Tag: dark thoughts

Awkward Tales from the Shadow Side: Reflections Underneath

I stand in front of the mirror

Armour on

Battle worn, cracked and brittle

Some areas thick and rigid with hasty repair

Is this the way you love me?

Lifting the helmet, what can’t be seen, as they reside so deep, are the howling banshees who live inside. Burrowed in, born of survival, fear and pain. Revealed, tired, wanting eyes.

The cuirass goes next, throat exposed

Words have died here

Breath extinguished

Fine network of scars unseen but felt

Pauldron lifted, the weight had held my arms in place to brace against the blows. Shoulders curled forward with the phantom weight of all that was, without the bindings now threatening to disengage

Plackart next, twisted scars over where the heart resides

Thick, thorny vines at once piercing and protecting the beating centre

Jagged lumps of torn tissue across the upper back holding my arms in place

Faulds removed, one by one, exposing my sex. Sometimes taken, sometimes gifted

Mistaken often for the sole root of power – it is but one area I can hold sacred

The cuisse loosened to fall away, revealing legs with nearly invisible trails of scars, some inflicted through war, some used as a release to quiet the banshees on their terror.

Here I stand, the mirror reflecting all that was hidden beneath the armour

The ugly truth of the damage. The damage that created the need for the armour.

Can you love me this way?

Can I love me this way?

Bad Saturday Poetry

I want to tell a chapter.

So easy to write of dragons, heros, battles and mystical villains.

But this chapter is ripe with horrible truth. One that runs on a loop in my head.

To tell the story, I need the words, but they have disappeared.

Fear, anger, a sadness so deep I don’t know if it has a bottom.

To keep it trapped in my head will surly pull me back into muck that I’ve fought my whole life to get out of.

I want to tell a chapter but it’s ugly and dark. It is not for everyone. And I can understand. But I can’t hold this on my own.

Trust, the words are coming. I’m trying. Trust, I am not alone. I’m trying.

I want to tell a chapter

When the Levee in My Head Breaks

The screaming in my head leaks out

Every sensation amplified and painful

Control is lost

Monsters move in

I can’t speak words

I cry, rage, fear, disappointment

Irrational

Shaking till it feels like I will explode

Curl tighter and tighter into that ball

‘I’m sorry’ are the only words that can be made of out the mush in my mouth

Why sorry?

For all the things I’ve ever (not) done

For breaking

For being

What triggered this? You want to know- all of it, none of it- the crowded loneliness in my head

The work I’ve done, today feels for naught

I am so far away- what do you need? I’m asked. I don’t know -comes the swift reply

I need this to stop

I need to be truly heard

I need quiet in my head

I need the pain to go away

I need the weight of responsibility lightened

I need to be held together till the shaking stops

I need it to be recognized it was never all mine, even though I took it, it was never all mine

Not praise nor encouragement for accountability

But understanding it’s too much and it was never all mine

I make a deal with the monsters, they can have their space,

just give me enough clarity to keep one foot in front of the other, a thought or two and a dry eye when others are near.

Fix the mask once more- temporarily hope it holds. Ignore the discomfort, swallow the bile building in my stomach.

Let’s just play pretend on more day.

Waking in an Anxiety Attack

Wake up from a dead sleep

So many thoughts I can’t grasp one

No breath

Feeling I’m going to split apart

Gulping for air

Fear

The smallest I can go

Arms wrapped around my self

Knees tightly into chest

Nothing slows

The speed of every impulse rushing through

So fast it may just disappear

The fog of everything and nothing

Sickness rises

From a dream? From life?

Try to count

Try to focus

Try to pray

Lose track of the mantra I cling to, to tie me down

Muscles armour, the shell protecting the insides from coming out

Smaller still

Jaw so tightly clenched, small moans escape

Inside the skull deafening screams fill the void

In the darkness I wait for the light to return

Unfinished Production

I tried to write the present, future story of my life

I took the best of what I wanted

I took the best of what I saw

And the story was so beautiful

You didn’t know the script

You didn’t want my story

You couldn’t play the part

You tried to tell me you’d been miscast

Now my stage is empty

Scattered, torn pages on the floor

The echos of my voice bouncing off the lonely walls

Stage make up streaked down my face

Lights fading

Audience gone

The Heart of an Empath

My wounds are such, that when I see them reflected in you, my response is one to want to heal you. To shelter you and let you know there is better.

My desire for connection and the mutual exploration of the deep does not fit.

I am to be taken in doses, as I see I am too much, or is it not enough?

I am told my need to help is not normal, by some even unwelcome- no matter the intent.

Do we not all have the desire to help each other? To care for and nourish each other?

To bathe the wounds in kindness, love and acceptance?

I do not understand why I don’t fit here.

Children Today

Torture to see pain and fear in your child’s eyes

How do we explain the world? The lack of empathy. The constant fear drum being beat relentlessly.

Wanting to say everything will be alright, feeling the words dry up on your tongue because you don’t know. Never make promises you can’t keep.

Her heart is heavy. Mine is breaking.

I hold her, wipe away the tears, fighting back my own.

Hope, hope, find it, enough to share. I can not bare one more thing.

Until I have to.

Tell her ‘bout the wheel, how it will turn. It won’t stay like this forever. It can’t.

A piece of childhood shattered. Another bit lost.

I must be her port. Hold steady despite my fear.

Broken stillness of the night

I woke up at 3. Shaking, not being able to catch my breath. The vivid remnant of nightmares clinging to me like webbing.

I can still see the house I was in, ransacked, ripped apart. Daylight coming through the cracks in the window coverings, dust drifting through the air. Stale smell of inhabitants long gone – desperately trying to hide things like pictures and journals for safe keeping. Things that prove I existed. Knowing with certainty the zombies were coming. Coming to consume me as they had the things and people around me.

Pain singing through the areas of my body that in waking time is my reality. Only here the wounds are visible, bruising, blood, oozing disease dripping from the bandages.

In this dream I am aware I’ve been battling a long time. I feel my child is still alive in this wasteland. I am hiding these things for her. With hope she finds them, a record of the loving normalcy we had lived.

The exhaustion running deeply, the fear that I am loosing the battles, the outer and the inner.

Waking up, I felt nauseous, unable to shake the fear. My shoulder burning, my knee locked in a useless position. My mind racing to what the todays doctor appointment will reveal.

The deep disappointment of still living with the threat of illness, loss of income in a situation I can’t control. At the mercy of ‘the people out there’. The dream very much a mirror of how the constant hammer of daily life is chipping away at me.

So I am awake. Sitting in the dark of my living room. The sounds of my house humming along as it does at the witching our, the furnace and fridge, low buzzing filling the space. The cat crunching kibble, the puppy sighing and shifting in her blissful sleep. Not affected by the webbing of my dream, the anxiety monsters poking at me.

Me knowing in a matter of hours the people in this house will be up, navigating another day.

Still a slight shake of my hands. The paranoia that I may still yet disappear.

Trying to find, deep down inside the fortitude to face today. Another day of worrisome news, the hard to shake disappointment in humanity. Quick mental math, acknowledging the numbers out there vs the risk of leaving the house.

I must shake this off. I have people to care for. A job to do. Clients to treat, a class to lead. A child to parent. A partner to provide balance too. Friends to support and encourage. A life to live.

It was just a dream. Right?

Inside war

This morning, I allowed my self to feel some of the anger that’s been bubbling. I looked deep into where inside this is sitting. I am so angry and disgusted with myself. As most of you know, simultaneously my knee and my shoulder have been failing me.
Three years ago I was building a strong body, I had found some relative freedom from my mental monsters. Through life circumstances and a couple of freak falls the physical and mental took a few hits.
The pain is constant, and some times workable. But has chipped away at my physicality.
Yesterday walking was nauseatingly painful. This morning, while I was achey I thought it might be workable. So I tried to stretch, a bit of yoga and a few other things to get moving. The knee and shoulder screamed all the while.
I crumpled to child’s pose and wept. I am so angry that I can not do what I could before. I am so frustrated I have all but lost the gains I had worked so hard for. I am so disappointed I gave into some old patterns. I am broken hearted that I feel so little compassion for myself.

I want to keep trying. I have to keep trying. There are a few things that I have kept with. There are a few things that keep me going. I can do my day to day. But these things were not done for self compassion, these were done for functioning, so I can work, so I can do the day to day. But not done of love of self. This makes me saddest of all.

I see this in others, I offer compassion and uncompromising care for them. Trying to let them know/feel that they deserve better. I have gallons of outward empathy. Yet inward is empty.

What is it that makes us feel unworthy? Being unseen for the beautiful creatures we are? Being told we are too much or not enough? Being discounted? Being shunned when we offer love and compassion to others- setting the seeds that even our best is met with disdain so me must be grotesque.

I am allowing the pain in today. In my body, in my heart, I will not dull with medication so I can ignore it. I will accept it as a part of me, for now. I will try ever so hard to find the compassion for myself that it’s ok to feel what I’m feeling. I will accept my disappointment. I will sit with this. I will try to love self despite these perceived failings, I will try to love these broken pieces too.

This world is hard. We all carry so much. Be kind. Be loving. To all. But most of all to SELF.
❤️