The daughter, the depression sufferer
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Carl Jung
My mood, icy & pensive
Mother, your lips, red like an ambulance
Your being, red, an ambulance
Your words, red, an ambulance
This life that you have given me, red, like an ambulance
Mother, you took me to church
Mother, you taught me grief was a cycle
This sadness, my sadness
like a desert
like Chopin
This sadness, my sadness
has its own nervous system
There are days
that it tastes like dessert, bittersweet
like lemon meringue
South Africa, mine too
in more ways than I can count
To break
Oh, I'm used to that
the upward twist and motion
The swell and the tension
I had a nervous breakdown
Has this happened to many women?
I don't know
A lost adolescence
spent trying to find myself
trying to find purpose
All this is a harvest,
a season
temporary and sufficient
A quiet source and resources that need to be put to use
I have loved you
since the day
I began to live inside you
You tended your womb
like you tended your garden,
a rosebush is a rosebush is a rosebush
The womb is a sacred space
Every womb is a sacred space
Life is sacred
All creation of life is sacred
You, mother, taught me how to pray
You, mother, made a lioness out of me
because your own mother had set the example
and her mother before that
You, mother, who eats fear and depression
for breakfast
Please forgive me
I'm sorry that I'm a failure in your eyes
I'm sorry
I'm sorry, I never brought a man home
I'm sorry, I never gave you grandchildren
Here is cake & flowers
Here are stars & apples
Here are tomato sandwiches
Here is a plate of coleslaw & fried chicken
Here is incense & oranges
Here is a bottle of your favourite perfume
Here is a bar of beauty soap, fragrant, to celebrate Mother's Day
Tell me, does all this stuff make you happy?
Let me make it up to you, please
Please, tell me how I can make it up to you?
Here is money
Here is enough money
to buy what you need,
to buy what you yearn for
Did it make you forget picking me up
when I was discharged
from a variety of mental hospitals?
I have been treated like a leper
because I was a mental patient
because of my disability
And other people, family,
have treated me like a leper
And you, mother, yes, you
have also been guilty of treating me like a leper
I gave you what you needed
Won't you say that you're proud of me?
What will it take for you to say
that you're proud of me?
Didn't I love you hard enough, in all the ways
a daughter must love her mother?
Mother, my lantern, lighting my way in the dark,
didn't I worship you?
Mother, you are sacred to me, my entire universe
To me, to me, to me, to me
Do you believe it?
Now, will you love me?
Now, when will you begin to love me?
Say that you love me
Be my lantern in the dark
Mother, now look here, you have turned me into
the quintessential female poet
You have turned me into
another Emily Dickinson
And in a faraway room
I write to reach you, always you
Play, Chopin, play.
I am tired. I am so, so tired
of wanting love
of asking for love.
Beyond the trees
“In longing, I am most myself, rapt, my lamp mortal, my light hidden and singing.” — from the poem "I Loved You Before I Was Born"
Li-Young Lee
I sit with the sunrise & sunset
of the child in my lap
We are reading a book
As I turn the pages
the child's voice, a song, a hymn,
a psalm, peace of mind & wing,
salt & leaf. I turned inward & I remember
the woman I called Second Mother, Auntie Mackie,
the woman I called Third Mother, Mama Florence,
and the funeral I did not attend
A lake, see a sizeable expanse of water,
of grief settling in the aftermath
that held me captive in its grip
Sky, innocent,
and yielding, yielding, yielding
to something that it cannot name
And beyond the trees
the shadow of the mansion of the mental hospital
where I lived for six months
after my first nervous breakdown in my twenties
What is memory?
Rain carries it
The volcano explodes with fire, ash & light
But suffering can explode too
Mostly, into madness
that has no expiration date
Dear Mother
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant; there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you."
Georgia O'Keeffe
I gave you money, but it wasn't enough
because I was trying to be loved, I was trying to be hugged
and giving you money didn't turn you kind
I gave you flowers, but it wasn't enough
because I was trying to be loved, I was trying to be hugged
Flowers did not make you loving or love me
I cooked for you, but it wasn't enough
because I was trying to be loved, I was trying to be hugged
This did not make you happy, satisfied or feel fulfilled
Anyway, you preferred eating fear and depression & me
You preferred the middle child, and your youngest
The daughter and son whose bodies you turned into stars
I sent you a text, but it wasn't enough
because I was worried about you, I cared
Dear Mother, I can't resist you
I wanted you to know that I loved you,
I wanted you to know that I needed
to be heard, hugged, understood & loved
I guess none of these things was enough for you or
made you see me differently, or was important to you
We live in the same house, but you still don't see me
I have stopped asking you to heal me
Your actions began to speak to me
As did your silence
And your actions spoke louder than words
As did your silence
My grief began to speak to me, too
It began to gnaw at my soul
It, too, began to speak louder than words
What to do with all this noise, right?
I think I started to disappear ever since
the day I was born, the day that you brought
me home from the hospital, the day that
genetic predisposition was mentioned
What's left is my heart, it's still beating
What's left is pain like an abyss
Sometimes it just feels better to hide the pain
Now I walk around, an effigy turned intellectual
who has given up countless counselling sessions,
drinking endless cups of coffee and going for solitary long walks
I look at pretty women and see their grace
but also their mother. I see their happiness,
and I see their partner, I see their children
I look at pretty women and see their confidence,
their strength and see their father
I look at pretty women, and I see you, mother!
And because of you, mother, I am mad
Because of your choice of spouse, I am mad, I am mad
and because I am mad you chose not to love me
What exactly is left of me?
If you must know, wreckage
But somehow beauty must survive, mustn't it?
And in the wreckage,
flowers & Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet
next to the poetry collections and novels
that I have written,
and that you have not read
I have even written to you in those poems
in those poetry collections and novels
Dear Mother, I'm sorry
I'm sorry that I'm your “mad” daughter, that I’m your “crazy” child,
I mean, that's what you tell me,
I mean, that’s what you tell people
I'm sorry that I can't change who I am
I just wanted you to hug me, I just wanted you to hold me,
and make me feel that I was more than enough
I wanted you to tell me that you were proud of me,
but you never did
I am still waiting
Ode to all Mothers across the globe
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
Emily Dickinson
No one knows the
quiet struggle of a mother
the unmet dreams of her youth
No one knows the quiet struggle of a young mother
an unwed mother
a single mother
a mother who has a child under two
with another on the way
an exhausted mother
but carries on nonetheless
a mother who weeps quietly
in the darkness
the mothers who lived and
who live now in memory
the mothers who are still living
the mothers who love their children
who live across the ocean
the mothers who love their children
in faraway cities
the mothers who love their children
who have forgotten them
who listens to these mothers?
who hears the sound of their weeping,
their tears like raindrops,
dew, a frozen sea,
a melting pot
but the Lord knows
that quiet struggle
and the mother's unconditional love,
her strength, her intelligence
but the Lord knows
when a mother holds
and carries
and clings too much
but the Lord knows
the young mother's quiet yearning
for a better life for her children
for the life she never had
and the Lord knows
that even flowers bloom in her tiredness
even the Lord knows
a mother's love comes from the stars
Her love is the sun, the moon,
and that a mother's love is birthday cake,
Christmas,
the entire solar system
rolled into one.
What do the eyes see?
“You are the light of the world. Shine, and darkness will disappear.”
Paulo Coelho
My terror, perhaps just a seashell
that misses the ocean
What to do with its story?
What to do with this
exquisite heartbreak
that has survived?
What to do with this
ache like the sea
in the face of despair?
My loneliness, oh, what to do with
this depressive state of affairs
My introspective reflection,
a glimmer of hopefulness
in my eyes staring back
at me in the mirror
My isolation, I have turned
that into a masterpiece
My alienation, a pen, an invincible sword
My emptiness, her journal
My body, this body, like winter,
and even in winter, feeding others
Nurturing a child, how do I teach her to endure
when I could not teach myself to endure,
to survive loneliness?
Reading to her
in a language only she understands
I play with the child, and when I play with her,
it feels as if I am inhabiting another realm
of lullabies and fairy tales
My loneliness returns to me
as night falls, as silence ascends
like a murmuration
At night, I am alone
Books, music and religion, my companions
All this, my eyes see
And it is up to the heart to understand
what the eyes cannot make sense of
I asked for love, but got winter instead
I asked for love, but got interviewed instead
I asked for love, but won a prize for my poetry instead
And so I decided, what was love anyway
It was a gift I hid in a box, that I saved for a rainy day
I continued to ask for love but got depressed instead,
lived in isolation instead, was alienated instead
I asked for love but had a nervous breakdown instead
I asked for love but did not receive it
I still keep love in a box as if it were an inheritance or something,
as if I am a trustee
I store it there, and on rainy days, like a thief, I take it out
and stare at its reflection
When I am lonely, I read the poems of Ocean Vuong and listen to Chopin
“Before language, there was just the peculiar house of nerves.” — From Jenny George's poem Sword-Swallower
To feel lonely takes work
It takes energy to want to feel human
I can't detach silence from loneliness
As I feel these edges come upon me,
the loneliness feels like a meadow, bitter,
sweetness and green. It tastes like bittersweet nectar
I am tired of melancholy. I am tired of this grief in my heart
I am tired of this loneliness that carries me
from the bedroom to the bathroom
from the bathroom to the kitchen
In the same way that my father's depression
has exhausted me, has carried me
In the same way, my own depression
has exhausted me, has carried me
I carry sadness, emptiness & solitude
in the vessel of my body, its expanse like the ocean
In the mornings, I take out depression with the bread and milk
as I collect the newspaper at the door
as I make my morning coffee & burn the toast at the edges
Today, loneliness, you are everywhere I look
Today, loneliness, you exist in every thought,
every feeling, every lived experience
Today, loneliness, you are present in the fleeting
embrace of the child who wants to
be picked up and watch her grandmother
frying donuts in hot oil. I am the woman who told
herself that she would never know love
I worry about the child and her future
I worry about the child's neglectful mother
who doesn't call to ask about her daughter's welfare
I worry about my brother smoking his lungs away
Yes, I worry. I think about the mental wards & being labelled
a mental patient. Relapse, hospitalisation & recovery. Stigma
I watch my mother play nurse and count his pills
Even in the despair and hardship of this loneliness
God is waiting for me. He waits in moments. And
when I am lonely, I remember love. Carrying it gently
in my hands like a ripe pear softened by the sun
like a slice of green melon, its juice tart, like a puppy, like a tamed bird
like a wedding bouquet of wildflowers, I carry love unconditionally
I reach out to people who don't reach back
At night, with my abandonment issues comes shame & silence
& longing. I want to be more than okay, I want
to be more than fine. I want to be more than just
alright. I want to be happy. Dear God, I am only human.
We aren't all the same. Some are loved deeply for who
they are, and others are simply not loved at all,
and unloved, they must make their way through this life
They must spend their days believing that even madness is a sin
as I do, in the ways that I do. And if the silence is heartbreaking,
then so is the loneliness. There are days when, rightly, I forgive
my father, but there are also days when I can't look at him
Those are the days when I see myself as other people see me
Madwoman, they say. I don't see a poet. I just see a madwoman,
a woman who never married and never had children,
whose family has disowned her. I like my body more when it's wounded.
It feels more alive to me. I wake up, and I'm a mountain.
By Abigail George
