This is not a woe is me post. I take full responsibility for the things I say and do as an adult. I just have deep wounds, and as those with such wounds and the entire psychology profession knows, it’s so hard to heal them and move on.
Continue reading “Decompression.”Tag: depression
Back to Square 23.
Will you ever learn? No. But you can grow.
You’ve forgotten you’re a creaky old kettle wasting away on the stove. Boiling over. Boiled over.
Someone turned on the gas. High. You didn’t notice.
You were too busy trying not to crumble.
So here you are. Ashamed you’ve spilt. No. Flailed steaming liquids everywhere around you.
It was clearly a mistake. But what can you do when that fire’s going?
It isn’t until all that’s inside you has evaporated into steam, and you are left hollow, that you can make any sense of it.
But in time, too much time, you eventually learn to accept your archaic kettleness, cracks and all.
You realize you may not control the fire but you can subtly shift where your passion explodes.
You can cause havoc or create justice.
You must get in control of the magma inside. It’s powerful and impolitely poetic.
Trying to clean up your mess is futile.
Just dig deep and study your cracks and tilt at just the right angle. Be prepared to boil over. And accept you will always make steaming messes, so they might as well be productive ones.
Home.
The long goodbye to my first love continues. Goodbye to the walls which embraced me in my darkest times. The floors which captured my tears and laughter. The scenery that soothed me as I fell apart and puzzle pieces myself back together to survive another day.
Downstairs, the spaces which, since altered, once held me as I listened to my “The Little Mermaid” tape to capture the lyrics of “Part of Your World” pausing and rewinding every second (for the record it’s not pregnant women, sick of swimming, ready to stand), the same floor where I made a brilliant stop motion video about The Bluest Eye, the spot where I came home from school one day, having forgotten my key, and climbed through an unlocked window and fell face first into the game room, successfully entering, nonetheless. And I walk barefoot on the floors where countless games of War were played and Erector sets were erected in the best moments with my father, in happier times.
Continue reading “Home.”Motions.
Going about the motions from morning to midnight,
trying to silence the sensitivities that swing you over,
and instead march on, focus, task oriented, GSD, one
deliverable after another, wake up, get up, and go,
and then again it is night, my child crying, 4am, my
bones rattle with exhaustion and delicate temperament.
Maneuver through meticulous motions, machine,
marching on from moon fall through moon rise,
silence the sensitivities that swing you over and over.
Life is a tactical, a solvable equation, in and out,
a game of strategy, not wit, of disappearance::
that riddle is you, hidden behind thick metaphor.
And few even notice at all, which is the victory you seek,
in that storm shelter of your soul, surrendered there,
going about the motions from morning to midnight,
silencing the sensitivities that swing you over.
Stop.
She ran anxiously through a forest of overgrown trees that hadn’t been touched by another human in years. Thick foliage ripped her feet raw as they bled and painted lush verdant carpeting a morbid maroon. In the thick of thicket, surrounded by oak and pine, a lone stop sign stood, screaming its one purpose, “STOP!”
But she just kept running. She wasn’t sure where. The trees blocked the view of anything beyond and her feet were scraped to the bone, but she ran anyway in circles and squares and circles again.
There was, she later observed, a clear, paved path out of the forest, down the road, to town, where people laughed and played and drank and took comfortable shelter at night and in the storms. But, for whatever reason, she couldn’t see it. She refused to see it. Plenty watched this woman running in circles, her feet tattered, her clothes torn, her body aching, and questioned why she didn’t just step on to the path and head back into town.
She didn’t see it. The more she ran, the further blind she became to anything but trees and that stop sign, coming into view time and again, cutting through leaves, pinecones, and bits of broken and unbroken branches sprawling to the sky. She just kept running because that is all she knew how to do. And she hoped, without hope, that someday deep in that forest, there, in the prickled green, would be another pair of feet, freshly wounded, another set of eyes, seeking an exit but incapable of finding the obvious path out, and another pair of fingertips, reaching recklessly towards the branch-cut sky.
Instead she remained there, alone, revisiting the stop sign every few days and pondering its significance. “Why stop if there is no one else here,” she thought. “Why stop if I don’t even know the first thing about how to start.” She looked down at her battered feet, layered with old and fresh dirt and dried blood, and continued on, in circles, through the forest, running for the sake of staying in constant motion, hearing the laughter erupt from those in town, somewhere, nearby, and suffering from self-sourced infliction.
The forest isn’t real, the villagers knew. It was just a stop sign and a crazy woman circling it. She hadn’t any wounds on her feet, only deep in her heart, long ago pierced by something far more sinister than fabricated forest; her throbbing vessel, beating alive at her core, punctured prematurely, left open and raw, with a wanting wound, festering from infinite intervals of intellectual isolation.
…
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Cracking Chrysalis.
We come into this world alone and we leave it alone. In between there is insatiable loneliness and the thought that perhaps if we surround ourselves with people, if we socialize and find love and family and friends we aren’t meant to be lonely.
But loneliness is not solved by surrounding yourself with people. I’m not sure how it’s solved, or if it’s meant to be. I binge on anything unhealthy to make myself feel whole. To forget the emptiness, momentarily. I long for connection but fail to find it meaningfully. Or I share too much and push others away.
I find the grittiness of humanity — interesting. Intriguing. Inspiring.
I don’t want to discuss what, I want to understand why.
Continue reading “Cracking Chrysalis.”Trick Tick Tok
Again, November. Again, soon December. Again, I remember.
The clock, though it no longer ticks, clicks on, ahead //
a head behind // ahead // of those orderly aligned behind its
pressing compression snugly holding us hostage to
the threat of our own smoldering imaginations leaping
over control lines and rising from the ashes of adolescence
long lost in the sallow sky, hidden beyond sediment and soot–
—there it goes the time ticking trick tick tok, tick tok or treat.
November, again. December soon, again. I remember, again.
The reckless, cruel, unstoppable flame, scattering embers
igniting the dull, dry, desperate world ablaze in rageous fit //
The afterglow, crusts of orange whispering to sleep on
whatever it is that remains here is all that’s left of me,
in November, again—soon, December, again, I remember,
the air grows thick, and hot, and charcoal grey, and,
I remember November, I remember it all, again.
How To / To How / To / How?
To write, or, more broadly, to create, I feel I must know, as many do, all the things that must be known, albeit not everything, since no one can know everything. But, in the case of the creatives, I speak of those who know many things to reference and metaphorize, which, in my general naivety, or general choice to ignore all rules, I’m claiming it as a word, red-dotted underline be damned. And, I do not have such knowledge, so I feel I have not earned the right to create. Not yet. But when?
I know so little. I know what I know of constantly fluctuating emotions in the boiling bubble of my brain, but little else. All that I’ve “learned” disappears in moments. I have nothing to reference. I’m discovering notes without knowing that music is an art form. I’ve got nothing.
Continue reading “How To / To How / To / How?”Rebel.
“You were a rebellious child.”
My father believed in hierarchy and order, though wasn’t necessarily the beacon of such organization. A rebel in his own right, he was king of the household and all shall bow down to his majesty or else, and never question him or any deviation from his high image of himself.
As an adult, I asked my father why he disciplined me the way he did–so severely at such a young age–and “you were a rebellious child” is the answer I got. His emphasis and tone on the term “rebellious” clearly did not skew positive.
Continue reading “Rebel.”Circulation
I like the light here. Perfect-looking people look all the more perfect in this light, and everyone else still is painted with the polish of perfection. There is a cool breeze circulating around my lips, entering from the open door where light pours in. It also pours in through the large glass doors and the loft ceilings with more tall windows. This place is far too fancy for someone like me, with every element designed to meet the highest of standards, and every guest seemingly architected to fit in their respective space, much like the ceramic mugs with half-heart-shaped handles.
It is a “gallery cafe” and its aesthetic is apropos. I’m far too desheviled for this space, but perhaps I’m performance art disrupting perfection. Women with crisp white button downs and bright blue jumpsuits and soft cotton flowing skirts are on display. Men who look like professors and rock stars and startup CEOs also design themselves into the scene. The “rock star” has tattoos and long hair and wears a muscle shirt that says “risk it for the biscuit.” I wonder if he really would.
Today, I’m ok with being alone. I’m enjoying the cool air pressing against my nose and tracing its invisible path and sources. I’m enjoying the parade of pants perfectly creased, too-perfectly creased for Sunday. And the tall trees outside, piercing up fiercly, far beyond my view. And those smaller, whisper trees that feature leaves in the season’s transition, a base of green yellows up into red orange, as if someone took a culinary torch and burnt just their tippy tops into rust.
I’m tired. Not tired as in I didn’t sleep last night, but tired as in a visceral exhaustion that aches through my bones. The exhaustion that comes with fighting getting one year older, one year further from my father’s death, one year away from my childhood home likely being sold, and forever away from identifying some greater purpose–or maybe moments away from that.
I can barely keep my eyes open. But with them closed, as they are now, I do not fall asleep. I feel more awake than ever. I feel the breeze up against me, holding me, keeping me safe in my solitude. I have to go back to the real world shortly–this is just a brief post appointment hiatus to caffeinate and rejuvenate before the week ahead. The weeks ahead. The last month of 35.
Turning 36 is something. Not that it’s old, but it’s certainly way closer to 40 than I ever thought I’d ever be. And its gone so fast it’s clear that I’m also close to 50 and 60 and the rest of it. I want to do something in this vast pool of time I have left in good health before it’s gone. I’ve always felt death’s hold against me–as a child I’d close my eyes tight at night and wonder what it would be like to just be gone–but now it’s there, ahead of me, approaching. If the next 20 years of my life are dedicated to earning income and motherhood, that means I’ll be 56 before I have time to create. Not that I know what to create or have any talent, but I still want to find the time to try before I’m 56.
I just write these silly blog posts because they’re the only thing I have time for these days, and writing consistently, even pointlessly, helps me in my day job. But what else is there? There must be something more. It feels like a cruel trick that through childhood we’re given ample time to create and then, just when we have enough knowledge and maturity to say something meaningful via these creations, we have no time.
But I do have this time, sitting here, eyes closed, typing hopefully the right letters, circulating a thousand possibilities in my mind, breathing that fresh, pollinated fall air deep into my burning lungs.
life with interest 