Words From the Wise

We all write songs about life, we just sing 'em different.
- Listener

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Envy

God I love you
I know that I always have
From before this version on my soul drew her first breath
I have loved you
It is as if you are a sold and tangible part of me
As if I am unable to feel whole without you

No one can help me
I'm drowning in your truth
In my truth this time 
Because I can never let you know

It is a painful place to be
Comstantly feeling like I will never be yours
Thinking I can never
Say to you what is in my heart, my mind
My soul, my sex
I can never truly let you in
Not all the way

Because then I will lose you

And I can't lose you

It would be like tearing my skin off my body and 
My pound of flesh given

I tearing in my brain, a split, schism 
Seeing you love her, hearing the devotion you have
Knowing there is nothing I could ever do to change that
Knowing how happy I am for you

Because I am genuinely so
Because even though I want you all to myself
Wrapped up in me

There is no rock or hard place
There is no silver lining
This. Just. Is. 

I love you. 
I love you. 
I love you. 
I love you..

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Damè

I whisper your name to break the silence
I'm resigned to you now
Imagination gives me what I want
It makes you tower above me, my protection

I must remind myself to breathe when I'm around you
I must force the air back out of my lungs
For in that exchange I am home

My hand slides into yours effortlessly 
I stand and feel the warmth of your hand
on the small of my back, guiding me, leading me

My breath catches as you slide your arm around me and pull me into you
Pressing my body into yours
My heart pounds in my ears like a storm
Waves crash in my belly
You are my shore

It is terrifying to touch you
sadness, longing, guilt
heat
desire
I am glowing just being near you

Needing to drown in you
Please just brush my lips with your finger
Please just touch my neck
Please, just, please

Is it real, this thing?
I could make you happy,
I could make you love me,
I could disappear completely. 
     - "Do You Sleep" Mary Lambert
 

Friday, July 22, 2016

Estoy celoso


 Estoy celoso , muy celoso , pero no tienen derecho a ser.
Quiero ser ella.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Choice

This choice was anything but a choice
I did not move a single step
Not to the left or right
I did not move forward toward you
I was forced
I was pulled
I could not have stayed anywhere other than near you

Lifesaving spiderwebs of heat enter into every pore
The power you hold is magic
The way you stay always foggy in the back of my thoughts
I can not shake you because the world would swallow me if I did
You are mine
You hold so much of me without ever knowing
If you know the power you have, you never abuse it
Because my truth is in this pull
I can not stay anywhere other than near you

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Random thoughts on a single word

I'm now wondering how it is that language can have such a hold on us.  I mean I'm no stranger to its power I was an English major so language and its intricacies are not at all lost on me, but even I can be amazed by the power of it.  A single word, a small phrase, hell even just the thought of what was said can change my mood. But I think what amazes me even more is how things fit together so perfectly. 
This is my year of Hamilton the musical, and I am not alone, 16 Tony noms is proof of that.  I didn't know much of anything about him or our nation's history at that time.  Thanks to my first love, music, I have learned so much and am learning more because I actually want to.  Well this does correlate to my thoughts, remember readers stream of consciousness writing from an INFJ can be really involved.  #Hamilton has so many beautiful songs and relationships as well as the history. But from the moment I listened to the cast album, which was months ago and I'm still listening every day, I felt so connected to Angelica & Hamilton's relationship. How much you can tell they loved each other, truly loved each other, and yet they kept their relationship familial.  He made mistakes but he loved his wife Eliza, and Angelica loved her sister so that she gave up her chance with Hamilton. Plus, as addressed in the music Angelica knows in that society she is responsible for furthering her family's name and status. So they are never together romantically even though they are so compatible and she loves him. 

It is so easy for me to understand this,and yet even when I first fell in love with #HamiltonTheMusical there was really no reason I should understand.  Then understanding became experience, and it was as if my life was (once again) orchestrated to prepare me for experience. 

It was listening to "Take a Break" when I had my I-will-love-this-show-forever moment. I've only had a few of these even though I do love theater, but previously only Rent & Wicked gave me the same feeling. It was all about a comma, punctuation in a letter, in a phrase, but the power that one tiny thing  holds is so beautifully expressed by Angelica in the song that it truly pulled at my heart. The breath taken, the desperate and hopeful pause in her voice, the love expressed tore at my soul. 

And then it happened, just now in my life it happened and I am so grateful I don't even know how to truly express it.  Like #Hamilton my story isn't even a conversation, a modern letter, a text because that is how I talk to you. Damn it, you are so precious to me and I can never really let you know because I don't even know how to say it. Maybe one day I'll figure it out but I don't know how. I don't even know if there is a way to explain to someone that you love him, you know your life is better with him in it, you know your life just isn't right without him, and yet hey don't be threatened because I also love and respect my husband. I love you, and I need you, but I don't want to scare you away.  I don't want to alienate your wife because I actually think she must be fantastic- I mean, you chose her after all. 

I have daydreams all the time of getting to spend time with you, in person, just us, the 4 of us, the kids and all of us, so many different configurations and every single one makes me smile. These thoughts make me wish, and hope, and pray, that I can figure out how to make it happen some day. So now here I am stuck trying to figure out if i will ever be able to make these things happen. I pray they do, daily I pray they do.  And now I know why, you are #Hamilton to my Angelica, and I am grateful for that in my soul.

My dearest, Angelica / No worries love

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Shattered

How could I have let this happen one again
I think, I think through things clearly
I believe that I am taking the steps in the direction of the path I'm craving

And here I am again, 
It's that time again where I need to get through one minute at a time
I don't want to take a deep breath because I know what will happen
The sadness will move, and rise, and grow
I won't be able to stop the tears from coming
yet
again

It's hard to look into the mirror and see what I see
see all the mistakes
see all the decisions that lead me astray

But this is harder
I can't see anything
I can't even tell if you will ever be there again
And even though I know the impossibility of you understanding this
I know of how perfectly you understand me

I'm not sure yet how to get ahead of this pain
I don't know if it's possible - this is a race I have never been able to win

Missing you should have been my second nature, not missing you at all should have been easy

But it didn't work that way
There is a part of what I can only believe is my soul that needs you
A part of me that feels completely shattered
I don't even really know how this happened
Happy was not something I expect
Attachment was never going to happen
except it fucking did

And there is nothing I can see to help get me out
or to get you back


Friday, May 6, 2016

May 6th thoughts...

I know I'm not the only person who feels like they are just so out of place in the "normal" world around them.  My biggest fear right now is that I have ruined a friendship that was special to me.  The thing is this whole INFJ mindset is supposed to be super rare or whatever, but I'm going to say that "super rare" does not mean good or easy to understand.  I know I screwed something up, or at least I feel like I did because everything was fine and now it's not.  It's a dark, hurt, the size of a really annoying pebble in my gut.  I feel it right where you would shove a fist if I were choking to force out the offensive thing....

That seems like an irony I don't deserve....



Monday, May 2, 2016

Haze

It is wet and soggy
damp and grey
This sky is docile
stagnant
frozen

Droplets cover my vision
everything is hazy
everything is stopped

I beat my fists against the air
I scream into the silence
just to hear if your heart is beating
Beating out a rhythm for me

I want to grab this peace you give me
I want to grab it and tear it apart
Tear it down to that shiny off white and bloody bone

I can't keep listening to it
I can not keep feeling it
I must let it go before 

I must let it go
even though it is precious to me
even when I know I will lose a part of myself
even when I can already feel the loss

I will throw my head back and scream until all of this horrible happiness is gone from me
I will breathe in what I do not know to save what I do

But I refuse to forget, to give in, to cower
I refuse to give away all of my happiness no matter how wrong
I will never be able to let you go even if I never again speak your name
I will feel your breath on my lips

I will find myself in the dark and I will feel you there
I will allow the idea of you to rise up in me
I will love


Friday, April 29, 2016

Surface

What happens when I look beneath the face?
What will be seen once the skin has been peeled back and thrown away?
What will become of what stays above and what stays below?

She has stood confident and tall all she can
Confidence is fake and tall is point of view
Fear is flickering right next to her heart
She begins to transform back into what she is

Leave the torn pieces behind because you won't need them
Shove your way into the undergrowth and breathe in
Savor it
Linger in the confinement
Let out all your power
Let go of all your fear

It is dark
It is wet
It is waiting for your hatred
Give yourself
Only yourself
And you will find peace

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Beast

There is a consistent drumming in my head
Loud, clanging, steady
It matches my every heartbeat
Before I even know it has happened again
it claims me
Beating in tandem I am not at all confused
I am not hypnotized 
I am aware to the point of clarity

Inside I am changing,
I'm moving away from the girl I have so 
carefully crafted
The years of learning what is acceptable to present
My surface is splitting as the fiery core of who I am
rises up and claims what is hers

I would let you
I would kneel for you in complete trust
The drumming of my heart only gains strength 
with the thought of you spinning me
Pinning me against the wall and holding me there
I want to be paralyzed and have every choice taken away

I want all you have to give and even what you think I can't take
I want you to try to break me 
because I know you never will
Bound by you, to you, for you
You know what it takes to release me
Help me so I am not destroyed
Please take away my choices and let me serve you
I will be lost without you taking
the snarling black and stopping it from
crawling and giving buoyancy to more of 
my usual thoughts
Fuck me, I need you to let me taste you



Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Hourglass

Inside the hourglass

Time passes every day
sometimes it sprints by me so fast I can't even remember what I have forgotten
I'm slipping
If I had no place to belong would I still be moving forward

Even when I'm trying to suffocate my soul
I try to rip apart all that is good, to pummel my grace and force it to abandon me

I have a place to belong and my grace can not be ripped away from me no matter how hard I pull and yank and thrash and batter

It will not let go

I want to give into the soft and smokey darkness within me
I want to revel in all that I could be
To be able to taste all the things that are crawling just under my skin

I slice through my veins and try to force it out
try to evict the last shreds of my conscience 
Please just let
me
go

I open up and let the blood flow
I do not call out for help
I want this, I want to sink
Please just let me go

But when I look down the blood spilled is not my own
He has taken all of it
The beating, the sadness, the depths of everything I yearn for
He has torn open his very heart to give me mine

He reaches out to me and gives me back that last breath with just enough time left for me to inhale the sun

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

March 30th Thoughts


I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person who feels this darkness working it's way up inside.  I remember soon after that I am not alone.  Everyone has their darkness to fight, whatever that may be for you I hope it's a battle you win someday.

It's funny because I find there are many times when I want her to come forward.  This black and twisty thing inside of me.  I think of her as....well....a her, so that's how I'll refer to her here too.

She's always there, dark, and just staring at me, waiting for her moment to pounce.  And when she gets a hold of me, oh the simple joy and pure adrenaline I feel.  It's a challenging thing living with mania because the mania itself is delicious.  She comes in and starts tearing down walls.  She uses a sledge hammer to destroy everything I've struggled to build because she knows I have absolutely no use for it at all.  She knows that it's all just holding me back from what I really want.  The things I really desire.  Those thoughts that I do everything in my power to keep hidden, caged, quiet.  She comes in and before I even realize what she has done, she has destroyed my inhibitions.  My mind opens in a way that only those of us with the same problem can understand.  But I'll do my best to explain it to those who don't have to fight the beast.

For me the mania comes in the form of creativity, and I LOVE IT.  Even though I'm medicated now and my mania states are much, much, more subdued; I love when it happens.  I can create poetry, paintings, sketches, drawings, it seems like a never ending font of creation.  Every fiber I am made up of wants to take the things in my life that are causing me any sort of pain and use them to create something new.

Sounds great right?  Sounds like fun?  Sounds exciting?
Oh she is, she is, she is!  Until...

Until the spark starts to burn so hot and so fast that I can no longer control it.  She has turned from a spark to a blaze, and I am what will feed her.  This is when I start to lose control and she weasels her dark and twisty way into me.  Thoughts that threaten my marriage come into my mind.  Thoughts that make me question my Lord.  Thoughts that make me doubt everything I've worked for as a human child of God.  I feel guilty about things I want, things I'm thinking about.  Actions I feel I wish I could take....
Actions I'm terrified I would take if offered.

She holds me down and starts to wrap me up in her sick lullaby of ego and promise.

This is where the story changes for me.  Thankfully this time, and the last 326, and hopefully the infinite number to come, the story changes.

My Father speaks to me.  He holds my heart in His hands, my soul is only His to keep.  He loves me still.  He loved me then.  He will love me until the end of time.  That grace I have been given for not a single reason sustains me.  I can make it through the dark times.  Sometimes I may even make it through unscathed.  But even if I don't He is still there, He still loves me.

There are no checks and balances to Him.  One sin, 100 sins, heck even thousands of sins every day will never stop His love.

And no, just like I will always have to take my meds, like it or not; knowing this does not change the fact I need to follow the Lord's example in Jesus.  I need to love my fellow man, and that includes me.  I need to remember that compassion needs to be paramount in my life.  None of this means that I should just keep sinning.  No, it is not a "free pass" as it were.  I should try to do better every single day because He loves me.  If I love the Lord then I should want to do what He asks of me.  But even so when I do fail He will still be there every time with the same infinite love, compassion, grace.

Friday, March 25, 2016

Supernova

There is a universe inside her
An entire universe swirling, and gliding, and growing inside her
She holds the key to everything 

I can lose myself in her
There are no sharp angles, no corners,
nothing hard just swells of soft skin that rise up to me

I could take forever and just trace all her lines with fingertips that are dying to learn her
I have hands that fit to her hips with perfection
She has lips that mold into song

Thursday, March 17, 2016

The Girl

Here she is
I watch her move across the tile
I see how beauty and grace is growing in her
I see how she is blooming right before our eyes
This girl is beauty of the most perfect kind

This seed of a woman is already fierce
She is growing and learning faster than I ever
believed possible
Her footing grows more confident every day

She has fear
She has pain
She has sadness and hurt

But this girl stands back up
She stands back up
She    stands    back    up 
and demands to be seen over and over again

She is all scraped knees and bruised elbows
She is painted in a myriad of colors
sunshine yellow, mossy greens, chalk dust blues and reds
Her laughter creates perfect sparkles in my vision

She is just beginning and yet I can see what is growing inside her
I can see the strength she has yet to unleash
I can feel the love she will one day give
I can hear the song her spirit will one day sing
And I just pray for the faith to help her see it all through

For one day this girl will let go of my hand
She will step into the light
She will walk away from me no longer with grace growing in her
She will be fully opened to the world
Her lines will be soft and full of power

This girl will forge a path that I can only begin to fathom
This girl will show me what it means to be a woman

One day I will have to force her protector to let her go
One day I will have to remind her he never can

And yet she will still move forward and away
I will watch as the knobby knees and messy hair
turn into beautiful long legs and a crown of beauty upon her
I will never be able to hold back the joyful tears
As she rises toward the sky

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Harden

People say I never get angry
I'm not all hearts and flowers
But a rose-colored view of life
That I will lay claim to. 

But don't be fooled by that attitude
Don't assume it's because I'm naive 
I have scraped my way toward rosy
By breaking myself into shards along the way

It is more my seeing again and again 
What the darkness inside me is
More than fully capable of
Where those leathery wings want me to go
What she whispers in my heart
How wonderfully she twists me

So I choose rose
I chose to give control of myself over to another
I choose to listen to a voice inside
That is tiny and scared
Tiny and hidden almost completely 
Tiny and fierce

My hearts
My flowers
My colors full of rose
These things I chose 

If I don't you would only see  what is dark
You would only hear the lies she can tell
You would only know 
Truth

Sunday, March 13, 2016

One Second

This is the longest second I've ever known. 
This is bliss and hope. 
This is joy with excitement 
This will stay with me. 

This look into your eyes will go on forever. 
It will continue into the future just as far as it will emerge from the past. 
It will become the song of you my heart will sing. 
It will spill forth and cut through the darkness and bring me home. 

One glance will have the power to shape me. 
The color in your eyes, the grace of your lashes,
The smile I see in them. 
These things will go on forever.


Friday, March 11, 2016

Husband

Being misunderstood has become a normal
a normal that I believed was a mountain to high for anyone to climb

Everything that I have within 
the things I want and need
the things I never let see the light
These are the things I knew could never be traversed

Except that you did

Reaching in through the rock
Pushing into my very soul until I am brought to my knees
Binding yourself to me in a way that I could never shake you

I am small in this space
broken and shamed
I have kept myself captive in this space all alone
I threw away the key
I made sure there was no way for anyone to ever find me here

Except that you did

You found me and you saw what I could never see
You knelt down in the bloody mess I had created and you worshiped it
You worshiped everything I kept dark
You worshiped my truth and never questioned my devotion to it

You came down into me and pulled out the sticky black pieces one by one
You grasped at them and ripped and pulled them from my skin
one after one after one after one
Even then I was living in fear
Fear that there was no end in sight for all these dank corners of me
I knew you could never make it to the end of them

Except that you did

And even after all this, 
even after seeing all the mistakes and desires I have
you stood above me looking down at my huddled body
Shaking, crying, knowing you were going to leave me
You reached out and lifted my face to your light
You took my hand and forced me to stand
To stand with you

You took your shirt and used it to wipe away every tear I had ever cried
You took off all the clothes I had because they were wrought with shame and sadness
and you burned them
Standing before you bare 
I was finally
not
afraid
or
ashamed

I stand with you now
I am wholly yours now
I never believed there would be safety in honesty
I never believed there would be someone who could see how precious the darkness is to me

Except that you did

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Reflection

Being my own worst enemy is probably my greatest strength
I suppose it could be that I just want so much so deeply
So deeply that I lose all sense of right and wrong
So deeply that I lose all sense of what I should do
What should be done

My confusion abounds, and my desperation 
My self-imposed desperation
Since I can never leave things as they are
As they are is never good enough
Is that because I'm never good
Enough

I'm scared you will let me go on
And on
And on
You will support all of my weakness and encourage it to grow
You will let me continue on this edge
You will help me find my way
You won't give up
You really do understand my unabashed awkwardness
You really do love it

If I had more control
If I had more sense
If I just had
                       more

More

I want you to accept this layer of dust I carry
I want you to accept it and lead me to where I can change it
Lead me to where it is I believe you see me
Away from this mirror crusted over and tarnished
I know it is a difficult task
I know because I have never mastered it
I know because I keep questioning everything I'm doing
Everything I'm saying
I keep.....

In the end I just want to look up
Look up and see you still there
There looking down on me
Looking down on all that I wish I never had said
Never had done
I want to look up and still see you there
Still see what I know I remember as peace


Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Sleep as a Lost Art

I can only assume my attention is needed somehow. I lay here looking into nothing, wanting nothing more than for this nothing I see to be even less of a something. What to do when your mind refuses to shut up, and forcing quiet is not an option. 

Counting sheep - the aforementioned mind is a problem, as I lose count and my sheep just start wandering around and refuse to jump

Meditation - hopeless on oh so many levels

Blogging - apparently does a body no good, but proven (eventual) to help tire the mind 

Yawning has commenced so we are getting somewhere. 

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Sarasvati

peaceful quiet is not at all peaceful or quiet for me now
my heart is aching in ways that make me
desperate
                  dark
                              lonely
                                                                  alone

my head weighs so much more than I ever knew it could
and my heart weighs even more than that

i feel as if i've lost my soul

i
am
breaking

there is nothing left of me
there is no life within me

at least, none that i can feel now

This Is Where I Want You

you hold the key to my smile, you hold the hope from my heart
you protect it in an iron fist that no one can open, no one can break it
you keep me
                               safe

I let you keep me safe

I need you to keep that tiny last fading ember of me

safe

i will lose myself if you don't
i will separate from every place that makes me....me

i need you to take this from me because i can no longer keep it safe
i want to slice it into so many bloody withered pieces
that there is no pain left to feel

so take This,
protect This
       take me
                     protect me
because if you do not
i will choose to disappear

i have lain so much at your control and you don't even know what you have been asked to hold and protect.

but i have the truth in the darkness
I am safe in you


Friday, March 4, 2016

Breath

There is one realization that I know must be shared.  I know my daughter saved my life.  She was a gift from the Father, one I never would have chosen for myself.

She was the last thing I wanted in the moment I found out I had her.  I thought I would never be able to walk through the fear to have her.  This was not fear of a spider, or even fear of assault.  This was soul crushing and paralyzing fear.  This was knock me to my knees giving everything up to the Lord kind of fear.  

Here is where I learned to trust God fully.
Here is where I learned that trusting in God fully did not mean everything would be instantly better, or even easy.

My daughter bore me into the world long before I bore her into it. I had debilitating postpartum depression after my son was born.  I was in therapy, I was dealing well, I was refusing meds.  When she was given to me I knew I had no other choice left.  I could never make it through that kind of darkness again without hurting myself and my children. Those feelings and thoughts are impossible to understand if you've never been close to them in some way.  But I guarantee you it would have ended so very badly.

Except,
She was gifted to me.  I knew I had to start taking the meds I was told to take. I knew if I ever wanted to make it through they would become a permanent part of my life. And because I was terrified of feeling that depression again I took them.

My daughter saved my life.

I can say now with a clear(er) head that she did.  That I know she did.  I am still a person who deals with depression/anxiety.  I always will be.  But I can say with confidence that if it weren't for these meds I know I would have tried to take my life one day.  I don't say this as a "I might do that" statement; I say this as an "I KNOW" statement.  

So many things, to many to go into, lead to my accepting who I am and the problems I face.  But the basis for all of it is that one sentence:

My daughter saved my life.

Rebecca Grace
Rebecca - For my sister and my friend who died far to young but loved much
Grace - because she is my tangible example of God's Grace

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Wane

You are a marvel
Pablo was right
And even though you haunt my dreams
In the middle of the night 
And even though the reality of you cuts me like a cross
You are a marvel
And I'll love you
Though its lost


This piece was written almost 18 years ago I believe. It's one I often repeat to myself when I need to remind myself that happy endings aren't always happy

Core

Photo credit Exit34 Photography 

 If fear were tangible,
tactile,
something far more formidable than thick clouds,
if it didn't seem to flee from every breeze,
would I listen?

Would I find that fighting against what I want,
what I know will make me miserably happy,
would become a fight I don't want to win?
Except that I do.
I want to fight, I want to dig in my heels and bang my fists against the wall.

I want to forget about everything I've worked for before this.
I want to find myself tied and tangled and strapped down
so that I have no other choice,
no options to turn back toward clarity. 

It makes no sense, not even to me,
but I want to take everything I have shining and new,
and I want to cover it with the mud, muck, and mire.
I want that.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Memory

Closing my eyes makes me uneasy
I know what lies there

I know what will come to me then
the world will evaporate
my reality shifts
my heart stalls and stutters
while I'm waiting for you to meet me

There is no logic or reason in the dark
this is my rabbit hole
this is my dark place
this is my desire swelling upward to pull me down
this is where I allow myself to die

I feel you there in this incredible surrender
this is all barbs and thorny scratches
that must be fought through to reach you
The pain of finding my way tries to stop me
to right me
to change my mind

And right when I'm about to raise my eyes to the light
right when I know it is my last chance to grab onto
the ladder that will lead me to safety
you come to me

I can feel you
I can almost reach out and touch the skin of my desire
I can nearly graze my fingertips along your face
You are that breath on the back of my neck
You push my hair behind my ear and whisper
Your voice drugs every sense I have and I want to give all I am to you
I want to give all I am to you
I want to give all I am to you

I try to pull you into me with each breath in
I try to feel your skin on mine
I try to make this cloudy, half-awake version of you solid and strong
Stone and marble so I know I can never fall

And right when I can feel everything about to align
Right when I know I will finally breach the bramble and touch you
When my fingertips can already feel the heat of you and my eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness
I feel the sharp pull of a string

It goes through me splitting apart everything I believe you were just about to put together
It saws into my gut and comes out the other side of me
wrapping all around and I can't untangle myself

Forcefully ripping me away from you
forcing me to collapse like so many paper dolls
forcing me back into the light where I cannot see