Five of these days, one each of the last five years,
I have been in the cyclical existence of hell,
and while the promise given is for there to be no more tears,
It’s not looking very well.
For if there is a heaven, and I get to see you there,
I’ll offer you a promise you can be sure that I will keep.
The next time I lay touch upon your golden hair,
I assuredly will weep.
It was another one of those, take your breath away moment, kind of days.
Where after it happened, I could feel myself still sitting phased,
emblazed with grief and dazed by delirium,
wondering which emotion will come next after I try to restore my equilibrium.
I’m done.
Well wish I was completed,
so as to not jump into success already feeling like I am defeated.
I am seated at any table that I wish to be at.
In front of me is often a gold dusted mat.
Yet with just a pat on the surface, the dust stirs
and reminds me it is almost no worth
to even give the residue a chance of coming through,
and presenting itself with any credence.
But in my defense,
I am always staring at the ever building fence
that also comes with its dust from the saw.
See, I can be anywhere and be what is being built,
at the same time see how much that gleam comes with filth,
all strewn around.
Still it comes down flighty and grand,
I can see how much the remains still have affect over me.
and lands back at the very tips of my hands.
This time I am able to notice more readily
when that grief is about to take over my body,
I wrap up in the melancholy,
stake my claim,
to the place that it takes when it tries to confide in my breaking brain.
I reintroduce myself to the pain,
I notice that somehow I am able to abstain
from the overwhelming sense that sadness has gained and retained
all that is my future of healing and composure,
again, a knowing that I procure and endure
in those unabridged versions of my living memoir.
….. into August..
Day 1/29… 29/1….
Synchronicity is the serving purpose. Sunsets serve the same purpose. One could say upon the same token, we are the same regardless of the flip,
For whatever side is showing, is authentic in its presence and shows face in spite of the face of the storm,
The vision given, is the vision living…
Live the vision you envision
This may seem ironic at first. Getting dumped honors women you say, how’s that? I know, it may be hard to see that as true at first, but the playbill that we have all been watching, was not what I auditioned to be a part of. I think it is safe to say, that a lot of leading women “roles” are actually a monologue of the deflated main character’s hopes and dreams. So what better way to step back into the limelight the woman was destined to play, than by being let go by a director who lost the lines to the script?
Break a leg!!
Oh ouch, I mean that figuratively, because we may need that balance as I explain just how empowering it could be to get ditched by the garbage delivery service. It’s like scoring a vintage Tiffany’s lamp in someone’s “FREE” bin on the curb, that you just got kicked to. Perhaps it can be visualized as a rare recording that just got remastered and goes platinum in a week after being dropped by a “bigtime label.” Actually, if you’re thrifty, it is as invaluable as the Juicy or Coach bag tucked away in the back of a dirty shoe shelf at a Goodwill.
Ok, ok, but why is this such a good deal?
Frankly, because I am, as you are, worth more than the mass produced cheap trash that was being fed into my soul.
The dish that I kept ordering and tasting was delicious though. Like downright made my mouth water. Every single time I sat down back at the table and I waited for my yummies, such a tasty and delectable appetizer. I was hungry though. The chef and I talked and clearly he was still a line prep. I love a man who can cook. So he kept feeding me the little delicious morsels that were filling me up, with an order on the line for the main course. My hopeful chef though, was still picking out other ingredients. He was ordering and eating from other menus as well as cooking really well for personal company. It was as if this prep cook was bringing back some of those leftovers and trying to serve them as fresh and uniquely supplied from his growing garden. I got food poisoning. Every time I bit into the prepared meal, I was dished out more watered down, reused and polished colanders caked of uncooked yolks.
The yolk was on me….
Let me tell you folks, the yolk is runny. Almost as runny-y as I am…..was….back into the shallow end of a pool that I thought kept getting deeper. Deep enough that I seemingly kept drowning in the buoyancy. I like to swim. But here’s the thing. Sometimes my water is really really dark, stagnant and pungent. I think I must be my own pool boy who just came fresh out of the gym, but has no flex. Mostly though, often I am a deep sea scuba diver that cannot navigate the way through a pond of my own wastewater. It is this environment that any sea-goer of my ship must fare at any time the storms roll in. But they are ripples from the rains of tears that were collected from the scorches of the thunderbolts at sea, where my nets have always been cast, since the time I was a Moses in the reeds. A collection of a liquid story.
An open book kind of story.
A story where it can get really difficult to trudge through those rambling rants of agony and loss. A long narrative where the writer has emphasized every letter to its fullest enunciation, giving exclamations to the most grueling grief. I narrated chapter after chapter of disbelief and debilitation followed by triumphs, joys, and reconciliations. But when the readings started reflecting and recording the rips the pages have held since the beginning of the press, the reader suddenly forgot how to read, shut the book. When opened back up to the joy of expression, after spurts of censorship, its an easy read with short stories of love, growth, and excitement. Yet when the next chapter, needs, to have its own title, needs to be enveloped into, co – authored and on the same page about where the rips are from and why they keep ripping, it suddenly becomes a comic book to the reader. Audible laughter became the veto to my voice and the red pen to my memoir.
MY memoir, MY Memories….
Many memories I have that I will hope to wash off the body like a temporary tattoo, where once the image was bright and crisp but the lasting result was a dull residue. Unlike the marring fingerprints from handling a collectible art piece to handily, some of the markings, the scar on my back, will not wash away, scrub away. Thankful I am now aware that I can have something incredibly beautiful braided onto my skin and seek healing in the process. As an artist, what is any better a way to express a scarred and tossed away clay lump of “too much mess,” than to become my own flowing and evolving masterpiece of self allowance and mastery?
A mastery of mind release.
See? It is now to become a release of all that was bound up in reflexes heightened to rubber band reactions. Wound up as tight as it could wind and triggered at its last of elasticity, snapping out of sight, and all that is left is the waves of energy left behind. The reverberations generated have shaken the casing off and created an emergence of what is to come. A flooding of all that has been dammed, from all the damns that were uttered, has come rushing through, ready to cleanse the basin. Gleaming and polished porcelain now, a receptacle of rejoicing once the voice was free to flow.
Flowing freely …
Freestyle forming now. It becomes time to see the freedom in becoming free. Not inundated with the pressures of not being able to withstand the opposition to expression. See now, the hardening chiseled away and reveals the treasure of those pressures. A diamond. Lighting the pathway which has been cleared to lay the new foundation of my Kingdom with the precious gems of the noble build. It becomes time to apply my own masonry of paving the way to a star studded encampment that will encompass all that is glistening in the glory of growth, and no longer held from progress. A lamp unto my pattering feet…
As I finally walk away…
Walk away from the table of poison where I no longer have to wonder who’s garden you pillaged to plate my palette… As I float away from falsity of finding depth in your shallows and shark infested wade pool that just waits for me to emotionally bleed and feast on my fears… As I saunter along into the sunshine and seek out only the growing seedlings found along in salutations of honesty and full hopes… I am upcycled from the bin of bruises you boxed me in and will encase the world in an array of raw and real reverence. I have become the priceless point of existence where all that reflects back to me is an understanding of what I know I am worth. And as far as being discarded in the dump, I realize that you are what you eat. I ate a lot of garbage, I became a lot of garbage. I was fined for wanting to reduce, reuse, and recycle from trash to treasure. So, while the garbage man is still making trips back and forth to the dump, I, a rare and valuable creation of star stuff and bright lights am able to find the value of the depths and rise above the heaps, where there are no more shadows dimming the hope and love I have to shine.
Shine on, me, you, crazy diamonds.
Yesterday I received an exchange that I never thought I would hear.
I was in a marriage/relationship that was intense and full of love and very unhealthy. Our unmet childhood needs came out in full force, resulting in lack of acknowledgment, anger, and started the cycles of abuse. Mental, emotional, physical abuse… …. start the ptsd journey in my body, …..in our relationship.
After years of hope, some change, and little soul dirty work, we got “better.” or maybe we just put it away because, Love was on the rise, mandated counseling, and who wants to actually work through the “old” pain when you’re trying to “heal?” We can just get over it, right?
Then, THE worst thing in our lives happen. Our daughter dies. Grief, grief, grief…. and triggers. The ultimate triggers. Everything triggers. Endless ptsd. and the need for needs rose up out of the ashes to burn alongside the fire for peace from the pain….. layered ptsd.
My grief, and my ptsd were scoffed at. My pain and fear of everything that was happening in my life was taken in, never chewed, yet regurgitated with agitation that I could not “get over it,” or whatever was being hoped of me. (just months after our loss).
My grief and my ptsd, turned to resentment against me. The inability to process that I have to process, losing my daughter and all that occurred during this time, created a divide that was digging my grave. I had to start saying goodbye to the idea that I was allowed to feel the Ptsd running through my body as my blood. and when you instantly cut off a blood supply, the result is mortem. so, I was no longer living. At least not the way I needed to in order to actually live. Survival mode kicked in. And within a year, our relationship was kicked out, along with my need to be acknowledged in my ptsd, triggers, and grief.
Grief. triggers. ptsd. and it has been all on me. And I think that at some point you begin to believe that you don’t have the right to hope that another will see it, and you begin to do it on your own. And you don’t stop. And then you do a bit of healing, for yourself. You become “independent.” And sometimes independence turns into…..
Living in this last several years in a place where this has been a priority to me. To heal and work through the triggers. work through ptsd and grief.
It also since has looked like – been living in a relationship of a world that has been incredibly similar to the relationship patterns of before, if not WORSE, in fact. So much intense love…. and so much intense pain,……. and abuse, and ….. triggers. Ptsd. Grief. Unacknowledged. Goodness I am so diligently and fiercely loyal …. patterns.
Why? Because I wanted closure. Closure to the window that let my needs fly right out. and I thought that maybe this time that by shutting the window and staying with it, being with it when it got wild, would help it settle down. But the window was shut from the outside and all that outside observer cared to peek into was the bouncing around of “chaos” on the inside while I sat inside alone with the fluttering failure.
And once again, kicked to find the Independence. One that I was already establishing, still trying to heal, and trying to share the healing. It was one that said again, that my ptsd, my grief, would remain unacknowledged and simmer on top of the burnt ashes to send the message to the gods, that my, our, ptsd, triggers, griefs and traumas that are not worked through, are for the sake of “love.”
this message that has silenced me for years, and a message that has silenced the messenger’s ability to hear their own internal message and acknowledgment, created a platform to continue the cycles of abuse, to themselves and to their, our, partners.
I began to think that this indeed was a silent and unacknowledged journey. But I started to understand that maybe those that refuse to see the course, may never, and I understand that I still have to do my healing with our without acknowledgement. I hoped to be ok with that.
But then something profound happened yesterday, in the midst of all of this.
An acknowledgment. YEARS later.
Patterns and pains realized and processed, or in process, later. Tears in the eyes, understanding now the effects of ptsd are real later. An, I’m so sorry I did that to you…….. 3-5 years of me living out this nightmare on replay, later.
And I realized a few things in that moment.
One, that I was grateful for this moment I had once longed for. Two, that I was so sad for this pain that courses through this man’s being, knowing how hard it is to carry the burden of ptsd. Three, I also felt very stoic. Like I had no emotional reaction at all.
But I felt so proud of manhood at that moment. It was more relieving to me to know that there is maybe some actual hope. Maybe there is an opportunity for more people to learn how to validate, allow healing as strength.
Because as I see it, no we do not have to heal the other person. No that is not our job at all. We can go on life thinking that the person who is open about their issues has issues, and get mad at them for it, only enabling and maintaining a victim mentality. OR..
We can all take a moment to see that not talking about the wounds, makes resentment. The peace in the in between silence is a peace from a graveyard. A cemetery of hopes and dreams. But those hopes and dreams will remain covered until you can unearth the deaths you have hidden within your own tomb, and bury them with blessings and love.
I received an acknowledgment. Finally.
from someone that I once desperately needed it from. From someone that it took years of pain and realization and a loss of all that was precious to him to see.
PTSD is real. Grief is real. It does NOT go away….on it’s own, it sits “silently” while we “live” on in glory. It invites itself to your table and never leaves. Until, an invitation of nonjudgmental exploration with love and empathy is offered and validated through openness and diligence, the pain will always come back and they will always see it as “chaos” served.
I Love deeply. But I am fiercely independent. My dependency lies within the idea that we all feel the same, or should want to feel level and loved.
And while I did receive an apology, and it was real, it was more empowering than I had expected it to be. I only hope that it empowers women and men to sit with themselves, and meet vulnerability now, not 5 years too late.
Blessed be on your journey to healing, loves. We ALL need acknowledgment and validation. Find love in what love actually means. Begin to heal traumas, together, because we indeed, are not alone in this.
My heart pounding, bags at the chair, I’m ready to leave… for the minute?, hour?, day?? I don’t know, but I feel my heart ready to explode. I say I’m leaving, just ok. We embrace, my heart is pounding, surely you’ll feel it and say something. Nothing is said. My hearts beats faster. Time to pull away, you still embrace, say nothing. I grab my bags, unlock the door, silence is walking out with me. I say I love you, you say I love you back, nothing more.
You walk by me and your phone is in your hand, head down. You walk by me and head away. I am left to sit or follow. You walk by and smile. Head down, phone out, up to closing of door. I am left to sit or follow. You walk by me and your hand reaches out to graze me, your gaze head down phone out.
I had a dream this morning. I shared and cried about it this morning. I had a dream where I was crying and mourning and I shared about that this morning. I am in mourning this morning.
Christmas I say is sad, I found an ornament. I say it is sad that I haven’t bought new ornaments in a long long time, the newest one I found yesterday. It was sad to find the ornament, the newest ornament, it’s wreath of Heaven Baby, ornament. This is why I don’t like to decorate, find new ornaments, it’s just sad.
It’s a sad ornament filled, I’m in mourning and your head is more often lately in your phone, I am having anxiety, you’re probably going to give me grief over this act of grief and lack of acknowledgment, and the day is going to be your family decorating with ornaments, will I might get accused of abandoning you all while I’m expected to sit extremely uncomfortably, and I got a lot going on and things I should be doing other than being made to feel like a what’s your problem and probably won’t check in on me, kind of morning.
I’ll go grocery shopping instead.
I stand along the flowing waters like you. I stand along the rivers edge and watch the foundations erode away like you. I stand in the rain, I stand in the snow, in the blistering sun, and in the dewy morning relief, like you. I stand stripped of my original casing, i stand exposing my inner self, I stand without the security of limbs laden with leaves for promise of production. None of this is like you, but still I stand. And I continue to stand majestically open and casualty to all infliction. I stand with you still. I can be seen with the gray of my roots telling of my time. But still I stand. And as the eyes gaze upon all of us, casually loving and observing the fullness of us all, I stand alone in the capture. The eyes stop, the heart relates, and for this moment in time, the wear of existence is wondrous, and I stand in that beauty of the chaos and calm. The whole scene is taken in, and walking away, the image retained is that of me, still standing.
And as I tried to wane this morning, the feeling came over me again. I could feel it in my bones, in my veins, in my muscles, in my brains..
I wept silently while his arms were wrapped around me. He didn’t notice. Just like no one else would know. Not unless i said something. Not unless I spoke, but who would care. I could hope.
My tears dropped off my cheeks like the shuddering of my body. I again, wept silently. I again was held, alone.
And what words do I say? As we’re laying there in the space of death and the space of life. And again, it shudders through my veins. Through my muscles, through my body.
I could feel the moment of the death. Not knowing then how I knew it would feel now. I could feel the memory of our dna coursing through me. I didn’t know then it would be the end , but I know now.
I didn’t want to share the thoughts. Didn’t want to impede my depression on you or any argument of why I feel the way I feel. I didn’t want to have to feel what you don’t feel, you’ll never feel. I didn’t want to be disappointed that you don’t feel.
The love I give has continued to pour … fill full and pour more. The source of this love has been questionable for an unknown amount of time now. I can’t say when it refills or how. I can’t say why it keeps giving or what it’s motive has become. For it has been a wounded well since our time has begun. Before my bucket was used to fill your cup, before I knew you had needed more than me to fill it up, I had to re-mortar the bricks that contains the courage, just enough. The job was done in haste and maybe some despair, but I knew would hold with gentle care. If gentle hands pulled my rope, centered it with purpose and I’d bring up the liquid hope. My plan was to pour into you with all I could hold and refill so quickly that the exchange of warmth from my source to your vessel would never go cold. To keep releasing all into your hands for you to drink me, take in my delivery. To just empty over and over again… and then… I realized I was over pouring. Your hands were always open, to receive from any duct that gave attention. They always stayed ajar and your mind took note to the sources that weren’t too far. And in the brief moments when my pouring slowed down to a drip, so I could take a moment to evaluate the dripping in which I’ve been slipping, created by the spill over from the tipping over of other pitchers into your serving cup, you keep putting at my table to serve you up, and in those brief moments of when I drip, you sip from another drip line filling you up and clog up mine. Then you hold up your hands and all the love pours out. Every drop and drip from my heart spout and it stutters at its source, and I have to realign my lines, my strings, my handle, my encasing. I have to retrace the rebuilding of my walls and all my compartments, are they intact, where do I lack? What’s wrong with my pouring? How is my all not enough? Then I see that a segment of my wall has been sloughed. Etched with drills of a version of love that made my exterior soft, while my love just kept pouring right past this love blinding blind spot. Picked at quietly as I kept flowing on by, wondering about the little streams that kept seeping awry. Thought the loss was from the tears that I cried. But it was lack of care that degraded my interior. Pulling and releasing my rope at commanding positions creating tensions unexpectedly and force back of slack, slapping into my mortar. Close by are your hands prying down my border. Close are your hands being filled by others, allowed to slip in to where my everflow never stops it’s flow. And leaves me to wonder where my love is to go. Leaves me to wonder will your hands ever close? Will you ever be able to wrap them around my well, only open for pour, from my lovings course, only embrace and drink from my love source?
Can you look in the mirror honestly? Does it tell you the truth of who you are? Does it show you in bold all the little secrets you hold?
Can you look in the mirror with pleasure? Are you able to observe the crease of time on your brow? Do you see the lines you’ve said displayed on your head?
Can you look in the mirror with trust? Has your reflection morphed too? Do your eyes look at you with pride or is it behind the lids you still hide?
Can you look in the mirror with dignity? Did the ego wash away in the shower? Are you seeing yourself as well and taking that nakedness into the words you tell?
Can you look into the mirror for long? Is it a gentle and confident exchange of sight? Do you see a human with intentions pure or a facade to procure?
Can you look into the mirror and see truth? Do your eyes relay back to you reality? Do your lips form the way they appear as you speak or are they cracked and breaking speech?
Can you look into the mirror and rely on it to be accurate? Does it show you who you really are? Will your reflection last to be who they see you as or will you be a reflection of your past?
Can you look into the mirror and smile? Are you the same in both dimensions? Are you honorable in the eyes of those that seek you to be reliable?
Can you look in the mirror? Can you stare at yourself long enough to see your soul? Can you keep seeing yourself the same or will the mirror shatter under your shame?
Can you look in the mirror? Can you be present enough to see who you really are? Will you be able to be whole and clear and good away from the mirror?
the Proverbial Phoenix 