Dear Ten Years Ago

Dear Ten Years Ago,

You didn't know you were a Queer.

(or, you did but you were still trying to hide from it.)

You were 26, pregnant with Baby number Two and still married for the first time.

You were perpetually unhappy.

You lived in a little house on Lemon Street,

the one with the awful brown 70s carpet and the five citrus trees in the yard.

Two of the lemon trees had cross-bred with grapefruits to create some kind of

Abomination Fruit.

Under the shade of these trees in the mornings,

you would go and sit in the grass

to meditate.

Dreaming of the ways you would make your life better,

Someday.

You still dream of that someday,

But now you know that life can be better,

And it is in so many ways already.

You know who you are now. You know that the little fling

you had with your best friend when you were both 25,

the one that didn’t mean anything,

wasn't a fluke. You know that your depression didn't happen

just because your mom had it, or your grandma did.

You know that life is better out of the closet.

You also know that every day is not going to be easy.

You know that life outside of the self-imposed closet is

still just life,

and that some days will be hard.

You know that Grief

with her dark veil

will still sneak up on you

at inappropriate times

and you will excuse yourself from a meeting to

cry in the ladies’ room.

You will close the stall door just as the tears begin to flow.

You will sit down on the toilet seat,

sinking into that grief

and let it flow out of you.

Because you will know that

“the only way out is through.”

And you will wake up one day

and finally feel that the

weight of it is no longer sitting on your shoulders.

No longer with you at every turn,

no longer a burden you must carry with you

until the next time

you find it lurking around a dark corner

of your mind.

You will see that grief will always be with you,

in some small way

but that it needn’t consume you.

You will see that a piece of toast with butter

and a cup of tea

can be beautiful things.

And you will keep doing your practice.

You will write yourself this poem.

You will realize that you are still so young.

And, in another ten years you will write yourself another

and be amazed at how far you have come.

(inspired by 
Stay Here With Us:

poet Andrea Gibson’s project to combat suicidality) http://stayherewithme.com/2013/07/