I live my life through the words I write
Riding the waves of emotional lability
makes my soul weary.
How many hours of turbulence
must I endure
before the storm passes?
Fighting against the waves
brings more exhaustion than acquiescing
but even still,
I collapse, depleted of energy, at 10 AM.
I submit to the emotional storm,
praying,
I retain enough strength to stand again
when it clears.
Buried in silence
beneath layers of self-doubt.
I will stand, and rise.
Most of what I live in fear of,
in the shadows of anxiety
are circumstances fabricated by my mind.
They come from within me,
my own doing,
and break me.
If they come from me
they can end with me too.
I can acknowledge the discomfort
and the depths it reaches
down into my blood and bones.
I can see it there,
give it a name,
inspect and observe its nature,
its behavior.
Why has it chosen to bury here
in my body?
What does it yearn to tell me,
to show me?
How can I help it heal, move on?
What can I find in the space
it leaves behind?
I can acknowledge the discomfort
and grant it permission
to help me heal,
and grow.
Stop putting so much damn pressure
on yourself.
You are not in a life-or-death situation.
If you make a mistake
(what classifies a mistake anyway?)
there will be opportunities to do better next time.
If you keep holding out
scared of imagined consequences
preparing for remediation of the fallout
without taking action at all,
you will kill yourself
before getting a chance to see the success
beyond the worrying,
unwarranted.
Acknowledge struggles,
show yourself self-compassion.
These feelings will pass.
I have much to say
to contribute to the conversation,
to expose my experience,
to connect.
I can feel the words on my tongue,
in my throat,
poised to drip from my lips.
I cannot add my voice to them
before the topic changes,
before everyone else moves on
so they remain, poised and powerful.
They retreat back, away from my mouth,
down my throat
dropping into the stomach,
a series of small dead weights.
Contracting to comfort them,
my body crumbles in on itself
until I am nothing but a ball
of voiceless words.
I take at least a dozen breaths,
formulate in my mind what I want to say
typing it out,
erasing, and typing it out again.
This is a safe space.
I ask the question.
How do you know when
you need more than just self care?
Reactions range from widened eyes,
to nodding heads and note-taking,
but him; he offers empathy.
We hardly ever need an engine replacement;
maybe it’s just an oil change or a tire rotation that we need.
Muted on the microphone,
I tremble and quiver in my thick wool sweater
as a tear slides off my cheek
and lands on the keyboard.
Fighting against a force within me,
I cannot see it
nor assign it a name.
It urges me to retreat, recluse,
hide away from you, and me,
promising me peace and tranquility.
I feel another figure
rise up to the challenge,
rationalizing with me against every promise.
‘You know better than this’,
‘You are stronger than this’,
‘You must overcome this on your own’.
I listen to the rational voice
and head its advice,
but the other, deeper voice still calls out to me.
The fight rages on.
Waiting
any day now
betting
on whether the blood will come
the same way
I’ve waited and betted
on countless days before.
Dawning Words 