How Poetry Saves My Life ( again) or Seratonin and Not-Seratonin

Somewhere just inside my forehead a neon sign has been blinking all week. I am lost I am lost I am lost, it says. It's hard to get much done. Hard to sleep when you have neon in your brain. It's The Grief. Hello, Grief. You have to go with it, I say. Go ahead, just Google "How to get a person to come back from the dead." It's all right. After a little reading, you settle down. You drink a little wine. Or a little tea. You splash back into reality. You watch another episode of Orange is the New Black, and you totally dig how Piper doesn't smile the way she used to. How there's someone new behind her eyes.

I listen to podcasts now instead of talking to Dan on the phone when I walk in the evening. I'm not sure how I ever survived without Curtis Fox and Poetry Off the Shelf from the Poetry Foundation. These podcasts got me through the Divorce Anxiety too. Poem by poem. No long stories. I love you, David Sedaris, and I love you Moth, and I love you Radio Lab, but sometimes I just don't have what it takes to hang on to the ledge that long. Just give me a poem. Talk to me about it. Then read it again.

Tonight there was this: (apologies re the weird formatting)

The Drama of the Gifted Hansel
				Shit are we lost? Should I tell her we’re lost? If we had some pot, we could sleep— and worry in the morning...I’m sure tomorrow my friends will find us. If I tell her, she’ll cry; women are so weak. I thought we had a plan when I lay down that bread. Fucking birds. Should’ve used stones. Wish we were stoned, because she’ll panic if we’re lost. She’ll say, “I told you so” about the crumbs. Then she’ll scream or faint or start in about witches. Shit. I mean, no one needs to live inside that kind of anxiety. It’s obsolete. Take me. Things hurt, but not really once you understand everything is chemical if you let it be what it is— a matter of seratonin and not-seratonin, control and not-in-control. At least she knows what it’s like. Man, I’m such an asshole. I’m such an asshole. I’m such an asshole. Or am I? Anxiety is just a matter of thinking for too long about yourself. I wonder if we’re lost. —Debora Lidov Also saved by this:  The Ultimate Freedom Yoga. And this: http://www.taichichih.org.

Tuesday Afternoon Beach Report

It's August at the seashore and it's all Baywatch around here. Life guards have returned to their abandoned towers, sunbathers are hunkering down on the sand or dashing into the waves, probably thinking that this is the coldest beach vacation of their lives. The water is full of boogie boarders (in rented wet suits?) and I'm pretty sure I'll be adding to my collection of found sand toys as August progresses.

I walked for about an hour today at almost high noon, zipped into a fleecy sweatshirt, listening to two teenage bathing beauties approaching the water. "Did you put on sunscreen under your tanning oil?" one asked the other.

"Of course, I did," the other one said. "I don't want to look like a lobster." Really? That's what people do? Put on sunscreen and then tanning oil?  Sometimes I think I know absolutely nothing.

One thing I don't know is what I need most right now. I keep pondering what I should do for myself. I keep telling myself I need to get out more. Telling myself I need a support group. But I can't decide if I want a caregiver support group, a grief support group, or maybe I even need to touch base with my favorite birth mother support group, CUB, since all of the birth mother stuff is swirling around in my head post-publication of  my book.

I've figured one thing out though. At night after dinner when I take my walk through the neighborhood, since I can't talk to Dan anymore, I listen to This American Life or the Moth podcasts.  People have stories. Big stories.  I love it when they tell those stories. I firmly believe that the telling of our stories unites us.