The Movement of Words

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Sometimes you need space, the absence of sounds and voice, and a forced calm to see things come full picture: no distractions, no people, nothing.

I find it hard to speak out or feel feelings authentically because they sneak up on me from out of nowhere sometimes, and I’m left wondering why they were there. I’ll feel this pressure in my chest, a turning in my gut, and this overwhelming sense of dread that knocks the wind from me. I FEEL but lack the words to express what causes these attacks of pure sadness to cloud over me.

Today I realized I love the written word in any way I can get my hands on it, wrap my soul around it, and devour it. 

It’s why I love music, read books, and scroll through endless quotes with pretty, dark pictures; they speak louder than I know how to. They speak for me because I learned to be quiet. I repost or save up quotes because they speak volumes when I lack the ability to grasp at words. They sing to me the hurt I’ve felt inside for years so I can cry and let the pain out.

When I read, I’ll sit for hours in this world, swimming around in my head while I cry, laugh, and go through a field of emotions, running my fingers through the flowers of written dreams. 

I get lost in music; I find relevance in lyrics, hope in quotes, home between the pages of books, and religion in how the violin moves me to tears.  

I often wondered what was wrong with me because I didn't feel or express myself, or behave, the way others did, but I think that's the part that makes me, me.

I'm a human that finds peace in devouring the written word. I discover myself written in pages long ago. I learn about myself and others and send them where they need to go. Like I'm a librarian of human emotions that have been bleeding forth onto paper for the last millennia, just searching the cosmos for someone else to understand. 

I'm not meant to be normal, and I love that about myself. 

Two Halves of a Whole

 Two parts of me fight it out emotionally and logically. It's a never-ending ping-pong match that no one wins because we need to understand the rules of polite society, but we were never taught. We've gone feral and stuck in survival mode for a small hellish eternity. 

What this means is that: 

There's half of me that works endlessly, tirelessly to try and fit into a normal, functioning society. I twist my life into some version of what is deemed normal or normal enough. Normal adjacent?

I can keep up the act for only so long before the tides roll in and take me with them. Pills won't work because it's not a simple diagnosis of Bipolar or Severe Depression. Childhood trauma caused the C-PTSD, and I don't believe in taking medication to cover up my emotions. I wasted years hiding my every emotion, hurt, and tear shed; why cover it with a rug now when I'm making such great strides for my mental health?

I'm healing, just not in the way others want me to. 

The old me would say that's okay, but it's not. I know I'm putting in the work; no one is me and knows me better than me. I've spent years in my head, alone, don't think for one minute I don't see how it looks from the outside.

I know. It's not good. 

Then there's the other half of me that's bitter because I'm trying to fix something, lots of things, a never-ending barrage of things, and have been working nonstop for over twenty years on something I didn't break.

But it never seems like enough, like I'm not fixing myself fast enough or putting enough time or effort into healing my broken parts and pieces. I had been asked if I could improve myself more by people I care about, and I say I'm trying. Still, the truth is that I've been trying for so long to mend myself that I don't know if anybody can genuinely fix me any more than I already am.

And I feel like I've failed these people.

Especially when you are told to look into medication when I already had, I've opened that conversation with all medical professionals, and I get told the same thing.

I'll tell you now, if you're reading this, medication for someone like me is a cop-out. Authentic healing is when you force yourself to feel your bullshit without hiding behind the feel-good effects of drugs, alcohol, and medication.

I don't want to continue numbing myself to be more digestible in society. I don't want to be numb and not feel things; I want to cry when I'm sad; I want to feel my pain because at least I know I can feel it. 

And after being numb in situations that cause me great emotional harm and pause, I don't want to be back there. 

I'm not okay, but I'm working on myself, and I'll be there one day. But I'm not going to numb myself anymore in order to be liked or be bearable.

I'm a mess, and I've never told anyone anything but the truth about who I am. I'm still learning the depths of the hurt, but I see the light. 

Because there's this tiny sliver of something inside of me that yearns for peace, to forget the past, and just go mindlessly into the present and move forward.

Not backward.

Because when we are blinded by the past, by pain, and wander through life in a depression haze, we don't see right away, when we run until we are too far gone to make the walk back. 

Sometimes it's easier to just, I guess, let everyone else think you're crazy instead of explaining yourself because… you've been told so many times that no one understands you, and you kind of give up trying to be heard.

If you don't understand what it's like to live through severe domestic violence where hitting and drinking, and yelling are involved and wondering if this is the night someone goes to the hospital, physical/mental/emotional abuse on yourself and others in the household, and substance abuse that doesn't stop at alcohol for twenty plus years of your life. Then I won't be able to accurately explain to you why certain things physically take my breath away and throw me into unspeakable amounts of mental anguish before being taken on a weeks/months-long emotional hell ride, just to be told: "I don't understand why this is so bad."

You wouldn't.

But medication isn't going to erase my memories, erase the feelings I remember vividly, feeling as if I either hid somewhere or stood up to be a target. The nightmares won't just disappear, and my brain won't rewire to be somewhat normal. 

I've been telling everyone for years; I'm not normal.

I'll never be normal.

But I'm a work in progress. 

One day I hope to be okay-er; I type that as I roll my eyes because I'm exhausted from typing this. And the use of 'one day' is the lie I keep telling myself, which is a blog for another day.

But, yeah.

One day…

One Day...

​One day…

One day is the lie I’ve been telling myself since the beginning of time. One day is my lifeline, life preserver, the beginning and end of my inner dialogue, and will probably be the last two words on my last will or my tombstone.

One. Day.

One day I’ll escape this house, my younger self will away the day, daydreaming for hours, and no one will ever hurt me again. 

That one day never came because the hurt is within’, forever following, attached like a cancer.

It stops you from having an ordinary life because you’re bound to make patterns. Your one days don’t matter in its scheme, only sucking dry your hopes and dreams. 

One day I will move, and my parents will be happy; I’d pray every night we can be a typical family then.

That one day never came because unchecked mental health swooped in like a predator and claimed each soul that entered those doors. Normal was a social construct you weren't meant to taste. It was there to tease but, my dear, never to please. 

One day I’ll fall in love, and I’ll be finally happy; I’d wish on every star as I stared up at the sky, tears in my eyes.

“I wish… for happiness.” I’d whisper. I still prayed, but they were left unheard, unread, words spoken and never read. The abuse was worse. The yelling lasted longer and came on more frequently and so much harder. Dear God, I’d plead, where did you go? 

But no one would answer, and no phone calls were returned. It’s like these issues were expected because no one would look twice, no ears to our door, or a glance at my face.

One day, I’ll be normal; I’d look in the mirror around my red-rimmed eyes and tear-tracked cheeks. It will be okay; you will see, it’s character building, that’s right, that’s precisely what it will be. Until our character is guarded and our words forever misconstrued, when we hid inside of our head and clung alone to basic human curiosity.

One day, I sit in my car, thumbs plucking up tears as they fall, you’ll see. We will stop running, I whisper in the night. We won’t have to run because one day, we will be healed enough not to have to worry about being misunderstood. You’ll see, I promise.

We will be okay one day.

One day…

One day we will be okay.

Fragility -poem-

​I am, in the infinite world of every possibility, completely broken. Like an egg that fell to the floor or a window after a baseball.

I’ve been shattered, accidentally or on purpose, but broken nonetheless by people I let inside. 

It started when I was young and continued until I was a vase pieced back together over time. This stained glass effect on my soul shows light through the cracks where darkness still hides. 

I grasp at each crack, hoping for a shard of light to penetrate. My fingers itch for warmth, the tiniest bit will do.

Until the warmth touches my sallow skin, do I shrink away.

How can I want something so bad, but fall away from its touch? 

It’s like I want until I can’t fathom, then once in reach, I get scared and push back into my cool shadow.

Safety in darkness, but in want of the light.

It teases the wisps of the dark at my edges, but the light never intrudes.

It’s like I crave the softness, but curl up instead of the crude. 

In comfort I find in jagged corners where monsters are want to hide.

Because if I cross the dark and into the light, I fear I’ll see where other demons hide.