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?