Lyme Disease, a poem about suicide: THE HERE & THE HEREAFTER

Lyme Disease - A poem about suicide

When I wrote this poem, clearly I was in a very bad place. I wanted to top myself. Don't get me wrong, I never would have gone through with it, but the idea appealed to me. A way out. No one knew how I felt, which now that I'm out of that hellish depression, strikes me as horrendous. But then, I was so busy being strong, I fooled everyone.

I'm guessing the main point people do go through with it, is down to feeling isolated, unable to share, pathetic, worried about being a social outcast? Perhaps pressured, even conditioned to believe that surely they ought to be able to cope?

I wrote this poem five years ago. But it has never been more relevant to me than it is now, just after a Lyme Disease diagnosis, and the fact that it describes many of the debilitating symptoms of Late/Chronic Lyme Disease to a tee.

For all who suffer with Lyme, the diagnosed and the undiagnosed, and indeed for all who suffer any chronic illness and dream of an alternative. This poem is for you.

The here and the hereafter

THE HERE

Is she falling?

Drunk with ill.

Lifeless legs,

Keep her still.

Joints frozen.

Limbs heavy.

Drowning fast;

a flooding levy.

Aching body.

Pain within.

Subject to

internal din.

Nervously taut,

staccato of toe.

Step by step

of cautious woe.

Wired to scream.

Not to smile.

Scares and scars.

Vicious and vile.

Control; reachless

A no go zone.

An abyss open.

A place alone.

Sunshine bright.

Bright is pain.

Listless, sapped,

laid out again.

Legs won't run.
Can barely walk;
tumble. Jumble 
has replaced her talk.

Is this finite?

Ever repeated?
Can she be free

of a life so cheated?

AND THE HEREAFTER

She turns her face to death

and back again to hope

And asks for hope to give her

a long piece of rope.

And when no one is around

in the middle of the night

A noose she does make

to climb towards the light.

Found hanging the next morn

with a smile on her face,

She'd set herself free

to a pure painless place.

When they cut her down

to lay a body on its bed,

they emptied her belongings 

beside her blood drained head.

They stood back to see 
what little she possessed.
At worst, a stash of pills,
A crumpled tissue, at best.

They found, no hope no joy.
And they looked for a while.
Just grief. Relentless grief.
Her all consuming trial.

And they stared out of her window
to the patch of grey below.
And spied uniformed and lifeless 
- row on row on row. 

No future amid laughter.
No future - none at all.
As they stared out of her window
they heard her new life call.

I'm happy now I'm free, 
there's hope, joy and ease.
My grief has dissipated.
It's left swinging in the breeze.

They realised all they knew

of this tortured bruised soul,

was the fact that she had gone

to a place where she was whole.

A place where she was able
to be at once at one.
Celebrating no more pain
with legs now free to run.

© Emma Oliver July 3rd 2013