Tag: dark thoughts

A Reminder

This week, my mental health feels like a yo yo.

One minute I am in such a good steady place.
So much had been poured into my cup this week. Cathartic laughter, time in nature, meaningful words, expressions of love, joyful moments of being connected. There was peace. There was easy breath.

One night of not great sleep.
One more reminder of what still needs to be done
One more heartache, added to the pile I was momentarily graced with putting down.
Only to lift once again.
An opening for those pesky little mental monsters to jump in.
They turn you raw from the inside out
They turn up the volume in your head.

Use the tools. Write it out. Distill the source if you can. Assess the reality vs fiction of what you are being told. Distraction of nature, family, comedy, story telling, conversations with friends.

My monsters are on point. They find the wee bits of unintentional salt in conversation, tiny sharp fragments observed in action. And grind them into the wounds that I am working to heal, scar over at the very least.
Misinterpretation. Misrepresentation.
This is what they do.

This too shall pass. More work. More curiosity. More understanding. More self compassion

Awkward Tales From the Shadow Side: Self Owning the Ugly

The rage is almost unbearable

I want to scream till I am spent

Childhood lessons:

refining sensitivities to others, anticipate the needs to keep the peace, prove my worth.

Do not ask, do not demand, it is selfish, you are not worthy to ask so much.

Adult lessons:

I taught you how to treat me. She is kind, giving, forgiving and hardly asks for a thing, we love her.

But when she does she’s needy, an emotional sucking hole that has the audacity to want to be first. Know your place.

The rage ( at self) comes from trying to change and loosing out when I’m no longer suitable. The rage ( outwards) comes from not being considered, from not having someone, anyone anticipate how tender I am and how I might be affected. The disgust I feel ( at self) for this ridiculous notion and foolish hope.

The sadness and exhaustion comes from knowing what saved me in childhood can be dangerous to me in my adult life if I am not careful, also knowing that my empathic skill can still be a superpower.

Rage at seeing the cycle, more rage at the seemingly inability to break it meaningfully. Disgust knowing I can not demand to hold value with others until I hold value within. Frustration knowing my self worth has been dependent for so long on how others need me.

She beats her fists against the glass and still insists she’s a valid lass

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.