The brain gets crazy right before the end

That was what my friend said about a loved one returning after a long waiting period.

I know what he means. You spend so much time missing them, and before that in denial that they were gone, and before that in preparation for the separation. And then one day you realize they're coming home.

And that's not even what I was going to talk about, but his words struck me.

I also saw a movie with a dying woman in it recently. She started seeing her old, dead relatives before she passed. The brain gets fuzzy right before the end.

Death and I have this understanding, though, and I will not allow it to overtake me until I have accomplished a minor task list of to-do, to-meet, to-help, etc.

Been thinking about a title of a book.
...because I write short books
sounded good.

Soon to come: rant.

Victimized

I watched a video today of a person talking about the feelings he had after years away from an extremely fundamental college and culture.

You can watch the link here.

http://www.stufffundieslike.com/2013/11/the-victims/

It's interesting how these things just come at the right time.

I responded:

"I’m completely new to this conversation, but I want you to know that in my struggle to deal with a rape, I had the exact same reaction: I didn’t want to call myself a victim.

Somehow, becoming a victim meant that I couldn’t be me anymore, and I had to re-examine everything about myself that I believed to be true.

I guess I’m sending you hugs. And I hope that we can all work together so that no one ever has their voice taken from them ever again."

I was literally just discussing the implications of calling yourself a victim with my therapist, as I've been working through what I can finally call rape. I really am not comfortable talking about it yet, but I hope to eventually share my story because it needs to be heard.

I want to clarify something, right here and now: No one's trauma, pain, or silence EVER gets to be better or worse than someone else's. It's just different, and everyone's experience is different because everyone's context is different, but that doesn't mean I've got MORE trauma than you because (insert any reason ever). Pain is pain and trauma is trauma and the more we try to quantify who hurts worse or who has survived more is just going to alienate us instead of unifying us. And no one wants to win the "my life sucks the most" award, really. 

Rant over.

I guess I want to say that I am a survivor. I feel guilty, like I'm cheating when I say that, like I'm stealing the word from someone on the other side of breast cancer.

Part of that guilt comes from feeling like I haven't survived yet. I can't claim the word "survivor" because I'm not on the other side yet. I'm not past some invisible line where I get to say "I'm not happy about what happened, but I'm going to accept that it happened and keep living."

I guess someday I'll be a survivor, and that will be a huge stroke of victory. Until then, I will keep fighting my way out of this dark corner, wounded, victimized, but not silenced and not marginalized.

I finally re-found my voice.

I was supposed to take a quiz, but I wrote this instead

What is two weeks?
A trifle, a mere
smudge on the
timeline of my existence.
But for the news
That came today,
I'd have you in
my arms in two
weeks. Only two
weeks more? I've
waited two
hundred days
And could
start hearing
the cheering
from the finish
line...but
now it's twice
as far away,
and I run
on in lonely
silence.
Only two
more weeks
might be the end
of me.

Comparison (thank you again writer's digest poetry prompts)

When things are hard to describe - like the first time you draw blood and your heart rushes but your mind cringes - you don't. You tell the outlines, skip the details, tell them everything it's not. Because telling them what it is -

the desire to die
or see everything
and everyone you
 ever cared for
go up in flames
lest you combust
from the pressure
of trying to just be
good enough &
accepted by your family -

will never cross your lips because you crucify yourself, marked as a martyr as that train flashes, bullet-speed, through conscious thought.

I won't even step on a cricket; how can I crush these dear people?

because the anger inside cannot be dammed any longer. It will find release. Not a matter of if but when, the lava that spews, from my mind, so incendiary that even my physical home is on fire.

No, I didn't start the blaze but I was glad to see it burn.

I wanted to lose everything.

I had a chance

to be free.

in case of fire

don't breathe
just crawl
find air
some where
get safe.
stop, drop,
roll, burn.
fire sky
rains ash
fall, cry
ask, "why?"
death comes
life runs
full tilt
dead leaf
finds ground;
grace rain
falls down
flames cease
new bud
life here
again

a broke poem (thank you Writer's Digest Poetry Prompts)

what what what happened
what happened to you
what what what ...to you
what happened?
what what what happened
what about Kansas
what happened in Kansas
what...to you in Kansas

*click* OFF.
Fuckin' record with one track
Over and over
I been patient
I tried
But it's time to unplug
You only abuse that power
so SNAP pull CLICK
I took away what makes you tick

Because I know what happened in Kansas. *mute*

~written June 19, 2013

Prompt from a poetry gathering

"To plan for the future without having a sense of history is like trying to plant cut flowers."
so maybe that's why
I can't grow roots,
the memories erased and
the plants die right before they bloom

They say it's self-sabotage
but I can't feel the pain

Yet I sit here with mice and men laying plans and roads and maps and goals
but they crumble; they decay

time wipes those memories away
memories that would give
me roots, bring me
strength, bring the sun

How can I believe the dawn if I can't remember ever seeing it before?
This is the terror of my dark, the dark without memory of the light.

Time Warp

"Now you're just somebody that I used to know"

"I used to be somebody else"

beauty of a "used to be" is a past
pasts have futures "unwritten"

Time is allowed to pass for you but I'm stuck on recycle, repeat; recycle repeat; recyclerepeat

And I'll rise above this like I have before
but right now
no before
no after
just now, and pain forever

About Tigers and Goldfish

In trying to describe my problems, I used tigers and goldfish.
God is a tiger. You think it's a goldfish.

So your emaciated tiger has never had the strength to step out from its tiny glass enclosure because you feed it goldfish food.

You are so convinced, so sure that you have a goldfish god that when I talk about my tiger god, you call me crazy. You call me insane. And you keep wearing the goggles of willful ignorance that keep you from being aware of the magnificent creature you have.

Some of you might leave the "goldfish" at home. Others of you might bring it with you in your day-to-day life. But it's pretty boring. It swims up, and down. Left, and right. It's only a goldfish. How much can it do? Splish, splash. You might get a drop of water on your arm.

By treating your tiger like it's a goldfish, you will never be aware of or in awe of its presence.

I started taking my tiger for walks because it got pretty big. All you see is me dragging a dying fish on a string, and you tell me "You're killing it! You won't even have a pet anymore if that's how you take care of it!"

And so you worry that I will soon have no god; I'm killing it. If you realized that god was a tiger, you'd realize that I couldn't kill it if I tried.

A tiger. It comes with me everywhere, and I am always aware of its presence and power.
Total immersion.
In doing this, my actions change. Suddenly you see me walking down dark alleys with a goldfish bowl and you fear for me, thinking I must be foolish. But you cannot see the tiger, walking with me shoulder-to-shoulder. What have I to fear?

You're a neighbor, and after hearing my delusional stories about a pet tiger, watching me walk a dying fish, and evaluating all my actions as basic crazy, you watch me spiral in a craze of myth and legend and lore. You are intimidated. Something about my goldfish just ain't right. It's a little bigger than yours, and it's starting to get stripes, and it survived being dragged across concrete. Now you cry black magic, tricks of the devil, sorcery and blasphemy. No matter how you talk to your goldfish about your concerns, my fish keeps getting bigger. Your ignorance goggles are malfunctioning, and I'm suddenly very, very scary.

Why? Because you become like what you spend time with, and I'm now more like a tiger. I look into your soul when I ask you how you're doing, and I'm sad when you respond with the scripted "good" response. I feel your sadness and loneliness, and sometimes I just get so frustrated that I try to steal your goggles. To you it seems incredibly violent and unnecessary, but I just don't want you walking around blind anymore.

Having a tiger completely consumes my life. It is my every thought, every breath, every waking moment: the tiger is there. You can't ignore it. You can't hide. It will sniff-smell you out of any corner you choose. It is present. It is real. And the moment you realize that you're actually dealing with a tiger?

You Live.

If you haven't read The Life of Pi, then you should. Audiobook or movie or something, please for me.

A Story about Mexican Food

I just got back from 2 months in Texas. You know what I realized?

All Mexican food is the same stuff. In different shapes.

Taco: soft or hard shell with "same stuff"
Burrito: Taco, all wrapped up in tortilla
Enchilada: Burrito, plus sauce

Tostada: Taco, only in the shape of a volcano
Chalupa: Tostada with a hard shell

Taco salad: when you want the stuff all ground up and scattered, without any semblance of shape or organization

So just remember, it's not about what food you want, just the shape you want.

Getting my Write On

I went to a poetry meeting a few nights ago and it has sparked the inspiration to keep writing, start writing again, just to get words on paper and reclaim my thoughts.

I like the way that sounds: reclaim my thoughts. Not sure who took them over, but they're not going to keep them. Mwahahaha.

I will be sharing some of what I wrote. I think I want to blog about it to be able to share it with people and to find therapy through that. The poetry gathering was great for that; the founder deals with bipolar disorder and  is an activist about awareness for autism. I felt safe enough, with strangers in a Panera restaurant in Texas, to share the following poem that came from a prompt. I was surprised and relieved at the same time.

Introspection. Self-reflection. It is time.

This is the poem that came from the free-writing prompt (with a few line-break changes and added punctuation and a potential title because I'm the author and I do what I want!) :

ERASED (unfinished)

"To plan for the future without having a sense of history is like trying to plant cut flowers" ~David McCullough

so maybe that's why
I can't grow roots: the memories erased
& the plants die right before
they bloom

They say it's self sabotage
but I can't feel the pain

Yet I sit here with
mice and men
laying plans and roads
and maps and goals
          but they crumble; they decay

time wipes those memories away
memories that would give
me roots, bring me
strength, bring the sun

How can I believe
the dawn
if I can't remember ever seeing it before? This is the
terror of my dark, the

dark without memory of
the light

The Journey Beyond: Part 1

This is the beginning of a work that I want people to read, but only people who want to understand where I came from, how and why I've changed, and trace my path. I suppose it's to explain why I'm here, after almost two decades of seriously and intentionally following Christ, to renounce Christianity.

If I had a 95 theses and somewhere to nail them, I'd probably do that. I'm a fan of tradition, making bold statements, and not being afraid to tell the whole world.

But I was afraid to talk to my whole world. I knew where they were coming from, and I knew it would hurt them. I knew that I was, in their minds, turning away from God. Which is bad 'n' stuff 'n' things. In some theology, to know God's goodness and still choose to turn from him is the only unforgivable sin. My parents raised me to be a good Christian, and I had learned how, and it was all good until about five years ago.

To preface, I used to be what I'd call hardcore Christian. I believed that the whole Bible could be literally true. It didn't matter to me whether He made the earth in 7 24-hour days, or 7 SomethingElse-days. I just believed that it mattered that he started the whole thing. I'd read about the deistic clockmaker god and many other perspectives on god that I half agreed with and half disagreed with, but I wasn't too bothered about it. Jesus was so real...

God was my best friend. We talked all the time. I was an authentic, living-like-I-should Christian. And everything was not always good, but I have an undying optimist inside me that believed it would all work out in the end, the way it was supposed to be. And I just KNEW God was real.

How did I know? Well, while I was carefully contemplating how to kill myself in sixth grade, I felt a hug. And Something told me that I wasn't supposed to kill myself and that it had plans for my future. My then-faith in the Christian God was complete. He had to be real.

Now, I'm not so sure. It could have been another force that I don't put into the box labeled "Christian God" and I'm certain that it was. Why? Well I don't believe in the Christian God. I believe whatever is out there has been misunderstood, mislabeled, and misrepresented by people who espoused to know it and religions that claimed to frame it for us. I think Jesus Christ himself would be pretty upset about what we've made him out to be and what we've made God out to be and how we started a religion.

How dare we.

So that's the short story. Now for the long version, including how I handled questions like:

Does God ask us to do things because they are the right thing to do?
...or does he ask us to do them simply because he says so?

Why do you keep using/reading the Bible if you don't believe in it anymore?

...and how I came to conclusions like:

Christianity does not have the monopoly on truth.

I am a witch. (I feel the potential consequences of making such a statement are dire, even in this day and age, and I'm ready to burn at the stake for it...*that's supposed to be halfway funny, guys*)

More to come; feel free to post questions and I will answer them as I come to them. Love and light to all.

This is my life. At the end of the day, I have to live with myself in my own head. At the end of the day, I answer to me. And I must do things that I would approve of, be happy with, be proud of.

I know who you're meant to Love

Have you ever loved someone?

I'm sure you have. In one way or another, you have loved someone. Or something. Or you're a psychopath. All of which are options; I'm just trying to be inclusive.

I've loved people lots of different ways. Some people I loved enough to not date. Others I loved too much to date. Some people I loved enough to let go. Others I loved so much I couldn't let go.

But you know what the hardest kind of love is?

(This is the part where you GUESS).

But you're not going to guess. You're going to keep mindlessly reading. So I'll give you a little text-room to think.

The past week has been filled with more disappointment, wreckage, damage, insanity, and tears than I care to remember...but it has also held more hope than I have had in years. That's the way it works, you know. Balance. Breathe. Life will come and life will go and at the end of the day you have to live with yourself.

Ok you had better have guessed by now.

The hardest kind of love is to love yourself. But you had better do it.

I love you, but...

...just in case
I ever stop
these will be the signs

mushroom clouds arising
dark, gray sky
spring never coming
whispers of my
existence nothing but shadows

and the gray-green sky will twist
breath tornados destroy
every memory of me
like I fell into a time vortex

and really never existed
because if I didn't love you
I didn't really live
and if i didn't really live
how did i
exist

Day 2 Without You

and the title rhymed

and the little pieces of my life started to fit together
like books on a bookshelf
but with pages torn out
pages that belonged to you
pages that you wrote

and the stories don't all end the same
way
anymore
because something lost
something gained
they will never be the same

and my life continues in a tick-tock rhyme
with words that i don't heed or mind

and i follow the schedule and i keep score
but i don't breathe like i used to anymore

and some days i wake up and you're not here
i reach for the phone and stop in fear

and i can't bear to miss you in this nauseous way
the sun rises on my sickness every day

"and they're all made out of tickitacky and they all look just the same"

and every Swift song becomes a part of me
and us and everything we used to be
and i see your truck outside my house
and i ignore my imagination gettting away
with me

because your love is in every inch of every wall
in my organized closet
in my messy pile of clothes
your love is
in all my old books and in the non-fiction section of every library

and i made a promise, a solemn vow
you won't find me again like i am now
i'm made of better stuff
i'm made of better things
i'm not a caged bird who cries when it sings

you'll find me someday
at the end of a page
composing a story
without bitter or rage

the promise is sealed
the promise is set
I will fight 'til I'm healed
Scars the ghosts of regret

and your love will stay with me
until my dying day
I'll keep it close by
I'll always find a way

To make it through 7... 700 days without you.