You're in a dark place, aren't you?
I nodded.
He gazed at me knowingly, without sympathy, without shame. He wasn't going to try to fix me.
I was being seen, like I've never been seen before.
Is this mother pain?
Is this relationship pain?
Is this about your relationship to depression?
What's that?
An addiction to pain.
...
Yes. I am a pain addict.
Say more, says the therapist.
Well, says the patient, I am trapped in this cycle.
"This cycle...?"
It's an addiction, really, to intense feeling.
Do you want the cycle to end?
Yes, and no. If the cycle stops, I lose my humanity.
What does that mean?
I am cursed and blessed with this extraordinarily sensitive disposition.
--- The sensitivity allows me to feel all of human pain and joy.
--- I don't know, I don't know.
What don't you know?
I can't live without ---feeling.
It seems as if this causes you grief.
Of course -! I don't have a choice - I can't live with it, or without it.
You can't control your emotions -
Yes, yes, you can! You cut them out! All of which you don't want to feel.
You still have those emotions, whether or not you feel them.
Stop it, stop it! I am sabotaging my own life! I'm tired of the pain! And I can't bear to be away -
Stop.
I've woken up to this world to realize that I have become a realist at the price of my idealism. I've yet not come to terms, nor will my being will ever truly be one or the other in this lifespan. It's a challenging place to be in, this yearning for something fantastical and unreal, but it's that childlike me that I am anchored to, and I will not let go.
There's a certain time in the hour in traffic that I wish that I'm several hundred cars in front of where I'm stranded. I always imagine that I was able to move ahead through space like that. It makes sitting in standstill traffic way more interesting.
I don't need more limitations. That feeling of limitlessness is profound, special. That's when I'm creative, expansive, growing, flowing, moving. I love it when I'm limitless. Playing with shapes, words, forms - structures crumble in my hands and I am rewarded with the freedom to rebuild it anyway that I want with these same hands. These hands. These hands to write, these hands to conduct, these hands to touch and feel and want to hold - these hands do not let go.
Girl Scout cookies gives me a good amount of iron for breakfast. Samoas first thing in the morning, yum.
I want
I want
I want
I want someone to feel my skin and really feel it.
I want
I want
I want
I want someone to hold me and feel all my joy and being and darkness and tragedy and irony and sadness.
I want someone to spar with words - someone who loves to play the way that I play.
I want
I want
I want
I want someone to understand that I am all things, not one thing. And all these things are true.
I want someone to love my mind. More importantly -
I want someone to love my heart.
I want
I want
I want
I want someone to hold me.
I want someone to hold me really tightly, like I'm not going to be let go, at least, not easily.
I want someone strong enough to stay holding me.
I want someone strong enough to let me unleash my true self, the part that are all things.
I want
I want
I want
I want
I want you to see me again.
21 February 2011
12 February 2011
Cry Baby
In my soul
there verged
the cry of an animal
that has been waiting
to be released.
I found myself wanting to cry yesterday morning. I was at work, placing pastries carefully onto wax sheets, making sure that they were presented in a way that satisfied my visual palette. One of my co-workers laughed at my desire for perfection, and the other smiled on the other side of the bar. We had gotten closer; I had finally felt a sense of belonging in our struggles and laughter, together for hours in this place where we're free to create.
But that wasn't the reason I wanted to cry.
We were listening to something beautiful, I can't remember what. Jerome knew how to play my iPod better than I can.
The thought that crossed my mind was, "I have no reason to be unhappy: I have a sense of belonging, people who love and care for me, and I am committed to this sense of stability.
"Listen to your pain. Don't run away from conflict. Love when you want to, and learn to receive love."
And suddenly I wanted to cry.
It felt like pain, but more like a pain standing on firmer ground.
I had been suffering. And I was too ashamed to show much of it.
And as I was placing pastries on sheets, I stifled that cry, knowing very well that it is the release that I've been waiting for - my body needs this release.
It was on the surface for most of the day. I sat down with my increasingly close friend at work, and told him my desire to cry. He understood, but didn't know how to give me the space that I wanted.
I started drinking early - I still felt the cry.
I stumbled into many people, and I felt vulnerable - it's right there!
In the evening, I was with friends who supposedly knew how to give space, but I had never felt safe with them.
I don't feel safe.
I don't have a safe place to cry.
I don't have a home that is my own.
I don't have my own space.
I don't have that sacred loneliness.
And I needed to cry.
I still do.
there verged
the cry of an animal
that has been waiting
to be released.
I found myself wanting to cry yesterday morning. I was at work, placing pastries carefully onto wax sheets, making sure that they were presented in a way that satisfied my visual palette. One of my co-workers laughed at my desire for perfection, and the other smiled on the other side of the bar. We had gotten closer; I had finally felt a sense of belonging in our struggles and laughter, together for hours in this place where we're free to create.
But that wasn't the reason I wanted to cry.
We were listening to something beautiful, I can't remember what. Jerome knew how to play my iPod better than I can.
The thought that crossed my mind was, "I have no reason to be unhappy: I have a sense of belonging, people who love and care for me, and I am committed to this sense of stability.
"Listen to your pain. Don't run away from conflict. Love when you want to, and learn to receive love."
And suddenly I wanted to cry.
It felt like pain, but more like a pain standing on firmer ground.
I had been suffering. And I was too ashamed to show much of it.
And as I was placing pastries on sheets, I stifled that cry, knowing very well that it is the release that I've been waiting for - my body needs this release.
It was on the surface for most of the day. I sat down with my increasingly close friend at work, and told him my desire to cry. He understood, but didn't know how to give me the space that I wanted.
I started drinking early - I still felt the cry.
I stumbled into many people, and I felt vulnerable - it's right there!
In the evening, I was with friends who supposedly knew how to give space, but I had never felt safe with them.
I don't feel safe.
I don't have a safe place to cry.
I don't have a home that is my own.
I don't have my own space.
I don't have that sacred loneliness.
And I needed to cry.
I still do.
07 February 2011
06 February 2011
This Human Body
She told me that I was unclean - my body was unclean - my mind, my soul, my very being and the things I touched were unclean.
On days when the only things I kiss and hold were my bedsheets, and the piles of books that pass through my hands usually only deposited in my brain, she, upon looking on my cathartic body and sullen face, would instruct me on my body - that it was a rotting corpse, forever smelling, decaying, foul and uncouth. The lesson was to force me to bathe, to move, because, she said, it seems to be the only way to keep my shell of a corpse alive. I think she meant for me to refocus my energy on matters that are outside of me, especially that of my outward appearance, because it required discipline and an attention on matters that weren't so deep or internal.
But now I walk feeling like the very air touching me changes the textures and purity of my complexion. The ground I touch saturates into my pores and mingles in my blood, tainting it into a vile serum. I breathe toxins, cough out death. I have become the very decay that I have internally feared, and she had given me the notion of dying while living.
The duality in itself is beautiful,
but as I am emBodying it, one who is transitioning into death only wants what's coming.
On days when the only things I kiss and hold were my bedsheets, and the piles of books that pass through my hands usually only deposited in my brain, she, upon looking on my cathartic body and sullen face, would instruct me on my body - that it was a rotting corpse, forever smelling, decaying, foul and uncouth. The lesson was to force me to bathe, to move, because, she said, it seems to be the only way to keep my shell of a corpse alive. I think she meant for me to refocus my energy on matters that are outside of me, especially that of my outward appearance, because it required discipline and an attention on matters that weren't so deep or internal.
But now I walk feeling like the very air touching me changes the textures and purity of my complexion. The ground I touch saturates into my pores and mingles in my blood, tainting it into a vile serum. I breathe toxins, cough out death. I have become the very decay that I have internally feared, and she had given me the notion of dying while living.
The duality in itself is beautiful,
but as I am emBodying it, one who is transitioning into death only wants what's coming.
03 February 2011
Write.
Write.
Get it off me.
This.
This pain.
I'm ashamed
around my inability
to be fiscally responsible.
I'm ashamed
that I let my life drop
and smash into pieces
simply because I didn't feel accountable.
So I lose jobs,
relationships,
myself, my privileges, my freedom to do things -
and it's a black cycle.
I don't feel safe, I am scared.
Write.
Get it off me.
This.
This pain.
I'm ashamed
around my inability
to be fiscally responsible.
I'm ashamed
that I let my life drop
and smash into pieces
simply because I didn't feel accountable.
So I lose jobs,
relationships,
myself, my privileges, my freedom to do things -
and it's a black cycle.
I don't feel safe, I am scared.
02 February 2011
Shits and Giggles
In spite
the last day of the Year of the Tiger
I got a boot on my car
and fines amounting to $1082 to pay.
I mean -
if I want my car back
within 72 hours
before it gets fucking towed.
And, as the pecan on my sweet potato pie,
I've lost my ability to feel.
the last day of the Year of the Tiger
I got a boot on my car
and fines amounting to $1082 to pay.
I mean -
if I want my car back
within 72 hours
before it gets fucking towed.
And, as the pecan on my sweet potato pie,
I've lost my ability to feel.
Realms of Sleep and Longing
I write sipping tea ---
"I think you have to accept where you are," she addresses my ongoing discontent with my weight.
Some echoes in my head agreed, but a pain invaded my mid-back, causing me to shift uncomfortably.
Am I limited by my striving, wanting, longing -?
It feels that way.
Pretty Jane was in my dream, and I think it's because Francis often shows a sad sweet vulnerability, especially around her. It is in his vulnerability that I trust; and when he shamed me for my promiscuity, as his language implies, I saw his truth in seeking sweet Jane.
He was in my dreams, the one that has invaded the realms of longing and feeling and light for years. I think my exhausted body wanted to exhaust my mind, and he exercised me with a serious selfish conviction: that he was there, but not present with me; there some times, most often not, but the times that he were, I thought, outweighed the times that he isn't - I felt the old familiar emotions of being slighted, running the circling pattern of leaving myself exposed to his harsh wind for anything that he wanted, needed - forgetting me, my wants and needs. Then he slowly turned to my most recent lover, and my heart beats doubly, because I wanted things to be different, I wanted someone who could meet me in my own pain and bouts of darkness, who saw my want and love of poetry and its sharing, my chasing after sunsets and living for the sun rising, my tears, my love for physical affection, all sorts of affection, complete love and caring.
Oh my God.
I want someone to care for me.
I deeply want to be taken care of.
I've been hearing women say that all year...
And had accepted their truths, not realizing
that it is also mine.
"I think you have to accept where you are," she addresses my ongoing discontent with my weight.
Some echoes in my head agreed, but a pain invaded my mid-back, causing me to shift uncomfortably.
Am I limited by my striving, wanting, longing -?
It feels that way.
Pretty Jane was in my dream, and I think it's because Francis often shows a sad sweet vulnerability, especially around her. It is in his vulnerability that I trust; and when he shamed me for my promiscuity, as his language implies, I saw his truth in seeking sweet Jane.
He was in my dreams, the one that has invaded the realms of longing and feeling and light for years. I think my exhausted body wanted to exhaust my mind, and he exercised me with a serious selfish conviction: that he was there, but not present with me; there some times, most often not, but the times that he were, I thought, outweighed the times that he isn't - I felt the old familiar emotions of being slighted, running the circling pattern of leaving myself exposed to his harsh wind for anything that he wanted, needed - forgetting me, my wants and needs. Then he slowly turned to my most recent lover, and my heart beats doubly, because I wanted things to be different, I wanted someone who could meet me in my own pain and bouts of darkness, who saw my want and love of poetry and its sharing, my chasing after sunsets and living for the sun rising, my tears, my love for physical affection, all sorts of affection, complete love and caring.
Oh my God.
I want someone to care for me.
I deeply want to be taken care of.
I've been hearing women say that all year...
And had accepted their truths, not realizing
that it is also mine.
Old Friends Revisit
Bitter discontent without space for words for thoughts with sense the taste within limits sad limits the awareness of such is the taste of mortality of which I deny but again these are just words and I'm avoiding what is real - what is now - present - here
It is humiliating.
It. My emotions. My moods, my extremes, my stories, the grandeur, the darkness, the seeming infinite space of it all, the humiliation of my humanity coming in dosages of atomic energy.
I felt it most when all of this pain was rising up to my cheeks and emitting straight out of my body - the kind that becomes funneled into a sharp human weapon, and my upper body was the blade. I was restrained, and that came to a tip. I chose the restraint, but it didn't feel like choosing at the moment. I had the expectation of being shamed for my behavior before I even showed it. I countered truthful behavior, even if it came in a state of high frenzy and emotional bottle rockets, I countered it with "road apples" as Langston Hughes had called it. They came as weights - because I needed a discipline to ground me as I visited the Pacific in the middle of Karim's room. I sat in the sand for hours as they communicated to each other, but I could only hear tidbits over the sound of the waves and the wind and the crashes of my mind shuttering on and off to the reality before me. I couldn't sit still, and even as I type now, over 24 hours later, my fingers tremble in such a way that indicates to me that I haven't stopped running in my mind, even in darkness, even in the white rooms that I'm starting to see clearer now.
I am humiliated that I am in turmoil. I am humiliated that I show my emotions. I am humiliated that I have no sense of control, and that is now publicly evident. This has happened before, when I was in college. I'd have entire days during which I was passing off in some sort of spastic daze, boisterous, crude, loud, and at the time, I felt like I was jovial, charming, and as delightfully extroverted as ever before; fortunately in the theatre department, eccentricity in any capacity in individuals is the norm, and after a night of building self-shame and exaggerated observations from my peers (all exacerbating this mounting embarrassment), I come back to our long school hallways unseen as other than myself from before.
But not in this group of friends. When they put their attention on me, I was surprised that they haven't noticed the trembling and the speediness of my speech - but then they did, but the noticing was a reaction of questioning: why are you acting this way (I don't believe you)?
Now the quality of humiliation is greatly tinted with an attack on my emotions, which is invariably, always my truth, as my mood in any given moment is always the mood that I find myself in, and whether or not I hide it, I could not hide the mania that was happening in the moment of attention being put on me this night that I was on sandy beaches of Karim's carpet. These were truthseekers, this particular group of friends, but the desire for truth outweighed the desire to accept and be loving - and at any point, I was in the fragile stage of letting out some of the most dangerous, volatile, and absolutely most vulnerable parts of myself. I think I was riding on the precarious edge with this group, because a large part of me wanted to believe that they would rise to meet me - to accept that I was deeply psychotic, and that they still loved me.
I couldn't express that.
Nowhere in my wildest dreams could I have felt and expressed that in the moment.
It was too much to ask.
And already too much to have given them enough to see this part of me.
The part of me that wanted to be lewd and mean and violent to the closest of them. The part that wanted to cry and let out the saddest truths about me. The part that just lets me act out my psychosis and paranoias and fears and delusions and everyone will still be okay, not afeared, and certainly not going to tell me that I'm going to be okay, and that everything I'm experiencing will go away. I wanted them to withstand the maelstrom that is me and not walk away or fix me.
I want that so much now, I'm realizing. That I cannot control my moods, and don't wish to have to control them - but be accepted despite where I am, and loved by those I call friends and lovers.
But I'm too afraid to let them know.
They don't know.
They don't fucking know.
So they question. And this questioning was severe to the fragility of my frightened and paranoid being - that even as they turn their gaze on me, my thoughts were five minutes into a conversation that may or may not happen, that everything they said had slowed down so immensely, that I predicted every next word as they spoke, and I was never, at any moment, present enough to assess the situation enough to calm the irritability and shaken anxiety down. Not once.
In the day since, I've tried to expel my energy as much as I can. I visited my family, driving up and down the chilly San Francisco peninsula. I worked long hours, stayed as long as I could, talked to as many of my friends and had as many conversations that I could take ahold of, ran when I could, and kept my attention rapt to my busmates to and from work. I had bought a wireless router before the meeting of ocean and friends, and I had set it up for Loomis and I. I was getting annoyed that I couldn't use the internet, and wanted us to at least each have our respective computers. I haven't yet expressed the annoyance, but at the same time, the only thing I'm doing with my computer privileges is write nonsense to prevent my hands from hitting the walls and my mind from exploding. We near the middle of the night and in less than four hours, I should be rising from bed to start my day. BUT MY MIND WILL NOT STOP.
I AM TOO SELF CONSCIOUS OF THIS DISEASE THAT THEY HAVE NAMED IN MY BRAIN BUT I WILL NOT BELIEVE IT I WILL FIND EVERY MOMENT'S CAUSE FOR MY TRIGGERS BUT I WILL NOT USE THIS ILLNESS AS A CRUTCH.
I am scared. I am delighted. During my evening drive to Los Gatos, I contemplated driving off the 280 into the beautiful reservoir that dominates the western bay area. I wanted my body to rise up from the water to seep into the thick fog that sometimes like to trickle over the mountain range, back up and over heavy like fingers, hands, back into the Pacific. I thought it poetic, that thoughts of suicide were always coupled with my romanticizing of death. When in practice in the past, however, I would chose the most painful and ugly methods in order to die.
Then I'd find myself in minutes or hours of grace. That everything was a complete joy, and I found myself pouring into dialogue about music, relationships, and something artistic, and knowledgable, and always profound, at least to me.
Everything was fleeting. None of it was of my choosing.
Throughout the day, my hands were poised over several contacts on my phone that I wanted to express, "I need help. For the love of God, please restrain me, because I no longer have that power." Then the moments of tensing would pass, and as I collected my thoughts and logic again, so did the will to be self sufficient and the will to live.
It is with great relief as I'm writing this, that my thoughts have slowed down tremendously. I requested that Elizabeth played an episode of the Tudors to distract at least a fraction of my brain, and the moment she relinquished my computer, I knew that in putting words to my experience, that I'd find less confusion in at least having some manifested copy of my world that wasn't locked in the safe of my mind.
I'm tense living with someone. Elizabeth and I share a bed. I'm usually inclined to let my panic play out in the night, when everyone is asleep, and I'm able to wreak my sheets and pillows into smithereens. I can't do that with a bedmate, lest of all with another person in any general vicinity.
This is the best I can do for a release. Adieu.
I must write more often.
Right now my mind is occupied with something else.
It is humiliating.
It. My emotions. My moods, my extremes, my stories, the grandeur, the darkness, the seeming infinite space of it all, the humiliation of my humanity coming in dosages of atomic energy.
I felt it most when all of this pain was rising up to my cheeks and emitting straight out of my body - the kind that becomes funneled into a sharp human weapon, and my upper body was the blade. I was restrained, and that came to a tip. I chose the restraint, but it didn't feel like choosing at the moment. I had the expectation of being shamed for my behavior before I even showed it. I countered truthful behavior, even if it came in a state of high frenzy and emotional bottle rockets, I countered it with "road apples" as Langston Hughes had called it. They came as weights - because I needed a discipline to ground me as I visited the Pacific in the middle of Karim's room. I sat in the sand for hours as they communicated to each other, but I could only hear tidbits over the sound of the waves and the wind and the crashes of my mind shuttering on and off to the reality before me. I couldn't sit still, and even as I type now, over 24 hours later, my fingers tremble in such a way that indicates to me that I haven't stopped running in my mind, even in darkness, even in the white rooms that I'm starting to see clearer now.
I am humiliated that I am in turmoil. I am humiliated that I show my emotions. I am humiliated that I have no sense of control, and that is now publicly evident. This has happened before, when I was in college. I'd have entire days during which I was passing off in some sort of spastic daze, boisterous, crude, loud, and at the time, I felt like I was jovial, charming, and as delightfully extroverted as ever before; fortunately in the theatre department, eccentricity in any capacity in individuals is the norm, and after a night of building self-shame and exaggerated observations from my peers (all exacerbating this mounting embarrassment), I come back to our long school hallways unseen as other than myself from before.
But not in this group of friends. When they put their attention on me, I was surprised that they haven't noticed the trembling and the speediness of my speech - but then they did, but the noticing was a reaction of questioning: why are you acting this way (I don't believe you)?
Now the quality of humiliation is greatly tinted with an attack on my emotions, which is invariably, always my truth, as my mood in any given moment is always the mood that I find myself in, and whether or not I hide it, I could not hide the mania that was happening in the moment of attention being put on me this night that I was on sandy beaches of Karim's carpet. These were truthseekers, this particular group of friends, but the desire for truth outweighed the desire to accept and be loving - and at any point, I was in the fragile stage of letting out some of the most dangerous, volatile, and absolutely most vulnerable parts of myself. I think I was riding on the precarious edge with this group, because a large part of me wanted to believe that they would rise to meet me - to accept that I was deeply psychotic, and that they still loved me.
I couldn't express that.
Nowhere in my wildest dreams could I have felt and expressed that in the moment.
It was too much to ask.
And already too much to have given them enough to see this part of me.
The part of me that wanted to be lewd and mean and violent to the closest of them. The part that wanted to cry and let out the saddest truths about me. The part that just lets me act out my psychosis and paranoias and fears and delusions and everyone will still be okay, not afeared, and certainly not going to tell me that I'm going to be okay, and that everything I'm experiencing will go away. I wanted them to withstand the maelstrom that is me and not walk away or fix me.
I want that so much now, I'm realizing. That I cannot control my moods, and don't wish to have to control them - but be accepted despite where I am, and loved by those I call friends and lovers.
But I'm too afraid to let them know.
They don't know.
They don't fucking know.
So they question. And this questioning was severe to the fragility of my frightened and paranoid being - that even as they turn their gaze on me, my thoughts were five minutes into a conversation that may or may not happen, that everything they said had slowed down so immensely, that I predicted every next word as they spoke, and I was never, at any moment, present enough to assess the situation enough to calm the irritability and shaken anxiety down. Not once.
In the day since, I've tried to expel my energy as much as I can. I visited my family, driving up and down the chilly San Francisco peninsula. I worked long hours, stayed as long as I could, talked to as many of my friends and had as many conversations that I could take ahold of, ran when I could, and kept my attention rapt to my busmates to and from work. I had bought a wireless router before the meeting of ocean and friends, and I had set it up for Loomis and I. I was getting annoyed that I couldn't use the internet, and wanted us to at least each have our respective computers. I haven't yet expressed the annoyance, but at the same time, the only thing I'm doing with my computer privileges is write nonsense to prevent my hands from hitting the walls and my mind from exploding. We near the middle of the night and in less than four hours, I should be rising from bed to start my day. BUT MY MIND WILL NOT STOP.
I AM TOO SELF CONSCIOUS OF THIS DISEASE THAT THEY HAVE NAMED IN MY BRAIN BUT I WILL NOT BELIEVE IT I WILL FIND EVERY MOMENT'S CAUSE FOR MY TRIGGERS BUT I WILL NOT USE THIS ILLNESS AS A CRUTCH.
I am scared. I am delighted. During my evening drive to Los Gatos, I contemplated driving off the 280 into the beautiful reservoir that dominates the western bay area. I wanted my body to rise up from the water to seep into the thick fog that sometimes like to trickle over the mountain range, back up and over heavy like fingers, hands, back into the Pacific. I thought it poetic, that thoughts of suicide were always coupled with my romanticizing of death. When in practice in the past, however, I would chose the most painful and ugly methods in order to die.
Then I'd find myself in minutes or hours of grace. That everything was a complete joy, and I found myself pouring into dialogue about music, relationships, and something artistic, and knowledgable, and always profound, at least to me.
Everything was fleeting. None of it was of my choosing.
Throughout the day, my hands were poised over several contacts on my phone that I wanted to express, "I need help. For the love of God, please restrain me, because I no longer have that power." Then the moments of tensing would pass, and as I collected my thoughts and logic again, so did the will to be self sufficient and the will to live.
It is with great relief as I'm writing this, that my thoughts have slowed down tremendously. I requested that Elizabeth played an episode of the Tudors to distract at least a fraction of my brain, and the moment she relinquished my computer, I knew that in putting words to my experience, that I'd find less confusion in at least having some manifested copy of my world that wasn't locked in the safe of my mind.
I'm tense living with someone. Elizabeth and I share a bed. I'm usually inclined to let my panic play out in the night, when everyone is asleep, and I'm able to wreak my sheets and pillows into smithereens. I can't do that with a bedmate, lest of all with another person in any general vicinity.
This is the best I can do for a release. Adieu.
I must write more often.
Right now my mind is occupied with something else.
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