Red-handed Expectations

 Chosen to to be a mother by birth but god knows there's plenty of ways to parent on this earth.

Not even thirty, but on bad days I need my cane, and still the doctor can't be bothered to get to the true bottom of my pain. 

For I was born to accept suffering, to the stigmatized yet holy anatomy, silently expected like the countless mothers before me in my bloodlines to be comfortable with blood on my hands...

I am expected to be comfortable with blood on my hands where men must learn it.

I have reached familiarity with that which causes most sulking men to find revulsion.

Firsthand red-handed where the men must distance themselves from the action.

Mine is blood shed without violence, without loss, only in absence. 

Yet the same fools who claim to understand my body and identity better will squirm if they listen too deep to these words.

They will dismiss the process of perpetual growth and destruction, though it follows the bloodied path they brag to walk in wars. 

Heartbeat

[ breif but graphic descriptions of miscarriage, reader discretion advised ]

There is a fading heartbeat. 
It is dying. 
You cannot end its suffering. 
You cannot end yours. 
You are septic, you are sick.
You're begging and pleading. 
There was no chance of saving a little heartbeat. 
You never wanted these invasive cells.

But there is a heartbeat. 

So you must suffer. 

You're in the hospital. 

You are on antibiotics. 

You are suffering... 

But still, there is a heartbeat. 

There is a heartbeat, product of conception struggling. 

Your body cannot pass it. 

There, there's a heartbeat. 
There was a heartbeat. 
You have a heartbeat. 
But it is not important. 

You live in the United States, where soon, a safe abortion is no longer an option. 

This would be a simple D and C. 

The cells are already doomed to die, but there is a heartbeat. 

This was not be an abortion. 
You are having a miscarriage. 

These cells have no chance within you. 

But the governor insists you give them a chance. 

So it will kill you, surely as a coathanger would.

You have no safe options.

There's a heartbeat. 

You have a heartbeat. 

But your heartbeat doesn't matter to them. 

You are a woman, you are property again..

You are lower you are beneath them. 

You are second plus to them.

You don't have rights. 

You don't have options. 

You just want to end the suffering of the cells to save yourself... 
But... There's a heartbeat. 

Now your heart is struggling. 

You are feverish 

You are dying

You're delirious. 

You are bleeding, bleeding, pleading...
None of this is right. 

But your rights don't matter. 

What what supposedly matters to the government? 
What matters to them is that dying clump of cells falling from your womb, the umbilical cord still connected, barely recognizable as human.

They swear this life matters to them but they will just as surely damn it to death and poverty, damn it to you fate if it is born with the cursed womb.

It is dangling by a thread. 

It does not matter that there's no chance of saving it. 

No amount of science, no amount of prayer.
It has a heartbeat

Even if it is no longer within your womb and destined to die.

It does not feel pain. 

All the pain is yours to feel because you have no rights here.

You're a criminal if you seek to end it to end this pregnancy. 

That was not a pregnancy, that was an invasion of your rights of your body, of your autonomy.

There's a heartbeat growing weaker. 

It's yours. 

You are dying. 
But there is still a heartbeat in the cells. So your death is irrelevant to them.
There are no heartbeats. 
You have died. 
For what?
Why?
The pro-birth regime; the once merely crooked government is now fully broken, twisted, and corrupted.

Church and state intertwined in a torrid love affair that will burn the bed they lie together in, fucking as the house burns down around them without care.

Church and state fucking atop your rights to your body, the patriarchal hard-on for power and control.

You have a heartbeat, but it was never truly yours in the eyes of the lovers burning the house down.

Your heartbeat, and you yourself, were only seen as nothing more than a broodmare. 
You were never a human to them. 

You were only a vessel for their sons. 

I still have a heartbeat. 

I will scream for those who don't because of these laws.

I will flaunt my tied tubes and scrambled eggs.

I do not want to birth a child into this world for fear they be born to bear the brand of the breast, the womb.

I will scream about my past use of plan B

I will applaud the man who bought it for me

I will shout that it failed me

I cannot afford to be silent about my miscarriage of 2015 because by the bastards that was abortion.

By my third tenant that was my right if you count it so!

"One's body is inviolable, subject to one's will alone."

By science it was not!

By my fifth tenant: 

"Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world."

But I was nothing more to this system than a broodmare.

Tubes tied, I am a broken vessel.

What heartbeats really matter to them but their own numbered ones...

I am horrified... but I find solace knowing I will outlive the people who put forth legislation that will cost more lives than they think it will "save". 

If I Die At Pride

If I die at Pride, my name is Andi. 

Do not call me Andrea, I hate the name; but to change it is danger and shame.

If I die at Pride, my pronouns are They/Them, do not call me she; I was not strong enough to bear that title.
If I die at pride... tell my mother I was closer to a son than I ever was a daughter.
If I die at Pride, do not mourn my death, celebrate my life, return me to the earth; for I am a witch.
If I die at Pride, know I died screaming again. Know I've died at the stake before in another time. Know I will always outlive the hate.
If I die at Pride, my paternal grandmother and the aunt on that side are not invited to the service. I disowned them.
If I die at Pride know I curse the folk who are responsible with my dying breath. Know I will haunt them, eternal in my unrest.
If I die at Pride... send locks of my hair to my brother in sweden and my friend in the Netherlands.
If I die at Pride so many voices die with me.
If I die at Pride, know I died doing what I loved; speaking my truth and standing for human rights.
If I die at Pride, tell my boyfriend I loved him with every ounce of love I had, tell his daughter how proud I was to know her dad.
If I die at Pride, comfort my unofficially adopted children, Alex and Chelley.
If I die at Pride, bury me with a notebook and a pen, bury me with copies of my brother McCallum's books, bury me with dice.
If I die at Pride, I die by the fear of an uneducated man.
If I die at Pride, put "Hail Satan" on my gravestone. Put the tenants of the TST on my headstone, remind everyone of the words important to me.
If I die at Pride, lay me down with a rainbow, do not wear black.
If I die at Pride make my funeral the gayest there has ever been. I want a drag queen to read my eulogy, I want rainbows and life and love and everything GAY.
If I die at pride... I die fighting; just the way I lived.

Physical Thing

 I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired and sick and tired.

Tired of the weight unseen that drags me down and down and down as my mind spirals deeper into the abyss of itself as I learn to accept who I am.

I hate myself; this broken mind that slips and breaks and shatters.

I hate my physical being. 

The soft and aching body; the hips build weird, the feet that point awkwardly in, that don't walk right. I hate my nose, I hate my ears, I hate the gap in my teeth and the shape of my face. 

I hate that thing I do when I laugh, because I went so long faking laughter that I had to relearn the real thing. 

I hate my eyelashes, I hate my fat and stubby fingers, I hate my arms and I hate my thighs. 

I hate the shape of my neck and the shape of my chin. 

I hate my womb, the thing I never wanted.

I hate the sunburn scar on my chest, the thing that beats beneath it. 

I hate my ribs, I hate my rolls, I hate my knees. 

I hate the physical thing that is me. 

I hate my brain because it cannot produce the chemicals.

I hate my eyes because they're haunted and hurting, but people call them beautiful when I cry.  

I hate my arms, I hate my legs, my lips, my voice, and my eyebrows... 

I hate that I can only been seen in this physical shell. I hate that people can't see me... but I guess that's my only blessing... because who wants to see that?

Forgive The Growing Pains

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.

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...

Broken Parts

Behold the broken parts in the mutiny of me against me, anxiety and self loathing creeping in to slide foul and hateful hands down my shaking spine to squeeze my frightened lungs.
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.

Hawk, Dove, Mask, and Glove

It's the time again, war.
A time of pestilence, a looming famine, so much death and, still coming, more.

Then was the time of hawk and dove.
Now is the time of mask and glove.

We called then, our young boys out to war.

Yet here, on our soil, this sickness has now killed a sad deal more.

Now, just as then, we deny and we pretend.
That we will not be effected in the end.

A country, built on the backs of those called to war...
Cannot handle being told to stay home, they're "bored".

American dreams are being choked.
As ever, all is well for the big business folk.

Woe be my fellow essential personnel.

Not just the Healthcare, not just Police, Fire, EMTs, Dispatch, those the people who see you through your moments of true essential hell.

No no, I mean the "lesser" perceived personnel.

Your hardware store, your grocery staff.
Those who take out your trash.

Your auto parts stores, all these cashiers.
Your fast food restaurants are places full of fear.

Even the processing plant workers are treated like meat.
All of us, trying not to spread disease is scolded as defeat.

We are expected to put our lives at near constant, silent risk.
When a year ago many of us were spoken down at as lesser than piss.

The line between fast food workers and sacrifice
Spelled out with  the words "essential personnel" as the font-thin ice.

Except it's in Your Lungs

Welcome all to my  anxiety, the tightening in your chest.
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.

Lucky Third

These feelings shouldn't hurt, I should be on a first name basis with them like lovers. The familiarity of being ignored and replaced, the sharp red sting of self loathing.
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.

347

"I hate myself, I hate myself. Not enough, no good, no point in trying to be understood."
That, friends, is the mantra of my broken mind.
My therapist made me take a count, every time it came to me. She made me make a tally sheet, of the times a day I disagreed with me.
Three hundred and forty-seven times, of the times I remembered to mark.
That was just a day at home, a relatively productive day alone. I did my dishes, I took out the trash. I watered my plants, fed the cat, even swept off the porch mat. I cleaned my shower, I mopped the floor.
Still the thoughts endure.
That's a day at home.
At work, I dare not count. I dare not mark the sheet, because that would be a wretched defeat. Every beep, every screen, steamer, item, every dish, drink, and drain... the mantra, the mantra, always, always in my brain.
Repeat myself, repeat myself; only when I shout do I seem to be heard.
Repeat myself, repeat myself; respect is but a dream. Feeble, fleeting, vapid steam, I want to weep, to scream for this shattered dream.
On my knees scrubbing tiles, fingers bleeding as I throw in the miles.
See me, hear me, anyone please...!
Silence met with laughter, the two shared a drink, laughed as I chased the futile, scrubbing beneath a sink.
I'm panicked and I'm starving for some kindness, but I dare not let it show.
I have to be a machine, mechanical, clean.
Speak not of the oil, of the leaks, the rust. In us, place all your trust, hail the nuts, praise the bolts; as the machinist has forbade us from being humans, dolts.
"I hate myself, I hate myself, not good enough, no good, unworthy of the stage."
My shocks are shot, my beams are rusted, my body a prematurely failing machine that cannot be trusted.
My hair is rapidly greying, falling out in clumps, but I'm forbade to speak on that; my suffering is invalid.
"You're smiling, it can't be bad!"
So was Robin Williams; so were others.
So I was I three years ago; when things were pretty bad.
The smile does not negate my pain, even if you can't feel it, can't see it the same.
Pain is relative, and circumstance depends on  what we're made of; what softens a potato hardens an egg.
I am a salad of misfortune. I softened my resolve, so I hardened my heart.
I'm afraid of kindness, I'm afraid of touch, even as I battle the fear, even as I work to undo the damages thus.
Unholy, unworthy, unclean, me. I dare not reach out my heart, I dare not reach for comfort
Not when I lie alone and crying; not even when I am in need of help.

Do Scary Things

A writer is a storyteller, a historian, a writer is anything really. A writer is a strange thing to be. The fact is old as language itself, older than documented history.
While I was puttering around online the other night, a writer I respect and admire said something ( in reality, a great many somethings) in a blog post that struck a chord in me, a note that hasn't been played in years. One line stuck with me, and struck me;
“do scary things.”
Do scary things?
I laughed a bit when I read it because he was, is, right. Those words extend so deeply into life, beyond writing.
When I was 16, I gave blood for the first time. Not solely for the sake that I am A-, a harder to find blood type, but much to the alarm of my creative writing teacher (and my mother), so I could understand what it feels like to lose that much blood.
The look on my teacher's face when I told him was both amused and concerned. Mom was mostly concerned.
I've been a blood donor ever since, whenever I can.
Scary things are everywhere in life. It took a lot of guts for me to get up on stage the first Open
Mic Night I read at. It took guts and perhaps 3 hours of getting ready at home, because if I was going to be scared, I was going to look good doing it. I was writing a character that did a lot of speaking on stage. I needed to feel that, to do it. So I did.
That was almost two years ago now… it's a strange thought.
I am the kind of person that sees everything as a scary thing, ESPECIALLY people. People are terrifying to me. I'm not entirely an introvert, not by any means an extrovert… I'm some blighted thing in the middle. I believe it might be an actor.
I am scared a majority of the time,too scared to leave my comfort zone, to do the scary things.
Life is all the scary things, and you have to do the scary things.
Every word out of my mouth is a scary thing to me, every set of eyes, every step into the light, every second on the stage, scary.
Parking? Okay, that's only kind of  scary. Walking in, saying hello, seeing the familiar faces, new faces, signing up, sitting down, scary.
I am always scared and maybe that's not the normal for most but that is normal to me.
Mess up a line onstage?
FUCK
Sheer. Terror.
Lose my place, lose my nerve, lose the steam for a piece in the middle of a reading?
FUCK
TERRIFYING.
Every beat of my heart is a shock, every breath in my lungs is a tornado, every step I take is pain.
I am always scared, even at work. Late night, rough customers, angry voices, damage control, long waits, tempers flaring, voices rising…
The catch of it all is a twisted thing; fear is good to me.
I lived with solid, abject fear for two years… fear that mom would see the awful things my boyfriend said to me in text, fear that she'd find his nasty letters, that she would see a bruise, that she would find the concealers, the cover ups, that I had begged and borrowed from girls in the locker room. Fear when I got to school that he would find me before I found my friends at breakfast, fear that he would take me to the visiting bleachers, fear that his hands would be harsh…
Fear becoming fact when people kept walking when I was screaming.
Fear being fact… when people saw it happen and then looked away.
You've gotta do scary things. Scary things like throwing the first punch to protect yourself after a year of taking it.
Scary things like giving in to the red anger for the first time and not knowing what happened for a whole half hour of your life.
Scary things like saying no, breaking up for the first time.
You have to do scary things in life, like let yourself be known.
My writing is my soul, beauty I cannot see in myself but that I feel. I am blind to myself.
Anybody who has let me rehearse my readings to them, who has given me feedback on what I have written and not yet read onstage has given that feeling in my soul something that I can see with my eyes. That something is beyond fear, beyond the scared young writer I started out as.
Everybody who has nurtured that dream… has a piece of my heart. That same thing that sends shocks through my chest, that same thing that serves as the molten core of a Phoenix… the very thing I lie and lie and lie to myself about in an attempt to guard against pain.
You have to do scary things to live.
I never wanted to drive on an icy road, I did. I almost died. Part of me did die.
Part of me, in the scream of metal and glass, expired. Part of me died and I, as I am before you, was born.
I did not want to open my eyes after the impact… but you have to do scary things.
I did not want to try to move my hands for fear they would be still, for fear that I would never again write, but I did and I do.
Scary things… if you don't do them, they will happen. Before this the only scary thing had been tame, controlled, the blood donation.
I do the scary things now. I don't let them happen, I make them happen.
Do scary things.
Perhaps the greatest words of inspiration at this stage of my life.

Any Sane Way

I don't think there is any sane way for people to understand me, so I opt toward insane and put my heart to paper. I write to explain and explore myself, I write for me as much as I write for the people I may not even know yet. I write to do things over, to take things back.
I write to do the things I can't, to cherish the people I  lost, to cherish the people I am afraid to pull in close lest I be rejected.
I write because for just a minute at a time I can live and breathe a dream, I can share that dream and let new eyes see it.
I write because I am finite and afraid; words are the closest we have to immortality. So I will admit my bare humanity through this, because my mind would live on in ink to inspire in spirit as others have done for me, and in the tapestry of literature, I will have my thread.

This is Not (A Suicide Note)

This is the letter I daily want to write, the bullet I won't bite. The bullet that years ago never fired, the .44 magnum that filled me for a time with endless ire.
This is the letter I'll never send, because your heart in this way I refuse to rend.
This is me, alive and unliving; me, present and forgotten.
Me, feeling redundant and replaced in every aspect of life.
Me reaching out to the ones who said they'd be there... to be slapped away.
I hope you never understand how it is that the people you see daily are the first to forget you; the first to make you feel that you're mundane and plain.
I hope you never understand what I mean when I say it sometimes feels like you're less burden dead than alive... that the single thing keeping you alive is that which makes you ache, makes you wish you'd die.

I hope you never understand seeing the signs in yourself, only to realize you're the only one that does...

I hope you never feel the ache in your heart that resides, heartbeat to heartbeat, in mine.
The ache that says, in a thousand bitter tongues,  "Everyone has something more important than me," or perhaps denial is more serene, "I don't want to die, I just want something to happen to me."
This is the letter I never sent.
This is the letter you will never read, because I am stubborn, I am me, and I refuse to let the demons win this fight.
I stand before you, not as someone meek, not as someone whose name will be read with a weep in an obituary.
I stand before you to speak, I am here to read, because I refuse to again make myself bleed. I refuse to give my destructive demons that lead, I refuse.
I will say it again, again, again, and again... because that is the only way to keep the demon out and let the weak seed of hope win.

I refuse to dim my light.
I refuse to let my self destruction win this fight.
I refuse to be a statistic, a tragedy, anything but me!

I.
Refuse.

Because I have come this far.
I've written this much.

I cannot count on my hands and feet the lives I have touched.
My tears do not make me weak, they make me human... because this is the letter I never sent.
This is the letter you will never read, because I know there are a lot like me. There, in this fetid world, will always be.
They are the ones I want to reach; they're the ones I see. They're the ones who need to know they're important to me.
This is a letter I hope you never need to read.

In The Ink

A writer is a dangerous thing  to be when you grow up in a nowhere town, but a beautiful thing to be when you've lived as a nobody in that very nowhere.

A writer lives and breathes a dream, a writer learns and burns, lives and dies, goes up and comes at last crashing down from the fantastical sky to the dull and dispassionate world in which we,  by birth, reside.
A writer can crack against the glare of the world and fall into The Ink, and many sink. The weird, however, we swim.
The Ink is to the weird, not a fluid, it's not a void. The Ink is a mania, grasping caffeine to build a world of steam and dreams, the Ink is Art, the Ink is in me and I am knee deep in the Ink.
I'm weird, I'm queer, and I will not be shamed for it.
I am deep in the ink.
I'm well into 60 thousand words already and I'll confess...
I am in the Ink too deep to sleep, only write for fear the ideas slip away, for fear the haphazard pin I put in my plot will fall loose and the whole of 60 or so thousand words in pieces all over will scatter again.
I am adrift and content to fish my tale from the dark waters of my mind. I am, for once with my writings, at peace.
The Ink is my obsession, the Ink is my salvation where the world spins wildly beyond my control. The Ink is my communion with the creativity I set aside, a chance to breathe again.
The Ink does not judge the writers... that we do  ourselves.

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones may break my bones; but words are forever.
Words come back to bite you, words come back and fight you.
You can crush stone, down to rubble, burn sticks to ash, but words... words cannot be undone.
I have done nothing here but be me and bleed ink...
Ink because I know the power of the word, because no matter how big the stick, no matter how heavy the stone; they're temporary.
Stone cracks and becomes rubble.
Sticks burn and crumble to ash.
Words cannot be undone.
Words cannot be paralleled by any machine in their power, words cannot be beaten in their sway, words cannot be  taken away.
I have, in my life, wasted a lot of words on anger and hate... I'm only human after all.
I have thrown my shares of sticks and stones, I have broken a share of bones, but remains the same is that the gain and pain were temporary, and it's the words that remained.
I was right in screaming, I was right in dreaming, but my words died oft unheard and alone... because words take two; one to listen and one to speak.

Why Am I Alive

I tire often, of my broken inner diatribe, the simple, painful four word question of "why am I alive?"
Every lung of oxygen taken is just the body's obligation, and every kindness I give is one that was, from me, once taken; now twice returned.
See, at work I'm a machine, I am maintained, contained, restrained. I have a purpose, I have a plan, I do not stand idly by; i stand and fan the flames ans the motivation and that drive my team like a train.
Yet I get home, and feel like I'm a scam. I'm lifeless, bland... I breathe here the same stale air, fulfill the oxygen obligation.
So why then, am I alive, a shell?
I'm alive because wings found me on the way down. I'm alive because something in me died.
I'm alive because I have places to go, people to meet, sunsets and sunrises to see.
I'm alive because I want to kiss beneath the moon.
I'm alive because somewhere there is always going to be somebody who needs me.
I'm alive because my nephew needs to see me be.
I'm alive because my son couldn't be.
I'm alive because my Aunt Jean would want me to be.
I have to be alive, because so many want me to be.
I need to stay alive, they want me to be.
I want to stay alive... just not always for me.
I need to stay alive to repay the people who have been kind.

I'm alive to be kind, I have to stay alive to be kind.
I'm alive because someone spoke to me kind... and I don't know how to thank that someone for keeping me alive.
I am alive because someone was kind when I needed it most, someone was kind enough to say they loved the words I wrote.
So be kind and speak kind... otherwise the space before you could be... would be, blank.

I Collect Voices

The human face is an unreliable thing to count on. So many so alike after a hundred, after a thousand, indistinguishable after a million.

I do not remember you by your face, not often, for I remember people by the sound of their voice. The trained notes of a musician, the rise and fall of a singer, individual whispers and laughs in a crowd. The stifled smile of an introvert draped over a velveteen laugh, gentle sass and wit. The fervor of writers speaking of what they’ve hauled from the blissful ink.

I collect the voices I hear and cherish the voices that speak to me kindly. The voices that inspire me, the voices I admire. A face is familiar, but a voice is forever; the voice is the sound of the soul as much as the eyes are the windows in.

I do what I can to avoid the voices I shy away from, the harsh and angry notes that make what is small in my soul cower and cry. The curse of me is the surly tone of my expression will forever belie the gentler side.

I collect the voices that I miss when they’re gone, voices that make my heart skip, voices that breathe life into my ideas and give them sound. I collect voices while I can, I drink in every word, reasonable to absurd.

It is when I begin to forget these voices that I weep. It is when I can’t remember the sound of those who have moved on that I break, when my own voice shakes. The quirks and tones of the old voices I loved taken when I was younger, Gramps, Grandma Great, Aunt Bugs…

I long to hear those voices, and I cry when I hear their recordings, because close is not the same. It just brings more pain.

I cry when a voice makes my heart skip, because those are the ones I fear losing most. My best friend, my sister, my mother, my overseas brother, a waning grandmother, my father, the people who hold my heart unknowing.

My voice holds my heart, so please don’t speak over me; of that I have lived enough. My heart is a temperamental thing, unruly and loud. She can call you out and tear you down, she lashes out in my veins and escapes late at night, early in the day. It looks like frustration and rage, she’s afraid and circling a long-gone boxing ring, waiting for the bell to escape her cage.

In Silence; In Hiding

I find myself more and more pouring into my fiction, more and more into what I recognize as my mildly problematic addiction.
When I write what's in my mind at least it's out and it's known. 
When I write the non-fiction I can clarify and I can understand... but more and more it hurts.
More and more the old worries ride up in rebellion, more and more they swell like waves in an ocean storm; more and more until the dam breaks under a raindrop... and I follow suit.
I was Queen for a day, and then failure for a week, then a month, a year... life.
Oh life... a, if not THE, defining feature of my sex, is the finite thing I cannot create. 
Life; the thing given just to take itself away, life that could pass through a buttonhole, gone.

Life, only once I held it in me... life escaped me, life expired. 
Life; I can remember where it began, I can remember where I discovered it, I can remember when and where it ended. 
I remember the pain of that life.
I remember that life, but I am shunned when I speak of it. 
I am shamed when I seek solace. 
I am disgraced in the fact that I did not share what I would have then been shamed for.
I would have been shamed; and here she is revered, venerated, celebrated.
For I am shame. I feel this shame in silence, in the primal ache, craving violence.
I feel this ache in my heart for a heart that never beat.
I hear this cry in my ear, of a child who never drew a breath.
I feel the kicks of a child that never moved, that never got to have legs.
I carry in my heart a name... that I never got to call. A name I never go to share, a name I never had the chance to give.
I feel these things in silence, I feel these things in hiding because I am not allowed to feel these things out loud.

Manage This

I came into management with aspirations and inspiration, not an ounce of trepidation, no hesitation.
I threw myself into the fire, put myself up for auction, work was the buyer, promise after promise to take me higher.
Yet here I stand a year and  two later, again my biggest hater, on thin ice, a skater.
Down I go; in the water cold, soul sold.
I'm supposed to lead and believe but all I've done is bleed.
Tell me please, what is left to be seen if all people do is deceive.

I've forgotten bliss
Because
I have
To manage
This.

Long forgotten is life and her warm kiss, lost again in in a world dark and brisk.
I'm reaching and screaming, begging and pleading, but nobody lifts a finger to stop the bleeding.

Rejected, left dejected, heart ejected from my chest and a tombstone erected when I decide to protect it. I had my chance and I wrecked it, my fire died because nobody checked it, so forgive me if in this life I'm a skeptic.

I go home, take a drink, sit down and think; if I'm so far from the brink, why does the line always have a kink?
It's never smooth, it's never easy, because my heart freezes whenever someone sees me.
I'm scared; it's unfair, there are things I want to do that I won't even dare.
I'm torn between doing what I want and doing what I know.
There were words running through my head even when I was shoveling snow, slogging along slow.
There is a narrative, lives being lived in my head, stories being told, a plan unravels, a heart unfolds.
There's a heartache and betrayal, two revolutions and a wedding, but the plot is still so frail.
If I step back from it, take my finger off her pulse, she vanishes, withers, dies. The ideas bleed out into nothing when I'm unable to write, thoughts never to be had again.
So I'm nervous and scared that a year of my finite life is typed, still incomplete.
I'm scared of the very thing I like, that which makes me get up to fight. The one thing that keeps me going, the fact that I write.
I do the scary things, each and every day. I'm getting bolder, I'm getting braver in the fact I have accepted that I can't be everyone's savior.

Because
I have
to manage
this.

My life, my time, my heart, you can argue that management is an art. One I personally see myself lacking.
Work is work is work. Work I manage, work is damage control, work is a coworker texting me on her lunch break with the updates, our store speed and goals. At work, to manage is my job.
Why?
Because by profession, I'm a bloody manager.
That's why.
But that's work, it starts there and it usually ends there. My heart is in my crew, my brain is in the office, my soul is in my writing.

I've never been at one, I've never had it together, because
I have
to manage
this.

There was a looming remodel, hours to be cut, the lobby to gut, new team to instruct, and hopefully and new me to construct. This was the easy part, now I have to fight. Now I have to work on myself, now I have to remind myself who I am, I have to remind myself that I damn well can.
That I can do better, that I've been doing better, that I can be my best.
Remind myself that I damn well better... because I will have a nephew.
I will have two new eyes looking up to me, and I will prove to him that who you have been isn't who you will be.
That lesson is a double edged blade, I've known the best to fall and the worst to rise better. I've been both, I've been there, I'll be there again in this life, its all i can do with this time I have, this mark I have to leave on the world.
I'll be there again because
I have
to manage
this.