I'm needy, I'm needy, I'm needy...
It's not needy if I need it.
It's not needy if I need it.
I'm weak if I'm needy.
I'm strong if I feed it.
I despise having grown into a social thing this year.
I despise that I have regrown enough trust to be human and weak... to be pathetic.
I outgrew one shell, and now I must suffer growing pains as I adjust to the next.
I cast aside the years of silence and suffering what was familiar...
I cast aside the things that bound me, belts, rings, books, and things... things.
Things.
Yet here I am needy.
Here I am needy and pathetic and weak, because I cannot breathe if I am alone now.
Yet I risk being unable to breathe around others.
I am being destroyed.
My character was pulled apart because March came with thoughts of my suicide, April came with isolation, May came with defeat, July ripped out my heart, and I haven't even stopped to process 2019.
Forgive me if I am not the one you've known, I've grown.
Forgive me if the year has broken me down.
Forgive me if I am only human and will only take so much.
Forgive me if the broken edges are sharp unless you know how to hold them.
Forgive me if I don't talk to you about my life as much anymore, if I have retreated into my silence... but know I don't do it to spite you.
February came with me seeing myself as a burden, and January I was already seeing the writing for the year. The omen in the tea never lied to me.
August dug into me with anger and strife, September, I didn't even feel like I should celebrate my life. Already October has come and gone with a reminder of July, that smile is gone.
Forgive me if I can't be a human being... I'm tired of feeling defeated and weak.
Forgive me if I've been corrupted, if I snap, attack, and bite.
I've grown into a woman who stands for herself; a bitch. I would prefer though, to simply be called a Witch.
Yes, I have chosen some people over others; sun and moon and stars forbid I choose me.
Skies forbid... that I have the audacity to choose me.
Self care isn't equal and fair, it isn't a color coded checklist, therapy isn't forgive and forget.
No.
Forgive my bitterness for the growing pains...
But this year isn't going to end folks.
This is our reality now.
And yes, praise the optimists, but I would rather not die a Gatsby.
I am uncertain, I am afraid, I ache and shake, my depression?
It causes me physical pain.
And yes, it's in my brain.
My brain is the damn problem. I cannot just grow some serotonin. I cannot trade you for some dopamine.
I can't go vegan and gluten free to take my "gay" away (and fuck you; you know who you are, keep the book, that is a proper "thing"), I can't inject essential oils to chase it away, no amount of reiki or Chakra work, there's not magical crystal I can shove under my skin, no amount of asshole sunning can change the build of my brain because I have a revelation for you!
Depression? Anxiety?
They damage brains over time.
Emotional Abuse? Untreated concussions? They do too.
Some bitter news, I have all of that, my brain is bruised and blue.
It cannot heal. I have to take care of myself. Myself first and foremost.
My neurons are fried.
My nervous system is full of glitches and triggers, I'm sorry I can't always "just get used to them".
I'm sorry I'm not a normal fucking human...
At least it's my best that I am doing...
Maybe it doesn't look, doesn't feel, like yours, but it is mine.
I'm sorry if I've never been enough.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Forgive The Growing Pains
Friday, October 23, 2020
Pain in the Neck
Some deeply personal rambling poetry for an early Halloween... because the scariest thing to be is honest.
"Pain in the Neck"
My mental illness does not define me; but it doesn't leave me be.
Newsflash: I have PTSD from being violently abused. Even if my mind doesn't consciously remember all the time, my body does. And I cannot seperate my actions easily from who I am because I have a broken brain.
So when my neck hurts in white hot pulses of agony from holding enough tension to pull it out of alignment, let me explain what I go through, rather, where my mind goes to;
I am back in high school, with a loser's hands wrapped around my neck.
My jaw aches too, because I am clenching my jaw to keep from screaming on the exhale as I force myself to do stupid breathing exercises, as useless as they feel, to try and override my own body. To calm myself.
But then that brings back another memory I can't face, hands pulling my hair, my head, thumbs pressing my jaw so I can't bite. I'm choking and gagging in the past and in the present on air.
But I can't bite here because I have to be polite, especially when I don't feel safe, because fear makes you prey. Fear makes you useless.
I have been traumatized time and time again; my brain is broken. My brain cannot be as it was.
Too much, too much, too much, stop, too much...
But the world doesn't give a fuck... that is the task of people. Yet too often, that is a task neglected.
I cannot breathe.
I am in a mask to protect others, I work a job where I serve others, I write to enlighten others, I used to be a leader to others, I used to be a Confidante to others, I am an empath and I have to feel the emotions of others...
I try to live my life low maintenance to please others, so I don't inconvenience others...
I have lived my life for others.
But then my neck hurts and my body remembers.
That is the only thing I can do for me is remember, but only painfully.
I try to forget but I don't feel safe, I can't when the one I cry out to doesn't hear me, but meets my molested eyes.
oh teacher teacher, wretched creature, I called your name and you walked away.
I can't breathe, I can't bite, and I know he's only going to be more aggressive when I try to fight.
Because I can't rely easily on others... I have to rely on me, at some point, everyone leaves.
Then the mask starts to feel like a hand again and it's hands on my neck, hands over my mouth, arms squeezing the life from my chest, hands hands hands crawling over my skin again.
And then my body remembers through the beeping and the screaming, but I'm at work, there's tortillas I should be steaming, but my brain is broken and down my face tears are streaming.
Now I look weak, now I'm broken, a workhorse gone lame or worse, human.
The coils in my neck wind tighter, I can't see through the pain, and I don't feel safe because I'm afraid.
I'm afraid to misstep, I'm afraid to set him off; him in past and him, irritable of the present.
My brain is broken and I cannot seperate now from then because my body remembers and it is afraid.
I cannot seperate my actions easily from who I am, so when I am overwhelmed, I am instantly failure in my eyes.
I am disappointment.
I am, yet again, a let down.
I am, once more, the problem child.
I am a rose and my traumatized brain is the thorn...
I love, with a passion I rarely utter, roses for those very things.
But I cannot love and accept myself because I have only in sad recent time been shown what it is like to feel those things... 2019 brought love, and 2020 brought acceptance.
I have a broken brain because my body holds my emotions too close to my pain.
I am medicated and dedicated to my mental health, but welcome to the modern world where you can't exactly have those things without work or wealth.
I have a broken brain, my illness does not define me... but some days it binds me. Some days I break, I shake, and I can't keep the tears down. Then the tears won't stay down because I cannot easily seperate my actions from who I am.
I never learned how to live for me because I was always ready to die for others... and I did time and time again. And again. And again. And again until I had to step back from being somebody to being nobody again.
So I'm sorry if I'm a pain in the neck...
Saturday, October 17, 2020
The Yaak House (Part Eight)
"The Yaak House" has moved to my dedicated Darker Things Blog! https://andiwritedarker.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Yaak%20House
I Write Darker Things
As I've continued writing on "The Yaak House" I have realized that I would do well to put my works of macabre horror on a blog dedicated to such so that my readers can enjoy my poetry unadulterated.
I will not move my short suspense story, "Echoes" as it is a milder flavor than "Yaak House", which has progressed into new and darker realms as I have written on it.
This new blog is still under construction, but the address is https://andiwritedarker.blogspot.com/
Things will be a tad messy on this blog insofar as "The Yaak House" is concerned, but I intend to keep the initial posts as placeholders, but replace the contents with a simple link to the corresponding label on my Darker Things blog. The link to all current posts pertaining to "The Yaak House" can be found here.
Monday, October 12, 2020
The Yaak House (Part Seven, Feat. Illustration by McCallum J Morgan)
(Special thanks to the talent of McCallum J. Morgan for his incredible illustration! You can view his blog in the link on his name there.)
The Yaak House (Part Six)
The Yaak House (Part Five, Feat. Illustration by McCallum J. Morgan)
(Special thanks to the talent of McCallum J. Morgan for his incredible illustration! You can view his blog in the link on his name there.)
The Yaak House (Part Four)
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Best Broken
My disorders don't leave me alone.
My disorders don't just go away.
I can't "just do better" because this is my best.
I have a broken best, and that's okay.
I'm healing, I've been hurt again and again for years, I had no idea how much I was being hurt.
I had no idea how much hurt I carried until I discovered kindness.
I had no idea how much the storm poured on me until someone held the umbrella.
My disorders don't leave me alone, neither does my therapist, nor do my demons.
I made a year self harm free, a hard fought year clean.
My relapse does not define me.
My relapse will not, in the paper chains of failure, bind me.
I have a broken best, I feel it in the way my anxiety makes my overworked heart ache within my chest.
Guess what, news flash, a bit about me and my PTSD; it's not just war, it's not just one form.
It has an awful sibling.
C-PTSD.
C?
Complex.
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
PTSD is one event, one thing, one wreck, one fire, one act...
CPTSD is multiple or prolonged events.
It is a lesser known hell.
For me, it is derealization and some forms of maldaptive daydreaming.
It is sitting, in the serene calm by brush lake, when the hands slide down my side as mine are on the table and my brother is across.
Hands as we are alone.
Hands on my hips, hands on my neck.
Hands and bless that saint of a man in the fact he understands how much one kind touch can ground me.
Hands under my shirt.
Hands pulling my hair.
The hands that hold are best exorcist to the hands that haunt.
I'm beside Brush Lake, but my mind is beside itself in the visiting bleachers of the high school, calling out a teacher's name for help, watching him meet my molested eyes.
Calling out just before being choked out... to watch him walk away.
Hands squeeze my neck from the past, I squeeze my brother's hands in the present.
I am beside brush lake but I am trapped seven years in the past.
My brother squeezes back, the hands fade away.
It's only a few seconds, it felt like days.
Hands and my brother has known in this small extent my hell; anxiety, anxiety, there is so much that those 7 letters cannot tell.
My disorders don't leave me alone.
They whisper in my ear.
"You're faking."
"You're only as good as the job you do."
"You couldn't save him."
"You're not worth a dime."
My disorders don't leave me alone.
"You aren't worth the time."
"You don't belong onstage."
"You don't belong in life."
My disorders don't just go away.
"Think happy thoughts!"
"Manifest joy!"
"Have you tried essential oils?"
"Maybe it's the gluten!"
I can't just "do better".
My brain doesn't produce the chemicals right.
If you can't make your own, pharmacy bought is fine.
Fine until you have to pay.
Fine until you have to hold a job, function, get paid.
Fine until you are standing in my worn out shoes, and two days of overtime doesn't even begin to cover the cost of the medications that keep you sane...
I have a broken best.
I have a broken brain.
I have an alphabet soup looking list of disorders, but it's okay!
Because I'm a writer, and I can thrive off this pain.
I don't want to, but here's an insidious truth.
Depression, oh my familiar, my mistress, my broken brain friend, hurts.
My body. Hurts.
As above, so below.
So the body, as the soul.
My shoulders carry mountains few have ever seen, I've been lucky enough to have a brother willing to admire my climb from where he stands beside me.
My right wrist aches from ancient abuse, scar tissue traveling free and loose.
My body clicks and pops, ask my brother, my sounds, his shock.
I have a broken best... and maybe I am like an egg; best broken to make better things.
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Big Weird Brother
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Unadopted
Worse, it is drawn from the experiences too many have had.
You are a cell, you do not feel, you do not scream, you do not breathe.
You are forced into existence by the parents of a young drug whore.
She never wanted motherhood, but oh her father preached.
You were born on the drug den floor.
You were surrendered at the fire station, for better or worse.
A ward already of the state.
Never by the birth mother held, you never got to nurse.
Already you are forsaken by the system, born into bleak fate.
You are adoptable, but you're expensive because you're young.
The system is glorified, a high price puppy mill.
You start to say words, to use your tongue.
"Ma" but those shoes are empty, too expensive to fill.
Everybody wants a baby,
adoption is only second best.
A last resort, a maybe,
hearts break in tiny chests.
You are one, but you have no home.
You witness your first abuse, foster mom and dad are violent, they fight.
You're young, you're scared, the suit people come, you get an ice cream cone.
You cry though, because it's not a familiar room you sleep in that night.
You are two, you are curious and loud.
You are cute, but you live with a monster.
The people that have taken you are the birth mother's crowd.
You're just another check for their roster.
The suit people come, you aren't even three.
They take you again, a new unfamiliar room.
There are still bruises on your cheeks.
You don't understand, and you cry when the thunder booms.
You are three, childless newlyweds take you to the pond.
They decide a child is too much, too soon.
You don't know the word yet, but you feel conned.
The suit people come, another ice cream at noon.
You are four and you already feel alone.
You're in daycare, and the suit woman comes.
The words of heartbreak and hope echo on your young lips, "I go home?"
The pain in her eyes burns brighter than a hundred suns.
You are five, you think you have a home.
You a family, an aunt too.
There is something weird with her, you feel it in your bones.
The suit people come after she starts kissing you.
You are six and you make a friend, your big brother, his name is Fred.
The suit people ask about him, with hope and a grin.
You say he wrestles naked with you in bed.
You learn years later, that the taste on his lips was gin.
You are seven, you're crying, you want a home.
The drunk you almost called dad says he's going to give you something to cry about.
Then, he breaks your bones.
The suit people, at the hospital, are the ones who see you out.
You are eight, and your gaze is haunted.
You woke from sleep with hand muffled screams.
After the act, he smoked a cigarette, flaunted.
The suit people come, for the first time they are a dream.
You are nine, another house, it happens again.
But the suit people don't check in as often now.
It doesn't happen often, only now and then.
Your learn it's called "sex", and realize for years, you've known how.
You are ten when you taste hope.
Start to call them mom and dad.
It's beautiful and fragile, a bubble of soap.
They are the first real parents you've had.
You are eleven, you haven't changed houses for a year.
You feel like you have a home.
You begin to forget fear.
Mom gives you a blanket, it's hand sewn.
You are twelve when you overhear.
These cries are joy, and soon enough you learn.
They'd been trying for an en vitro baby, it's worked, they cheer.
You're not in the announcement photos, but for this family you have yearned.
You are a week from thirteen when the baby is born, she's perfect and pure.
You even get to hold her, you call her your sister.
Then comes the heavy blow, they don't need you now, so you are returned.
You never get to say how much you'll miss her.
You are thirteen, you're still angry and you're hurt.
People don't want to adopt, they want blood, they want kin.
You're in Catholic school, this father's hands are crawling beneath your shirt.
At home, you trace a sharp pencil against your skin.
You're fourteen, now nobody wants you.
You're in a group home, you are covered in self inflicted scars.
Your grades are falling, your college hopes are few.
That's when you meet her, your first real friend, your star.
You are fifteen, she is your best friend, you start to call her mom.
She's seems ancient and wise, she's a writer.
She knows every way to reach you, and when you audition for a play, she's there to cheer you on.
You know by her scars she too, is a fighter.
You are sixteen, you're still in that group home.
You're losing hope in being adopted, but the mom friend is there.
You skip school one day to go get stoned.
Mom is the one to find you, you feel guilty, she was scared.
You are seventeen, you're little more than skin and bone.
You have more scars now, your body is thin.
Nobody wants you, you have no home.
Mom begs her parents to take you in.
You are still seventeen when you try to die.
You friend, Mom, cuts you from the noose.
Like a newborn with the cord cut, you begin to cry.
You wish you could overlook the haunting truth.
Her hands are shaking as she holds you close.
Your life is the greatest tragedy she has ever seen.
This friend has been a parent to you, more than most.
You tell her everything you've survived, she weeps and keens.
You are a month from eighteen, when her bold words are spoken.
"I will have not kids my own, but raise the ones tossed aside."
She makes a promise in her flesh that can't be broken.
She turns 24, and she has her tubes tied.
You are the day before being an adult, nobody wants to raise you.
People wanted kin, people wanted babies.
At least your friend mom is pure, is true.
Nobody thinks about the foster children they see.
These children, praying for maybe.
Praying to be that lucky third.
If en vitro doesn't work, if they can't have the baby.
Then maybe, just maybe, talk of adoption is heard.
You are 18 and you try to die again, the darkness sweet.
You wake in the hospital, your friend, now your mom, is reading your note.
The closing line, "Cause of death? En vitro, you see."
You reach for her hand as she sits shaking beneath her heavy coat.
You are 19 and you live with your friend mom.
She's crying because the state won't let her foster.
Your faith in humanity is all but gone,
You take her out to dinner, spoil her at Red Lobster.
You are 20 when you track a once young crack whore down.
Friend mom is with you, she wants to meet her too.
The once young whore is ancient, she lives across town.
The whore's gaze is vacant, she wants nothing to do with you.
You're halfway to 21 and your track down your father.
Well, at least your find you have a half sibling, his son.
Another foster child with whom most won't bother.
Your father is a grave, he turned on himself a gun.
You are 22 and your half brother is 15.
His last three foster parents returned him after their successes conceiving.
The pain is his eyes is your own memory, keen.
"Bundles of joy" are so damned deceiving.
People want blood, people want kin.
People want blood to their heirs,
More shallow than their skin,
The hands with blood on them may as well be theirs.
You are 23, your brother is just 16.
His foster parents just had a miracle en vitro heir.
Your brother was taken off life support after hanging from a tree.
He had over heard their plans to return him and despaired.
Your friend- she says to call her mom- holds you while you scream.
You were the one who got the hospital's call,
his life was taken by the selfish genetic dream.
You're thirteen again, you curse it all.
In his suicide note, it reads;
"My cause of death... en vitro, you see..."
You curse the fertility clinic for their "Good deeds"
You weep for the brother who never got to be.
You run into your former foster parents, you are 24, a friend is 22.
They're at a pro life rally as you walk her into the clinic.
They scream, "What if your mother had aborted you?!"
"You didn't want me either," your smile is bitter, cynic.
Silence spreads through the small crowd.
You tell about your freshly dead brother.
They slink back, guilty and cowed.
Your friend is brave through the abortion, you hug her.
You are 25, friend mom is 31,
You hear about the crack whore now in a hearse.
You can imagine never knowing the sun.
But here you were born, for better or worse.
You're 26, walking into the clinic beside a young girl.
It's your one-day sister, she's just 13.
Her parents are there, if just to protest, she says she wants to hurl.
Mother doesn't want her to abort her grandchild, the size of a bean.
She screams, she howls, "Someone will adopt it!"
You turn to her, you scowl, "Until they have their en
vitro child."
Your one-day sister turns to her mother and spits.
You tell her then you've missed her, she smiled.
Your one day sister becomes an only child disowned.
She comes to you when she's kicked from the house.
You are 27, you finally have a home.
Your friend mom is cleared at last to foster, she helps your one day sister out.
You are 28, your one day sister is now forever.
Family of choosing is a bond hard to sever.
You have a family, and of hope, at last you have a token.
She made a promise in flesh that can't be broken.
Everybody wants a baby, adoption is only second best.
A last resort, a maybe as hearts break in tiny chests.
Monday, June 1, 2020
Rights Are My Religion
Be ready, be ready, I do not do well in forced silence
Be ready, be ready, I will not be beaten and choked again into compliance.
Burn down my soap box, stand by, give alibi, defend the bad cops.
Good cops I see you, but you gotta control your own- oh, wrong narrative though.
It's as much about the good and bad as it is about the race; it's intertwined, I'm horrified, it's gentrified and glorified.
This isn't blind panic, it's systematic and borderline manic.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Broken Parts
Witness my mind against me, pushing me down to drown, smothering.
This is a panic attack, PTSD.
My front brain and back brain living disconnected, giving me flack.
Witness me, the trainwreck, falling from my rusty tracks.
Witness the panic, hands shaking and tears snaking down my cheeks as I curl up, pathetic and small, gasping, mouth gaping.
Witness anxiety consuming me while I lay aching, grasping the sheets.
Witness me left broken and meek; I am, to my anxiety, free for the taking.
I am left in my dark, unable to witness the world outside from within.
I don't see the hand darting out to grab my anxiety by the scruff, shake it, and throw it back again.
I am shaking, trapped within, while somebody else smothers the voice of mutiny over the course of an hour; because that is what friends do.
I can't even listen from within as a friend scolds the mutineer, but I marvel later at the way they so gently choked the voice and defend me; even seem to hold me dear.
Read back and watch the mutiny seep back through the floorboards to sleep and steep again in their fetid bitterness.
Behold the gentle and creative hands that snuffed out a self destructive flame, that quieted the mutiny.
Simply because this is what friends do.
You trust each other with your awkward, you do the scary things; you open up.
I am left to shake, quake, and wonder, for if so easily they handled mine, how often has perhaps their own mental mutiny torn them asunder?
How often has their own hate choked their hope and wheezed down their neck?
Has theirs too traced it with rope?
I shake, marveling at the time and kindness they took to chase the desert dog off where I couldn't put him to sleep.
I can't help but weep at the fact the broken parts were there, mutiny laid bare, and somehow... I'm addressed still as whole.
The anxiety lingers, another mutiny for another day, this shaking faith in the fact they can still behold my face as a whole beneath the broken parts.
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Hawk, Dove, Mask, and Glove
A time of pestilence, a looming famine, so much death and, still coming, more.
Now is the time of mask and glove.
That we will not be effected in the end.
Cannot handle being told to stay home, they're "bored".
As ever, all is well for the big business folk.
No no, I mean the "lesser" perceived personnel.
Those who take out your trash.
Your fast food restaurants are places full of fear.
All of us, trying not to spread disease is scolded as defeat.
When a year ago many of us were spoken down at as lesser than piss.
Spelled out with the words "essential personnel" as the font-thin ice.
Monday, April 20, 2020
Except it's in Your Lungs
Must I welcome you who mocked me? Must I?
Now that you have come now to suffer with me?
With anxiety?
Your mockery is not laid to rest, I lives on in my head.
For now who but you comes to me, the young veteran to this anxiety.
"What tea do you drink?"
"What meditations do you do?"
"How do you do this?!"
"I lost my screws!"
Oh hush honey, hush honey, I'll tell you the same things I heard, when I came seeking comfort.
"It's all in your head."
Wait, what?
Oh, right, it's your lungs now, isn't it?
I do not have to welcome you who mocked me.
I do not owe you my guidance, I do not owe you my time.
You have become my cruel amusement, to pass my jaded time.
To see you panic and heave and scream, the way I have in and out of dreams.
I have no sympathy for you because I've had to grow my own.
"It's all in your head."
Drink to your conspiracies, drink to your mania, drink to your denial until the virus comes to you with his hands like bile.
Mock the invasion I endured in my test.
Mock my quarantine, then run when I cough on you from my chest.
I'm maybe petty, I know at least I'm vile, as there are those I wish this plague upon.
I'm human, I know; my blood has shown me so.
So forgive me for mere fact I can't find a damned gram of sympathy for thee.
You, surrounded in the New York corpses.
You, seeing the states fall ill one, by one, by one until free from it are None.
I stand, in the familiar anxious hell sands...
"It's all in your head."
Except it's in your lungs.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
The Yaak House (Part Three)
Friday, February 14, 2020
Lucky Third
These are familiar things, feelings I must have foolishly forgotten.
Where my heart overflows love I step aside for the little wonders, tiny hands and feet.
Where my soul overflows grief, these sandcastles of progress wash away.
Two tides, two oceans, neighboring and never mixing, a body caught between.
I weep for the wonder I was robbed, scream for the misfortune of it all, beg myself for forgiveness.
I'm fighting the hardest I have fought in years; and scarce a soul sees.
I'm fighting again and I am proud for it.
I shouldn't feel like a child, holding my progress up for the world to see; but like I child I seem when I can't even say I'm, of my destructive habit, clean.
As I write my hands are shaking, body aching, my heart into peices breaking, but here I stand. Here I stand alone; alone in the way I have always been. Alone in the way of someone who has always been a centerpiece in someone's life but never the center of someone's world; the way of someone who has learned that they're never the first choice, or even second best. Alone in the way of someone who's a lucky third place, perhaps a perky side; alone in the way of someone used to not being chosen. Maybe it's a little bit selfish, but for all the years I've burned, the times I've been spurned, I think one human moment has been earned.
So ignore me then; ignore the lucky third. I'll wince and perhaps cry, but I'm long used to being unheard by the heart that reaches out for mine. Used to the fact I have mistaken what is kind for love.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Puzzle Glass
It's a problem I've had from a young age, from the moments where I was first ostracized as a child.
The who and when, where and how, those are matters for my therapist now.
What remain are the side affects...
A yearning for connection when all I've known is disconnection.
I don't know how to connect, I wasn't taught how; you can't show how.
A diagnosis somewhere withheld, as it surely would have spelt a death sentence in my education, a spectrum I was never placed on, but I feel now that perhaps I belong.
Manic high, Manic low, perhaps I run along one borderline or a spectrum of borderlines.
I lean into the idea of connection because it is warm, yet I cannot embrace it; as if born without arms, I cannot grasp the finer things.
I might as well be a grown child, perpetually inept, like a puzzle peice too broken to connect.
It's okay if nobody wants to solve me, I'm a glass puzzle of broken peices.
I fear connection because people bleed.
I fear it because I feel that need...and where there has been need there's been neglect.
I lean into the idea of connection because it is warm, but I cannot easily embrace it, because I have been scolded.
Now I fear the warmth for the scald.
I beg thee, explain to me, how do I best connect?
I don't know how.
I have but words; words upon words upon words... but I struggle if I am to casually converse.
Conversation is reckless; words, writing... that is more orderly.
You get time to string together words, more than when you converse.
I am blind to my tone, blind to how I am perceived.
I'm broken in the fact there's friends for whom I lack an empathy.
Friends I cannot connect to anymore.
Family before which I stand invalid.
I'm healing, I'm happy, even if the day was just another setback, another let down; a casual, late night meltdown of me on me against me.
I have often scolded when I lean in, as I must surely exist only to be leaned on.
It's a matter of who and how perhaps, but that feels like another fine thing I can't grasp.
I'm not allowed to take time but it is expected of me to make time... yet here I am born without hands for the clock.
I only know to make a mess, to run.
I feel in extremes; the worst extreme is the apathy, and I feel her hopeless grip creeping back in.
My apathy is the scary thing, because I can act through it, because I have been praised for her.
I have been praised for being the weakest flavors of me...
It's okay, if nobody wants to know me, stars knows some days I feel as if I don't even know me.
I dissociate, forget me, live in the skin of apathy.
I have acted through her arms and received praise...
Who would really want to know me?
I run hot and cold, no middle ground; I am awkward in a crowd.
I am... one on one, perhaps taxing to be around.
I've never been allowed to be the center, or maybe I've never seen the center in good context.
I grew up the problem child, I dodged the center for the critical gaze.
Even onstage, I feel that old anxiety, as if I never outgrew that age.
I grew up feeling as if I needed to justify myself; I was always analyzed. My every move, every book, every word, analyzed but never in those eyes justified.
I grew up infantilized, and they wonder why I am a mess at best.
They wonder why I am inept.
I was never expected to find any real world sucess.
I am not expected to do the best, I never have been.
At work I'm little more than a has been, I failed there; tried and tried to train for assistant... but I can barely help myself.
Nobody tried to train me, to be fair, what remains is it's just another place I failed.
Just another place I couldn't grasp the finer things.
Yet where I couldn't grasp the finer things, I understand intimately, the important things.
I understand the power of being vulnerable, I exercise that because that which I say for myself is harder to turn against me.
I will own my vulnerability, I will wear my weakness as armor and let those who attack me for it speak to their own character in doing so.
I find my power in being open and human, because everyone has somewhere a heart, a small scared thing.
Behind walls perhaps, maybe buried to be forgotten, but there is in all of us that scared human heart. Even if I fail, I reach for the scared heart... because the heart always knows, the heart always cries out.
Heart to heart I reach, maybe not in ways expected, but in this way I have near perfected.
This is the way I reach, through the shattered peices of puzzle glass.
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Words
Fear dictated the lives of our ancestors, it dictated the choices of previous generations, it dictates our lives even now.
Fear is worst when it comes to the heart, we teach ourselves "don't get close, you get hurt".
We teach ourselves that we aren't worthy, that we are weird and unlovable. We teach ourselves not to take a chance, not to go out on limbs.
We teach ourselves these broken lessons all while we hold in our hearts our human idols, humans as flawed and wonderful as we are afraid.
You can fall in love with small smiles and sarcasm, with the awkward and the intellectual, with the sound of a voice... we are a social species, we are designed to attach to others. We are designed to bond, to fall fast and hard.
So when we have a hard time doing just this, when we cannot connect, we perceive ourselves- and fear we are perceived- as broken.
When we are afraid, we neglect connection, we fill it with mindless and empty affections, obsessions.
I am the type of broken to fall in love and obsession with three other dangerous things. I fall in love with potential, I fall in love with intellect, and I fall for perhaps the most dangerous thing of all... words.
Words.
Words are my lifeblood, ink is on my skin, in my skin, in my veins. Words are my world, words are how I connect to the world with whoever and however I can. Words are how I was destroyed, how I healed, words are how I live and how I love. Words brought me here; into the world, to the brink of suicide... and words brought me back from it more than I care to count. Words brought me to the stage where words would save me again, and words... would fail me here. It is here that words would for the first time fail me completely, because words cannot present in any scale, cannot encompass, words cannot begin to explain what this place brought me. Words fall short, words stutter and fail, words saved me here. Small words saved something beyond me, they saved my dream.
Words saved words, if that can be seen as sensible in saying.
Using just words, you can build entire worlds.
Yet for all these words, I am perhaps the greatest idiot alive, a hypocrite, in one word.
I preach here of words, but I cannot, for the life of me, to those who bring to my mind countless words, and my heart constant warmth, utter a single one of what's true, to me, to my heart, to my dreams.
It is that dreadful month, the month of empty words and oversold hope. It is the month of the words I fear, it is a month built around the words I wanted, wasted, wept. It is what I call the Bastard Month.
It is February.
December and her dreams have gone, the new year has gone stale, and time marches on without regard for words.
It is February and I feel an ache to my core, down my spine, the ache is alone and I can only laugh at it. Alone because that's what I know best, alone because I am afraid.
Alone because the heart alone is supposed to be safe, but we are social creatures, and the heart alone is the heart that aches. Forsake the heart, and what have you left?
Still I the fool, fall with my whole heart, for words. I fall hard for words, afraid to utter even one.
So I resign myself to words, I cannot say clearly what I want, because so often in the past; when I've been understood, I've been rejected.
When I've been understood is when I've been hurt and betrayed, degraded.
So I will wait for nothing, and I will make my peace with words in the Bastard's Month.