After waves of panic and sadness crashing down one after another, day after day, each followed by exhaustion and incoherence, I met with a psychiatrist who promptly admitted me to the hospital.

“I feel as though everything in my life has blown up in my face, like one after another bomb has been dropped on me,” I said.  “I feel like a field of landmines.  I have been fighting and fighting, and I can’t fight anymore.”

The intake was long and humiliating, the rooms stark and unfriendly.  “Think of it as a respite,” the nurse said.  I sat on my hospital bed in the dark watching the blizzard outside.   I felt extremely alone.

So I began to talk to the Divine.  The Oneness, the Beloved.  I pulled out a notebook and began a conversation, a practice I read about in the books Eat, Pray, Love and Conversations With God.  For every woe I laid out in my notebook, a response came quickly to mind.  The responses were remarkably helpful and healing and not what I expected.  A turning point in my nightmare?  I felt the horror gripping my mind slowly ebb.  A gentle relief.  Almost joy.  I opened to it with a mixture of trepidation and gratitude.

Finally, ready for sleep, I asked the Divine to tell me a story.  I pulled out a book from my backpack, The Gift, by Hafiz.

“Tell me a bedtime story, Divine One,” I said.  I opened to a random page, to this poem:

We are often in battle.
So often defending every side of the fort,
It may seem, all alone.

Sit down, my dear,
Take a few deep breaths,
Think about a loyal friend.
Where is your music,
Your pet, a brush?

Surely one who has lasted as long as you
Knows some avenue or place inside
That can give a sweet respite.

If you cannot slay your panic,
Then say within
As convincingly as you can,
“It is all God’s will!”

Now pick up your life again,
Let whatever is out there
Come charging in,

Laugh and spit into the air,
There could be holy fallout.

Throw those ladders like tiny match sticks
With “just” phantoms upon them
Who might be trying to scale your heart.

Your love has an eloquent tone.
The sky and I want to hear it!

If you still feel helpless
Give our battle cry again,

Hafiz
Has shouted it a myriad times,

“It is all,
It is all the Beloved’s will!”

What is that luminous rain I see
All around you in the future

Sweeping in from the east plain?

It looks like, O it looks like
Holy fallout

Filling your mouth and palms
With Joy!

The poem was so apropos, I immediately laughed and said thank you.

Okay, so I did get nuked into the stone age, but joy is still possible… and I’m not alone.

I stayed awake for half an hour laughing at the thought “nuked into the stone age.”  Being in the hospital, a new rock bottom, and my life a barren wasteland, felt like the stone age.  I repeated the phrase to myself several times and laughed from deep in my gut, because it made the idea of starting over seem just natural.

This morning, I did not awaken in a fog of horror.  When I opened my eyes, I savored the quiet, timid feeling of okayness poking its nose into my world.  The bombing has subsided for now, the ash settling.  Creatures stirring.  A calm, snowy silence.