disgustingly, appallingly, horridly in love.

Slowly I've begun to remember who I am. Rediscovering a heart I had set aside as unappreciated. The world around me seems to change shape and the colors all become vivid, begging to be noticed. I can breathe without the weight of wondering why I take each breath. The tendency to lose myself into another person no longer seems to be a possibility. As it turns out, the right person by your side will hold you up and encourage your true self to shine. My life should be complicated and frightening right now, but most of the time it is not. I feel at peace for the first time possibly ever. I wake up excited and filled with an eager joy to live my life. Each and every breath has become the gift I've been told i should treat it as. Life has a purpose, a meaning, a plan I can't explain but am now so very aware of. My mind fills with concepts that are deemed silly and childish, yet I refuse to censor myself. My soul has found solace and over-analyzing that into a logic that pleases the skeptically concerned onlookers does not serve me. Love is not meant to be contained in a definition or time frame. Love is not a concept to be explained in words. It is clearly a feeling and it overcomes me right now. It flows through me in a way I had assumed was only possible in fantasy. It transcends the rules and helps me to see a whole new path in front of me. I want to go forward knowing who I am and discovering what else I will become. I want to do those things with your hand in mine, with my trust in you. Knowing that who I am is enough, is accepted, is celebrated. I dreamt of you, I begged for you, I knew exactly what I wanted and needed without any idea what body to find that soul in. You knew. You found me in a moment I had given up hope and restored it. You could see through my pain and into the person that used to live there. If it ended tomorrow I wouldn't regret a second, but I could stay in this place forever.

Falling Apart

The image of a person dropping to the ground in defeat, screaming to their god, and ripping at their hair in rage embodies the words "falling apart". Creating the idea that one falls apart in a single moment. I suppose some of us do, but more often it's piece by piece. Moment by moment. The difference between a building exploding and burning to nothing in a night versus leaking pipes, rotting wood, a cracked foundation. That building can be standing and housing an entire family while nobody even knows it's struggling not to collapse. 

    With that visual in mind and the possible methods of prevention of the destruction of that....building...one might ask, why would you let it fall apart? Surely in the case of sudden explosion we can't do much. Watch it burn and accept we must rebuild from nothing. But the decay, the slow descent into being condemned, we could prevent that, right? We could call the plumber, the exterminator, fix the broken pieces and salvage the building. Yet so many of us don't bother, overwhelmed by how much work it would be we let it cave in and take us with it. At least I do, in my emotional house.

    For a while I tried to fix the broken bits. Lose the weight and dress the part. Try new things, make better choices. I would smile when I didn't want to until it feels like that smile made sense. Things were afloat and I was maintaining my own structural integrity. Then one day my world caught on fire, I tried to put it out and it just kept burning. The cancer, the pain, the surgeries and the consequential emotional abandonment from my husband engulfed my whole being. I couldn't get control of the fire and the whole thing burnt down. There I was, sitting in a pile of the ashes of my life wondering how I got there. What of karma and its supposed importance to how we treat others and what we will receive in return. How was I here.

    So it's gone and we rebuild, or so I said. Perhaps a stronger person would have. Perhaps it's not too late, but I struggle to see how I will stand from this wreckage and create something new. Instead I sit in the ash, grasping at burnt bits of my life wishing there were a way to fix it all. So many times I have looked outside myself for help, for validation, for purpose. I beg the people I value the most to see me as I see them. Yet all they see is a singed heap of desperation begging for something they cannot give. 

Selling my soul to cancer

More than once I've compared the slow and painful spread of depression through my life to a cancer. I did so blindly, not knowing first hand the similarities one had to the other. How fortunate for me I've now had the gift of cancer metaphorically and literally. Not only had I compared the two and acted as if the pain of depression was the same but I welcomed actual cancer. Too unsure to walk out of this life I would day dream of how glorious an end it would be to slowly wither away. Friends and family loving you, devoted to you, standing by your side and telling you how strong you are as you get weaker and ultimately leave them. Never once did I consider survival. These dark thoughts were always in a place in my mind where cancer equated to death. What we don't realize is the moment we are faced with the possibility of death is the moment we realize how unready we are to truly face it. I became more confused and frustrated with every test and procedure. Filled with emotions so mixed I didn't know what I was even fighting for. Counting down the days to have my traitorous body parts amputated became my obsession. Researching every possible outcome was my new hobby. with each piece of information (bad or good) and each procedure and surgery I had hoped for a bit more peace. A gradual climb back to my life as I knew it, perhaps even improved. But every step robbed me of something else. My dignity was the first to go, displaying myself to countless nurses, doctors and technicians. Unveiling myself in the least comfortable ways possible in the name of survival. Next went my time, overburdened with appointments to the point I could barely keep track of where I was to be each day and what they would be doing to me when I got there. Then it came for my freedom. Bound to a bed that would literally set off an alarm if I even turned to stand up. Sent home to a chair I would be stuck in for weeks. Everything I enjoyed was off limits. No rock climbing, no running, no tennis, no fun. Once the medications began sleep was even off the menu. Then it came for my heart, my everything, my reason to fight through it all. Cancer came for my family. It didn't infect them with it's cell dividing fury in the same way it did me. It tore them apart. It separated them from me, it scared them, it shook them so hard we didn't recognize each other.
            Six months later it's "gone". They cut it out of me, labeled it bio-hazard, poked around at it, named it with numbers and stages and phases and graded it on it's ability to return. They drugged me, rebuilt my body and pushed me out of the medical nest. Fly little bird, we fixed you up. Everything is fine now. Go. Live. So here I am, living. Not living the life I lived before and not living some new and improved life. Living in the wreckage. Navigating what cancer has done to my personal relationships, my body, my finances, my body......Yes, twice I know. I can't look myself in the eye in a mirror anymore. I can scan my body up and down at full length. Inspecting each roll that has returned despite all of the work I had done before all of this to tone them. Analyzing the silicone, nippleless breasts that sit too high and don't actual resemble breasts to me. I can strip the fluids from the drains that hang out of the sides of my body and confidently dress myself to cover it all...but afterwards, to look myself in the eye and face that this body I am caring for is MINE. It's overwhelming, all consuming and so far still an every day nightmare.
             I am sorry I ever day dreamed of a graceful, sickly fade out of this life. I apologize for taking for granted the love I already had from my friends and family. I am filled with so many regrets and no way to take any of them back. For all of it all I can say is....I didn't know. I didn't know pain, I didn't know suffering and I didn't know how bad it could be. At this point all I want to know is when it gets better, if it gets better and how it gets better. It's such a slow crawl to the end of this hell and the scariest part of it all is I have no idea what that end is. There is no return to how it was. That life is gone and this whole ordeal has remolded me more than just physically.

I Hope its Okay That I'm Still Not Okay

Not ready to forgive and unable to heal, yet with no desire to quit or hold such resentment. I find myself in the exact same place of being unable to trust but wanting to, so badly. Your promises this time, so far, have stayed solid yet I live in fear that one bad day, one disagreement, one bitchy comment will make you remember when I just wasn't worth the effort. The effort itself makes me feel simultaneously worthwhile yet shitty. Someone is trying to make a change for me, trying to show me that I deserve love. But why would anyone have to try, why was I not deserving of effortless love in the first place? What made me first deserving of being disregarded and belittled? I can't tell if my reaction to the enormous pile of festering pain that has built was enough, perhaps too much or just right. If gut feelings are worth anything mine says not enough but I'm too afraid of letting out anymore. I've said all the words I thought I had until I felt I had drained it all out of my system. I cried until I couldn't cry anymore, rested alone and sad, then cried more. I reached out for support, I was held and have been treated with care. But it still hurts. It's not the pain itself, but the inability to make it stop no matter what I try. First powerless in my relationship and now powerless over my own state of mind I start to fill with rage. I bargain with a faceless higher power, "Why?! What could I possibly have done to feel so low?". Recounting every effort I've made on the grandest and smallest scales just to be good enough for everyone. It only makes me angrier. I want to yell it all at you. I want to tell you everything I've done right and how I deserved appreciation for it all. I want to hurtfully scream and break down, fighting my case that I am a necessary person. That I matter and life would not just go on without me. The problem is, I don't fully believe it and you seem to be in a place where you do now. This is the wreckage. While all the efforts to make the pain stop are needed and welcomed I still feel alone walking through my own mind. Ashamed that I can't just smile, that I'm still so on edge. Ashamed that I'm still crying inside and putting on a show on the outside because I don't want you to quit me. I can't let go of the idea that I'm holding it all up, but I know I have to stop.  I have to give this one sided love story a chance at being more rather than writing a lie in my head for your side of it like I have for so long. So many questions remain and swarm. How do I stop holding it up? How do I trust you to fix this? Where do I put all this anger that can't possibly be useful in saving us? I feel grateful in the moment for the changes I already see, and selfish to ask for more yet still I crave answers. I just keep digging at the wound and wondering why it won't heal. 

"We're just toxic together"

"I just think it's stupid" multiple times....

"Of course it was my idea, it's not like you'd suggest anything"

"Where is your ring?"

"Figure it out"

"It's not my fucking problem"

"I know you have a secret" 

......silence...so much painful silence...

"Why have you never worn that for me"

"Ask your boyfriend"

.....inappropriately laughing while I cry.....

"I just don't like anything about you anymore"

"You need to have more confidence"

"Get a hobby, or a job, you need to leave more" 

"Well yeah I love you, but only because you gave birth to our kids"

"I appreciate everything you do but it's not like I couldn't just do it myself"

"I'm going to make it better, I promise" (month ago, not now)

 

None of it healed because up until now it never stopped. 

Final Thoughts on a Wound I Cannot Heal

I want so badly to feel better and my body just won't let go. My mind has been molded into a servant of pain and can't seem to stop trying to compromise it's well being for the contentment of others. Food is the enemy and toxic behaviors are my solace. Smiles are forced while tears are unstoppable. You spend so long thinking if you could just bring to light what is really happening, if you just received a shred of validation then things would heal and quickly. But they don't. If anything the flood of reality pours in. Suddenly you no longer have any culpability in the situation and you know it doesn't fall on you to fix it. Not just feel it but know it. For a moment it's a relief and the painful existence you've been living makes sense, only for a moment. After the initial relief comes the knowledge that you now have to trust the person that brought you down so far to find a way to pick you and their self back up and start over. You find yourself in the midst of a thousand questions. How will they do this? What is their plan? What if they can't and the cycle repeats again? Can I live through it even one more time? Uncovering truths that needed to be seen opens new suspicions showing you a side of yourself you don't want to experience. A less trusting side that can't imagine ever feeling safe or comfortable with the person you adored. All the while holding on to the intense love that no longer seems to make sense. No one has hit me, because I would never allow it. No one has called me degrading names or forced things upon me, because I am on guard and protect myself. But the pain I've encountered I couldn't see coming. It happened slowly and somehow with calculated manipulation that even the person doing it couldn't see. Because sometimes people hurt you and they don't even notice. Sometimes they hurt you and they don't even want to, seemingly with no control. Because of this it goes on for so long....so long that you get lost in the place you let yourself get put. I no longer know who I am and I've been wandering through this place, lost and scared, completely by myself for what seems like an eternity. I don't choose to dwell, I don't want to cry or get angry. I don't even want to have to assign blame. I just no longer have a choice. As if my mind and my body had a private meeting, perhaps while I slept, and they decided it's time to crumble because there's no where else to go. My hands tremble, everything tastes like shit, I smoke cigarette after cigarette watching each puff of smoke come out as if it were my last breath. I don't have much faith that it gets better from here only because I find it impossible to trust that anyone other than myself can fix it. And I finally accept that I cannot. It sounds like the rantings of a person in pain on the cusp of making better choices. It isn't. It's a person who will wait a life time for the love she chose. A sad and broken person who knows what she has hasn't been good for a while, but that the alternative isn't any better. Loneliness will consume me no matter what I do so I hold on to a tiny shred of hope that I am enough. That you will see me some day for what I am, not just what I am but what I am TO YOU. That I can finally reveal all the pain without fear that it will scare you away. Hope that instead of quitting or running you see that all I ever needed was loved, held, protected from the loneliness even if you are literally protecting me from yourself. It's the last hope I have and I can only wait in pain to see if it's worth holding.

My thoughts on periods.....yes....periods

Life seems to be run in a multitude of intertwined cycles. Patterns we are blessed or cursed to repeat  that overlap each other as if to distract you from getting ahead of the other. The bills come at a certain point while perhaps not the same timing as your paycheck, school starts and pools close while the pattern of the weather hasn't made its full seasonal shift. It can either be overwhelming or perhaps embraced. I personally seldom find moments to embrace something that causes me such chaos.
       Some of these cycles we've stigmatized in a way to write off their importance. The full moon theory where everyone acts a bit different is treated almost as if it were some sort of myth. While I'm no educated scholar on sociology, psychology or astronomy I have to disagree. I seem to have a strong connection to the idea that this could have scientific evidence to back up the theory.
            Certainly more typically written off is the female cycle. I'm willing to bet I even lost 2 of the 4 people that may read this by even mentioning it. Regardless of your discomfort, I choose to continue for the sake of every crazy bitch out there who deserves not to feel crazy. The average woman holds a multitude of roles in life. Creating an endless maze of these different overlapping cycles and responsibilities. The emotional expectation alone is a weight few of us have the strength to bare every day of the month. It builds and festers each time we compromise our happiness. It gets heavier the more feelings we choose to suppress. It boils and burns inside while we stay in the level headed state of mind we are forced to maintain in order to succeed at all of our many jobs/roles/responsibilities. And then a dramatic bloody overflow of all the emotional burden comes and washes it all away. We're told we're irrational, we're disregarded as if our minds and bodies truly don't exist while we spend 3-7 days in this enlightened state of experiencing everything we've held in for the last 28 days. Everything has a tipping point. Women seem to be amazingly programmed with a distinct time to unload the overburden of life on a regular cycle.
            I don't pretend to fully understand the emotional state of the opposite sex. Men have been regarded for quite some time, if not forever, as the strong and steady gender. The stoic and hardened rock of the home. They are thought to rarely feel the urge to cry, to not overthink or act in emotion. Over time I think some of them have their own sort of programming flaw, not designed by nature but by skewed social standards. To feel is to be shamed. This isn't sustainable and nature doesn't seem to have built in way to fight such densely compressed emotions. There is no designated time to let out the overflow, no hormonal switch that opens that dam briefly. It's truly baffling to me and I feel such pain for those who are so emotionally blocked they can't shed a tear. I would rather bleed for a week and be told everything I feel is bullshit than never be allowed to feel at all.
              So in life's many cycles I will kick and scream. I will fight and flail, and some days i will conform. But at least in the cycle of being a female I will take pride. I will feel truly equipped with a power some aren't lucky enough to have. An electric surge of emotions I am allowed to have. A view into what happens when you're forced to tear down that wall of emotional rules.
         

No, I'm not okay, it's not okay, nothing is okay.....but that's okay

The pain is rooting into me, spreading like a cancer. Every part of me tied into it and being dragged down. It's hard to keep pretending I'm not falling apart or poetically spinning it to make it sound okay. Sadness is killing me. Be it literal or metaphoric, the destruction of my existence is in full progression and there's nobody left to turn to. Having tried multiple versions of myself, submissive, confident, big, small, an abundance of hair colors and clothing styles, social, antisocial, loving and withdrawn. I hate them all. There is no work to be done here, there is no exercise or therapeutic activity that can save me from this place I've fallen. And its so fucking lonely. I can't decipher reality anymore. Am I sad because you've shut me out, grown bored with me, and shoved me to the side? Is it the constant swing of being handed ALL of the love in overwhelming and illuminating abundance to being just another face in the room, invoking nothing inside of you. Or has my sadness, my pain, my loss of light to shine caused all of the love to give up on me. Searching over and over, cycling in and out only finding myself deeper and darker and sadder than i was the time before. Contemplating things we dare not speak aloud. Not for fear of being taken seriously but for fear of being laughed at. I want to reach out. I want to say "I'm not okay this time, this is not a drill", but the more I reach the further you pull away. The tighter I need held the looser your grip becomes. concerned and loving words from friends feel empty and forced, therapists aren't there when the cloud really moves in. Answers do not exist and my mind is on repeat SCREAMING over and over, "I'm so fucking sad it hurts, I'm so fucking sad it hurts!". Crying inside and spilling over to the outside at any moment I'm afforded the luxury of falling apart without inconveniencing anyone else. I just want to be held, like an inconsolable crying baby, but I can't ask to be held...because I would in fact feel like a needy, whiny, inconsolable, crying baby. Depression is lonely and anxiety is debilitating. But they're just words, diagnoses, categories to classify your pain. Naming it doesn't take it away, treating it doesn't leave you whole. Maybe some of us weren't meant to be "okay".

I wouldn't love me either

Redundant phrases and familiar fears fill me as i slip into a vortex of sadness and rage. Searching for an unrecognized scapegoat for the pain only to find myself alone in the room. my body vibrates with the electric frustration of life itself. Cold and uncomfortable I find no solace in anything that typically fills the void. I poured the wine but can't bring myself to drink, sat by the keyboard but struggled over the pointlessness of each word. Satiated only by flashes of something i repeatedly snuff out. I lash out like a child, helpless to express it all at once any other way. Frustrated and exhausted with the same old shit but still waiting longingly for the spark of perfection. There seems to be a solid reason why love is so frequently compared to a drug. What is often overlooked is the pain and withdraw when it's not available to you. The "off days" aren't just dull, they stab through every beautiful moment, tarnishing what previously shined. So tired and weak, I can barely see the point anymore. Scrutinizing over every tiny thing I do just knowing it's always wrong.  Maybe this is the end of my road. I've done all that I can do. every step I take from here on out will only lead the rest of them to the same disappointment. Where do you go when you've worn out every path. When you tried to be more fun, care about less, love better, look nicer....and in the end still feel like you've failed at them all. There is no road for me. Nobody left to turn to, nothing left to say. So tired but unable to sleep. It's these moments that seem to never end where i wish I could close my eyes and go back to a perfect moment that I just couldn't hold onto and stay. A place where i wouldn't disappoint anyone, not even myself. A place where that love isn't tarnished or bruised. Somewhere I feel alive, seen and needed. But my eyes always open and the truth is right there like a film coating them. As if filtering the whole world with a caption that says "why bother". 

Waiting to be Taken

Misery is a muse and an easy way out of averting stagnation and boredom. I call upon it to give me depth and purpose leaving all the in between moments empty and meaningless. What am I if not on the brink of destruction? Just another face in the crowd dying to be seen but blending in with the sea of beige. Even upon careful removal of the crowd itself I can't pique the interest of a solitary person who chose my company in the first place. I sit in this inbetween place bubbling up on the inside with no knowledge of when i will overflow or what it is that boils inside. When the lid blows off will euphoric joy spill from the top? Filling the air with intellect, perspective, love and realizations. Or will the pain be what's waiting to escape, not like the manic steam previously mentioned but a thick, bubbling, tar like, depression that will slowly seep out staining everything in its path. A substance unable to rise and float away. I welcome either as I feel empty and unseen otherwise, though if I'm being honest I'm in constant search of that steam. That perfect moment, that long care free night. The sensation of no consequences and absolute perfection. It is a distinct feeling of "This is right, this is meant to be. This is who we really are. I am seen". Mourning it's loss before it's even evaporated, I painfully accept each time that it can never last as long as the tar like depression that will always engulf it. Bringing me back down to reality and then slowly sinking below that to a darker place just as unrealistic as the mania that preceded. However dark that place may be, I'd sit in it for a lifetime before living in this unseen limbo. A place where I am a forgotten nothing, parading myself about only to realize there is no audience. Desperately seeking a deeper meaning, a purpose, a place I belong. I reject this limbo and revert to the only safe place i know. My muse, my pain, my pit of tar.  It may not be ideal but at least I know the road there and I can see that I'm welcome to a solitary cell at any time i should need to stay. Because I can't find a way to anywhere else, and misery, unlike my joy, is a place I can find alone.

Filling a Metaphoric Hole

I close my eyes and try to clear all of the mess inside my mind leaving only you. Desperately seeking the words i can say to build a ladder out of the hole you've fallen into. When suddenly the light shines on the subject and I see a clearer path. Fill the hole. I can lift you out, throw you a rope, bring a ladder...whatever metaphoric band aid statement is best fitting here. However if the hole remains you'll just keep falling in, jumping in, or being pushed.
       Filling a metaphoric hole step one, define the hole: A place where you can see me but you can't reach me. Every thought you have to say or do the right thing can't quite make it to the surface. Draining all sense of reality and only leaving cold, dead despair. A place where you can merely go through the motions of necessity lying to yourself about how nobody can tell. Denial, fake faces, oversensitivity to things you might usually brush off or even enjoy a laugh over. But there is no laughter here. Even if you were to open your mouth to let out a sound of amusement nothing would come out. It's a frustrating place with no way to vent. You are not hidden in the hole, in fact your are more exposed than ever. The hole is empty, devoid of people, feelings, things, hopes, dreams, aspirations or optimism. Such things burn before anyone has a chance to throw them in. And when you look up to see the faces of the people you know you must love....the depth grows, the faces distort. It seems as if trying to escape only makes it deeper.
          Filling a metaphoric hole step 2, not falling in with you: There you are, like an inanimate doll of yourself propped against the wall. I look down in to what seems a few feet down and your deadened eyes look up showing desperation that would suggest a much further climb. Maybe if i just jumped in and gave you a boost, reached my hand past the line of contentment and into the pit...if only for a moment or two. But there is an uncrossable line. Toeing that line only sends me on an immediate descent into the very same pain. Wondering how I went from the upbeat hopeful helper to just another lifeless doll at the bottom, waiting to drag the next victim down. There is no safe way to approach this hole, but walking away seems like a lonely journey to my own painful prison.
          Filling a metaphoric hole step 3, figuring out what to fill it with that won't bury you: Pitiful smiles, awkward laughter, pointless excursions to places you'd rather not be. They all pile on top like dirt on a casket in a grave. I need fluidity, I need you to float. To comfortably rise above the pain. A pool with sorrow at the bottom that you can rest easily and unweighted upon at the top. What recipe of literal action or words can equal this idealized liquid metaphor? What magical combination will rise you to the top and eliminate the hole for good?
          Filling a metaphoric hole step 4, realizing you can't: There is no guaranteed method, no incantation or ritual to end the cycle. There is only time, patience and love. These are all I have to give and all I believe to have helped despite my desperate attempts and flailing about to "save" you in the past. Perhaps these three seemingly simple offerings will aid in the process, but ultimately it is not my pain to solve, it is not me who is lost, and regrettably I cannot be the answer to a problem I did not cause. If this bottomless pit of despair is to be filled you will find a way, if for no other reason perhaps to float up to me at the top. Because there is no amount of time I won't wait, no test of patience I can't withstand and my love is an all powerful electric force that no pain will ever come close to stopping.

Simultaneous Conflicted Points of View

How Can They Both Be The Truth





Surely I am dying. A cancer or poison or slow working illness is creeping in to finally remove me from a world I don't belong in. It's as if no one has ever felt this before and the loneliness of my pain will eat me alive. I am an embarrassment in all that I do, never able to choose the right words for the right people at the right time. I'll never be enough. Leaving me caught between weeks of trying so hard I exhaust every part of myself and others where I give up entirely. Wishing for death because I'm far too cowardly to consider bringing it to myself. Lying alone wishing to be surrounded by attention I know I don't deserve. Paralyzed between what I want, perhaps need, and what I am too ashamed to ask for. Knowing that I'm ruining everyone and everything that I am responsible for, I have the audacity to keep moving forward. Raising children I have no right to destroy and holding on to a husband that could have had so much more. Even my dog looks at me with eyes of "why me?". Clinging to my contributions that mean nothing to anyone as an excuse to keep dragging them all down. The pain is so real, so physical regardless of how it manifested that way or what emotional state it came from. Look at me, Look at me, Look at me. I beg like an attention hungry child hoping that someone will say something to convince me that there is something to see. My body twists and turns in the mirror like a warped animation. Never giving me a clear concept of what you all see, but somehow despite that uncertain view I manage to convince myself it is bad. Not horrific or disgusting, no exaggerations to deter me and remind me I must be elaborating on what's really there. Just a steady well understood...bad... I want so badly to rest my mind in a place of acceptance on a road to contentment but know all too well that place doesn't exist.


I am a healthy capable woman who suffers from well hidden, yet at times, severe anxiety and depression. Due to many different circumstances through the course of my life I choose to manage this without medical intervention and I am aware that I will be ok. Even with the darkest thoughts I can have I am still more than able to run a household and raise well adjusted children. My husband, while wonderful, is not "out of my league" and I know we each deserve each other. We are equally talented and flawed in separate ways giving us at most times a well balanced relationship. The things I do matter.I make a difference and without me life wouldn't be the same or as fulfilling for several people. We all deserve love and recognition and it's perfectly ok to point out your accomplishments sometimes. My appearance is average. Without the aid of vibrant hair color or eye catching clothes I mostly blend in with a crowd and that is normal and ok. Statistically I am slightly overweight but again, nothing noticeable amongst others. On occasion, if I put forth an effort I may even turn a head and attract positive attention about my appearance. I accept I am aging at a normal pace and everything is as it should be. The aches and pains I experience are relative to my activities or lack thereof. The stereotypical weight in my chest, the tingling in my body and the occasional racing of my heart are merely symptoms of my mental illness and if I'm honest with myself I should seek treatment. The illness itself causes me to second guess that and never take necessary steps. I will likely live a long life and people will recall me fondly when I pass at an appropriate time of a perfectly average cause. 

I am a plague of contagious misery

Waking in the morning to a sky which seems to be perpetually grey becomes a redundant and painful experience that i see you struggle even harder to overcome. I once pitied myself, selfishly assuming this was a weight that only I would ever carry. Time passed by and slowly eroded your stoic ability to remain my strength. Never realizing that with each descent into my pain I dragged you a little closer to that place where you can't climb back. Struggling to keep you alive, not breathing but truly living, it kills me more than anything ever could before. No bleeding wound nor moment of grief would ever compare to the feeling of watching all that i know you to be drain out like sand in an hour glass. Counting down the time until you can't see my love anymore. My fears and delusions run deep in these times, always exaggerating a situation that you can't help but deny and downplay. Electric rage for my own destructive nature beams out of me in a way you can't see but I can't not feel. It burns and it pushes back as I try to contain every curious question. Never allowing me to stifle my need to invade your personal pain. Is this Love? Is this devotion, or obsession or just a self sabotaging cycle I can't help but repeat. I can't answer to that but to say it is real, and intense and even in the best of times it hurts like nothing else....just knowing it can't be that good forever. The mania and wild passion will always have an expiration date and that time seems shorter the more intense the joy becomes. It is truly entering into the greatest love story of all time only to experience the end over and over in a loop that leaves you wondering if the next time it might not come back. What if your smiles all become fake and the deep rooted all consuming pain i endure in response never relents? I'll hold this burning ember of all our anguish calmly in my hand until the next flip of the hour glass. Never without the scar to remind me the sand always runs out.

The line

Like a child testing limits, poking bears that are sure to attack. I push a little further than i know I should each time. heart racing, mouth dried up and hands shaking beyond my control I toe the line of security. Announcing my secrets, airing the clean and dirty as if they were the same. Because there was never a secret that was far from being a lie that would someday be found out. I won't shame my pain to protect the world. I won't smile through my broken soul. We don't tell you "I'm fine" to hide ourselves, it's only to protect you from the awkward moments nobody prefers to experience. You are not my children, I owe you no safety. Pretending to be the type to alter my behavior would be unfair to us all. I've taken on the love of many who in their entire selves don't always please me but I didn't walk away.
        I am stifled, constantly on the edge of the next thing but chained down and unable to leap. Calm on the outside and running circles of shrieking panic inside. Trapped in a cage I built with you and now you're stuck inside too. Some days the sun will shine, the bars seem further apart and the cage seems big enough to stretch our legs...but I dare you to imagine a time when you couldn't at least see the bars in the distance. Knowing you're never truly free of the restraints we've made. Fearing when the sun is not warm and the space gets constricted. Painfully aware that the good is not permanent.
         

What's wrong?

A lesson that I fear I was never taught, most of my questions are better if not asked. Inside of my soul, though it feels like a physical space, there is a box or bottle or designated cavity meant to house the feelings, thoughts and questions that I'm not allowed to indulge in. Many of these things come from a place which I thought was full of good intention and concern for the well being of others. As I'm learning about many facets of myself, I was wrong. The people in my life that would rather I keep these parts of myself in a tidy and concealed space may change over the years. They come, some stay and some go. Sadly I recall that these people that seem to want to smash and destroy a part of who I thought I was, I love or loved each and everyone with every part of my flawed and obnoxious heart. For 31 years I've been a burden to an increasing amount of people. I'm not sure that I'm sorry, but I do know that I feel some sort of pain for that reality. The bottoms of my figurative feet are scarred from the past and bleeding in the present from the miles of eggshells I've walked upon. I bare this pain not for you or them, but for myself. without walking that path I can't fathom the loneliness and loss I would have had to endure. But where does it go? All of my curiosity, concern, inconvenient feelings, can they really just keep filling that bottle or box? Today as I feel a boiling within me, a trembling of unwanted feelings, I wonder to myself (and the rest of you I suppose) is the space getting full? Is this the feeling of it overflowing or simply that I've forgotten how making a deposit to the box of my less favorable traits can burn. 

Dear Portland

Dear Portland, You are a beautiful city full of art, culture and fine foods. A city filled with intelligent progressive thinkers constantly creating new and innovative ways to keep their home clean and beautiful. TV shows and documentaries have been made about you and I myself idolized you as a place I could only dream to be a part of. But your beauty and wonder is a lie. You are beautiful in the way an old well designed and antique furnished home filled with termites is. You have an epidemic that grows by the day and is being ignored. The less fortunate, the impoverished, the down on their luck, the hungry, the poor. No matter how you choose to label them, your homelessness issue is something I've personally never seen so intensely in my life. As I drove in, my dream of what you were collapsed immediately. Small communities of overused weathered tents lined the grass by the highways. As I entered, people in tattered clothing held signs begging for my help. Your parks were built with statues and playgrounds for everyone to enjoy but nobody does because countless people with nowhere else to turn sleep upon the benches, the grass and even the statues.
      No Portland, I am not naive or idealistic. I am aware that many, if not the majority of these people ,made poor choices. I realize that several continue to make those poor choices. What I want to ask you, the city as a whole, is this. If we tell a child "you are bad, you are worthless, you will never be anything and nobody cares about you" day after day, week after week, creating a lifetime of never thinking anything more, what is likely to happen to that child? I suppose we could all answer this differently but personally I would imagine that child would be all of those things we convinced them they are. Why? Because they are human beings, because they are at our mercy and helpless. Because they trust and depend on us. Not unlike the HUMAN BEINGS living on the streets of your fine city. The ones you won't look at. The ones you step on, laugh at, scoff at and belittle. The ones you reinforce the feeling of worthlessness in by treating them like a species lower on the grand scale of life than yourself. They are all someone's child, possibly someone's mother, father, sister, brother, or best friend. Some are severely mentally ill. Others took a wrong turn and became seemingly hopelessly addicted to things that leave no funds to afford a life. And as time drags on, sadly, some don't know any other way of living.
         I want to solve your problem, but I know I can't. I want to give you the answers and make you what I thought you were, Portland. I racked my brain every day since I left trying to think how I can help, how someone else can help. Sure, I came up with a lot of small ideas to make things a little better but in the end I noticed one common theme in all of my plans. Restoring dignity, giving these people back their humanity. Whether it be through having lunch with them, getting them a shower, giving them a book to read or just talking to them like people...because they are people. Just like you, just like me. We are not made of anything different, we are not worth more than they are. I haven't given up hope of making my way back to help or even doing so with the far smaller population of less fortunate people here. I'd love to start my own movement, but until then at the very least I will remember to look people in the eye. Smile and say hello. I will treat each human being I meet as an equal and do whatever small kindnesses I can to restore any dignity they may be missing. I urge you all to do the same. It doesn't always require money or foundations. If each one of us can help one other person feel worthy, confident, strong and deserving of a better life then we each helped to create a huge movement. In short, if you want to see people do better, maybe you should do better as well.

Thank you Portland, thank you for opening my eyes, for showing me the truth and for making me want to do better.

Mirror, Mirror, Where am I?

Too many words can go unsaid and too many gestures stifled. So many feelings that should have been shared fall victim to fear. Fear of a faceless imaginary monster that we have placed inside of people we love and care for. A beast that I have come to believe will swallow me whole if I let anyone in. Don't tell them you love them, they might not feel the same. Don't tell them you want them, they might not have that urge. Don't wear that shirt, what does it say about who you were, are, or someday could be? Don't bother deciding on a meaning to life, there's too great of a chance you are wrong. Go through the motions, doing only what you think they may want. Eventually you won't remember what was so hard to hide. Whoever you were stretches thin. Each person you see gets their own version of you, because if you can't find way to smile you may as well make everyone around you do it instead.

    Until they don't. It starts with the ones who once knew you, I think. Assuming that anyone ever did. Your likes, dislikes, flaws and strengths all start to swirl together into a confusing mirrored image of themselves. They wonder where you've gone and if you were ever really there. You haven't noticed. You can't see. This is the most debilitating aspect of the fear, the monster, the invisible beast. You never saw it coming and you didn't notice it while it stayed.  Little by little it drained you like a slow leak in a balloon. Music, art, food, religion, political opinion, love, sex, parenting, social interactions at the lowest levels. One by one seeped out leaving you lifeless and confused. 

    This is not their fault. Nobody beat you down into this hole. Nobody scooped out your soul leaving the mimicking mirror shell. Not even you. Not marriage, not age, not children. The beast is not embodied, but I like to believe it can be fought. Every awkward laugh, one point for me. Every time I uncurl my hands from crippling anxiety and reach out to a person I love, a breath back into the balloon.

      In case I forget again. I am a human being with a purpose. Though I have accomplished many incredible things, I have not found that purpose yet. I will. I am a girl in love with a boy. Though I doubt this and challenge it often, that boy also loves me. I will always crave the epic romance that has probably already run its course in my life. I am a mother, a good mother who often hates herself at the end of the day but knows she did everything she could for her children. I am spiritual in a way I may never find words to explain, but it runs through me sure as the blood in my veins. I am a friend, a friend that sometimes tries too hard to be everyone's best friend. I am emotional in a way that I wish to share but never quite know how. These feelings all embarrass me. Almost anything that i feel deeply becomes the first victim to the fear. Perhaps recognizing this is the only step toward protecting the air I have left. It's time to shatter all the mirrors until the only image left is your own. 

Denial

A certain amount of time passes after an event and when that time has passed we are then expected to move past it as if it never happened. Each event gets its own separate time limit depending on the severity. No one will ask you how long you need, this time limit won't be discussed. Shoulders to cry on will simply shrug away. Listening ears will go deaf to your words. You will be a redundant bother to many but no one will tell you out loud. As your faithful companions begin to lose faith the weight grows heavier. Staying quiet so as not to stir up problems, you will soon forget what your voice would sound like if you were to allow it to speak. So many times your mouth will shy open only to close quicker than you could process the thought. Why stand up when you'll only have to sit back down. Driven by fear and pain the sickness has already consumed you when you weren't even looking.
       I am no more than a memory in my own mind of whatever i once may have been. I hold no life in my heart and I cling to the remnants of what I thought made happiness. I am torn down and unable to rebuild no matter how solid I may seem. I go through the motions wishing they meant more. Wishing every day that I could simply wake up and FEEL. Feel anything at all, something more than empty pain. Something real.
       How do I simply step into the other side of stagnant disappointment? There is no more mask, no cover, no way to hide from the dependant lives around me. If I knew how to be the person trapped inside I would gladly open the gate. If I could trust her just to "be" and not only to perform perhaps the clouds would just drift away.
   

The Evolution of my Personal Love Story

Ive never been one to ignore a gut feeling. Despite my cautious attitude that has only evolved in this particular phase of life, I am impulsive and proud of it. I don't remember the moment I first saw you, and the subsequent memories after that are almost certainly altered and distorted. But the feelings...those are real and vivid. I felt drawn to you with such intensity that I was willing to compromise anything for you. Later on, hanging on by threads, this would be my biggest flaw. 

     Like anything I do I showed you my whole world. The fun, the silly, the wild. The sad stories and darkest memories. I let you in on quirks and jokes and little flaws and quickly opened the flood gates to the pain. I let it pour out and stain you. Tarnishing everything in its path but it always washed away...until it didn't. I can be overcome easily just thinking about the beginning, before you knew how difficult it could be. I felt powerful, amazing, strong and worthy...because you didn't know I wasn't yet. Maybe I never showed that. Maybe I never even felt that way, but the memory Ive created of us back then would be stronger than the truth. We were picturesque. A legend to be shared through the ages. Inseparable. Most remarkably, telling the story from where I am now...I was amazing. I shined like a star. I had light, true unmistakeable light that everyone could see pouring from my very soul

      It wasn't amazing for you. I let it decay without even noticing it. The light stopped shining and I walked around in the dark with an internal navigation system that seemed to click on like it had already been used many times. My writing darkened, my painting stopped. I looked at a perfect body of fresh possibilities and sliced it open to feel alive. I began to hate everything that lived in me so much that i forgot how to love anything at all. This part of the story transcends time. Its not singular...a repetitive event that I'm cursed to relive no matter how hard I would try to avoid it. Sometimes I can make it years, sometimes only weeks. But the darkness creeps in and without warning it chips away at our perfect story. We recover, and many years later after having fallen many times I still couldnt tell you at what price. 

         I live exclusively to find that same light that I radiated so long ago. Selfishly trying to find a purpose bigger than cleaning the house and teaching lessons on washing your hands properly. I am a person with depth and soul. I am more than a physical body on a conveyor belt on the assembly line of the american dream. I've gone from rule breaking to rule making. My everything has been crushed and my spirit is nearly dead. I wasn't built to last in a world like this but I hang on because I've never been one to start something without finishing it.That brings us to my greatest flaw, doesn't it? I would compromise anything for a life with you. I have compromised my everything for the life I thought you would want.

     You didn't want this. In a heightened glowing portion of our fairy tale we took steps down a path we didn't fit the mold for. A stronger version of myself would have broken that mold and done things much differently. I would have married you in a field wearing whatever I had on that day. I would have had our same amazing children but whisked them away, with you, somewhere less regimented. I would have let all of my feelings exist in the moments they belonged in....not blown up after repressing them in fear. You aren't unscathed and we both know that, but i had the power. I had the ability to make this life anything. Instead I curled up and quit. I took the path of least resistance thinking it would serve those I love the best. I now see that compromising your existence to please others is not effective. You wanted to exist with me already. 

          What now? I cant very well tear down 10 years of walls that I built rock solid in a day. In fact several weeks after realizing the hell I've created I am barely chipping at a solution to tear it down. I believe that all things, whether seemingly good or bad, have a core truth. I believe in us, and at our core burns a fire that keeps me alive. With that belief also lives the fear that my same life sustaining fire is too hot for you to touch. It's there and you know it but you may never understand how I can stand in the flames and thrive when all they do is burn you. Somewhere in our time line I see relief. The pressure falls away and we live a shared, agreed upon life. My depth, however misunderstood, will be celebrated. You will be appreciated for who you really are...not just that your soul makes mine live. I fantasize about being able to stare in your eyes without being afraid or nervous. For you to be able to look back in mine and see contentment...not pain. 

            Im not dead. Im not gone. I can only hope I haven't killed you. We are a legend, a dream, a story for the ages. We are the butterflies in the beginning and the gut wrenching pain of the end. I am the heroine and the villain. While you are the hero and simultaneously the confused passer by. Looking from the outside at a person you only sometimes know. It isn't fair for you and I am too selfish to fix that. We all play roles in life. Mine is to feel so intensely that it breaks me. Yours, sadly, is to pick up the broken pieces every time. 

        Thank you for allowing me to need you so much. Fuck you for quitting when you have...

Your strength is unparalleled and tested at every turn. Sometimes I wish you were weaker. 

profound depression from the point of view of the disease itself

I love the way our hair falls in front of just one eye.

I love the way our body shakes when you're about to cry.

It makes me feel so strong to tear you down to shame.

You should feel so honored to be a pawn in my little game.

Hold it back. Suck it up. Those feelings are just a lie.

Put on that smile. Stand up straight and let emotion simply die.

Read your lines and close our eyes. Walk the way I say.

Don't tell your friends, don't shed a tear. Just tell them that you're ok.

I am the voice inside your soul. I am the creeping pain.

I am the reason, I am the weight. I am your crutch and cane.

I tell you that you need me if you want to feel complete.

Im killing you, what a show. Come on now, have a seat.

You never stood a chance against me, I held you before you were born.

Now we are one, destroying all. A beautiful person....but torn.

Ripped and shredded. Cracked and Decayed. Broken and left to rot.

I am all you have to hold, the cold comfort you've always sought. 

It doesn't matter how you fight. You can't run from your very soul.

Eventually one day, so very soon, all that running will take its tole. 

You won't get up. The weight will grow. That last effort won't be there

Then I'll creep in to take your pain leaving only that vacant stare.

The rest will quit. They'll shake their heads. They'll walk away from what we are

Accept it...leave it. let them go. Whats just one more scar?

I Cant Write Songs I Can Write Poems With Bad Form

 I'm so lucky, I seem to have it all
 but the pedestal is cracked and built for me to fall.

 Buy me all the things to make my world complete,
 tell me that I'm lucky that my life just cant be beat.

 I could tell you why you're wrong but I'd rather just fake it through.
 Why bother getting judged when I can be just like you.

 Hold me down, break my spirit. I'll accept it when you're done.
This is right, now I'm perfect. The world has finally won.

I drone through, my guilt will lead the way.
I can fool the whole world, I know just what to say.

 The luckiest girl who ever lived may not be allowed true pain.
Nothing in life is bad enough to outweigh what she has to gain.

 Let her die slowly, dismiss anything that made her real.
Work harder, look better, do more and to hell with the way you feel.

Life can be imprisoning, isolation at best.
Simple to see the bad but blinded to the rest.