Breaking Promises (undone)

*meant to be delivered slam-poetry style*

I guess they are just never
Strong enough
Promises

They masquerade like they can hold
The weight of the
World

If I promised, I meant it.
I promise, I meant it.
But the problem for the promise
is the past-tense "meant"

Because with every word I speak
It's truth in the moment
But I wouldn't count on past
promises

But it's not just you I've broken
It's me too
I promised myself things

So I guess I just make promises
I can't keep
Putting my tongue to paper my body can't complete

And there I've broken one again. No
"can't"
I promised myself.

So don't hold me to a contract
Don't chisel my words in stone
Learn the way of my heart
Trust the vessel on its own
It won't keep the promise
But it will not forsake the compass
It will not forsake the heading
It will not forget you, though it forget all those broken
promises.

On Privacy

I'm not the kind of person
Who understands the word
Private
As though you could keep
Your life cloistered off
From the rest of humanity.

I am intimate with strangers,
A refreshing and real me,
Infinitely.
So if you can't handle
Me inside-out
Don't start.

I have no respect for walls
Or fortresses of stone
Shadows that encase you
In fear you feel alone

Fences? Are fine.
But walls must fall.

I laugh when people try
To make things
Private
As though our actions only affect ourselves

Secret is different; secret is sacred.
Private is corrupt and caustic.

As though I cannot see straight to your core
Once I have witnessed your laugh
And you try to keep things private.

As though through ancient times
The sun hadn't seen all your folly
And banished all your fears.

I reach back and I reach forward
Both light and darkness, history and future report
And you? You try to keep things "private"

The tendrils extend, gently
Destroying your wall, your stone
Is no match for the might of life

Come out of the shadows
And release the burden of
"Private"

Untitled just yet

Because sometimes it just spills out of you like you're overflowing with words and thoughts and even though they never feel like they are enough, they are something and that's more than the chaos that drove you, deep inside your self-dictionary, to find a new meaning.

And these are the words that started it all: existentially fraught free throws. If you've ever read The Fault In Our Stars, you will remember those fateful words. Or perhaps those words just signaled that a brand new chapter was about to begin. The next few blog posts are the result of the tumbling chaos inside my mind and my feeble attempt to deal with them while listening to musicals and acapella groups do renditions of classic songs. This is me, losing my mind. This is me, chronicling the spiral into madness that is finally short-circuited by those beautiful words that made me change my life, probably forever. Because I finally opened a door that I had kept very locked (very locked is when you add extra locks, deadbolts, and perhaps even screw the door shut so the memory ghosts can't get out and haunt you), and while my brain did not seem to be any less like madness, it was far, far more beautiful.

I should tell you, I'm Disaster
But that could change; I'm also Delight.
You and I have fallen prey to the notion
That the laws of physics are limits-
                                                    but I'm ready to defy gravity.


Which is when I started obsessively counting sparkles on my bracelet.

And now I'm crying, gently feeling the paper under my fingertips and marveling at its smoothness. So strange. I'm beginning to doubt my ability to do this very sincerely.

And that's when I realized I might not be cut out for the job I was doing. But really, I'm just not equipped to endure any more sections of a lifetime without the one person who ought to be there, in every fateful sense of the word. It's not like destiny or fate, though. More like the Deep Magic, and as I realize how many times I have quoted Puddleglum to myself in the past month, I feel more
Narnian than ever.

A Free Poem

Bound. Confined. Focused.

Zoooomed in to the microscopic task at hand.

Minutiae matter in the moment.

Now breathe.

Every little atom in the air

Contributes to your life

It gives without thought

Don't take without thanks

Now breathe.

Just focus on the in and out

Breathe in, breathe out.

It's all in the breath.

Your joy, your life,

breathe in peace

breathe out gratitude,

Now deeper.

Breathe down into your hip bones,

sink into your toes, first feeling of 

Alive! Breathe.

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.