Tag Archives: struggles

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Deal Re-Breaker.

There’s this threshold inside of my brain that others either cross in a grain cut painfully against me, or never cross at all. It is a horrid barrier that I’m sure I have created myself; but it is a sound and solid barrier, all the same – an impenetrable construct by my own mind, immovable in my own mind. This is a threshold that grants closeness and kinship or falseness and nothingness between me and other people who come into my Life.

 

It’s hard to explain, but I’ve been trying my best when it gets brought up by (a) certain (male) people (person) whom I struggle to maintain “healthy relations” with:

 

  1. the way that my ability to even experience anything good or positive with an individual diminishes completely once I feel the slightest bit of vulnerability to him, because I am fucked up and my brain doesn’t work normally.
  2. the way that after I experience any vulnerability on a conscious level on his behalf, I seem to automatically try to sabotage everything.
  3. the way that if sabotage fails, I will resort to some innate mechanism of my emotions to execute the process of shutting down to him.
  4. the way that I spend the entire time this hideous process plays out in hating myself and constantly having to re-focus myself on what’s right, as opposed to what feels right.

 

 

 

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Relief.

I noticed it the instant she arrived this morning; and walked through my front door on her own: no struggling for breath, no panicked look on her rosy-cheeked face, no coughing…

I smiled bigger than I have dared in weeks at her as she shuffled past me in the entryway for a cup of coffee (she used to love my coffee, but hasn’t wanted any for a long time now). My smile was immediately reciprocated; and my heart warmed me down to my toes at that. I don’t know when she last genuinely smiled at me before today, but I do know it was too long ago.

As I sat down beside her at my kitchen table, and said something like,

 

“Well, well…look who wants coffee again and seems to be feeling a little better…”

 I saw it; the lump on her neck that was the cause for her diagnosis with terminal cancer; or shall I say, the lack of the lump, altogether. It has become invisible to the naked eye since yesterday, somehow, amazingly. Anyway, I am not deluding myself about her survival or anything; I am just SO VERY HAPPY TO SEE HER GETTING SOME RELIEF from the constant inability to breath or stop coughing…so very happy. Today was a throwback for me of my healthy Mama, who smiles and drinks coffee.

 

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Still Learning.

I got the Adrenaline spin,
not sure
which is the right direction
obscure
the thoughts that begin
to swim
inside my imagination
again.

I do the ADHD thing,
mumbling
heart weighs in heavily
numbing
sweat pours down steadily
panicking
my thoughts race ahead of me
evaporating.

I have scars for all to see,
they fixed me
a return from captivity
a recovery
a horror film slashing
bleeding
just as the final pint
emptied.

I have a heart that’s still learning,
I’m trying
a desire to indulge in humanity
difficulty
to connect with someone like me
a daydream
a baby of Lithium, Ritalin and Dexedrine.

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The Sick and the Dying.

It’s been a really hard week; we buried another friend from childhood yesterday, after a long and painful fight we have all watched from the sidelines. He didn’t want to die, and never stopped saying so until the very end: an element that leaves a much more impossibly bitter taste to swallow in everyone’s mouth. In my experience thus far until his death last week, people usually get a sense of relief with the death of a loved one who has been suffering badly in life – but not this time. His absolute unwillingness to die makes it difficult to find that relief anywhere in this specific context. And, it feels really bad.

Jackson is sick; like, really sick with some despicable strain of pneumonia or something and has been hospitalized since last week. Jack saved my life once; he saw it all, while he was still a paramedic in the armpit of America, where I was almost killed by my ex-husband.

Jack is the underlying reason for any of what might resemble “recovery” in my own case. It is often somehow easy for me to forget from day to day: exactly how much I owe this man when it comes down to it. If circumstances had been shifted even slightly in regard to who they sent out in the ambulance to my crime scene, he would be totally absent from my world; in actuality – there would be no world for him to be absent from, because I would not have recovered as I have without Jackson.

The more I think about it, the more it becomes obvious that he truly adopted me on the day I almost lost my life, unknown to my near-dead brain at the time. And the afterwards; well all I can really say about “the afterwards” is that without that man there to assure and comfort and baby me like did (and does), I would have been so ruined by humanity that I would likely be in an asylum. There simply aren’t enough Gods to offer my prayers to when it comes to Jack’s recovery and homecoming. Had I opened my eyes as the maimed and Frankenstein-esque creature I had become to anyone other than Jackson in the exact way that I did, and if even the slightest thing played out differently, I easily could’ve slipped into sheer madness from it all.

In the spirit of rescue and recovery, please send any good energy to Jackson if you’re reading this.

The Cut Throat Club.

Jack, the EMT.

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Pocket-less.

When every single face becomes
just a reason to divert my eyes
and every carbon-based “human”
alerts my nerves to stand on high
when every time that I try to break ahead
just enough to finish this looking alive
a backpedal finds me a crack in my head
and then I stupidly struggle to survive
where progression is stunted by stagnancy
and my clothes are all pocket-less
the place between strength and subjectivity
where I stand without answers to this
And every day brings another slap to the face
every night finds me hollow and numb
each decision that I’m left unable to dominate
every turn of the screws in my thumbs
where I’m hungry often but hardly ever eat
and my shades stay drawn all year round
there’s no word for such charged irritability
every day becomes just a target to take down
I am overly tired and I am deeply annoyed
there is a train wreck surging through my veins
I’m living in the body of a fabricated android
being taunted by the distant cries of a runaway.

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Me.

This villainous fiend that is me,

the shadow in firelight,

the beast waiting to spite,

such villainous things I perceive;

this slowly emptying sea,

the waves that break,

the breaths they take,

what a fucking tragedy;

this temper tantrumming,

the punches at air,

the utter despair,

such a childish identity;

this condition that’s underlying,

the highs and lows,

the last to know,

such a burden is mine to carry;

this unforgiven monstrosity,

the one under my skin,

the one who I am,

such a hideous monster is me.

 

 

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Nameless.

Lost amid the aimless
inside a place that’s timeless
vast and hollow emptiness
hostage to the heartless
washed up against the nameless
hung to dry with the airless
swinging on the line of the hapless
in a repeated pattern that’s effortless.