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