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 someone 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.