​WRITING THE ANATOMY OF SADNESS

by Angela Meyers

I woke up this morning thinking I would write the Anatomy of Sadness. Then I opened my laptop and read a Mark Twain quote. It altered me…dissolved my self pity and called on my warrior heart. I want to hear that call everyday.

The question haunting me this morning: When will I meet someone who really sees me? I have this feeling, only I can fill these shoes. I am a little confused, but I am not disappointed.

Prologue

Permission: this poem is a safe place
To explore the Anatomy of Sadness
I try to remember that I am a circus performer
I am about to dive into a tiny pool, in a big tent, surrounded by a great, grand world
My audience is none but myself
After I jump, and I climb out of my tiny pool,
I will take a bow, only to myself
 
It is an extraordinary thing to do
To fall so far with so little a safety net
Many climb to their own platforms,
and just smoke cigarettes and drink up there, nursing addictions, never braving the lonely fall  
 
For many that jump, the shock of the experience takes their life-breath away
They either never come out of it or they come out smuggling fear in their heart
Many never try again
 
But if I know myself at all
I will keep climbing and jumping, until the whole circus fades away
And I am standing bowing in honor to the experience of my life

 The Anatomy of Sadness, A Single Story
 For me,
It has dark edges
A wildness
A brutality that startles me awake in the night
In the morning
It is merciless with its endless interpretations
 
Imagination can turn it into a sort of high-speed tumbling into oblivion
Like a rocket man at the edge of the atmosphere
Falling off a proverbial cliff into no-gravity
It disorients the navigation system
 
For me,
it is an uprooting
It reminds me of trying to save my mother from herself
It reminds me of the girl I thought I was
It reminds me of the girl I never was
 
It reminds me of hitting the bottom only to realize I am still floating
No gravity, yet carrying all the heaviness of the world on my shoulders
 
Learning to love myself, from watching myself love others
 I looked at you, and I am sure that I saw you
And saw brilliance where so many, even you, suspected plainness
Your words were alchemy
They felt like a fire in my belly
They felt like an old friend warming up my soul
Your beauty took me by surprise, delighted me 
The way you fit so tenderly in my arms
It was as simple as gravity
It was a reverence
It was an honoring
It was like coming home
It did not belong to any interpretation in this world
Yet it was so fragile
So overwhelmed and drowned out by karma
 
Learning to love myself, from watching myself diminish others
 When it happens
There is a judgment that startles me as I watch it leave my body
An idea born in my mind that feels like betrayal 
My brain cuts the other down by categorizing the expression of their heart
The way I do to myself all day, yet never shudder
But when I watch it pass to another, I am startled by its ugliness
I have this imagining that they feel it
So each time it happens, I say a prayer that they are immune or that they are protected from it
For I suspect angels may offer that protection, even from ourselves
At the very least, I hopefully imagine that they are unaffected due to lack of interest
Then I try to remember that I have a choice
That maybe my heart knows that love, hate, judgment, beauty, ugliness is only filtered through this human experience
We must choose every day what to let in, knowing karma will require us to transmit it back into the world 

Angela Meyers lives in northern Colorado and works as a Physician’s Assistant. She enjoys the creative process of writing, and has a beautiful way of using metaphor and descriptive voice.