epiphanies

Perhaps it is perfectly natural for someone who has been at times psychotic, depressed, manic, and suicidal -- all specific, medical symptoms for the more vague and vaporous condition "crazy" -- to constantly ponder the meaning of the word and more importantly, the basic concept of sanity/insanity. I worry quite often that feelings I have are not normal. When I am assured that they are, I still have doubt. Sometimes I feel like I have emotional dementia. It's not 1943, I'm not back from the war, I'm here, in the present, and things have changed and progress has made and by all accounts, I am a different person.

It's the continuum I struggle with. It's true that if I could go back in the past and change even the slightest thing in my life that I wouldn't turn out the way I have - which, by most accounts (if not scales) is not a bad thing. As a kid I'd always flip backwards through Choose Your Own Adventure books to determine where I made mistakes, to figure out how I should've progressed. Not sure why I still do it in real life as obviously there's nothing that can be done. I guess I am hungry for lessons and knowledge. If I'm going to have pain, if I'm going to fail, I want to know why and figure out how to do better next time.

And I finally feel I'm at the age when it's possible. If I can keep my wits about me. And that's why I analyze and overanalyze everything. Why I'm so hard on myself at every twist and turn. I want to play life like a game. I want to decipher the puzzle so I can control the outcome. That part comes from fear and also the scientific, logical side of my brain. Funny how both are related. But the poet in me, the child, the lover of adventure and romance wants to just let go and let the winding river take me where it wants. But is that irresponsible? Is it irresponsible not to?

Maybe I feel and think such things because I am of the sensitive, creative, reflective sort. I'm not a Wall Street cod. Maybe I am home today, worried about unemployment and money, because of not some failture in my character or series of bad decisions (or a worthless union, actually) but because I am someone who is supposed to live life a bit more slowly. Is that narcissism? Rationalization, I'm sure.

I don't think that writing a poem or spending more time than usual to examine the petals of a rose makes me a better person, a more spiritual person, or any close to "god" or the central meaning of life. Or if I do perhaps I shouldn't. There is a direct correlation between 'insanity' and artists. Between irresponsiblity and creativity.

I wonder what it's like to not have had such sharp identity crises. I wonder what it's like to not have been psychotic and trying to throw myself off a roof. Not many people know what psychosis feels like. It's traumatic. I don't think I've ever really sat with that. It's uncomfortable and terrifying. It feels like this division from other people that can't be scaled. Most people have at some point in their lives been depressed. Maybe even manic -- or at least super "hyper." Most people have made bad decisions. Sadly, most girls I know have also been sexually abused or assaulted. But... as I sit here writing this I see what the real issue is. What really makes me feel so lonely and alone -- the psychosis.

It feels like you're in a nightmare. You know the dreams where horrible things are happening and you're panicking. No one around you is making any sense. And you are just so scared. You are pure nerve. There is no memories, there is no prolonged logic thought process. There is caged animal that is screaming and terrified and reacting. There is nothing but that very moment where you are filled with fear and paranoia in every cell of your body. It splinters you from reality. It is a nightmare. You can't control it. You have no idea why it's happening to you. You don't know what lead up to it. There are no shadows, just dark and threat. Ive felt it acutely and in the form of a slippery, sneaky predator. I've had it for weeks. I've had clear moments. I've had it like a knife in the gut. But the difference between me and you is that I HAVE had it.

Maybe that is why I feel that I am always outside of society. It is someting I can't apologize for or make amends for. Sometimes I feel like I wear it on my chest. I don't seem to think or feel like other people do. And so I slip back inside myself and turn to writing and poetry.

Or maybe I am jsut looking for something special to make me me. An excuse for faults and cracks and defects?

Don't take away my sins, my faults, my quirks. Because -- as I wondered one day in fear and nausea -- who would I be if I were not over weight, undisciplined, illogical, and poetic?

Fuck.

Epiphany.

That is the fear and anxiety I feel when I think about losing weight or exercising. It is the dread I feel when I think about a 9 to 5 sellign my soul to corporate America.

This is all so freaking confusing.

And why -- oh why -- do I share these struggles and feelings so publically? As a way to scream it out into the cosmos and hope for an echo? As an explanation for my self? As a way to relate?
As a way to ask for acceptance and salvation?

I don't know. But it feels more natural than leaving it inside to rot. The way I did as a child and suffered and suffered and suffered until I learned how to escape. Or so i thought. I just put the pain in a locked box. Where it seethed and grew and fed on itself all these years.

But anyway. Yes, fuck epiphanies.

I'm sitting in the dark. The tv's off and the only light is from the fish tank. The only sounds are the hiss of the radiator next to me, the soft blues from the speakers, and the bell in the plastic ball my kitten is batting around the living room. I want to be poetic and spit out something beautiful and meaningful but the muses aren't whispering tonight.

I really wish I had a cigarette. Or I knew how to take good low-light photographs. I wish I was somewhere warm and breezy. Dusty summer breezy, not humid and wet. I want like the days when I'd sit on the rope swing in our dirt drive way. Barefoot, toes tanned and in the dust. It was just a rope we'd tossed over a low branch and knotted, smooshed an old courdory sofa cushion to. Think about it. Don't you miss the feeling of swinging, too?

I miss grass. I miss sitting on that tree swing and looking up and down our road and seeing nothing but green grass and flowers. Blue sky. The smell of chlorine from our pool. I miss sitting on the deck. I would sit out there for hours, my toes and fingers dipping into the cool as I studied from one red regents review book or another. I'd lay back on that splintered wood and stare up the northern summer sky and watch the birds fly by. I can close my eyes and see it so clearly. It was paradise. And I'm happy to say that on some level I knew it.

this weather depresses me. But when I am in my apartment and away from the windows that face the street I can pretend I am somewhere closer to the ground, somewhere with a car parked outside, grass growing, houses with white siding and red trim. I can pretend I am six again and pilling into the back of our pick up. Growing up in the country was a blessing. tonight i miss it. I miss my family. I miss the way things used to be before everyone grew up and apart. I wanna close my eyes and everyone is happy again. And I wasn't a days' drive away, far from everyone, alone and struggling to figure out what I want to do with my life. What the past 30 years meant and what the next 30 will be. Thirty years went by so fast. It makes me feel sick to know that the next 30 will too. I really like this sourpatch brat of a life I have.

why am i melancholy when i am so happy? when I am so blessed? when I am so gifted with opportunity and love and potential?

30 years. how'd that ever happen. but i'm so happy it did.

james

I can't write when I'm happy.
I lie in bed and watching you sleep
I consider poking you, pinching your nose
Run through a list of mild but annoying
transitions to raise your blood pressure
without doing permanent damage
I do nothing, I turn and huff
Only I could find frustration in joy
I elbow you in the side, but too gently
I couldn't hurt you if I wanted
so instead I wake up the next morning
and tap away this bullshit poem
and consider the sunshine that illuminates
the end of my poetry career.

:)

argh!!!!!!

breathing
breathing
breathing

i sometimes wish i could just reach into my skull and pull out my brain and wash it off. like it could somehow rinse off all the bad thoughts and chemicals that are fussing with and fucking it up.

and it's a condition that makes you just ruminate and obsess. a snowball that just keeps feeding upon itself as it falls down the mountain until it's a freaking avalanche.

i'm having a brain storm today. and not in the fun, productive way. it's like a snow globe behind my eyes today. pieces of truth and sanity caught in a sea of chemicals that when shaken produces the effect of a gentle winter scene--from the outside.

ARGH!!!!!!

off

I wake up with yesterday in my mouth
and thus begins the list of failures and faults
I should've brushed my teeth instead
of falling asleep on the couch watching cartoons
I should learn to hide my phone from myself
No more insecure dialing on a Sunday night
And while I'm at it I should simply grow up
and stop being the kind of girl that I am

Not sure why I hate myself today
Perhaps nothing a shower and slap can't help
my orientation is misaligned with your magnetic north
I hate moments when I am today and yesterday
at once and I see only this in my tea leaves
I am at the bottom of an endless, dry well
I look up and there is just one way to go
only because this is where I put myself
once again, once again
but yet I blame it on a vertigo, a push
not a careless and practiced fall
not my unsteady footing, my propensity
to give in to gravity when challenged

klonopin

you tickle my frontal lobe
a bubble in my forehead
a reminder that sixty years ago
i might've been biting sticks
and watching my finger nails spark

fair skin never marked with haldol
i lie here and forget what i was trying to forget
mother's little helper
daughter's little enabler
but i have the permission note
to sit out of gym class today
so fuck off and I'll hold your jewlery on the bench

don't touch me with kind hands
if you touch me with kinds hands
you will remind me of the touch of kind hands
and we can't have that, we can have that in here

i can't make sense now
i want to tell you
i want to call and say
i think i started to go a bit crazy
and sorta wanted to go star spinning
down the length of grand street
and lately i can't help but miss
jumping, leaping, dancing, skipping
but i can't tell you this
i can't tell you this at all

that right now i wanna be naked in times square
just to pretend that it's a dream
and that the cold and eyes can't touch me

cartography

I am leaning in
I slowly, slowly peer down
Your hands steady me
but do not hold
My body anchors you
but I do not restrict
you are free to go
whenever you want
to move left, to move right
to throw me to the floor
and watch me cry
I have no claim
only a right to whimper
being that is of my nature

Lately I care only about verbs
especially the passive ones
that insinuate movement
but are just as still as you
and I
entwined

I am hovering
shadow boxing
I do not tell you
I want you to move
naturally
sinewy, a slow groove
along the paths and
inlets of your stream

I map you
I study, I sketch
I measure topographic features
enscripted in tree-vein script
and I admire form a far
and do not say
when you take my breath
for fear you won't return it