What is a stage but a pedestal
They belong to life
To freedom
An actor to the stage
And I just want to play the part that’s belongs to me
I want to surround them
To pull them into me and never let go.
That would satisfy only for a moment
A split second of selfish desire
It’d bring the whole thing down around me
Isolation and freedom in ruination
That I could have just one piece of them.
What would I do just to know.
Just to understand.
Just to know their name.
They poured sunshine and flowers into a glass
Two cubes of memory to chill
A shot of anticipation
A chaser of catharsis
Just what I need to take the edge off
Sorry it’s a short one today but, there’s a lot going on and I will definitely have more material coming soon. Good luck, Readers
When the act of loving is missing,
you can really feel it.
It’s sweet words and squishy feelings
Without thick walls and drawn curtains
Its sex without foreplay
Or pulling teeth to get the
one thing you thought you’d both like to do… done.
It’s loneliness
Giving more of yourself then you can stand
It’s “What do you want me to do?!”
Yelled out while someone just
wants to you to hold them
It’s not being able to share your day
Your month
Your year
Your life
It’s walking around on egg shells
because if you put into words
the things that are really wrong
you’ll break things
and that might break you.
It’s the threat of leaving
Hanging over and spoken out loud
Drilling into your insecurities
But you know what you need.
So leave
Go and get it.
I got my hair done on Tuesday and it feels great. You know that feeling where you don’t feel like yourself unless you’rein your favorite sweatshirt or jeans or everything just isn’t right until your make up is done? Well that’s me. I love my braids. When I picture myself as a successful person/writer it’s with braids. Maybe it’s weird but, it just makes me feel at home in my own skin. For me having them in is self care.
I have spent a lot of time this year on taking care of myself. Trying to lose a bit of weight, incorporating a skincare routine and, even bought a watch for trying to work through the ADHD time slippage. I want to come out better from this terrible year.
Self-care is so important. I know myself and without it I kind of just subsist in the world. The depression hits and I just spend all day playing games or something just to try to relax. I’m not saying videogames aren’t effective self-care but, I think for me and just the types of games I play there just isn’t always that same sense of accomplishment I get from just making sure I did two face masks this week. I’ve realized besides writing it kind of just makes me feel like I got something done and I am overall better for the ten minutes I took to do it.
I began throwing out a bunch of the old mess in my room leftover from a previous person and donated some clothes too. It’s odd sometimes what throwing a bag of trash out will do for your mind. ( I should probably clean up more often. It’s not gonna happen but, I probably should.) I have been feeling a little freer in this past week and I’m hoping I can keep up the momentum. Keep changing enough small things to make me a stronger more well-rounded person. To me, my self-care is trying to improve minuscule things over and over again to eventually create a chain reaction of positive change.
It starts.
At 1:37 am it starts,
A tightness in my chest that starts like a bulb.
It spreads crawling, winding all over me until
Chest, shoulders, upper arms, neck.
I can’t draw breath.
But, I know what I must do!
I stagger bleary-eyed to my computer
Why didn’t I just go to bed!
My mind screams at me
Tight, Tighter, Tighten
It’s over my clothes now,
Into my seams
The only way to rid my self of this poison…
I bleed it out,
The cold knife slips into to a well-worn vein.
On the keyboard,
Splattered on the walls,
The light from the screen is tainted.
Showing lifeless blue through scarlet life
I am free.
Bloodlet from creativity
Maybe now I can turn over
Maybe now I can get some sleep.
They starved you at a feast.
Tied to a chair and watched those around you
Stuffing faces and
Having over full bellies,
Rubbed.
While you cried,
Died,
Wasting away until you couldn’t even be tied with ropes.
Hopes,
Put on someone who could save you died
On dried and cracked lips
Hips
Only thing you thought you were good for was cock rocking and moaning
And groaning you did away with their pain
Rain
Came down torrential
Unintentional but, it’s all your fault,
Right?
Plight
Goes on unanswered everyday,
everyway you asked and pleaded
They stood up and retreated,
defeated you cried,
died felt the pain,
the rain,
and like a current you were dragged again and again.
They weren’t enough, much too rough.
They got cut,
And you were the one to bleed.
Their need the same refrain.
Remains,
You gathered them up in fragile arms.
A magpie in the wild,
A raccoon in the woods,
Collecting and erecting the skeleton of a life you could love
Shoved
Down, drowned in rivers of your own fears
Gasping for air
Hair,
You cut just to divest from the stress of a world closing in,
Hoping that a change on the outside
Will rearrange you inside
Ride it out,
Breathe it in,
Quell the storm that rages within,
Kin
Never loved you,
When you needed them they abandoned you too.
Shamed and Blamed you too
Withdrew,
Into yourself,
Into your art,
Into your head,
To your core.
Ore.
You found a prize behind the pain.
Didn’t get better,
You got even!
Decided to soar higher than anyone’s expectations
You believed in you,
Got through.
Thrived.
Striving to be more,
And greater.
You smashed the ceiling
Unfeeling,
As the glass cut you
Because you learned long ago,
That success didn’t happen without a little discomfort.
Your life started out tough,
But you know that terrain.
Here’s your refrain.
It’s all uphill from here.
You’ve kissed the sky.
And Helios touched you!
Used to be a victim of your own mind,
Reflect, directed it back and
Now…
You know your own truth
So Father’s Day was teed up to be pretty problematic. To set the stage, I had tried my hardest not to see my Father at least until it was absolutely necessary. It was made much easier due to COVID and his state being especially bad with it. So then I find out that during the week I had taken off, he was in the area and dropped in because of a wedding. My brother, who has always been the dadbuffer can’t come down to meet us halfway. I am really in it.
I dreaded the long march to Sunday. I had in my head all these stipulations like how I didn’t want to be there all day, especially if he was just going to drink. I had made up in my mind how much it would suck. I’d blown the whole thing up in my mind.
I used to say that I was a realist but, truthfully, once my wheels get going I tend to list towards the overdramatic. I just can’t help myself I get this feeling in my gut that I just seem to back my every fear and then I’m pretending that it’s prophetic. Like somehow my gut has never been wrong about anything ever especially my feelings towards women.
When I arrived at the place I was actually in a good mood. Considering that I had protested the week before and had that time off of work to just really enjoy my time recuperating from what has been a crazy season. COVID and Black Lives Matter are happening at the same time. It’s a tumultuous time for not just my people but, the whole of society. Things are changing and it feels good to be apart of that.
I will admit to having been turned around a few times because I’m literally no good with direction even with a GPS. (Yes, my people, I’m absolutely hopeless. I’m still hoping we’ll get built-in AR displays and I’ll get a minimap.) When I saw him a smile came to my face that I wasn’t expecting and most of my lunch went by without caution but, then he asked me.
“Is there anything I’d like to say to him I haven’t yet.” We’d had a nice lunch we talked about light things and serious stuff too. It was almost what I must assume other people’s relationship is like with their parents. But, he just had to ask and it was like a lead ball in my stomach. I looked around for exits but, there was none and the waitress was talking animatedly with a young kid. There was no way out.
It took me a while to speak. There was a long time there when I anxiously bounced my foot and messed with my hands. I felt like it ruined a rare and perfectly good time. There was a lot that I hadn’t said. Stuff that I didn’t really even know I needed to say but, I think he needed to hear it. I think it was less about me and more about him.
I told him that what he did, created a lot of my nervous ticks like not quite being able to look people in the eye or my loathing for confrontation. I think he needed to hear that I’m not sure what will I would say that would pop him off next and that it made talking to him hard. That definitely seemed to open his eyes a bit. That I was suffering from severe depression and that just made doing what he asked of me even more difficult. I was afraid most of that time and my memories of that time are more than a bit hazy but, what I will never forget is the fear.
I used to try so hard to find what little happiness I could find on the edge of despair. I did often wish I was dead. I don’t know how close this was or is to be suicidal but, it was how I felt. I never attempted but, I did wish for it a few times. It’s not something I try to bring up too often but, I know what my rock bottom feels like I’m not ever letting my self get there again.
He looked like he finally got it. Like a whole lot of things were put into perspective and he finally understood the whole picture. I think for him this was a wakeup call and for me, it was a release of a lot of the weight I was carrying around. I’ve felt so much lighter since and it has done wonders for my mental health. The years of deep introspective thought seem like they were finally worth it. Just being able to say the things I wanted to.
I don’t know what my relationship with my father will be like from now on but, I do know that now I can let some of this go. I’m better for finally being able to say my piece and maybe I’ll get a little closer to moving on.
That’s how it feels at first like a wave drowning me and dragging me down. It feels like I’m drenched to my bones with lukewarm melancholy and it weighs me down. When just getting up feels like walking through floodwaters. It’s nearly unbearable but, I do my best to get better and be better.
I think I’ve probably been depressed my whole life. I don’t know when it started but, it was a long time before I knew the words to describe what it was I was going through. It took a long time for me to come to grips and understand just why I couldn’t muster the energy to do things in my daily life and why the thought of getting up off the couch sometimes ruined me. I won’t say growing up was easy for me but, I got through it.
I’m not saying I’m in any way a good role model. I just ride the waves. I still manage to get up every morning and go to work and can more or less get the little done I need to but, I know I could be better. I’ve told people that they should probably go to therapy and I haven’t really followed my own advice. Maybe I’d be in a different spot now if I had. Now there’s medical insurance that’s the hurdle now but, hopefully, that will be easier to get in the next few years.
I’ve had a few pretty bad breakdowns in the past two years. It usually happens around this time cause work amps up, seasonal familial obligations, and not being able to get in that restorative friend time. Seasonal depression is a real kicker. I think I know I can’t do it all on my own but, now I have the skills and the wherewithal to know when it’s coming and try to head it off. Things like not staying too late at work or just doing things to make me happy. It’s not perfect but, it’s gotten me through. I can smile now more often than ever.
I’m so much happier these past years than I have ever been in my life. I have friends who get “it” who understand me when I feel the worst. Understand and honor my anxieties and are willing to be there to calm me down. I’ve been able to be there more for the others in my life suffering because I’m in a better place mentally. I can rise above the waves now.
Warren Dalton 