I heard my critical voice today
like a wind-carried whisper
or a whistle from down a beach
a far-off squeak
a ticklish purr.
But this morning, instead of
reassurance within it
support and strength
and encouragement behind it
for the first time
I heard disease
in its thickest form
all sputters and judgments and growls.
Inside the simplest phrase
lay the covert beginnings
of countless drilling questions
waves of crushing inertia
bottomless bottles of shame…
“You should get up.”
The sun was just over the clouds.
The alarm had yet to sound.
“You should get up.”
My pulse quickened in defense
“What for!?” I shouted
down my mind’s foggy hallway
Was I to leap up, smiling?
Prepare steel-cut oatmeal
and caramelize bananas
for the still-sleeping children?
Fold the night’s laundry?
Write last week’s thank-you’s?
Recite thirty years of missed prayers
in these last lazy minutes?
Lose those lingering pounds?
Graduate college?
Perhaps with this ten-minute head start
I could dissect my family’s rage
reverse my years of despair
remember…discover? my strength.
“You should get up.”
Just eight minutes now.
Seven. Four.
I have seen addiction as a hyena
a slobbering beast in shadowed view
taut and pounce-ready.
But there is no such predator
no monster, no enemy.
It is me.
Just me
and this icy voice
which I am tuned to just today.
I am years into scratching
and fighting and writing and wailing…
today I am listening.
And instead of the oatmeal
the weight
the regret
I nuzzle back into the pillow.
I nurture myself. I pray.
I sigh for reprieve.
“You should get up.”
“Or not,” I smile…
Today
I hear what is true
It is not time for me
to get up.
It is time for me
to rise.
Note: I wrote this in March, after a particularly grueling week in my counseling group. I have Lee M. to thank for talking to me about my critical voice. Had he not told me what it sounded like — what everyone’s sounds like — I might never have heard mine.
Public Image Limited, Rise
