The Dragon and The Smoke

I am used to the monster that lives curled in my chest.  She claws at my throat when I try to speak.  She wraps her tail around my lungs and squeezes until I cannot breathe.  She constricts and screams and cuts.  She is a dragon, furious and dangerous and she lives inside of me and she has for as long as I can remember.  They call her different names: Stress.  Fear.  Worry.  Their names are too soft, too trivial, too weak.  I know the true nature of the beast and I call her something else.  I call her Anxiety.  I call her evil.  Demon.  Monster.  Pain.  No matter what I call her, she curls up beneath my sternum and she feeds.  She feeds on every skipped heartbeat, every uncomfortable silence, every unkind word that comes to my ear.  She feeds on the toxic sludge that has been poured over me time and time again.  She is strong.  She crushes bones, she swallows common sense, she ignites the air until all that is left for my lungs is fire and toxic smoke.  I have lived with the monster in my chest for so long, I no longer try to rip her from her home between my ribs.  She tears at my flesh and makes every moment feel like I am bleeding.  I live with a dragon in my chest.

There is a new monster now, that puts the dragon to sleep.  There is a new monster that is stronger, more dangerous, more evil than Anxiety could ever be.  He is dark-made of smog and gas and something intangible.  He settles into the joints of my limbs and slips into my tear ducts until they ache and itch and sting.  He is not loud like the dragon.  He is soft, persistent, inescapable.  He is stronger than the dragon, stronger than me.  They call him sadness.  Grief.  Loneliness.  They do not know the depths of his empty eyes.  I have seen into the abyss and I call him Depression.  He is not my friend, he does not want good for me, he does not want me to survive.  This new monster puffed in the face of the dragon and she fell asleep, too tired to fight-to claw-to climb.  She sits like a rock in my chest while the new monster grabs me by the throat and whispers horrors in my mind.  He binds my hands and lays me down and tells me not to get back up.  He tells me not to eat and not to try and not to care.  He tells me life is not worth living and I listen.  He is so convincing.  When I try to argue, he puts his heel on my windpipe until the edges of my vision fade to black.  Sleep is so much easier than fighting.  He makes every moment feel like I am coming apart at the seam where my soul meets my mind and darkness becomes a familiar escape.  I live with smoke in my head.

They like to fight, the monsters inside of me; the dragon and the smoke.  When the dragon wins, my senses are on overload.  I see danger in every corner and resting for even a second might mean death.  When the smoke wins, I am dead on my feet.  I cannot see straight, and breathing is exhausting.  The monsters inside of me; the dragon and the smoke, they like to dance.  They work together to wear me down.  The dragon fans the flames and spins me faster, faster, like a top until I launch into the sky.  She relishes my scream, my panic as I fly, my inability to stop, my lack of control.  The smoke overtakes me and stops me instantly and I fall like a stone back to earth.  He relishes my impact, my blackout, the ache of my breathing that feels like too much work.

I wonder, how long can one human be tossed between monsters before the body fails and the lungs give out?  I wonder, how long can I last in the clutches of these evil things inside of me?  I wonder what will win; the dragon or the smoke?

Forbidden Daydream

I tend to live in extremes.  I love hard, with all of my hope and my heart and my head.  When I get hurt, the wound is deep and it takes years for the scars to start to form.  Even after something has scabbed over, all it takes is the slightest touch to tear me open again.  When someone loses my trust, I turn my back and run as far in the opposite direction as I can.  And when I get away, I take a few breaths and then I run a little farther just for good measure.  When someone brings me joy, I set them on a pedestal and I crown them victor and they get a golden badge engraved with kind sentiments and I throw all of my love into them at full force.

It's hard to live like that.  It's hard to make your way in a world that is so angry and apathetic and aggressive when every slight feels like a sword to the side.  It's hard to keep your eyes open when everything is so bright that your eyes sting and smoke rolls in so fast that it makes you blind and chokes you in a second.

There was one ledge I never allowed myself to fall over.  I built a wall at the edge of the cliff, three layers deep and tied a rope around my waist and anchored it to the thickest tree stump I could find.  I sat with my eyes on the sky and tried to keep my attention away from the one place I knew I couldn't go.  I let the world distract me and keep my mind busy.  

But years of boredom and abandonment wore the rope around me thin and a few months ago, the last tired thread snapped.  There was a freedom that I never knew I wanted and all the sudden all I could see was the wall in front of me.  I stepped across the space and I stepped up to the wall and I pushed.  And he said all the right things and the wall started to crumble.  It only took a few minutes for the wall to turn to dust and I walked right through the wreckage and stared down into the abyss that I tried to save myself from for so long.  Because loving him is a disaster in the making.  Because falling for him will never turn out right.  Because he's the best thing I've ever known and it's bound to break me.

In the ravine at the bottom of the fall was his smile and the way his laughter always sounded like it was surprised out of him.  In the ravine was the one person I said I'd never fall for.  And then I stepped over the cliff with my arms stretched out wide and let the world go as I fell.

Maybe it was all the years between us that made it feel safer.  Maybe it was all the miles that built up between us.  Maybe it was the kind words that caught my attention and pulled me in.  I don't know.  All I know is that I stepped over the cliff and I crashed into the river at the bottom and I didn't even feel the impact.  And the daydream I never let myself slip into swallowed me whole.

Now all my bones are broken and I don't feel it.  Now all the blood is rushing from my hands and my arms and my heart and the water around me is red and all I can see is the sundrenched sky color of his eyes.  Now all I can hear is his voice, even though I almost don't remember what it sounds like anymore.  Now, I've broken the last rule and I'm floating in a daydream that isn't real and it's the only thing keeping me going sometimes.  Now, it's the only thing comforting all the pain and easing me to sleep when the nights are long and cold and dark.  And it's not even real.  But it helps me forget everything else, and that's all I really want anyway.

Another Letter I'll Never Send (#6)

 Dear ******,

This isn't the first letter I've written to you.  This isn't the first time I've had so many things to say that I needed to release it all just to keep on going.  I have so many things I want to say to you.  So many questions, so many angry rants, so many exhausted pleas.  Today has been so difficult and I'm mad at myself for how often I wished I could see you today.

Part of me wishes I could celebrate my new project with you.  For a time, you were the only person I trusted with my art.  I want to show you what I've got in the works and tell you what I have planned and get your ideas because they always stunned me with their originality.  And yet, for years I couldn't write a word because you stole the joy from it.  You took it from me and it's taken so much time to get it back, to water the seeds, to coax the joy back out.  I don't know if I'll ever trust anyone with that part of me again because of what you did to me.  That's something I want to scream at you about.  That's something that has been so difficult for me to forgive.  That's something I don't know how to get over.  Because you said that it was sacred to you the way it was to me and then you betrayed it...and me.

I want to forgive you and start fresh.  I want to believe that you had such a good reason, that you've been trying so hard to get back to me and you have this spectacular apology planned.  I want to believe the best in you.  I want to believe in who I thought you were.  

And then there's the stupid part of me that just wants to forget it all and hug you.  I just want to call it the past and let you back in.  But it's like a movie where I keep looking out the window, waiting for you to drive up and day after day I'm left disappointed.

Today I've gone through the full spectrum of my feelings towards you.  I was mad at you this morning.  I was afraid to see you this afternoon.  Tonight I've wanted to ask you a thousand questions and then wanted you to tell me everything will be okay.  If you had asked me back then, in that coffee shop where we would be today...I could've made a lot of guesses.  The reality is not one of them though, and that is what hurts me more than the rest of this mess we've become.

Forever Conflicted, 

M

A Page From His Book

 He has such a hard time letting go. 

He can't let go of the past.  He can't let go of his problems.  He can't let go of things that are already gone.

But he's very good at letting go of me.

So I'm taking a page out of his book and I'm letting go too.

I'm letting go of his sweet, empty words.  I'm letting go of the memories of us that turn my stomach in equal parts of revulsion and regret.  I'm letting go of the hope that he might become the man I hoped him to be.

He's so good at holding on.

He holds on to people, but not to me.  He holds on to moments, but not ours.  He holds on to feelings, but not mine.

So I'm taking a page out of his book and I'm holding on too.

I'm holding on to things that take my mind off of him.  I'm holding on to things that make me happy, but not him.  I'm holding on to myself because some one has to.

He's got hands that seem to hold so much, and yet he lets me slip away despite the way he says he feels.

I've spent my whole life trying to hold on to things that are being dragged away from me.  I've got scars on my heart and my soul and my hands from holding on too tightly to things I wasn't meant to have.  I guess he's just one more thing I have to learn to let go of.

Another Letter I'll Never Send (#5)

 Dear ******,

It's been so long since I've seen you, I don't know if you'd recognize the person I've become.  Sometimes I wonder if you'd been here through the last few years, would I be where I am now?  Would the hurt have been less?  Or would it be more?

I saw you once at a baseball game.  And I kind of wanted to throw up.  And I kind of wanted to call your name.  Instead, I put on a baseball cap and stared at the floor until you were gone because I couldn't breathe.  So much of who I used to be was tied up in you.  So much of what I imagined my future would look like was molded around you.  It's strange, to me at least, to pull apart that future.  To strip all of my plans down and separate out the reality from the dream.  It's strange, even still, to have to rip you out like a weed.  It's odd to me that even now, you were in my life longer than you've been out.  That when I look at my collection of years on this earth, I've still spent more of them at your side than by myself.  But the clock is ticking and the time is counting down.  Soon, I'll be more of myself and less of you.  That's odd to me too.  That one day soon I'll have lived without you longer than I did with you.  It's a sadder thought than I'd imagined it might be.

I normally have a point to these letters but I fear I don't know what I'm trying to say but that never mattered to you.  You always let me talk without needing a big reason.  That's what we did for each other.  That's what best friends do.  Looking back on it now, I don't know that we ever stood a chance.  Things seemed poised to fall apart one way or another.  And while I miss the joy we had when we were together, I don't really miss you.  But I do miss having someone who knew me as well as you did.  I've tried in your absence to open up to other people, but the thing I had with you is something I don't think I'll ever get back.  It's something I don't think I can do again.  Not after losing you.  Not after growing up.

Sometimes, when I have really bad days, I think of you.  And I almost want to call.  Sometimes, when I have really good days, you cross my mind.  And I think of how you would've celebrated with me back then.  But the reality is that I don't have a number to call.  And I don't actually want one.  I guess my nostalgia just creeps in and stabs me every once in a while.  And I guess that's what I wonder about you: do you ever just think about me?  Even for a second?

I'm old enough now to know that we're both healthier when our worlds don't intersect.  I'm okay with that now.  It's just moments like these when I feel like I'm standing on a mountain looking down at where I've been and out at where I'm going that I think of you.  And I hope that even if it's only for a second, sometimes, you think of me too.

-M

My Favorite Phantom

I've been haunted by so many things, so many people, so many traumas.

I've never had a ghost that made me smile.

I've never had a ghost that made me hope to see it again.

And then there was you.

You and your smile that takes over my mind.

You and your eyes that seem to sparkle.

You and your kindness that shocks me into quiet awe.

And I find myself looking in the windows I pass, and the empty space, hoping to catch you standing there.

I find myself reaching out in my dreams and waking up to handfuls of air.

I find my chest aching at the impossibility of it all, of the timing, of the space, of the hope.

When I wake up with stinging eyes and a head that knows you're gone, I still whisper your name into the night in some dull hope that you might hear me.

I am haunted by hope that refuses to die, that promises me it's not the end.

I am haunted by hope that my favorite of all the ghosts will become tangible once more and catch me in this fall.

Wanting This

 I have never wanted something so gently and ardently as this.

When I open my eyes, it is the prayer on my lips as I wake.

When I close my eyes, it is the prayer on my lips as I slip into sleep.

And every moment in between is prayer after prayer, in every breath, in every thought, just for this.

I have never wanted something so simply, for no other reason than that my heart aches to be without.

My soul feels lost without it.

I have never wanted something so earnestly as this.

If I spend too long thinking about it, tears spring to my eyes fast and burning. 

I do not know what happens if I go too long without thinking about it because it's in my head always.

I have never wanted something so softly, so wholly, so deeply, so painfully in my life, and I have had an entire lifetime of wanting things.

But nothing like this.

Nothing so breathtaking, so impossible, so incandescent.

Nothing so terrifying, so transcendent, so delicate.

I have never wanted something so publicly and so privately all at once.

I want to scream about it.

I want to keep it secret.

I have never wanted anything like this in all my years of wanting.

I have never wanted anything like this.

Music That Makes Me Miss

 Music from my younger years spills in and nostalgia takes me over.  The words roll off my tongue dusty but never forgotten.  They pinch my heart the way an old sweater might pinch you in the places where you'd outgrown it.  But they feel so familiar, so warm and bright with memories that I let them slip out anyway.  The notes roll through me and raise goosebumps on my arms as I fall into the haze that only long suppressed feelings can stir up.

And I find myself missing the feelings I had back then.  Feelings that were big and bright and consuming.  I miss the high before the fall; the way I felt so alive.

I miss the way I hoped to much for so many things and my faith in people thrived.  I miss the freedom I had given my heart back then.

I miss the smiles that stretched our faces so wide for so long that the muscles started to ache.  I miss the way my heart felt so full that at times, it felt like it might burst.

I miss so much and I wonder now, if there's some way to get those feelings back.  Some form of healing that comes in more things than old music and aching, bittersweet memory.

I miss so much but I don't know how to get it back.  Feelings just slipping through my fingers, so small and fragmented and intangible that I have to shake them out of my bones the way you shake sand from your shoes.

And the way you go home sun kissed and gritty from the sea shore, I slip out of the music with an ache in my chest and a pinch behind my eyes.  Because even though the feeling fades, for a moment in time the music pulls me through the clouds and then drops me back on the ground and the effects are physical, noticeable, real.

An Island to Many, A Home to None

I know I'm hard to understand.  I know I'm full of contradictions and opposites and riddles.  I know I don't make it easy to get close to me and I know I make it hard to get away.

Stand too close and I craw at my throat.  I push you away.  I suffocate on your consideration and attention.

Stand too far and I choke on the space between us.  I reach with weak hands across the void.  I drown in the loneliness that seeps from my heart.

Am I picky for wanting someone who knows how and when to give me space without the weight of abandonment crushing me beneath it?  For wanting someone who sees through the mask I paint on each day?  For wanting something I'm not so sure exists?

I've lived a life full of loneliness.  People come for a season and only stay for a day.  I've spent a lot of my time wondering who still thinks of me when I still think of everyone.

Am I high maintenance for wanting someone who understands that fear?  For wanting someone who isn't afraid to stay?  For wanting someone who knows that when I push, it's just self preservation not me wanting isolation?

I feel like an island where people stop for a moment of rest before they head home for good.  I feel like the moment of reprieve on a long journey that doesn't quite satiate you because it's not quite home, not yet.  I feel like the space between foreign soil and familiar land, the space where no one waits too long.

Am I wrong for wanting someone to land here and feel like they've finally come home?  For wanting to pull up my roots and land somewhere solid for myself instead of floating in the ocean?

I feel and I feel and I feel and the feelings are like waves, pulling and pushing and rolling over me all out of my control.  Somedays I feel like a rock, solid and firm and standing my ground against them.  Somedays I don't even know how to swim.  I just need someone who can teach me to tread the water and then pull me up into a boat.  I just need a steady hand, a space between me and the water, a moment to breathe. 

The Strangeness of Now

 It's strange to have enough separation between past trauma and the present that I can finally see everything clearly.  I've lived my life pressed up close to the pain, not realizing what I was living in, not knowing how it was changing me even then.  I've lived with toxic acid in my eyes, everything blurred, everything messy, relying on stranger's hands to pull me through.  Trusting what they said and did because they named themselves friends.

Now, I've got clearer eyes, a clearer mind, and a few feet between me and the past.  Now I can see things a little better.  I'm not pressed so close that the truth is distorted, I'm separated a little with a better view.  A bigger view.  A view of how much bigger and brighter the world can be outside of the little muddy patch I'd been trapped in.

It's strange to look back at years of what I thought was my personality, at what I thought life was supposed to be, and realize that who I am is a persona that's been pushed on me.  I'm not better, not yet.  But I'm well enough that I can start shedding the skin they put me in.  The skin that never felt quite like mine but what did I know?  I was living with blank eyes and a head full of lying voices that told me to stay soft and mild and quiet.

Now, I can see the road ahead of me.  Not far, but enough that I'm curious about what might come next.  I'm curious enough to want to walk a few week.  Healthy enough to make it a little farther away.  I have a chance to make a new life, make a new self, make a new world.  I have the chance to change, to grow, to heal.  A chance to make my way into that bigger, brighter world beyond the mud patch.

It's strange to understand so much of my own mind.  To have so many thoughts going around all the time.  To constantly pull at the treads in my insecurities and unravel them until I find the source.  I'm a trail of threads, knotted up and tangled and hard to follow.  But I'm learning to be patient with myself, learning to follow one thread and pull and let go until I get to the root.  Until I get to the heart of the problems that sprouted from seeds planted in my heart.

Now I can see the weeds and I can see the flowers.  I can see where the good begins.  I can see the route to make my way out of the tall grass.  It's just a matter of time, a matter of having the strength, a matter of having the stamina.  It's a matter of fighting not only the ghosts of my past, but the doubts in myself.

It's strange to have a moment of clarity after so long, a moment where I can definitively tell that my next move will be the change in the tide.  Now I just have to make it.

Another Letter I'll Never Send (#4)

A letter to the three of you, three friends, three tragedies, three strangers.

It's been a long time since I've seen any of you.  One of you still embraces me as a friend.  One of you might stroll past me like a stranger.  One of you still stands against me as an enemy.  That's okay.  It's okay.  We were all so young when we met; so insecure and unsure and scared.  We were all trying to find our places in a messy, difficult world.

I don't want to place blame.  I'm just trying to come to terms with what we went through when we were friends.  I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that the cracks in my heart didn't begin at fifteen when I met a senior boy who stole my heart.  They began a little earlier.  With us.  With you.

I didn't really notice when you used me as a tool to find yourselves.  I didn't realize you were all using me against each other.  I didn't realize I was being treated like a prize and not a person. That pattern in my life started with you: with boys who didn't know how to be honest, who only knew how to play games because our lives seemed so much like a chess match at the time.  Always trying to be one step ahead.  Trying to win.  Trying to prove ourselves.

I realize now, that I was collateral damage in the chaos of your self-discovery.  I was a side-effect of you becoming who you are.  And while I am glad you've all found your places in the world, I wonder if you ever considered what would happen to me?  After you postured with me at your side, after you proved yourself, after you found yourself; what happened to me?

You taught me so early that I was someone to consider but never commit to.  I was the almost, but never enough.  I was the girl you might use to make someone jealous, but not the one to make you happy.  I was the ego boost and never the endgame.  I am truly happy you all found yourselves because I know it was a struggle.  I watched you fight tooth and nail for who you are.  I watched you triumph and thrive.  And I wonder now, how do I find me?  After so many years being treated like a place holder how do I find my place in the world, the way all of you did?

You all found yourselves, but somewhere in the shuffle I got left behind.  I heard each of you saying "maybe" and "only if" and "not now" and I sat politely with my hands in my lap, waiting for someone to tell me when it was my turn to be found, when it was my turn to become myself.  But no one ever came.  

I genuinely don't mean to sound accusatory or malicious.  I just never saw what was happening before.  I didn't realize that while you each told me I was beautiful and funny and impossible not to love, none of you were actually loving me.  I wonder, in all the time you spent playing each other, and finding yourselves, did you realize I was losing me?  Did you see the parts of me that broke away every time you showed me off like a stack of poker chips?  

We were so young.  So confused.  So scared and selfish.  We all just wanted to find ourselves.  

I think eventually you all found yourselves by borrowing pieces of me until there was nothing left for me to hold onto.  I'm sorry I didn't stop you.  I'm sorry I didn't know.  I'm sorry we grew up fighting and hurting each other.  I'm sorry I let you think that you can break people just to find yourself.  I would've stopped it all, stopped our pain if I had only known back then.

-M

Ghosts of Heartbreaks Past

He had blue eyes

and spoke in plot lines

and everything about us was soft.

He was looking for a story

like the world was one big movie.

Given the chance,

he could've been more to me.

But he left before we could start,

he broke my heart.

He had green eyes

and he wore bowties

and everything about us was fire.

He saw through my walls

like they were made of glass.

Given the chance,

I think we could last.

But time and space pulled us apart,

he still has my heart.

He had brown eyes

and only told lies

and everything between us was wrong.

He was looking for something stable 

like being with me was going to be his saving grace.

Given the chance, 

I think he could change.

But I'm so tired of the endless fight

he just wants one night.

Tender Heart

For so long there was a thick shell around my heart.

It grew some and I built it some and the layers got thick.

Heartache after heartache, I boarded up shop and let go of my heart.

I didn't need it, didn't want it, didn't care for the feeling it gave me.

I was sick of pain, sick of hurt, sick of being torn apart artery by artery.

For a long time, the heart in my chest was a stone.

It was heavy.

It was empty.

I didn't care about the cost because the pain had stopped.

Now, that shell is cracking and my heart has become exposed.

Every soft word, every kind sentiment, every hurting heart stabs into my chest like a knife.

It hurts all the time.

A wound being reopened and exposing the soft, new flesh to the harsh reality of the world.

It hurts for everyone going through something big or small.

While I'm glad to feel alive again, I don't know how to cope with the pain.

I've lived so long like a ghost, unseeing, unfeeling, unattached.

This tenderness is new to me.

I try not to see it as weakness, I try to remember that pain makes me strong.

I try not to shut down again, to coat the walls of my heart in cement or block out the world.

But living is hard.

Living hurts.

The ache in my chest is both foreign and familiar, from a time in my life I wish I couldn't remember.

Tender, aching, breaking heart, hold on.

Hold on.

Hold on.

Faint

When I was fifteen, I fell and hurt my leg.

I remember the waiting room at the emergency clinic.

I remember the way my hearing started to fade like cotton was being shoved in my ears.

I remember my heart pounding in my chest.

I remember the world fading at the edges into a soft black curtain that wanted to fall over my eyes.

I remember almost passing out from the pain.

When I was nineteen, I had surgery.

I remember being in the shower in pure agony.

I remember the shower feeling too small.

I remember the way my hearing started to fade like the world around me was whispering.

I remember my heart pounding in my chest.

I remember the world fading at the edges into a soft black blanket that wanted to pull me in.

I remember almost passing out from the pain.

Our bodies are programed to do whatever it takes to get oxygen to our brains.

To keep us breathing through the pain.

To keep us alive in a crisis.

And the ache in my chest now feels so overwhelming, so consuming, that I wonder when the world will start to fade again. 

I wonder when the sounds will become muffled and the world will soften into something dark and warm.

I wonder when I will pass out from this bone deep pain that tears me apart day in and day out.

Heavy

You are the lump in my throat that warns me not to speak.

The thing that tells me the words that fall out next will break.

You are the sting of overfull tear ducts.

The overwhelming need to release the things that are pulling me down.

You are the pressure in my chest.

The stones sitting in my heart that make every beat painful.

You are the tightness in my chest.

The crushing pressure around my lungs that keeps me gasping for air.

I wish so badly that you were something lighter, something easier, something refreshing.

I wish so badly that you were my reprieve from the world.

Sometimes, I wish you were nothing at all.

That I didn't know what it was like to live with you there in the passenger seat all the time.

But I have a heart with a memory like concrete and once something is etched in, it's forever.

Even if I break.

And you are the thing in my heart making it heavy.

You are the thing that makes it hard to breathe.

Precious Little Town

"You'll always go home again" is something people like to say.

"You'll miss it when you leave" they tell me when I say that I hate it here.

And sometimes I wish they were right, but it's not just some skin-deep desire to spread my wings and see the world.  This is something different-the way this place doesn't fit together with me.

I wonder if they could see this place through my eyes, if they would still promise me the impossible.

I drive through the neighborhood glancing down the street and praying I don't see the person I trusted with the very fabric of who I am and who walked away without another word.

I pass a building that anchors my memories of the worst moments of my life every day just to get into town.

I drive past one, two, three, or more neighborhoods and can count in each one the number of people who left me scarred.

I see the school I begged to be free from, the school where the damage began, the very building where the seeds of future disaster were sown and the sight of the brick makes me nauseous almost five years later.

Every corner is the marking of a war zone or a hostile territory.

Milk runs are like walking behind enemy lines with shields up and knives at the ready.

I don't say I want to leave because of some latent teenage angst that pushes me into isolation and dramatics.

I say I want to leave because I drive through this small town and there is not enough air in the atmosphere to keep me alive.

I drive through the town that "raised" me, the town that bullied me into submission, the town that knocked me around until I didn't exist anymore, and I feel sick to my stomach.

I drive through streets I could walk blind folded with white knuckles because on every side, I am surrounded by people who want to hurt me; people who have hurt me.

People think my dreams are just bigger than the horizon will let me see, but that isn't the problem.

It's not that I've somehow missed the little charms of the little town full of little people.

It's that I haven't missed them at all.  I see the charms and they don't make up for the hurt and the hatred and the unfairness.  They don't make up for the way people spoke, the way people pushed, the way people dismissed.

It's hard to care about hardwood floors in a house that's on fire.

It's hard to care about the charms of a small town when the town taught me that I am not enough, and that I am too much, and that who I am is not who I should be.

I know people find a home here.  I know people raise children and find love and live beautiful lives here.  I wish I could find that too.

But when I look out my window, I don't see some charming hometown that molded me into who I am.

I see the war zone I fought through.

The danger I grew in spite of.

The anger and hatred and venom that tried to choke me out when I wanted was to love and to live and to find myself.

This town isn't home, it's a haunted house.

This precious little town is just a nightmare.

; 1 in 5 ;

1 in 5 five people are affected by mental illness.  I am.  I am 1 in 5.

I have generalized and social anxiety.  I fight through depressive episodes.

It took a long time for me to get to the point where I felt safe enough, but also sick enough, to talk to someone about what I was dealing with.  Anxiety is complicated and confusing and hard to explain.  It's different for everyone that experiences it.  My anxiety my not look or sound or feel like someone else's anxiety but that doesn't mean it isn't completely real and relevant.

When I tell people I have anxiety, a lot of times their response is "oh you'd never guess that from looking at you!" and in equal parts it comforts me and it bothers me.
For one, I feel my anxiety so big and it's shocking and surprising and a little reassuring that it doesn't look like how it feels.  Because it feels unbearable.  It feels like I am going to jump out of my skin.  It feels like I can't breathe.  It feels like I'm teetering on the brink of passing out and screaming at the same time.   It feels like every person in the world is looking at me, scowling at me, hating me; even when I'm surrounded by strangers.  Even when I'm surrounded by friends.  And to some degree, I am glad that it doesn't look as bad as it feels.

On the other hand, when I'm told that no one ever would've guessed it because I don't LOOK sick, it makes me angry.  It makes me feel invisible.  It makes me feel like they don't take me seriously.  It makes me feel like they don't actually see me at all.  It makes me want to scream that you can't SEE diabetes or sore joints or cancer.  But when someone tells you they have arthritis you don't say "oh you'd never guess that from looking at you!"  Because you can't actually see illness.  You can see symptoms.  And you can see mine.  You can see me bouncing my leg and popping my fingers and picking at my split ends-anything to keep my eyes off of the people around me and keep my mind focused on one thing.  You can see me sign my ABC's as I walk to give my brain something to think about other than the panic.  You can see me bite my lip until the skin comes off.  You can see my symptoms, you just don't realize that's what they are.

Anxiety, for me, is a voice in my head that is negative all the time.  It is a series thoughts and feelings that roll through unannounced like "you're not worth anything"
"you're too emotional"
"you should just shut up"
"no one cares"
"no one wants you here"
"you're in the way"
"move, move, move, get out of the way!"
"you're taking up space!  You're wasting space!  Just move!"
"You're too loud.  Don't breathe.  Don't talk.  Don't move, just be still and silent.  Don't draw attention"
Anxiety is the feeling that I am somewhere I shouldn't be all the time, in every situation, in every second.  Anxiety is the feeling that people don't want or need me and that they wish I was elsewhere.  Anxiety is the feeling that no mater where I go, or who I am with, I will never fit or be welcome.

Anxiety is not stress.  I am not stressed.  I do not need to relax.  I am at war with myself and I am FIGHTING every single day just to exist.  Sometimes I pull into the parking lot at Target and have a panic attack and turn around and go home without ever getting out of the car.  Because the anxiety says I can't go in and I don't need to and all those people will see me and that can't happen.  It happens whether I am alone or with strangers or friends or family.  It happens when I am with people that I know in my heart love me, but that voice in my head says otherwise.  I am not stressed.  This is different.

Some days are easier than others.  Some days I feel unstoppable and brave and the war is not so hard to fight.  Some days, I wake up and I feel like I have a purpose and a plan and that the day is one big possibility.  Some days feel like bottled sunshine has been poured in my veins and I can do anything.  And then there are days when getting out of bed is literally all I can do.  Days where I feel empty.  Days where I wish I could just sleep and sleep and sleep.  Days where I sit in my room with a lump in my throat and tears burning in my eyes for no reason; because I'm just so incredibly tired of fighting.

I used to live at a 10.  Anxiety was a 10 every second of every day, even at home.  I had panic attacks almost every night before school the entire time I was in college.  I felt like I was going to fly off the handle all the time.  I felt like I was holding on to this sliver of sanity and the thread that kept me tethered to the world was about to snap at any second.  And then I started therapy.  I was skeptical and I was skittish and it has been the best decision I've ever made in my life.  Because of the things I've learned and figured out through therapy, I live at a 3 or a 4 most days.  Leaving the house spikes my anxiety but for the most part, I live with a controllable level of panic all the time.  The panic is always there, bubbling under the surface but it's gone from a rolling boil to a simmer.  It is never a 0.  No matter how much I want 0, I haven't found it yet.

Self care is an over used term, but it is an important tool for coping.  Some days, for me it looks like productivity.  It looks like laundry and healthy food and loud music and running errands.  And some days, like yesterday, it looks like me alone in my room, wrapped in blankets with the lights off, eating ice cream and crying through another episode of Greys Anatomy.  Some days it looks like taking a forty minute shower just to sit in hot water and feel nothing.  Some days it looks like maintaining and holding on however I can.

I don't want pity from people.  I don't want people to take this the wrong way and think I've written this for attention or for drama.  I just want awareness.  I want sensitivity.  I want to see the stigma around mental health change.

People don't come up to my brother and ask "how diabetic are you today?  Have you tried not eating sugar, I read somewhere that cures diabetes" but people do ask me "How anxious are you today?  Have you tried relaxing?" and I need it to stop even though they think they're being kind.  I need the people who don't understand why I hate big groups and small talk to understand that it's not personal; it's just HARD and sometimes I physically can't do it.  I need people to stop saying "I never would've guessed it by looking at you" when I tell them I have anxiety and start saying "wow, thank you for trusting me and letting me know."  I need people to stop thinking that I cancel plans because I don't want to see them and understand that sometimes I'm canceling plans because  the thought of leaving the house and seeing people is making me nauseous and making me hyperventilate.  I need people to stop telling me to calm down when I'm overwhelmed because I'm not in control in those moments; I physically cannot calm down.   I need people to stop telling me that they "get stressed too" because it is not the same thing.  I need people to understand that there is not always a reason for my anxiety.  Sometimes there is a trigger and sometimes I just wake up in panic and cannot escape it.  If there were an explanation behind it, believe me I would also love to know what it was and how to fix it.  I need awareness so I don't have to write things like this.  I need to feel safe enough to talk about it without the fear that people will then put their kid gloves on and treat me like a broken, fragile little bird.  I need people to stop acting like mental health isn't just as important as any other kind of health.

Since May is Mental Health Awareness month, I just wanted to say my piece.  It's something I care about a lot, something that's part of me and it's something that doesn't get the right coverage, and sometimes the coverage it does get is misleading and regressive.  Like I said, it looks different for everyone but if you or someone in your life is struggling, please realize that it is very real and you are not crazy or broken or weak.  If someone confides in you that they deal with something like this, please realize that it took so much bravery for them to do so and please, please don't dismiss them.  Mental health is real.  Just as real as heart health and gum health and joint health and we have GOT to start treating it as such; if for no other reason than to help the people affected by it.  To help me.

From your 1 in 5 friend
-M

Narrow Tunnel

I don't realize how hard I'm gripping the wheel until my hand starts to ache.  Prying my fingers loose is like trying to pry steel bars apart.  45 isn't fast enough, and neither is 50 or 60.  But I temper the foot on the pedal so that I'm just on the verge of going too far over the speed limit.  The road I'm on isn't long enough.  No road is long enough.  I just want to drive, fast and far, until everything I'm running from is a speck in the rearview.  But the things I'm running from are stitched into my skin and my head and my heart like they're supposed to be there.  Like I was out cold and someone thought they'd do me a favor by making them permanent.
I click the dial on the radio up, up, up.  Until I am the obnoxious person on the road whose music seeps into the cars around me when we slow down.  Until the vibrations buzz through the car and through my chest and into my lungs and make it hard to breathe.  But I'd rather drown in the songs on the radio than the pain that I'm trying to numb myself to.  The pain that's racing up behind me like a runaway train off the tracks.
Every zip code I speed through takes an ounce of pressure off my chest.  And when I finally get towns and towns away, and my breathing is easy and the tears aren't stinging my eyes anymore I realize I've got to go back.  It doesn't matter if I drive in circles out there for hours or if I sit stone still in my car in a parking lot because before too long, I have to turn around.  Leaving is like driving through a narrow tunnel that widens a little more with every inch; the light at the end gets brighter and bigger until the sky opens up above you and you're free.  Coming home is watching the tunnel narrow every smaller until you can hear the roof of the car scraping the top and see sparks catching on the mirrors beside you and the light at the end dies slowly until it's only a pinprick.
As I drive home, I try to breathe the way they've taught me.  I try to count the colors, count the clouds, count the cars.  I try to talk my self down and focus on the lyrics and not on the thoughts that scratch at the back of my mind like mice demanding to be let in.  I try and try and try.  But no matter how far I move or drive or run, no matter how long I'm gone, the pain always catches up to me.  I drive home and the closer I get, the tighter I hold the wheel until my knuckles are white and the edge of my vision is black and everything in between in the bright red spark of fiery pain and panic.  I drive home and the closer I get, the louder all the thoughts are and the less it matters how high I have the radio cranked.
Fingers grasp the wheel in a death grip, my chest constricts with the poison my own body sends to betray me and my eyes dart back and forth looking for predators, looking for danger, looking for ghosts.  When I pull in the driveway, it's like falling into a pocket of safety, a three hundred square foot space where the outside world doesn't know I land.  But the walls close in the longer I sit, so soon I'll have to go again for another drive, another attempt to run, another chance to breathe easy and I am so incredibly tired of having to run.  I just want to live.

Eyes like the Ocean

I just want to be understood.
I want to show someone the puzzle pieces that make me up and have them smile because it's not a mess.
I want to talk about the things I've been through; the things that broke me and the ways I put myself back together again and not be looked at like a baby bird with broken wings.
But I know if I tell you, your blue eyes will be an ocean of pity and I will drown myself in them.
I won't be able to help myself.
Even when they were just curious pools of sky, I drowned myself in them until there was nothing but you, you, you.
I ran out of air, up there in your atmosphere and fell to earth and shattered on impact.
So no, I can't tell you the battles I've fought or show you the scars I've got.
Because when you look at me with that big wide open heart and eyes that mesmerize me like whirlpools of heartache, I will dive in head first without taking a breath.
I will breathe you in, even if you are water in my lungs.
Even if you are death to the fragile body I keep resurrecting.
And I might be a phoenix…I might burn out just to come alive again, but I'm fire and the waters of you will inevitably put me out for good and I am not ready to go and give up this life I've fought for.
This life I've burned for.
This life I've lost time and time again.

You and Him

You sound like him but your voice is softer, your words make more sense.
You sound like him but my heart doesn't stop, it just slows down a little bit.
You sound like him and it makes me wonder if I really love you or if I'm just looking for ghosts of him wherever I can find them.

I liked how he made the world fall away.
I like how you make me feel alive.
I hate thinking of him when I talk to you.

You almost look like him, in the right light when I'm sad and nostalgic.
But when the sun comes up and the way you say my name makes everything else melt you look nothing like him, nothing like a monster, nothing like danger.

How do you tell a dream apart from a nightmare when the monster and the prince could be twins?
Does magic still exist or is this just some delusion I've sold myself on so I don't have to be alone?

You sound like him, but it doesn't stop me from wanting you.
You look like him, but I want to look in your eyes for just another second.
You remind me of him, but then again so does the night time and the ocean and everything in between.

A Star Collapsed

I thought I could trick myself into staying.
"He knows me...he just doesn't say it" I said to myself so many times.

But I know it's a lie and it's sour on my lips no matter the number of repetitions.
He looks at me and he sees the girl he met and he hasn't noticed I'm not her anymore.
He looks at me and I know what he sees; I used to see her too staring back at me in the mirror.
She was wide-eyed, on the brink of collapse.
She was a star just before it burns out- brilliantly bright and seconds from demise.
She was hollow inside but she smiled and listened and wasn't too loud.
She blended, learned to camouflage herself to stay safe.
She hid the bruises on her soul with a light voice the way someone might cover bruises on their skin with make up.
She did the same with the scars, slipping her foot on top of the drop of blood that fell on the floor to hide it.
I can see her so clearly, it's almost like she's here beside me and not just an echo of the past.

But that's not who I am anymore.
The girl in the mirror now is too tired to hide the pain.
She is the star after collapse-the black hole, big and vast and unknowable-starving to fill the void.
She isn't hollow anymore, she smiles, not as often but more true, and she's louder now; she's making herself known.
She blends in the way a shadow does, only when everything is dark; other than that she stands out like a dark silhouette on sun drenched concrete.
She doesn't hide the pain, she just hopes no one asks about the bruises and the scars; but if they do she tells them.
She doesn't have to step on drops of blood anymore because she stopped bleeding; now she just has to stop picking at the scabs.

I wonder sometimes how people who say they know me can look at me and not see this new person, this one who is healing and who isn't ashamed of the past.
I wonder how people who say they care about me never saw how the girl before was a shell.
I wonder how he talks to me and thinks he's so close to my heart.
I wonder how to tell him that we're strangers now and it doesn't really even hurt.

Wildflower. Wallflower. Wildfire.

He is a mumbler when he speaks.  I guess I'm hard of hearing and the two of us didn't make a great pair no matter how hard we tried.

I never understood what he wanted...or maybe I just didn't try hard enough to listen.  He spoke in riddles and slurred his words together and let them slip out just beneath his breath.

I guess that's what happened when I thought I heard him say he wanted a wildfire.  I guess that's why I thought I was right for him.

It turns out he wanted a wildflower.  Someone bright and free and dazzling but still soft and beautiful and pleasant.

It turns out that's not who I am.  It's who I used to be, but that's not enough because now I'm two steps away from that version of me.

All the pieces of me are too similar; wildflower, wallflower, wildfire.  It's easy enough to get them confused; especially when he whispers no matter how many times I beg him to speak up.

If he'd known me back then, when I was bright eyed and saw the world through a prism of color and possibility maybe we would've had a chance.  But he met me when I was a wallflower, clinging to the edges of reality with a fragile grip, ready to let go.

And now, he hasn't noticed that the wallflower caught fire and now I'm a raging, dangerous wildfire that burns up anything in my path.  He hasn't noticed that the soft edges of me are burned up, turned to ash, turned to flame.

He thinks he knows me but he doesn't.  He calls my blue-green eyes emerald and it just proves he hasn't noticed that there's quite a bit of blue in my sometimes green.

He thinks he knows me but he doesn't.  He tells me I have my life together when if you asked him to name three things that make up "my life" I don't think he actually could.

Despite it all; all the miscommunication and the attention he doesn't ever pay, I still try to tame the flames and be the wildflower he wants.  I try to turn the flicking tongues of destruction into poised nonthreatening petals.

Wildflower...wallflower...wildfire...what does it matter anyway?  Whether I'm wild or tame he doesn't know my middle name; he doesn't know me.

He doesn't try.  He just mumbles and drifts past me, only latching on when he's bored.

Wildflower...Wallflower...Wildfire...it doesn't matter.  He doesn't see me.

Prompt: A sleeping dog/Old barn/Blazing fire

It was cold that night.  So cold I could barely feel my fingers as I flicked the match across the strike patch on the box.  So cold I was almost numb to all the pain that place had brought me.  Almost.

Under the porch, were the wood was dry and exposed I couldn't help but think of the rooms above me.  The blood was long washed out of the carpet in the sitting room but I still saw it, still smelled it, still felt it slipping underneath my feet.  The hallway upstairs had been bleached and the carpet had been replaced but I still saw the body when I was on the top step, still heard my own scream ringing in the air, still heard the wail of sirens in the distance.  Those were the latest pieces of tragedy to befall the old house but they were not the only ones.  Time was not kind to the house or the inhabitants and I wanted so desperately done with the cursed place.  To be done with the pain.

The wood caught quickly and for a second, I fell back on my heels and watched it burn.  The fire was hot, bright, brilliant.  It warmed me from the cold, dry air.  When the blaze was too much, I tossed the match box into the flames and crawled away between the bottom steps of the porch and walked, slow and steady down the gravel drive.

Before me, the barn stood like a sentry at the front gate.  In the doorway, Bark was sleeping away yet another night.  He opened one eye when I fell into the cold dirt beside him and moved his head into my lap.  If he saw the house he'd guarded his whole life burning down before him, he didn't act like it.  Instead, he went back to snoring as I stroked his long, soft fur.  The grey in his muzzle reminded me that he'd been witness to the dozens of mysterious catastrophes that had befallen us here.

I waited until the house was a giant, blazing inferno before I fumbled my phone out of my pocket.  The operator knew my name when I called.  So many calamities and the local authorities start to learn your name and address.  She was asking me too many questions.  Was I safe?  Where did the fire start?  How long had it been going?  Was I hurt?  Was anyone else inside?  My voice echoed off the beams in the old barn.  I was safe.  I didn't know anything about the fire; I was taking Bark for a walk when I saw it.  I wasn't hurt; for once.  No one else was inside; for once.  I heard the sirens before I even hung up the phone but a soft feeling of peace fell on me knowing they would be too late.  It was finally over.

I didn't have to call my father.  He knew when he saw the lights heading up our long, winding road that another tragedy has collapsed on top of our shrinking family.  When he found me in the barn, Bark asleep in my lap, he let out a long held breath.  He didn't ask any questions.  He just sat in the dirt beside me.  I think he was just as relieved as me.  We watched them point giant hoses at the house but the damage was done.  There was no saving it.  No point in saving something that had never done its part to save anyone else.

Mismatched Pieces

I grew up fast.
I was young and bright and then my life changed in an instant and just like that, I was grown.

My head was 30 when I was only 18.
My mind was 30.
My thoughts were 30.
My priorities and interests and focus all missed the space between where I was and where I was supposed to be.

But my heart...my heart got left behind.
The rest of me propelled forwards and I forgot about my heart because it didn't seem to matter then.
I left it in the hands of a green-eyed monster who didn't know how to take care of it and didn't care.
I left it in an 18 year old body that died and I forgot that it might matter later on when the dust settled.
No wonder I feel like the pieces of me don't fit together right.

My years on this earth are finally catching up to the years put on my soul but my heart is too small, too young, too naïve.
My heart still believes in magic and romance and happy endings while my head is past all of that, past trust, past hope.
My heart falls in love at the drop of a hat and my head doesn't believe that love exists at all.
And with two different ages sharing one body, I get myself into situations that I have no idea how to handle.

Because the boy who stands in front of me now and says he wants me doesn't do any of the things I thought he was supposed to.
And if he did, I don't know what I would do.

I'm an adult with a teenager's heart and a jaded soul and those edges don't line up.
They never did.
What if they never will?

My Sweater

I have a sweater in my closet that I can't wear because of you.
It doesn't smell like you anymore, not since I washed it a dozen times, but that doesn't matter.
I look at it and I think of you.
I look at it and I think of the last time we were together, the way things felt like puzzle pieces that don't go together quite right.
I look at it and I think of your hand in my hair and my heart in my throat.
I have a sweater in my closet that I used to love and now I can't stand the sight of it.
The stripes hurt my eyes and the pink hurts my heart and the grey just hurts all over.
It doesn't smell like you, it smells stale and unworn and untouched.
Like me.
Like us.
I have a sweater in my closet that I can't touch because you touched it and now it's not mine.
I have a sweater made of memories that drowns me when my fingers skim the sleeves.
And sometimes when I pass it, I have to pause and wonder if you remember it too or if it's just another drunken blur that you don't care about anymore.

The Latest Illness

There are a whole host of things wrong with me.
The overwhelming fear that buzzes faster into panic, the sadness that tries to drown me, the voices that whisper hurtful things to me in the middle of the night.
But lately the loneliness is all I can feel.
It makes me wish for the times when I was numb.
The loneliness is crushing, sitting in my chest like a boulder; making me gasp for air and all I get is water.
It scares me so much sometimes that I want to tell someone else, to remind someone that I'm here.
And then I remember I don't have anyone to tell and even if I did, what would I say?
It makes me miss the years when I was blind to what was happening around me and everything felt like magic and sunshine.
Because now all I feel is water filling my lungs and my veins and my head.
Water and ice that stings so much I can hardly breathe.
And there are days where it doesn't hurt so much, days when I get to spend time in the world of the living laughing with my friends and remembering what it feels like to really be alive.
But then those friends turn to each other with more than friendship in their eyes and I know it's my time to step away.
And the other friends want me around as long as I'm the silent, wide-eyed darling who has nothing to say and laughs at everything.
If I become someone else, someone like who I really am, they don't need me anymore.  Don't want me.
And the other friends are great, perfect really, and it's not their fault but there's a line somewhere that separates us that I can't cross because I still live with my parents and I haven't said "I Do."
The latest disease that I can't forget I have is the loneliness that eats at me daily from the inside out.
It's never gone, always lingering, always painting shadows darker they are and silent moments longer than they should be.
The grief is bad but at least I was numb.
The anxiety is worse but at least I'm dealing with it.
The loneliness is a different beast entirely, a beast I wish I couldn't feel, a beast I don't know how to tame.
This sickness is like a chill that's set in that I might not be able to work out.
I don't know my chances of recovery.

Tension

There is a tension between who I am now and who I used to be and who I thought I might become.

The past is something I cannot escape and the present is not the embodiment of the future I had imagined.

There was a girl, once, who was light and sunshine.  She was wild and free and made of all the things that have no boundaries; like the sea and the sky and watercolors.

There was a girl shattered.  Made of fragile, broken pieces, begging to be left alone.  Begging to be saved.  Begging to fall asleep until the pain faded away and left her hollow.  And so she was.

There is a girl now, pieced together with reinforced steel and made strong.  She lives like the seams of reality are nearly bursting all around her.  She walks delicate and smiles softly and tries not to say too much, tries not to disturb the fragile seams around her.  She holds herself together like all the pieces might tumble out if she moves too fast and keeps her mouth closed to keep in the secrets.

There once was an idea of a woman, bold and beautiful and breathtaking.  A woman who wore scars like charm bracelets and told the tales of her past the way warriors told stories of war around the fire.  That woman was made of gold, spun thin into thread and woven through sunlight and glass and grace and magic.  That woman was everything.  She was a goddess and a princess and a warrior.  She was a dream and now she is a memory, a ghost standing on the bank of a river, just out of my reach.

These girls that existed, this girl who now is, and this woman who once was meant to be, they pull at the edges of myself.  Begging me to relapse, begging me to sleep, begging me to stand tall, begging me to reign.  The tension is too much, the skin pulled too tight, the limbs pulled too many directions like being drawn and quartered.  The tension takes over and I shut my eyes and will them all away.  Let me be.  Let me sit in silence without the pain, just for one moment.  Just one second without the tension would be a reprieve.

Prompt: Cold Coffee-White Leaves-Mints

Winter took hold fast while we slept.  Green leaves are wrapped in ice until they hang white on dead limbs of sleeping trees.
The cold coffee in my hand feels as out of place as I do waiting in front of the coffee shop for someone who might not bother to show.
A tin of mints rattles in my purse as I bounce on the balls of my feet trying to stay warm.
I can't stop the doubt swirling in my mind.  I shouldn't be here so early.  I shouldn't be here at all.
Across the street bundled in a black jacket with a red beanie, I see his bright green eyes smiling at me.  When a bus cuts between us I hold my breath, afraid I imagined him.  But traffic clears and he's still there, smiling at me and waiting for a safe second to dart across the road.
The chill of winter fades as my cheeks burn red.
He's early too.  Maybe I do belong somewhere, even if only for today and only in this coffee shop.  Maybe I belong by him.

Echoes

Everything I have now is an echo of the things I've had before.
An echo of the things that hurt me.

There is one with a sharp mind and a quick tongue and a chip on his shoulder bigger than his heart can handle.
There is one with a bright smile and an affinity for lying and hands made to stir the pot.
There is one with amber eyes the same color as the whiskey he drowns his demons in and soft, sad words that fall like poetry on my ears.

Everything I am now is an echo of what I've been before.
An echo of the different versions of me that have existed.

There is a bright and beautiful girl so full of hope and love and life that she glows when she smiles.
There is a ghost, a fragile thing so broken and scared and hurt that she craves only sleep to dull out the pain.
There is a warrior, wounded and bleeding but still standing on her feet, swinging blindly at anyone who gets too close, unaware that the war has been over for months.

I look in the mirror and the echoes ripple through me like ghosts all crowding into this one body, trying to fit together in one skin, all vying to occupy my mind.
I look around and the echoes of the people who broke me then and the people who scare me now glare back at me in every glassy window and every new face in every place I go.

I want to let them go; the echoes.  The ghosts.  The memories.
I want to walk out to the ocean where the waves are deep and strong and hold my head under the water until I come up new and clean and empty.
Empty of the pain and the thoughts and the nightmares.
Empty of the words I never said that clog my chest and sting my eyes and press against my lips.
But lungs full of water have no room for air.

Broken Streams

I stepped in a stream and I thought of you.
I had to pause and take a minute before I could go on because the feeling was so strong.
Because I am a stream, fast and constantly in motion, always changing, always new.
And you are the foot that stops my progress.
The shoe I have to split myself apart to accommodate and work around.
You don't seem to notice when you've stepped on my movement; the way I don't notice the stream until my foot is right in the middle, forcing the water to flow around me and go out of it's way.

I stepped in a stream and I thought of you.
Of how I was fine, how I let the current of time flow and take me somewhere new; how I let it make me someone new.
And then I thought of how you stepped in like it was nothing, like I was a stagnant pond just waiting for your direction.

I stepped in a stream and I thought of how over the last seven days it seems like an army has crossed my current, always stepping right in the middle like my life means nothing if their shoe isn't in the middle of it to get wet.

I stepped in a stream and I congratulated the water on it's continued motion, even when I was in the middle where I didn't belong, even when I made it harder for the water to run.  And when I was on the other side, I thought of all the people who have appeared in the middle of my progress, where they don't belong, where they made it hard for me to move, and I congratulated myself on my continued motion.  I congratulated myself on my healing, despite the way they keep stepping on me and tearing my scars open again.

I stepped in a stream and I thought how unfair it is for the world to keep trying to stop the water until I remembered that water is strong enough to carve a mountain in half and that after all this time, I myself am mostly water too.

Holding My Breath

Everyone has a different response to fear and mine is silly.

It's not really a solution, it's just an instinct that I don't know how to change.

I hold my breath.

I hold my breath so my brain can focus on the lack of oxygen and not on the panic or the fear or the hope.

I hold my breath so I can focus on the black spots that dance in the corners of my vision; so I don't have to focus on the brown eyes bright like amber lit through with sunlight in front of me.

I hold my breath so I don't have to think of anything other than the next breath I might breathe in; so I don't have to think about his voice or the things he's said or the way he's expecting me to answer him.

I hold my breath but I can only hold it for so long.

And when I finally let go, the world comes crashing in and my lungs burn from more than just the fresh air.  

They burn with fears and thoughts and words I'll never be brave enough to say.  

With reasons why we can't and why it's too late and why I'm not right for him.

And since I don't have the words or the timing or the courage, I just take a deep breath again and hold it until I can't anymore.

Sorry Doesn't Fix Everything

Apologies are supposed to heal things.
They're meant to mend the tears we rip into one another with our own savage humanity because our words have teeth and our actions have talons.
They're supposed to be like a salve on the burns we inflict when we let anger burn too bright and burst out of us.
They're supposed to stitch us back together like lacerated skin when we lash out sharp and fast and hard.
They're supposed to be like treaties signed on neutral ground to end the battle.
But this one feels like stones tied to my feet right before I'm pushed into the water.
This one feels like a punch to the gut when I had my eyes closed, praying to be done.
This one feels like exhaustion; heavy and cumbersome and oppressive.
This one feels nothing like healing or freedom or peace.
It feels like a new, jagged wound that I don't know how to fix.
It feels like I might bleed out in agony because you said sorry like a dagger slipped between my ribs right to my heart and I thought we were done fighting.

Dangerous Armor

My fears rattle in my chest like broken breaths every day, but at least they feel familiar.
Fear and doubt and self-criticism are as natural to me as breathing and blinking and movement.
I never realized how heavy they laid upon me-the pieces of armor that have become who I am thrust upon me by what I have lived through.

The hope that buzzes beneath my skin now is a stranger to me.
It feel foreign and dangerous, like a toxin injected right into my veins.
The high is almost nice, but I've ridden the cycle so many times that I know a crash is coming.
Instead of closing my eyes and riding the high, I keep my eyes down watching the ground fly closer, anticipating disaster.

I want the hope-I swear I do-but it feels so fragile.
So breakable in these shaky, clumsy hands.
And it's never just my own hands that I have to contend with, there are always others.
Hands that don't know how to be gentle, and hands that don't know how to keep their distance, and hands that poke and prod and never support.
There are so many hands on the hope that wavers before me that I don't know if I'll ever be able to hold it on my own and I don't know if I want to.

Because I'm a coward.
Because I'm so tired of watching it break.
Isn't it better to have never touched it at all then to watch it fall from the ocean of hands that hold it and forever wonder whose fault it was that it broke?
Because the voice in my head likes to point fingers during the day but when it's just me and her she changes her tune and blames the only one left...
Me.

I don't want sympathy or apologies when I say what's next, I just want to say it because it feels true.
I let the fear and doubt and self-criticism settle like an old, unshakable cough in my lungs.
I let distrust wrap itself around me like a warm cloak.
I let the past make itself into a shield and I shoulder it almost gladly.
Because it's easier.
Because I know if I'm always on alert no one can sneak in and hurt me.
Because the weight of that armor, no matter how dangerous, has become my new normal and I don't know if I could live without it.