
whatever you want to call it

It’s torn us apart
because you don’t understand
why they can’t begin to comprehend
what’s going on inside your head

It’s torn us—you and me—apart
because you’ve convinced yourself
that I don’t at all understand
what’s going on inside your head

You forget I’ve been there
that those crazy, mad thoughts
have been inside my head, too

But then you’ve forgotten a lot of things
all the times I was there for you
just to listen
and the times you were there for me

Forgetting the good
is a tragic side effect
of medications meant to help
Somehow they don’t erase
memories of the less-than-perfect moments

My greatest desire is to forgive
and to be forgiven
to live and laugh and love again
to mend what has been torn asunder
to heal the thoughts inside your head

But right now, in this moment
it feels like you might as well be dead
at least that would be easier to live with

 

aasignLinda

You can find Linda’s own website at http://lindakruschke.wordpress.com/

 

 

 

Dark Saturday

Your disciples all hid away
terrified that dark Saturday
Not knowing what to do
now that men had crucified You

Hope that day was hidden too
doubting what You said was true
Wondering if You would really rise
or if Friday proved Your demise

I think I know just how they felt
as with hopelessness I have dealt
Mired in the Saturday of depression
in need of Your intercession

As the disciples on Sunday found
You as King would clearly be crowned
I have found Your promises true
of eternal hope to help me through

Although Saturday may seem quite dark
Sunday’s resurrection is Your hallmark

Contemplating Suicide Is Not Selfish

Sept. 10,  is World Suicide Prevention Day. Why there is but a single day of the year devoted to preventing suicide, I do not know. We should endeavor every day to provide the hope the hopeless need to get them through the pain that leads to suicide.

Often we hear it said that those who kill themselves are selfish because they hurt the people they leave behind. But if you’ve ever had suicidal thoughts or tried to die by suicide, you know that is not the case.

If you never have, it is difficult to understand.

I’ve only been truly suicidal once, but my thoughts were far from selfish. At the time, my actual thought was that my husband and son would be better off without me because I was so depressed and broken that I was no good to them. I truly believed this terrible lie.

Thoughts of suicide often follow a long pattern of trying to get well with little or no success. It stems from hopelessness and a sense of feeling like you are a burden to those around you. To consider suicide is to desire to unburden others and put an end to endless pain.

Unfortunately, the thought processes of a person who is suicidal are just simply wrong. I know mine were. I can’t imagine where my husband and son (who was 1 ½ then and is 26 now) would be if I had gone through with it. They certainly would not be better off. That thought was a lie.

There is always hope, even when things seem the most hopeless. What a person struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts needs is love and hope. They need understanding and reassurance that the rest of us would not be better off if they were gone. They need to know we are there for them and that they matter to someone.

They need to know that God loves them and wants what is best for them, and that “This too shall pass.” But in the meantime, we are there to be a shoulder to cry on and a heart to confide in.

That Didn’t Hurt

Note: This article was posted last November on my page at The Mighty, a great resource and community for people with chronic or mental illnesses.

I have long, straight, super-fine hair. When I was a kid, it would often get tangled and I didn’t like to brush it. So my mom would brush it for me, yanking the brush through the rat’s nest knot. “Ow, quit yanking,” I would say with tears streaming down my face.
“That didn’t hurt.”
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that phrase, I could buy a small mansion. OK, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I did hear it a lot. Sometimes I still do, or variations of it.

A Lack of Understanding

Several years ago, my sister and I visited an aunt and cousins in Texas. We got to meet one cousin’s grandkids who lived with him.

The impish face of one granddaughter was adorable. I so wanted to play this game she’d made up.

“Hold these,” she chirped, and handed me three pine cones. I don’t even know where she got pine cones in Houston, Texas. I hadn’t seen many pine trees.

Try as I might to hold them lightly, I could barely stand having them poke my tender palms. “I can’t hold these,” I finally said, as I set them down on the coffee table. “They hurt my hands.” That was an understatement.

My sister looked at me with puzzlement written on her face. “Does that really hurt?”

At least she’d asked.

More Failure to Understand

On another trip, this time with my husband and son, Mexico was the destination. Cancun, to be specific. A place of sunshine and beautiful coral sand beaches.

Mid-trip, my husband decided he wanted to have his hair cornrow braided by a merchant in the local outdoor market. He talked me into having mine braided too. I should have known better.

While he was enjoying what felt like a wonderful scalp massage, I endured torture worse than all my mom’s hair brushings rolled into one. I felt certain the woman braiding my hair was going to pull every hair out of my scalp. I will not be doing that again. Ever.

I took the braids out the very next day because the pain wouldn’t cease until I did. My husband still didn’t understand.

Looking for Answers

The denial of my physical pain by those who know me best often makes me wonder if I’m losing my mind. Because it does hurt. At least that’s what my brain tells me.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that a doctor gave my sensitivity to pain a name: fibromyalgia. No one could tell me why I had this thing that can’t be tested for or proven. Sure, there were theories.

One pain specialist asked if I’d ever been sexually assaulted, because that kind of trauma is connected to fibromyalgia. I was, when I was 14, but I’d been ultra-sensitive to pain long before that. An online article suggested a link between the Epstein-Barr virus, also known as mononucleosis, and fibromyalgia. I had mono when I was in the seventh grade. But again, my pain sensitivity existed before that five-week illness.

The first doctor to mention fibromyalgia to me wouldn’t commit to a diagnosis. She prescribed amitriptyline saying that “empirically that’s what we’re treating you for.”

In addition to the chronic muscle pain, I have osteoarthritis, although I’ve been told the degeneration in my neck doesn’t look bad enough on an MRI to cause the pain I complain about. In other words, it’s really all in my head.

Happening upon Relief

As with most fibro patients, I have some other health issues, including GI problems. At one point, my doctor suggested I quit eating gluten. When I replied that I hadn’t eaten gluten in over a year, she suggested I quit eating dairy. I rolled my eyes, feeling like she had no real solutions. But I did try it.

She also wanted me to quit taking ibuprofen, which I wasn’t happy about because it was the only thing that took the edge of my chronic pain.

For four weeks, I read every label. If a food contained whey, casein, or any dairy products, I didn’t eat it. Then one day I realized my muscles didn’t ache all over. I didn’t even wish I could take ibuprofen because I didn’t need it.

So I kept it up. I didn’t eat dairy at all for four months. Then came my birthday and dinner out at The Cheesecake Factory. I decided I’d been good, so I deserved a piece of cheesecake to celebrate. I ate the whole thing, which, if you’ve ever been to The Cheesecake Factory, you know is a huge slab of pure dairy and sugar goodness.

The next morning, I awoke to a feeling like I’d been hit with a Mack truck. Every muscle ached.

I’ve been mostly dairy-free for several years now and feel much better.

Still Pain Sensitive

Which is not to say I don’t still deal with pain. I still don’t understand why pain scales have a 0 on them. Are there people who, at times, don’t feel any pain? I suppose there are, but I wouldn’t know about that. Every day something aches or I do something that results in acute pain beyond what those without fibromyalgia would feel.

But the pain is more manageable without the added inflammatory reaction from bombarding my body with dairy products it doesn’t like.

It’s also easier to deal with when I quit listening to those who don’t understand tell me, “That didn’t hurt.”