Poetry Saved My Life

Today I am grateful for my husband Darcy and our history together. I am also grateful for the role that poetry has played in my life.

I enjoyed this week's local writing group. Meeting new people and seeing some familiar faces. As I said yesterday, I appreciated the honest sharing, through writing, that went on. Pain and joy are great sources of writing inspiration aren't they?

One of our topics was poetry. My input was short and to the point: "Poetry saved my life."  That is a true statement in my life. I have no doubt of that. I started writing poetry when I was 11 or 12. I started drinking alcohol when I was 14. A poem I wrote at 16 had this line: "I found alcohol before I found me." Another poem I wrote in my late teens was titled "Twelve Pack" and ended with these lines:

And the twelfth was for

Blessed oblivion
 

I was never comfortable in my own skin in those days. I was at dis-ease. Alcohol gave me a temporary fix, but every drunk was a club to beat myself up with as well. I hated myself and when you add a depressant to that mindset, I was pretty low on many nights. I couldn't talk about it. I wouldn't talk about, unless I was drunk and then I was often in a blackout and wouldn't remember what I said anyway. My pen on paper became my salvation. The terrible mix of negative emotions building up in me would find some release. That release, through my pen, is what saved my life. I am pretty sure I would have died by suicide or by some alcohol-related accident had I not kept putting pen to paper.

 

I wrote hundreds of poems during my drinking days, but only when I was sober, hungover, remorseful. I may have tried a little writing while I was drinking, but I think part of me knew then that writing, like the sports I was in, was one of the wholesome amd genuine activities keeping me from going over the edge of the abyss.

 

I don't remember what inspired my first poem. I think it was a poetry contest we heard about at school that we could enter. I think it had a focus on nature, always a source of inspiration for me. Today, I have well over 1500 poems in notebooks, journals, three-ring binders, on napkins and little pieces of paper. I can't read too many poems from my drinking days all at once. It is too hard for me. But they serve as a powerful reminder of what I was like, what happened, and what I am like now. For all of that life experience, I am deeply grateful today.

 

Poetry saved my life. It also kept me on the writing path. More on that tomorrow.