losing my poetry

It seems I've been reading a lot of poetry on the blogs I frequent and it makes me remember when I used to write poetry. Its bigger than just that though - I used to live my life in poetic ways.

I felt emotions in bold ways - not just sad and happy but devastated, distraught and exuberant, ecstatic! Now....well, I'm kind of a sad and happy girl. When did that change?

I often thought it just left with youth, that poetry was a teenage girl thing and not the stuff of mothers. But around me I see mothers who still think in poetic terms, whose emotions are best expressed with rhythm and rhyme. It seems I've grown too practical for such things...and how sad.

I used to feel everything so deeply and there are times that was a blessing but more often it was a curse. I'm approaching the tenth anniversary of losing my son Gabriel and in the days that followed that horrible time, I wrote poetry. It was seeringly painful and I often don't go back and read it because it was my raw emotion at the time and its just too much. I described my early days of grief as not seeing a tree as green but seeing every shade of green on every leaf of the tree. The clarity in life - and death - was painful.

Perhaps this lack of poetry is a defense mechanism. I'd like to say life hummed along nicely after we lost our son - but it didn't. The fallout from losing him was wide and has nearly taken my marriage as well. If I lived my life in poetic terms, I don't know if I could survive to take care of my children every day. If I let myself go down that path where I feel every emotion so sharply, I worry I might not get back. I avoid fiction that will suck me into that world. I listen to music that I cannot get lost in. I stopped painting because it became too overwhelming. I have shut off all the sources of poetry in my life, so afraid am I that it will bring me back to places I've walked away from.

I can't say this is a very good solution - but its a necessary thing. My children, particularly my eldest, have inherited this painful empathy and I've already started to teach her how to guard against it. She already has shown signs of depression and I remember how painful life was sometimes. Watching the news, going to school and seeing another child hurt or just being in a room where people are angry - all these things would weigh so heavily on me. It wasn't until I was an adult that someone explained to me that I might not be feeling my own emotions. I was picking up the energy from people around me. It was as though a light came on and I understood those nights I would wake up and wander the house just feeling that something, somewhere wasn't right. I've talked to my eldest about this because since she was a baby, she has been sensitive to others emotions and the skill of learning which are yours and which are others' is an important, self-preserving skill.

But the downside is - you learn how to set your feelings at arm's length as well. Like a loaf of bread set on the table in front of you. Ah yes, I see that I'm hurt by that. I can see that I feel betrayed and angry and oh - a dash of rage is creeping up!

Teaching her the lesson of allowing yourself to live with some poetry in your life without having it consume you...that lesson will be harder to teach because I have not learnt it yet.