It Returns

I begun to notice the familiar feeling of numbness once again. I know it is numbness because I have begun to desire so much pain. I asked myself why I couldn’t desire love or happiness in order to feel something, but unfortunately, I know all to well that the threshold between happy and numb is far less define than that between numb and pain. Take your words and drive them through my heart like a dagger. I want to feel everything. I went to him and my body responded to nothing. I was indifferent to his presence. My heart yearns or its own torture. Its turning into grey matter and I don’t think my body can live off of the limited blood supply it is managing to pump. My empty chest is begging to be drowned in demons before they begin to claw at my skin again. Destroy me and leave me dead on the cold, hard pavement so I can rebuild myself and create a newness the can grow and flourish in this life.

Whole

I don’t really know who I am anymore. I searched for myself for years and I thought I finally figured it out but recently I’ve been changing and trying to change. The weirdest part is that it isn’t in a bad way. It’s almost like I have become so comfortable in who I am that I can change who I am without losing myself. I don’t love him and I don’t want to but I am hold him there just incase. I don’t want love. I want someone to be around but I want to be able to walk away from it. I don’t want love. It is a strange feeling not to be craving love from other people. I don’t have holes in my heart. There is no black pain oozing from my wounds. Is this what it is like to feel whole? I’m not running anymore. I don’t need to justify myself to anyone. Sometimes the exhaustion washes over me and in an instant I am transported backwards in my life but somehow I keep moving forward. I find the light on my own, I pick myself up, I brush myself off, and I move forward because I don’t go backwards. So, I found myself, but I keep finding myself and I find that I am capable of controlling who I want to be and I think I am ready to look for a reason to walk away and I am ready to give myself a reason to walk away. I am smart. I am good. I am powerful. I am strong.

Pretend

I’m in this body. Clearly in this body but somehow, I’m looking at it from the outside. I have this happiness inside me blooming like sunflowers, but it doesn’t feel like mine. It doesn’t feel like my happiness. I could venture to say that I feel someone about to pull the flower from my ground but I don’t even feel like it was mine to begin with. Who distributes the seeds? Did one accidentally get sprinkled onto my ground watered with my tears? Did I accidentally get someone else’s happiness? I can’t even say that I feel like I am leading separate lives anymore. Before, it felt like I was a different person in every different place I was. Now, I am grounded. I am stuck in this spot to watch my body wreak havoc on my world. Even when I say that I question it, because sometimes I actually think the chaos it creates is for the better and may help me wade through my dark waters. Of course, there is no stopping me from drowning at night. I walk straight into this depraved sea. I close my eyes and I can imagine that I am not surrounded by violent waters but wading through a field of sunflowers being persuaded by the winds. Replace the silent screaming with the sweet songs from the birds. Deny the ocean floor and believe I am lying comfortable in the soft grass and earth of the field. Refuse the water in my lungs to be anything other than fresh air. I can pretend. Pretend until my body convulses from asphyxiation and I am hurled back into reality. It happens over and over again and I will continue to pretend I am not succumbing to my darkness until I am dead in the ground. Whatever I keep coming back for will fade away and I will be left hollow and without a purpose. When that day comes I will accept happiness as my own as I lay abandoned in my grave.

Your Baggage

You were the friend I thought my children were going to call aunt. The one that made me believe soul mates weren’t always romantic. The one I was so sure knew far to much about me to ever let go, but I guess there is always a time to let go. For as long as I have known you I have watched out for you. I have loved you like a little sister and spared my own feelings to comfort and take care of you. I felt like you were my responsibility. That everything you felt was my job enhance or detract. Any pain you ever felt I did my best to take away. All I ever wanted was to take it all away. Similar to the law of conservation of mass…I have a similar theory. That pain cannot be created or destroyed. It is simply transfered from hosts. You see, when I took your pain away there was no where to put it. The only option was to bear the weight of it myself. The problem is, you began to offload your problems onto me. I became the place you unloaded your baggage and then walked away. You left me when I needed you. I did everything I could and when I needed you and I told you I needed you, you couldn’t have cared less. I broke. You broke me. funny thing is, I thought that would make me stronger. Allow me to walk away and not get caught back in the trap of someone requiring me to be the host for their pain, but it didn’t. I am not as willing anymore, but moments later I will give and offer my hands to take the worry. I want nothing more than to remove this burden from myself, but I would rather be crawling under the weight than to give any of it to someone else. I would rather see you happy than to worry about my own happiness. I’m afraid that will never change but I am willing to try and make it. You aren’t the only one who has used me like this but you are the beginning of the end. It’s time you take back your baggage and carry it yourself because if you leave, you aren’t leaving it with me anymore. And honey, you already turned your back, now its just time to walk away. This time you can keep the knife out of my back.

Releasing myself from the ones I felt bound to

Where do you draw the line? When everyone keeps taking from you, when do you make it stop? When do you decide enough is enough? I have become a life guard, there to help people who are drowning. Recently, I have noticed all those I try to help are flailing too much and are pushing me under the tide in order for them to rise up. Of course, it isn’t purposeful, but it doesn’t dismiss the fact that is happening. As they catch their breath, my lungs fill with water. I’ve learned to swim, and I am pretty damn good at it, so why am I drowning? I have given people pieces of my foundation in order for them to build up their stability. I learned to build my home, quite strong, so why is it crumbling? I realized, I was giving away pieces of myself hoping that if I gave enough away I would disappear. Turns out, you don’t disappear. You just become used and exhausted. That’s right. They used me. I wasn’t being generous, they were being selfish. I made excuses for people because I believed all they needed was a little help and I thought I could be that help. But they didn’t want help, they wanted someone to hold them above the water. And I realized the more exhausted I became that I was spending my strength to spare someone else’s heart ache. I was carrying their baggage on my back on top of my own and I apologized every time it slipped. Can you imagine? Apologizing when you were already carrying their load. I built myself up and I chose not to be the victim of my life but the hero of my own story. It’s time for everyone else to do the same. My whole body is shaking. Anger is seeping through my skin. Anger for all of the people who have used me and then blamed me for their short comings. Anger for the people I supported but smothered me in their own disappointment when I wasn’t looking.  I cannot keep hurting myself for people who want to soak in the stench of the parts of life that didn’t work for them. And I WILL NOT be angry anymore. I have had enough anger and I refuse to hold it any longer. I don’t have room in my heart for it. My heart will forever overflow with love but I will not distribute it to the people who throw it in the backseat leaving myself with nothing. My love does not come with conditions but there is no warranty. When you break it, it is gone. But when you accept it, it can grow flowers. I would know. I can see it in myself sometimes. I used to think it was others planting them.  The ones I thought loved me as much as I loved them, but it wasn’t. It was me all along. Of course they died quickly because I wouldn’t water them. I’ve never been good at keeping plants alive. I never could agree with someone when they said that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself. I always believed that was a lie and I still believe it is partially a lie because I haven’t loved myself in a very long time but I have so much love to offer. So I gave it to others. While giving away so much of my love, even to those who didn’t deserve it, I learned to love parts of myself. The happiest parts, the most selfless parts, the most open parts, the parts that saw the best in people when everyone else refused to. That has gotten me hurt quite a few times, but it is the part of me I love the most because if no one else can see beyond the flaws to the most beautiful parts of someone, at least I could and hopefully I helped others see it too. Wanting to fix people. such a problem. A large reason behind of the aforementioned. Something I should to learn to do more sparingly, but for some reason I really don’t want to. My empathy makes me, me and if it is the part I love most about me, even if it hurts so, I cannot change it. It’s the only part of me where I can keep the flowers alive. Taking care of yourself is important and there are so many different ways to water your plants. My way might hurt sometimes, but its filled with love and will never again be overshadowed with anger.

Void

She is stuck. I cannot tell you where she is because I cannot find her. She is lost in the void between here and her mind. Drifting slowly almost to avoid the end of the vast emptiness. The ability to avoid all the feeling. She is no longer here. Her body is an empty capsule carrying around her demons she left behind. The bruises left from her past. The pieces of her past she wished to no longer carry. Any sense of feeling she had left was abandoned in that vessel. You may ask how one can choose to feel nothing but if you knew what she felt you would choose to be numb as well. She has been tossed to the outer most depths of the world just to be reeled back in by empty promises of comfort and happiness. She has been stripped of trust and vulnerability. She has built her wall only to abandon it when it proves to be useless. She is done searching for something to fill the void within her that seems to swallow everything in its wake…including herself. She succumbs to the emptiness and gives herself to the darkness within allowing her mind to slip away. She is missing. She does not want to be found.

The Storm is Coming

You know the thunderstorms? The ones that somehow strip all of your worry away. They are these intensely stressful thing in our atmosphere. There is just so much energy put into one ten minute spell of thunder and rain and wind and lightning. maybe the reason they are so calming is all of our stress and energy is stripped from our bodies and pulled into our surroundings to be used purely for the storm. And the moments right before, when you can feel the air shift. The breeze harsh but soft all at the same time. The smell, it’s like the world froze for a few minutes and you can smell the release. We talk about the calm before the storm a lot. Those exact moments are everything blissful right before the sky open up and fall upon our heads, but there is a difference from when we use that phrase that the reality of nature. When we say the calm before the storm, it’s generally because we know our lives are about to turn around completely. I wish when I said that I am feeling the calm before the storm right now, that I was about to feel the release I do when an actual storm starts, but I’m not. I can feel the storm surging and the longer we push it off the stronger it grows, the more energy it is going to have. My body gains more and more tension by the day and the anxiety builds in my chest. I can’t keep wondering where this is going to go. We have two options and one of them scares these shit out of me. Do I let these last few days pass and try to enjoy them but get caught in the rain when the storm starts or do I get a head start and hope the storm doesn’t start until I can watch it from inside. Either way there is a storm coming. The question is, how willing am I to get wet?

Shade of Red

Rip open my chest and bleed me of life until the skies turn red.

Show me the fire in your eyes that turns your soul red.

Bleed your anger into my palms so I can understand the flashes of red I see when I see you.

Tell me why your life is filled with the heat and anger that should not belong to any human. Tell me why you wear red on your sleeves.

No one sees it but I see you and I see the weight you carry on your shoulders. I see there is something weighing on your soul that you cannot shake and it is tearing your mind to pieces. Your body is over flowing with red oceans that are drowning you because you never learned how to tread through it. The waters have reached the fill line and I can see the vast oceans expanding in your eyes.

Red. Red. Red.

I see red. But I see you. There is a film of scarlet over my eyes. I see the world with the crimson filter.

It is me that is vexed. Lost in this world that someone has spilled their wine into.

Stride toward me and find comfort in this familiarity. For it welcomes you like a blazing campfire on the winter nights. The arms of the flames wrap around your body as the fading embers fall upon your face.

Your lungs have been filled with the fallout when your world came crashing down but this world was built specially for you. Built to heat up your soul once more and burn through your reddened casing.

 

Your Eyes

The overwhelming sadness is growing again. That look in your eyes. That moment I saw everything you wish I wasn’t. In that moment you invited all of those dark demons back and they left their mark as they crawled their way back into my body. Your eyes showed me everything I could never be for you and I could feel my heart crumble. You know, you hold all of your secrets in your eyes. Everything you may try and hide away makes itself clear through your eyes and it scares everything within me. My head is pounding. I want to do everything right by you. Why can I never do it right? What can I do to make you happy, because all I ever seem to do is hurt you. Please, take all of me. Open all of the wounds on my wrists and drain me of all of my value. If everything I do in my life is wrong, let me do this right. All I want is to take all of your pain away and all I have managed to do is make your life harder. You can’t let me do this. I’m not worth any of it. I can never be what you want or what you need. I fell. I fell even when I knew I shouldn’t have. I have to keep reminding myself that if I give all of myself away maybe the world will release me. Empty my soul until there is nothing left in this body. I am exhausted and I will never be enough for you. I find myself saying sorry a lot to you. I wish, more than anything, I could be everything that you needed, but I can’t and for that I am so truly sorry.

Running Thoughts

A million words and my mouth can’t form any. A million thoughts and they remain unspoken, locked away in my mind without ever being released into the world. I can try to let them escape, to release them so that they can run to you but my body shakes in resistance. As I reach for the locks guarding these thoughts all of the words dissipate. With no words to sew together, I have nothing to give you. You ask me to tell you, to share myself with you, but my body will not physically let me. I will try to stabilize my voice for you, but even then, there is nothing to cross my lips into the air. Sometimes i wonder if we are all allotted a certain amount of words and I have run out because someone else is using mine. I want to give you my words but someone has already stolen them. I wish to share all of me with you. I want to give you all of the darkest and brightest corners of my soul, but my chest has a padlock that not even I have a key to. Please don’t mistake my silence as me not caring or not having anything to say. There is so much I could say but nothing that I understand enough to help you understand. Sometimes I believe I am not thinking anything or that my mind is moving too slow to string together words, but I think it is moving far to fast for the rest of me to keep up and I can’t even manage to reach and grab a few words to make a sentence. The whole world is rushing by and I can’t manage to make any sense of what I am seeing. Sometimes you manage to slow it all down for me. To make all the world disappear, but even then, I am so overwhelmed by what is happening in front of me. You want more from me than I can give you. Maybe one day I will be able to give you what you so desperately want, but until then, I am sorry.