curseofconsciousness-blog

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

peanut butter skies

blood-shot eyes

sweaty thighs 

and white-hot sighs

drippings globs

and choking sobs

stifling air

thousand-yard stare

wher am i?

oh my, 

its the

peanut butter sky

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

Anxiety and Me

My anxiety eats me

From the inside, out

It starts in the center

Of my chest-

the pit of doom

A twinge of panic

Ignites my heart

It radiates outward

Rapidly

Like a high- frequency radio signal

Spreading

Until I’m completely filled with it

Frantic static

Making my cells collide against

One another

And my organs shiver

And my skin crawls

And my lungs,

They suffer the most

Swelling

Narrowing

Until I can barely feel the air

There��s something not right

And my body confirms it

Is this what dying is like?

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

Strong women

There are more bad people in the world than good; my mother knows first-hand. You see, she was suffocated and shattered by the one person who was supposed to save her. Stifled by the maternal hate that can only stem from evil. My mother did nothing other than be born. Born to a baby hater, a daisy stomper, a life killer. But my mother was stronger than the beast who bore her. And although she suffered many battle wounds, she has survived and triumphed over her oppressor.

She escaped the witch and cast her own spell. She made a life her mother never wanted for her. She kept rising. And so, from the day she bore me, I never had to fight a single battle. She did everything in the world to protect me from the evil of it. But in all her effort to save me, she suppressed my strength with her love. I am fragile (I break easy). But with this fragility also comes immense empathy, my biggest weakness. It allows me to forgive and always forget injustices I’ve faced.

‘There are more bad people than good,’ my mother tells me after my millionth heart break.

It is that evil in the world that creates powerful women. The evil that built my mother up and turned her into the furious white rapids, working endlessly to protect me.

But I’m an adult now and she says she needs me to be strong. I run sobbing into her rejecting arms as another boy takes a bite out of my heart and another friend stabs me in the back. She will not hug me, she says, until I stop crying, she needs me to be strong.

So now i am trying to build myself up, before the evil can stifle and suffocate me. Because there are more bad people than good in the world and I’m not sure how much more heartache I can take.

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

We feel so sorry, so deeply for the dead. Like it’s like some mysterious affliction only cast on a select few. We idolize the dead, worship them, in a sort. We erect monuments to them, write books about them, remembering through rose-colored glasses, the way things were before the terrible affliction. Of course we all know that we are bound to die, but there is still some tiny nagging sense that it would never happen to me.

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

My body is an extension of myself

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The living of life is never a static occurrence; it is a process of relentless learning and renewal, of continuous and dynamic chance.

Garry Landreth (1993)

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Words of the Wise

How can someone so arbitrary, so reckless and emotional, string together words so seemlessly. Effortlessly stitching together sentences. Inspiration flowing from her fingertips. A private conversation between pen and paper. The writer, unaware of what she is writing. She does not seem to be the type to write so fluently. It is her unconscious who controls and unleashes the flow of words. She takes bong rips in between bouts of subliminal inspiration. She’s young and lives like it. But she’s also old and writes like it. Her young mind is still thriving in the sex and booze saturated life of youth. She uses writing as an attempt to unravel the inner complexities of her mind. 

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Obsessive thoughts, I cant stop the torrent once the floodgates are open. Angry, obsessive thoughts. Until I’m bursting with rage. I feel betrayl, jealousy, love.  It really is a different kind of pain inflicted when someone who you truely believed was good and trustworthy utilizes your weaknesses to tear you down. She uses your feelings, your secrets, your secret feelings, to injure you, hoping it will be mortal. Seemingly out of no where, she will use the people you care about, the people you like, the people you once loved, to crush you. It is the pain that follows complete shock. The slow ascent of gut-wrenching pain, steadily diffusing through your chest. It is the pain you feel, physically. It is the pain that send you back, past the months of recovery and therapy, to that one desperate state of being, cycling through all of the emotions with each intensity set on high. Panicky, swirling thoughts, clinging to physical pain like a life line to keep from going under. Ramblings coupled with rage that keep me up through the night. How can a person create such a state in another?

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

Dear Mr. Coroner,

Please don’t tell my mom

about my nipple ring.

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

uncomfortable secret

My eating disorder is a secret. A secret kept between three: myself, my therapist, and the local convenice clerk. Unlike the convenience clerk, my therapist has not seen my disorder in action. She has not witnessed my arms filled with bags of chips. She has not scanned through the countless chocolate bars (all of which King Size). She has probably never wondnered if I host icecream parties every weekend or if I’m the owner of sugar-addicted fiends. I can only describe to her the excitment I feel while browsing my options. I can only describe to her what the clerk sees. He welcomes me each time with a familiar smile. He wonders how a small girl can eat so much. He wonders if its just the munchies. He knows me, we greet eachother. I’m comfortable there. It is only until I am home and halfway through my pile that the shame settles in and the darkness settles once again. An unending cycle that yields absolutely nothing. A shameful, guilt-eliciting secret. A secret that makes me uncomfortable even to write about. 

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

inbetweener

I’ve been floating. Lost somewhere between billows of furor and tides of woe. Somewhere where the sky meets the ocean. Where their horizons embrace as if   ancient lovers reunited. But, focus on the center of the divide in the distance (where the ocean meets the sky) and see the unmistakable celestial band, highlighting where one body ends and the other begins, writhing with the motion of waves; a shift in space where water stops being and wind begins. Focus on the great divide that separates the breathe of nature from its blood. Suddenly they seem to melt, one bleeding into the other, leaking hues of orange sun into pools of icy blue. Two different expressions of life brought about by the same creative force. That place where the element designed to lift and bolster combines with the element designed to sink and immerse. Like opposite ends of a tight-rope, one end, saturated in fear and the other in exuberance. On one end there are laments of dread and on the other there are jubilant cheers. Somewhere in the middle, is the place. A place encompassing a profound sense of grandeur while also harboring a creeping suspicion of anticipated doom.

It is a place where I feel infinite but vulnerable; Inspired but unmoving; Stagnant in a pool of enthusiasm. At times I feel like I could conquer the world, do great things and achieve notoriety. Other times I feel it will be me destined to be crushed in the end. These cycles of confidence, dampened in fatigue, leave me in a state of disorientation, where I’m unsure of everything. Everything I ever learned or heard and everything I’ve seen and felt.   I’m unsure, even of my own existence. 

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

Drugs

All kinds

Blue pills

White pills

Crushed fine powders

Of all different sorts

Lush green florets

And small paper squares

Drugs

A route to alternative states of being

The shortcut to euphoria

A pathway towards death

Sometimes transcending time

Sometimes transcending space

Sometimes transcending both

Sometimes drifting a little too far

Towards the wicker welcome mat

At death’s door

Exhilarating while it lasts

Intoxicating and addictive

Drugs grant the opportunity

To experience life and death

In a single moment

Simultaneously

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

What makes you think...

It’s my body not yours. It’s a cliche but It’s the truth. It really is my body, not yours. What makes you think you can touch me. What makes you think I would want you to. What makes you think you can trick me. What makes you think you can force me. What makes you think that it’s ok. That its ok when someone says no that you keep going. What make you think its ok to use force on me. To hurt me. To continue even when I’m pleading with you to stop. What makes you think it’s right. Because I stopped fighting? Because I let you continue while still pleading, please? Please stop. Because I thought it was safer to stop fighting, let it happen, and run when I had the chance. It must have been God who made you sick. Who made you stop to open the car door and vomit from all the alcohol I could smell and taste. It was a divine intervention who left that door unlocked and gave me the courage to run. I left my underwear, no time, no need to grab it. I also left a piece of myself. No, I didn’t want to leave it. You took it but I had to run. It’s not right. And I have to apologize to myself for telling myself maybe it was. 

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

Deer-watching

There is no one in the world who could love me as much as my dad loves me. I am just starting to realize this now. He has done and would do everything for me,to keep me safe and help me develop as a person. As a daughter of a mentally ill mother I needed someone stable and unconditionally loving like him.  One of my most significant memories of my father I will never forget (although this memory was not nearly as profound for him as he barely remembers it) took place during my sixth year of life. Both my father and I are very intuned with nature and are both overcome with the sheer beauty of it. One evening I complained I had never seen a deer, a real life wild deer, in person before. I had only ever seen them on television or at the zoo. My dad told me that deer are usually out at night and if we go out early enough we might be able to catch a glimpse of one right before they head off to bed. He told me he often saw deer in the forest surrounding his workplace. We decided, then, that the next morning, before the sun even rose, we would wake up, pick up a coffee and some munchkins and go deer watching. I was so excited. Excited to see a real life deer. Excited to be having an adventure with my dad. But most importantly I was excited for life. I was excited to see the sun rise, see nature work at its quietest moments. To experience this all with someone I loved and someone who loved me. The next morning I was so tired I didn't even want to go anymore, but my dad made me get up. We drove the 25 minutes to his work, me half asleep in the passenger seat. It was almost four in the morning. We pulled in the parking lot and waited. Waited for an eternity it seemed, and just as I started to become restless he pointed them out. A couple of young deer emerging from the woods in the distance. I was so amazed. I was overcome with love. It was so beautiful to see something in its natural environment, a product of nature. A product of the same force that created me. It was so beautiful. I assume I went to school later that day but I can only assume because I’ve never had a more profound memory from this period of my life. It was the first time I was touched deeply by the beauty of things. Its an experience I’ll never forget.

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

I’m that kid

I’m the kid in your class that always smells like weed. I’m the kid in your class who shows up half an hour late on the first day. Im the kid with the ripped jeans and curly hair. I’m the kid who doesn't do the homework and wings presentations. I’m the kid your parents told you to stay away from. I’m the kid hungover at work and puking in the public restroom. I am that kid, but thats not all I am. 

[curseofconsciousness-blog]

Words from my 14 year old self

Since I can remember I have always kept notebooks and binders filled with my writings. My kindergarten self would write and illustrate stories on construction paper held together with tape or staples. Looking through one binder I found a passage I wrote when I was about 14 years old. What I wrote shows the contradictions you feel when faced with mental illness. Even before I had a diagnosis and a therapist, I had a drive to recover. No one wants to be miserable even when they feel completely hopeless. This was one of my more upbeat pieces and must have been written when I was in an elevated mood. Sometimes, though you're in a place so dark theres no way you can find the light on your own. Maybe this can help someone find some light in the dark. 

(circa 2009)

I feel crazy. I don’t even feel safe in my head anymore. I feel like I’m being suffocated by a mighty hand pushing down on me. I feel like any second I will wake up and this was all a dream and I am a completely different person. Although I sometimes wish this would happen, I also hope it never does. And even though I feel like my life is coming to a crashing end, I would be sad if the people in my life never existed. There are too many good people in my life to throw away. And although I feel like my life is crumbling to pieces by the forceful grip of stress, lost friendships, lost memories, and bad, crazy thoughts, I have to think that life goes on with or without me. And it is up to me whether I want to move on or not. I am griping to the past, not wanting to let go. But who knows, there might be better, happier memories for me in the future. I just need to take a deep breath and let go of all my worries because life is too short for hatred, jealously, anger, and sadness. I have to make good from bad. And start each day as who I want to be rather than who I think I am. I am the only one who can change myself. You have to enjoy the people you love rather than wait for them to leave you. You can’t cry about that one day when they will leave, you have to enjoy the time you have. My life feels like its falling apart and I feel crazy. But everyday is a new opportunity to change. My life feels like its in ruins and ashes, but from ashes and ruins you can build new temples. You can build a better life and learn from mistakes. You can build an empire from the ruins and find new ways to keep it strong and not let it fall again. 

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Radical Acceptance

My therapist asked me if I knew what Radical Acceptance was. It is, she explained, the act of acknowledging our utter inability to control some of the things that happen to us. I lack this skill. The skill to be able to accept our reality. My anxiety-fueled brain just cannot let go of the things it can't control. She explained that sometimes what stresses us happens inevitably and cannot possibly be controlled or changed. So why, she asked, should we waste time worrying and ruminating when nothing can be done. It is better to accept that we have no control than to constantly try to gain it. You just have to keep living.