Poems from my recovery process helped me heal

Sometimes writing in a journal just doesn’t cut it. And when complicated thoughts seem too difficult to capture, simple phrases can meet the moment.

During a major clear-out (thanks to the pandemic), I found a book of poems I’d written during a 10 to 20 year period, starting in 1982, after I’d reached goal weight and my feelings were starting to emerge.

Here are two poems from my recovery that have been relevant in an ongoing way. Maybe you can relate. Maybe even try a few of your own.

Cake  (August 1992)

Goodbye to the cake in my mind
Goodbye cake – to the pleasure
To the pleasure.
To the taste and the texture
And the pleasure
The brief, too brief,
Too, too, brief
Pleasure.

Goodbye to the reward
To the simple easy reward
To the pleasure I can’t have
To the pleasure, denied
Like so many others.

But the cake, the easy cake
Of all the pleasures denied
The cake is so easy to provide
But the cost is very high
But I want it, I want it.
I want something.

Growth Rate (May 23, 1983)

It’s not true.
I’m not bad.
I’m slow.

I take my own sweet time
To grow.
I’m in no rush
To go, go, go.
I’m here now.
So very slow
I flow.

Its not true anymore
But it used to be.
I was bad.
I had
No core of my own
So I fell into
Other people’s slots
Let their thoughts
Shape me, shake me.
I rattled noisily inside
Like a broken clock.
Now I’ve installed a new
Pacemaker – slow and steady
The race is over.

It takes as long as it takes!

share