Tag: mental health

War and Peace

Write about a recent conflict.

Emotions wash rapidly

upon the shore of my

distant mind

Like activating a land mine

Fire ravaging

the serenity that lay there

 

Anger burns often

without apparent cause

incinerator buried deep

So far within me who knows

what trips the wire

 

Searing loved ones

with the intensity of my heart

Don’t come closer

or I’ll have to go

My finger is glued to the trigger

and I have lost control.

 

But you forgive me

Bullets riddle your skin

You wince on and forgive me.

I cannot see what drives you to me

Maybe you like the flames.

Is this what makes you feel alive?

The Professor

Write about a teacher who has influenced you.

She was a stout, grey-haired lady with a deep belly laugh and an affinity for Shakespeare. She was good-natured an understanding, something that god knows I needed in the spring of my freshman year in high school. After three hospital visits, including a week-long stay, I was falling behind, half the assignments in the gradebook marked missing. I distinctly remember her pulling me aside one day and daring to share a bit of her soul to a 15-year-old: “Everyone told me to pull myself up by my bootstraps, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even reach my boots.” Later, we were assigned a paper on a personal story–not a practice college assignment, but practice in the kind of personal storytelling college essays would require. I spilled everything in my trembling 9th-grade soul to this slightly odd English teacher, and when I handed it in, god bless her, she said: “I bet it has a happy ending.” When I had her again, after all that, she shaped my writing so powerfully that I attribute my recent successes on my papers to her. She wrote the recommendation letter that got me into this Honors Program. This stout, grey-haired lady believed in me.

But it was my short, mother-hen French teacher who saved my life. Who noticed when I left class, put two and two together, who called the office, my parents, alerting my father to the fact that I have braved the February winter to walk home and take handfuls of pills. She saved my life–she found my life worth saving. Je te devois ma vie. That kind of love from a  teacher is hard to find, but I owe a lot to that elusively powerful kindness in teachers who notice you, who care. Although the memories I have are fleeting and do not resurface often when they do, I think of them fondly and treat them with love, examine them carefully, and gently fold them up and tuck them away again. I am not that girl anymore–I can be trusted with locked doors and sharp razors and scary high ledges. I do not need advice on how to want to be alive any longer. I want to be alive. I just need someone to tell me how. They gave me all the why I need.

Sugar

Write about something so sweet, it makes your teeth hurt.

The chocolates were so sweet and rich that her stomach churned and her teeth ached, but every time she shoved a new one in her mouth she felt a sort of grim satisfaction. Her, fat–as if! Sure, overweight–she was pushing 220 for a long time coming. But fat was such a vulgar word. It carried so many connotations of ugliness and hate. As she caught sight of her bloated belly poking out under her t-shirt, she popped another chocolate in her mouth and furiously blinked away tears. Her boyfriend just dumped her because of her weight, this was no time to cry. It was time to get angry, to take up arms, to rally a crew of young body-positive Instagrammers to her cause. But instead of picking up her phone, she picked up another damn chocolate as his words echoed around her brain.

“You don’t take care of yourself anymore.” Well, not entirely true. Sure, the cigarette habit was not the best, and takeout 5 days a week could be construed as poor self-care, but at least she was feeding herself. There was a time she would shy away from the mere idea of consuming a single calorie. The image of her brittle bones, the sack of skin she turned herself into, would keep her eating for a while yet.

Sure, the weight gain had taken her by surprise. But she marveled at her new body. The weight of it, how grounded she felt in it. As if her tie to the universe somehow grew stronger. Her “metabolism” had been the envy of all her high school friends, somehow keeping her thin no matter what she ate–or, at least, that’s what she told them. Back then, she floated through the world like a wisp, anxiously aware of her size, addicted to feeling small. In this body, she felt safer. She no longer felt like a victim of circumstance, out of control. Maybe to the untrained eye, she was losing control of her body, of herself. But in reality, in this skin, she never felt so confident.

So she ate another chocolate, relishing the sweet rich flavors that made her teeth ache. He could talk, the world could talk–but she loved her body, loved every inch of it, fat or not. It finally felt like hers–and she intended to keep it that way.

Addict

Everyone’s addicted to something in some shape or form. What are things you can’t go without?

Open mouths and loud whispers

they think you’re too crazy to hear

No wonder you’re addicted

to what helps you take them away

 

Every cell in your body

compels you to stop

cigarette, joint, bottle, needle

pick your poison

they all kill us in the end

 

Giving in does not feel like

Giving up.

You love the rush, the feeling of

breaking the rules

of letting people down

 

Addiction plays you like a violin

And you stand ready at attention

Ready to throw yourself back into

oblivion

Just one more time.

enough

you thought he was everything. he was the sun, moon, and stars, he was the one, your perfect match, you couldn’t believe it. in a city of 3 million people, you found each other, completely by chance, what are the odds of falling so hard for someone so fast? your poor pathetic heart never saw it coming.

so you trust him, so what? so you give him more than he gives you, par for the course. see it coming, see it coming, see it coming. see your heart shatter into a million little pieces all over again, such a fine powder it feels like stardust and the only thing left is a black hole in your chest where your thumping heart used to beat steady. love him, think of him, write of him and to him like he’s like you, like he cares like you, like anyone could care as hard as you and you think he’s different.

numb yourself to the cold, the winter storm that swept over your warm summer day. have you ever seen something more pathetic than a girl in hopelessly unreturned love? he doesn’t even hold you down, he doesn’t have to, and takes a sledgehammer to your poor exposed soul, chips away the parts of yourself you like the best so at the end of the day all you’re left with is an old, twisted, blackened thing, like a lump of coal and you can’t feel. anything. except a deep-seated dread that you are not made for this world, you do not deserve it.

so what’s next. so what’s next. so what’s next. they don’t make pamphlets for this sort of thing, “so you got raped, what’s next?” you have so many broken pieces you don’t even know where to start, and after all who’s to say you deserve help. who’s to say you didn’t ask for it. who’s to say you didn’t deserve to be broken, to be torn down, who are you to be happy, who are you to enjoy a warm summer’s day? who are you to have the audacity to believe you had found your one? who are you to love yourself.

i wished to turn myself into somebody i could love again, so i filled the house of my soul with the things of my childhood: painting, writing, reading, walking. i found that the seeds of love are inside me, they’ve always been there, they were waiting for me. i found the seeds were not blooming, how could they, they were planted in salted earth, doomed from the start.

i tend to my soul. i take care of my little garden, i make sure it gets sunlight and water and food. it is growing slowly, but it is growing, i can feel it in the little moments of kindness or beauty in my days. my mind is a dusty shed but i am clearing it out, dusting out the cobwebs and sweeping the floors. as i clean, rediscover things about myself so old they’re almost new. things that have been as broken and battered as me, but i was the hand that brought about their destruction, these things i’ve hidden away, these things i’m scared of. i take them out, treat them with care–glue and tape pieces of myself back together and set them out in my garden for people to see.

my garden is messy, disorganized, cluttered, beautiful, and mine. i still don’t know what’s next. but i have my garden and my shed and the house of my soul. i have myself. and that is enough.

i am enough.

corners of the mind

Maybe you liked it. The otherworldliness of it and the separation. You liked how the world sparkled for you and you alone, you liked being cocooned in a psychedelic haze, it protected you, a mobile womb to block out the world. What on Earth will you do when it’s gone? Easier this way, isn’t it, to just tune it all out and continue down the rabbit hole. What’s the use of learning about yourself if you can’t apply it to the outside world? But it was never about the outside world, was it? It was about the made up fantasy in your head, the alternate impossible reality that you created just to inspire yourself to quit, and the second you caught wind that your impossible dream was, well, impossible, you ran right back into the loving, comforting arms of addiction.

*

But I still want to grow old. I’m a dreamer, always have been. In the darkest of moments, I take a litmus test: I allow myself to envision my future. If I can’t see it, I am lost. If I can, I am still okay. Today, my tomorrow is content: maybe grumpy, living alone (well, not alone… dogs included), maybe a writer, maybe a retired zoologist, maybe both! Today, I have a future. I am not lost.

friday

Your face is hot
hands cold
Vision hazy
Belly aching

You need the thing you hate the most
Biologically, you know
The nutrients gleaned
From the bread, butter
fruits, meats, grains

These things are your
survival.

Drugs strewn around you
Do not eat.

"Go to rehab."
Do not eat.

Makeup to make you beautiful
Longing for natural grace
Running down your skin in a
cold sweat
Do not eat.

Words on the page,
thin and uncontrolled by your weak fingers
Do not eat.

Rain tapping windows
World in sharp
painful focus
steady rhythm
Eat. Please eat.

the heavy hearts

i like taking moments to sit in the coffee shop, stare out the window, and listen to all the conversation around me. about lives. that are happening in tandem with mine. isn’t that weird? everybody’s life is taking place around us. we are part of another person’s lifetime, in some way, at least.

I can see the mountains today, from my window to the outside. They’re snowpeaked now, which is beautiful. i didn’t grow up with a lot of topography, and it’s something i hadn’t realized i missed until i came home for thanksgiving. coming home is weird because i’ve changed so much. i’m finally allowed to become whatever person i want to be and i want to believe it’s a person my family can accept but i’m not sure about that. they’re probably just worried about me. the person i’ve become is rather unhealthy.

i haven’t been writing as much lately. i don’t know why. it might be because oftentimes i feel like i’ve sunk to a new low in my mental health. tomorrow i’m going to the counseling center because it’s’ something i think i should do. my friend asked me what i hope to get out of the meeting and i have to admit i couldn’t really answer her clearly, but it’s important to go into these kinds of things knowing what you want out of it, even if the answer is just to know where to start. i think that’s what i want–to know where to start. i’ve had so many diagnoses and so many things happen to me. i just want to figure out what’s causing it this time.

sometimes i can convince myself that if i just deal with my problems one by one, they’ll go away eventually and i’ll be capable of being a happy, healthy, healed person. but the thing is that the problems keep coming back. today i thought of the day aimee, not something i’ve thought about in a while. and i remembered all the anger and the grief. i remember crying uncontrollably and then an intense feeling of calm, of wanting to be okay, of wanting to just sit in a place with less going on. a routine. i remember feeling dead, i remember wanting to feel dead, i remember feeling the intense uncontrollable sadness, i remember thinking it would never end. my friend asked me how i could ever get over something like that and i didn’t know how to answer her because i don’t remember how i got over that trauma. just time, i guess. i had to wait until i was ready for therapy to be helpful, to get enough distance from the event that i would be able to process my feelings with a clear head.

but that took years. i’m running out of time to be happy.

i feel like sometimes all the medication and therapy in the world can’t help me now. like i’m a lost cause and i should just get as far in my life as i can before the world becomes too unbearable and i give up. that some people are just destined to be sad, and maybe i’m one of those people. one of those people with the heavy hearts.

well. and then.

living with a mental illness that was worse in the past but kind of better now is really weird because you have to disclose it on forms for cool outdoor adventures you wanna do and then you get triggered and almost start crying in your college library in the quietest room there.

just my two cents, anyway.

so instead of crying about it or coping with drugs, i am attempting to write about it. and how shitty it was.

which was really shitty. so shitty. not to overshare, to the maybe 4 of you who will read this, but mental hospitals are not fun. and your experience will stick with you throughout your life. you will always have to write that you were hospitalized twice for psychiatric reasons and you may be thinking “well that’s not very many times” but every time you have a hospital bracelet on your wrist, every time you’re categorized because your body or mind has failed you and now all the doctors and therapists need to rush in and fix you so you still want to be alive… that takes something from you every time.

and then… man oh man, reader you’ll love this, and then three years later once you think you’re done, that the only thing that can hurt you now is heartbreak and that will leave eventually–then you go to a party. and you take a new drug. and then

well. and then.

i just feel like screaming at the world. and all the shiny perfect people. yes i’m broken. yes i have been lower than all lows and you know what sometimes i’m still there. sometimes bad things still happen to me and pages get added to my ‘tragic backstory’. but i am still a person. a normal person. with habits and dreams and needs and addictions just like the rest of the normal people out there. i’m still a person.

sometimes i feel like i’m out of control. like the campus is liquifying and all the things–the lawn, the buildings, the classes and students and teachers–are all floating past my window, and it’s just me staring out at it all going by like sometimes i do in the morning or the evening. unsettling.

and hey PETER. just talk to me maybe. i think i really like you. and i want to hear from you.

when you have to fill out forms like that it makes you think that maybe you don’t deserve to do those kinds of things. the normal, happy people things. because that medical history will never go away. it’s always there. just because you turn 18 doesn’t mean it goes away. it just means it’s not as cute to still be experiencing that type of stuff. maybe that’s why i don’t hear from him anymore. because he realized how unfortunate my mental state is. my ability to take care of myself.