Imperfect and Joyful

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to re-open my particular brand of crazy. If one day I just started showing up to playdates with bandaged wrists and unwashed hair, and, oh yeah, an intense need for affection as well as a penchant for taking rejection really, really bad. I mean 'over-the-top' bad.

(Woooweee! Was I a character or what?)

It's not like it's exactly a secret. I've shared bits here and there with those I trust. I harbor no need to keep things quiet.

We hear time and again how mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but I can't help remembering all that ugliness, all these broken and damaged people slumping and sliding around me, too tired to even reach out for a hand. I remember my hostility, my cruelty. Sometimes I'm ashamed of that portion, the ugly person I became, with little regard for those around me.

But I also remember that within all that ugliness, all that sadness and heaviness, there existed these tremendous sparks, like the bioluminescence fireflies give off in the waning light of day.

Spark. Spark. Spark. Weaving in the air and tangled up in the bushes. Unexpected presents.

Sometimes broken people make the most beautiful music. Once I sat outside the hospital smoking with three other patients, and the time we had within that 15 minute space was one of the best of my life. Had you taken us and placed us in a park, you would have never known what building we had just come out of, or why. Our conversation, our laughter, our faces, melodious.

It hits me sometimes, the normalcy of my life. The I have relationship with my husband brings me happiness and not heartache. We watch baseball together on the couch. We laugh and hold hands.

All of it: making dinner, shopping, seeing friends. Going to bed without medication. Going through my weeks without group therapy, a social worker, or the special kind of craft time that doesn't involve children with glue. Omega fatty acids replace Wellbutrin; calcium & Vitamin D replace Trazadone.

Like any person, I can say there was a time in my life that was particularly challenging, but it was also one that I wasn't quite sure I'd survive.

I pick up my youngest daughter from preschool, and take the short walk home with her among the crunchy fall leaves. I wonder what would have happened had this picture been available to me when I was 20. What my battered self would have thought then, if a nurse had showed it to me on my bed.

"Here is what your life will be like. Imperfect yes, but still mostly joyful. Can you hang on?"

I imagine that girl holding the picture in her hands in disbelief.