prescription pills & photographs

sometimes i am not a friend; i am barely human. i am cold and craving loneliness and yearning to escape from the crowded chaos within my head. i do not want to connect with anyone but myself and people misunderstand and label me with words like “distant” and “rude” and they tell me i’m “being cold” and “putting up a wall” and “isolating myself”. and maybe i am all of those things but sometimes that is what i need to be and i just need someone to be okay with that.

i need you to be okay with me not saying anything at all. to be okay with me not looking you in the eye as i mumble out some words about being alright. to be okay with me being alone. i need you to understand that sometimes i won’t cry or scream or talk. instead i’ll be as cold as ice and i’ll try not to tremble. i need you to understand that some days i won’t be able to do or say anything. i won’t explain how i’m feeling because i don’t feel anything at all. i won’t say what i’m thinking because my thoughts don’t make sense to me. they’re partial pages of magazines ripped out with only half of paragraphs left to make sense of so whatever sounds drip out of my lips will only be scraps of poetry and probably won’t mean more than the headlines from those magazines. i need you to listen anyway.

some days it will be like watching someone smoke a pack of cigarettes on a rainy day. it’s beautiful and mesmerizing and calming but under the surface it’s toxic and it’s destructive and it’s irreversibly damaging for years to come. maybe it’s that simple but i think it’s more complicated than that because someone always has a choice to put down that pack. but this—it’s embedded in the roots of my mind and it’s growing sickly roses without thorns and thin trees without leaves. i’m not sure if it will be worth it if you aren’t prepared for the possibility that you might not be able to save me after all. even still i am willing to make this work if you will be okay with long nights to sit on the bathroom tiles and empty eyes to greet the morning light.

it takes less than prescription pills to remind me that i’m still sick and that today will not be all wonders. i need you to understand that no matter how many times i tell myself that “it gets better”—some days it’s just too hard to believe that no matter if it’s whispered in my ear or shouted at me from across the room. i need you to understand that sometimes i’ll be terrified and i won’t even understand what it is that i’m afraid of. it’s nothing simple like a dark closet or heights or monsters under the bed because when those were my greatest fears there was always something that could ease my mind until the panic subsided. i don’t even know the name of what i’m scared of but it’s hiding inside my soul and some days it ravages the places i called my sanctuary, tearing down photographs and shredding letters and smearing blood on anything beautiful. and i can’t do anything to stop it, to keep it out, to make it go away, because i’m powerless and i can’t control the shaking of my hands.

i need you to understand what this has done to me and what it still does to me. i can’t say “i was sick” because i have to follow that sentence with the phrase “i still am” so why not suffice to say i’m suffering and some days it’s better but sometimes it’s worse. that doesn’t make me a bad person just because i’m too ill to act in a way that’s socially acceptable.

i can’t cry anymore, that’s another thing i’ve lost. it’s not the emotional bs breakdown or the overreaction of taking something too personally or the bawling because feelings were hurt. i’ve never been one to cry over those anyway.
but the moment—the soul’s breaking point, something so deep it causes a physical pain in one’s chest, the throat tightens so it’s too hard to swallow, and soft screams sound better than words to describe it—all i can do now is blink slowly as darkness clouds my mind and my face bears no hint of emotion because there is nothing but that ache, beyond heartache is soul-ache. something is terribly broken but i cannot respond no matter how much i want to. and tears that ought to be there—just the ones that trickle out of the corners of the eyes and slide down the cheeks—i can’t find them, as though they’ve literally been eradicated from my body and i feel so insensitive only to stare because i don’t know what else it is that i can do to express this. i tried to bargain with the sky to lend me raindrops so i could cry again but i spilled all the ones i was sold because apparently shattered shards do not hold rain. i feel like i lack humanity because there is nothing for you to wipe off of my face and no excuse for you to touch me. i feel too terrible for you to touch me anyway, even to hold me.

i need you to be okay with me when i am too tired to do anything. some days just waking up is a misery and it takes more strength than i have to move from out of bed. i’ll have barely been conscious for two minutes and already want to go back to sleep again, and it doesn’t matter how much i slept during the night because sleep cannot cure this exhaustion i feel. it is buried in my brittle bones and sends chills up my spine, leaving me shuddering while huddling under the sheets. and there is so much work to be done in the world that it weighs on my mind so that my head is too heavy for me to even sit up, all i can do is rest it on this pillow and hope that the pressure lessens even though i know that it will only grow.

i feel like less of a person when people refer to my illness as another part of myself, as if it’s separate from me and can somehow be isolated and fit into a test tube for experimentation. it’s not as neat as that, because this virus is pervasive and it’s saturated within my body, it’s not just concentrated chemicals in my mind. no, i am not my depression but my depression isn’t separate from who i am. it is an integral piece of who i am even if i don’t like to admit that to anyone or myself. that is why it hurts to hear “that’s your depression talking” and “just don’t give in to the depression” and “choose to be optimist, positive, happy”, as if i have another option other than the deceptive lure of cooperation that it works in my brain. it’s a deal with the devil that my mind makes behind my back and i have no say; heck, i didn’t even know it was happening. but i have to live with it. that doesn’t seem fair.

yes, i can say that i want to get better but i wasn’t ever given the authority to write eviction notices. i didn’t even speak with the landlord that let depression stay in the first place, his name tag only spelled Abuse and he said that he owned the room for rent.

i never had a choice but i’m left to live with the consequences of others’. i just need you to be okay knowing that it might take my whole life to learn how to be happy again.

disclaimer: my posts reflect my personal thoughts/views and do not constitute a cause for alarm or concern. for further clarification, please read this.

just, alive.

the world is made of motion and i am at a standstill with thoughts swirling in a cloud around the edges of my mind and no problems are being solved but i’m only getting dizzier trying to pick out answers from the tornado of chaos. i am afraid of being swept up in the turmoil but i am afraid that if i stand as still as i remain now that i will freeze with the pure coldness of loneliness.

i think it’d be lovely to trim the tips of the sky with lines of lace so that even the storm can seem delicate for once. even terrors have a chance to be beautiful: like the light that filters through glass shards of a bottle on the wooden floor after it shattered from slipping out of the hand of the body that was too drunk to stumble further than the couch cushions of the living room.

i’ll be the shaking shell of a skeleton if you’ll be the sheet of skin that wraps tightly around me and holds in heat so i can continue to count the pulses from my weary heart and the short inhalations that keep the air barely flowing to me. i forgot to tell you that i burst a lung trying too hard to keep breathing so i took the stems of wildflowers and wove them into a proper replacement because living is everything when there’s love supplied by a lover.

i am not covered by unloved scars because when i put each cut there i didn’t realize that it was a desperate attempt to stay alive, to find a way to survive without suicide. and now each is a reminder of a reason to love myself again, of a reason to love the soul that fought so hard for a chance to live in a world with a little less pain.

and although the wish for death will never fade away forever the wish for life will keep on growing stronger and i think that’s what matters after all. just, to breathe.

shivering souls & slender smiles

>touching into photography a bit more this month.<

it scares me to be aware of my own vulnerability and i wonder if this weakness is worth living with for the sake of a fading horizon. fear is like an icy chill that slides all too slowly down the length of my spine and leaves me shivering like a bare branch caught too early in winter. and as i tremble if you listen closely you can hear the rattling of my brittle bones inside my skin stretched too tightly around the frame.

i think bitterness made its home there long ago and has been caressing the expanse of my veins but sometimes it wants too much to escape and so i carefully crack open a window in my wrist to let it go free. and sometimes hope dies and its heavy carcass rests on top of my thin lungs and makes it harder to breathe and i think maybe that’s what we call heartache.

>my soul has surprisingly happy corners i’ve discovered. small smiles count for life.<

loved & lonely

love transcends economic standing, relationship status, social position, ethnic background, religious views, medical status, and sexual orientation. love with no strings attached; without contingency or conditionality. because at a fundamental level, we are all equal, all deserving of the same love.

 

p.s. i know i suck for not writing lately but i haven’t been able to get thoughts and feelings translated into words well. i promise, i’ll try to do better. ~

time & toxicity

i think sometimes we come to our own breaking point whether we realize it or not and when we’re pushed to that edge anything can tip us over. we are more fragile than we know and we live to be rough with our souls and we’re taught to toughen up to the point that we build up walls and we break down hearts.

we are living time bombs designed to explode at one point or another and some of us can withstand the pressure longer than others but no ones’ fuse can last for eternity. maybe the tragedy is not that we are eventually destroyed but that we never even realize it’s coming. and maybe if we had we would have been able to do something – heck, anything – to attempt to diffuse even if in the end we were unsuccessful.

it’s as if we live our lives so mindlessly and we accept cliches for answers and forget the meaning of our search for meaning. we accept mediocrity as normality and we forget that adventure even exists beyond the horizon we’ve become so familiar with looking at. it has all become a dull picture and we have allowed it to remain that way.

but what if we were really honest in self evaluation and looked at our lives through the lens of temporality since we only have one life to live and we sure better live a damn good one.

so this is what i want to know.

why do we allow toxic relationships to build up in our lives and why do we cling to the people that treat us like we’re nothing. why is it that we feel guilty about pushing people away and why do we not believe that we deserve better than abuse. have our hands grown so accustomed to holding that rope (and being told that we were holding on for dear life) that we never even noticed that we were pulling harder and harder. and did it never occur to us that the cord could become too tight to even thirst for breath. were the raw marks on the skin of our necks not enough of a sign that we were the authors of our own torture.

why do we allow burdensome commitments to hang on to our shoulders and we live as though they were simply supposed to stay there and never be questioned as to why they were there in the first place. because things change but most of all we are not the same people we once were and we are not tied to the same dock where we set sail and this ship was meant to touch upon new shorelines. what was meant as an anchor has now become a deadweight that holds us down and drags us beneath the sea and someday it just may be enough to be the death of us.

then maybe instead of scribbling down a list of goals at the beginning of a new year we would make just one resolution. maybe we would resolve simply to live more mindfully so that we might make use of the time we have left unless we prefer poison to fill our last breath.

28/31: enigmatic illness & incomprehensible empathy

they don’t understand what is wrong with the chemicals in my brain so they try to fit it into a dimension they can wrap their black and white minds around (although it’s always taught that brain matter is grey so why is it so impossible to see the issue as grey instead of wrong or right). conditioned to ostracize the unknown, to reject the lunatic, they brand us as crazy and dangerous because they’re something just not right about having a disease of the mind instead of a disease of the body. they can love a boy with leukemia but they don’t consider it inhumane to lock up a boy with schizophrenia, send him from hospital to rehab program to therapy to prison. they’d rather not deal with what they think is crazy (and by crazy, all they mean is “not like themselves”) so they label us as the insane.

why is something so different so dumbfounding to people who can see the galaxies and stars through a glass lens and is it really that improbable to consider that molecules in a mind could be rearranged like the planets in the sky. and if the preacher would give him a chance i’m sure god himself would scream out, that there’s no shame in being sick in the head and it’s nonsensical to prefer a deficient limb instead. even the son of god had to wrestle with the demons and spill his own blood.

all we ask for is a chance for love. at least give us that.

 

27/31: wondering & wandering

it perplexes me what it means to be lost and i wonder if i am the epitome of that condition. maybe we live to remember lost opportunities or die to regret lost moments but either way it seems as though time is the enemy and we are on this side alone. we live with lists of all the things we meant to do but never did because we were too busy with things we thought mattered more at the moment. we run towards constant mirages of productivity and value but grasp at ghost-like images, still believing that as long as we work harder we’ll reach it someday. we’ve become enchanted by an illusion that consumes us and we willingly sacrifice the ones in our life who love us most of all. we surrender our souls in a search for an impossible goal, a fountain of youth, a city of gold. and when we are left in bitter realization that the ideal we finally caught up to was only a handful of dust, we look around and realize there’s no one left standing but us. we have given up everything and everyone for the sake of what never mattered after all.

i am paralyzingly terrified of the possibility of reaching that point of utter lostness but i cannot seem to keep from pushing all that i love farther away from me. it is protection – so that i will not hurt them in my own condition; but it is fear – because i still do not truly believe i am worthy of their love. i cannot bear the thought of losing any more moments, given away to fear’s victory.

 

26/31: tired of trust

it is exhaustion that drinks the life from my bones and it is horror that eats the love away from my heart. it is the world i see saturated with such indifference and apathy that shakes my skin and breaks my body. haughty glances leave scrapes on my scarred skeleton and it seems as though the hospital has become home for my shivering soul. i am a broken and beaten being but i will keep my lungs mended enough to breathe deeply from the air of anticipation. rest will leave flakes of nightmares in the corners of my eyes for when i awake and renewal will print a shy kiss on my shiny soft lips and tomorrow will be better than today.

25/31: holidays & heartache

holiday sentiments sound hollow as they ring in my ears so i wonder if it’s my hearing or my heart that’s defective. this means so much more than words on a greeting card and happy faces and pretty presents wrapped and morning fires charred. we’re told there’s christmas cheer somewhere in our hearts but no matter how deep we search we know it is a lost cause from the start. coloured lights wrap round and round and round the prickly pine tree and our thoughts go round and round and round our heads to the point of insanity. there’s supposed to be hope and we’re supposed to feel love and there’s this sense of warmth and happiness that we see everyone else has but not us. all their candles are lit but we are left with a thickly blackened taper pressed between our palms that will not open its mouth to lick a single bright cheery flame.

so we wonder, will wounded hearts always burn black or is there ever a way to get this joy back. how long must we wait before the promised healing or should we learn to be content with this life of quietly bleeding.

i think we’re fooled into believing that every day after restoration will be bliss because we live in incessant tunnel vision to the things around us and those before our eyes. we wait for healing to begin: to be healed, to feel healed. to be happy again. but the healing process has already begun. we’ve been in open heart surgery without even knowing it. we’ve been prodded by scalpels and stitched by surgeons and maybe that is where the hurt has been coming from. it’s the process of facing the past and reliving painful moments and correctly what can be changed and accepting what is there to stay. it’s a hell of a journey of forgiving all that we once screamed at to forget, everything we wished could be taken back and made untrue for once. and it takes time because it’s not something we’re going to be okay with today. but maybe tomorrow we’ll be a little more okay with it than yesterday.

what healing doesn’t mean is that we forget everything that happened or that we trivialize the pain that we felt or that we brush off the abuse that was done to us. healing isn’t packing away memories in a cardboard box labeled ‘do not open’ and shoving it onto a top closet shelf. healing means opening up old wounds that never healed quite right so we can medicate the cuts and pick bits of shrapnel left from the battle out. healing means looking back and crying because of how much it hurt and we know it will always still ache because of the scars it left behind. but healing also means looking back and smiling because those scars are scars and not open wounds anymore and because they mean that we survived.

holidays will still be hard but they will get easier as time goes on. we will never be the same children filled with innocence whose bright eyes shone with the untouched joy of christmas. but we are the battle-scarred veterans with worn smiles and a twinkle in our eyes as we tell the story we helped to write.