The Return

I have not been writing. I have been avoiding my own words and thoughts like the plague. I have been running from the honesty required for expression. I have been trying to force wholeness, perfection, smoothness, into every facet of my life- fearful, once again, that if I acknowledge the crack, that the whole thing will come crashing down. I have returned to shunning the other facet of life, and in turn, have pulled my fingertips three feet off the glass. I am back on the proverbial other side of the window pane. And now, I have finally forced stillness for long enough to utilize my awareness and be honest with myself- and sequentially others. I write these worlds slowly, fiercely, born of need that has been ever present but is only newly acknowledged once more. I’m not sure when I stopped believing in the worth of every emotion/experience. I forget when I became so hard on myself again, so afraid to admit that I am uncertain, that I am scared, that I can be both whole and a mess. So here I am in all my glory- reflecting on the lightness, the darkness, and the in between. The way in which we (I) utilize distraction (pre-occupation with external validation, an acquiescing to the 10,000 things begging for my attention at any given moment, a passionate avoidance of stillness) to achieve a safe, mindless state, forcing my council to stay locked in a dark room behind a closed door. My worth lies in the juxtaposition of the north and the south, in my existence as it is- here are little windows into the realizations of my thoughts over the last twelve hours that brought me to this moment. I am thankful to be here- I am freed from the expectation of being something/someone I am not.

I have started writing again. Dipping my toes into the water and watching as the ripples absorb into my skin- I can feel myself opening up slowly, tentatively, a flower responding to the process of preparation, a trusting of the laws of nature. I sit surrounded by the gloom of a rainy sunday and feel as if the universe has served me breakfast in bed: rest with a glass of fresh orange juice and a side of strawberry toast. I can feel myself seeping back into my body, absorbing back into my bloodstream, remembering the mind in relationship to the body.

Last night, as I have been so often recently, I was fighting the desire to see and be seen, to numb, distract, to continue moving as to never allow my thoughts to become tangible. This impulse, this yearning, this ache, rooted in fear, is so strong in its grasp- rooted deeply in my gut as it grows into my airways- cutting off my ability to decifer that which is authentic and that which is a facade. Whatever superficial form it takes, the need to dissociate parades as if it is my one true calling, my life’s desire, what the universe is asking of me- it is a parasite that almost perfectly mimics the feeling of intuition. It is bizarre the way in which it is able to intertwine itself behind my eye sockets and circle through my brain, caressing every corner with the temporary high often confused with peace. How will I ever become big enough to win this war? Solid enough in my grounding to stand without the crutch of external validation. Even as I write this a part of me resents my awareness, my need to dig towards understanding and meaning in each moment. I have never loved something I hate, resented something I need, pushed away and fought violently for something more. It is all very confusing.

I think I have been avoiding myself because I am afraid to realize I am not where, I am not who, I think I should be. Not happy enough, not sure enough, not knowing enough. How is the result of all my restless work not perfection? This is a flawed, flawed narrative, of course, but it is present nonetheless. I forget I am allowed to be a mess. I am allowed to be a mess. I can be okay and be a mess at the same time. I can have it together and be falling apart in the same breath. I can have somethings figured out and somethings not, and tomorrow I may have learned the latter and forgotten the former. I am constantly weighing the worth of all forty million things asking for my attention and assigning morality to my actions in search of feeling good enough. I am learning how tiresome, and necessary, it is to carve out space to be alone, silent, still.

I have been avoiding words like the plague, terrified of what might come out, even more terrified of how they might come out. What if my expression isn’t good enough? As if there could be morality attached to the human experience. As if every decision made is a test of my ethics. I am re-learning the desire and need to be vulnerable- every week, every day, every second. I watch the egg fall from the nest and dig my fingers deeper into the soil- carrying the dirt under my fingernails as a reminder. I am remembering that the mess is the meat and that I must not clutch onto time to the point of suffocation. I have been resentful of the ever-changing position of the minute hand- unable to reckon with how we change from moment to moment. I haven’t felt this possession of my hand and pen to paper in so long, and I cherish my reunion with honesty. The sweet puppy exhales deeply in my lap and I feel a bone crack in my chest- a rush growing in tandem with the heartbeat in my stomach.

I am here, in this life. I have been gone for a while, or maybe just a minute; It is hard to be sure.

Gratitude, hopefulness, peace, reintroduce themselves softly- mist upon my fingertips. I am sorry for the way I have denied myself release- accepting my assignments of morality as bible and not allowing acess of any thought below a certain perceived pedigree. I don’t know when I learned to be so harsh- I am now learning conversely.

I am not sure when I became afraid to share my darkness again- when I began to believe my worth was directly related to the projection of perfection I could achieve. When I began to erroneously, and arrogantly, believe that I could be the only one sharing in these experiences. A subconscious reflex to associate sadness, uncertainty, and fear with shame instead of understanding their cyclical and necessary nature in human experience.

I am thankful to be here- I am learning how to resign to the teaching methods of life. I am valuing honesty in the way she deserves. I refuse to allow myself to feel less worthy for possessing the full range of human emotion. It is raw, it is messy, it is scary, it is real.

A little preface to the below- my writing sometimes manifests in really dark ways- especially when they are words born out of avoidence left to fester within the shunning until I am ready and able to return to them. I’m not sure why I feel so tangibly or intensely or how my thoughts come to be such a physical experience playing out in my mind- but they do, and I am working very hard on accepthing this fact and appreciating it as a gift. That being said I think it’s worth a reminder that that which is captured in expression is one tiny sliver of one moment in time. I can be feeling these things and ten thousand others at the same time- I may feel these words for a moment, or a week, I may revisit them or never have this experience again. They can feel dramatic (though I don’t believe in the word dramatic, who is judge the response of another. How can one remark on the experience of another if they will never know what it is to be that person truly), but it is how it is felt in the moment- often made more intense during the release (the writing process). Often times, once I work through my emotions in this way, by the time they reach this digital form, and to you, I have completely moved on from them. Freed through my process of understanding. But I think they are still worth sharing in case they ever find the reach of someone who can find a shred of recognition in them to know there is solidarity even in our most alone moments.

The Crack, Again

There is something just beneath the surface 

I am tapping on the ice 

Watching as your breath fogs on the glass

I am running as fast as I can, sweat is dripping from my ears

I only lookbackwards, my chin rests tensely on my shoulder

My skin is smoking 

My breath is tangible 

My lungs pour fire into the snowstorm

I am watching myself

I hear someone scream to stop

I see my own lips form the demand

I am on my knees crying

Bloody, begging 

Digging my nails into the ground 

Tearing my skin across the edges

Red stained snow, watercolors swirling on a canvas

One by one my legs move as if they have no choice

This can’t be my body

I am watching through the window, I cannot taste the air

I don’t remember who I was yesterday

Or the day before

What time of day is it 

What is important to me

How does one start to have a thought 

I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand 

This isn’t what I think it is

This can’t be what I think this is 

I don’t know what I think it is

I squint into the fog, I close my eyes for the show

My words race round and round five hundred laps, five hundred years

Something is running for its life

I laugh into my scream hoping to play the role into existence

I graze the pinky side of my fist across the surface and wonder why nothing happened

I dive headfirst into the tequila I will drink next Tuesday and relish in the blindness

I watch my eyes fall from the trees and thank the leaves for holding my need to be seen

I ask the children next-door to peel each fingertip off like the skin of a grape and eat my teeth for breakfast

My neck muscles tighten, holding the familiar feeling of nothing, claiming possession once again

I am tired I am tired I am tired

There is no place to run, there is no release to open, each step taking my soul like a souvenir, how did I get here

Who have I become

How does anyone stand the knowledge of time

Do your bones not break with each tick of the clock

I cannot contain the feeling

That evil is swallowing me whole

That this world has somehow turned upside down

I feel sane among the zombies, I fear insanity among my peers

The voice that says I don’t want to be here anymore

Did I tell you, I don’t want to be here anymore?

My tears do not come but never stop 

I slice slowly across my sinuses and lean into the release

Replacing rain drops in a drought with the steady stream of blood that is not good enough

I can’t be who you want me to be

I ask only to be excused

Months and months and months is this what I am given?

God save my soul and send me down where I belong in the company of my own where I can feel at home knowing what it means to be a human I cannot live in this world of evil and inauthenticity anymore if I think about it too hard my brain begins to melt out of my nostrils and I am scaring the neighbors and I want to smash every plate on the wall and sand my teeth into swords and clear the smoke that is prohibiting me from having a thought

I must burn down the forest so I may start anew where has my taste for the words gone I no longer find anything I know to love digestible and your thoughts sit at the base of my throat in a pool of bile threatening to drown me whole

But at least this is the most honest thing I have thought since I died last month and it’s funny I thought I forgot how to see my feelings but really I just never knew how to see feelings that are not mine to have

And I have been lying 

Profusely

Sometime by omission

Sometimes in your eyes

Blatantly to myself and thank god I have been forced to sit in silence I am asking you to tie the knots tighter across my chest and cut my toes off one by one as I lay my cheek upon this white padded floor and return to something

Or work through something else

And I am tapping on the glass begging, asking if I can see myself