Anne SG and the Big C

Here is the way these blog posts come to me: words will flutter around in my head, arriving, hovering, and disappearing at will.  Then I look up the word, the idea, the concept, and think some more.  Then I begin to unravel why the word mattered to me in the first place.

Verge matters to me in such a larger scale than my day-to-day life.  Being “on the verge” seems to be the perfect expression for me in terms of who I am, how I live, how I perceive of this life.

If you are “on the verge” you might be about to undertake something–not like a vacation, but a life step.  A person might be on the verge of falling into the deep well that alcoholism contains is victims in; or perhaps he is on the verge of leaving behind one life to start a new one.  I’ve felt that several times this year, both in being seriously ill, moving from one state to another, and reconsidering my life’s work.  These are huge “verges” to be on for moments, never mind dwelling within for an entire year.

Another sense of “verge” is the first definition listed up here.  My academic work has always been about “outsider rhetoric”–in layman’s terms, about how people who do not have traditional means of power and expression find ways to express themselves.  These outsiders are living on verges, or at least believe themselves to be, and their lives are utterly defined by their marginality.  It has fascinated me for over 15 years.  

I know something about being on the verge, and about living on the verge.  In the middle of all of this is the fact that I realize I’ve always defined myself by anything but who I am–I’ve defined myself by my relationships–my life’s work, my ties to academia were how I lived most of my adult years.  That identity has battled with my identity as a mother, and I have never made the two work simultaneously. I don’t know if I ever will.  If I give in to one, I seem to lose the other.  My life, since I had children, has seemed to be a life lived on a verge–and I am trying to find away to take a leap of faith away from the verge altogether so I can be whomever it is that I am, either without all those identifiers, or with them happily cohabitating.  I have no idea where to begin. 

But I guess you could say I am on the verge of finding out.

I got a comment from a friend on my last post.  She wrote that she found a poem in my post, and sent it to me.  I love it so much I want to post it here.  I can’t really claim authorship for it–I suppose she put the music to my lyrics (and did a great editing job).  I just wanted to share it, and to thank her.

Holding On

Treatment is a euphemism, it seems,
for partial destruction of a self.
And not just the physical self.
I have struggled with my identity.

I look in the mirror
and don’t recognize the person there
–she’s scarred, noticeably older
and gray.

I’ve had my hair colored twice and still,
I don’t know who that person is.
She looks kind of butch,
like a housewife who has let herself go.

It’s hard to swallow.

Then yesterday, my first grader’s teacher
was shocked to hear that I’ve been in treatment
because I always seem so happy and fresh.
I appear that way because I am happy.

I’m happy to be alive,
to breathe this beautiful autumn air,
to have an active role in my children’s lives,
no longer bogged down in a nasty fog of depression.

Things are never really what they seem.
Though I look at myself
and see a worn out old hag,
someone else sees a healthy, happy spirit.

I’m going to hold on to that for now.

Thank you, Debbie.