The Levee

Let me cry 

Do you know how gut wrenching it feels to be half-loved  
By someone you would bleed yourself dry for? 
My side of the story 
It doesn't matter anymore 
Life happened 

The Levee has broken
And in turn the flood broke me 
And if I lived I would be considered heroic 
But if I were to die I would simply be a plot point 
I'm healing - I guess that's what I can call this 

Leave me be 

 
To offer them everything of yourself

Only to realize they never intended to hold it  
Only in my dreams do I get loved the way that I love 
And it's not poetic like I romanticized in my head 
It's pathetic and wrong 
But what's important is I learned who deserves a seat at my table 
And who will never sit at it again 
I want to scream out all the ways that love has let me down  
In hopes that somebody hears me and tells me it's all going to be okay 
I want to crumble at all the mistakes I have made into my palms  
As I watch as they fall through my fingertips as nothing but dirt  

But don't leave me 

I want to shove the world into a dark corner and tell it to go fuck off 
I want to ask why I have been such a burden to bear  
When all I ever asked for was love 
I want to understand others' heartbreak without becoming angry  
With how it doesn't compare to mine  
I'm done with hoping for a Disney-like romance 
Chucking it in the fuck it bucket  
And reverting back to the gray scale from sunshine and rainbows 
No metaphor will soften this blow 
I'm just a secret they kept hidden away until they want attention 
I'll always just be the half-love 
The half-truth I always settled for 
The maybe that never becomes a resounding yes 

When it was all I could hear in my head when I looked at them

My God 

I want to wake up as a version of myself  
Who does not live with this loss etching itself deep inside my heart  
I can't write anything that is going to make this hurt less 
I was going to marry you 
No metaphor is going to soften that blow. 
I'm just a tool in your box  
I'm the one that knows every part of you that you're too afraid to show 
When all I wanted was you to claim me 
I watched myself shrink 
Watched myself disappear piece by piece

Trying to fit into the small corner of the world

I wanted almost desperately for us to stay in 
I traded my pride for the illusion of something real  
For a love that never belonged to me 
I can't turn this pain into poetry 
I can't make this heartbreak sound like healing 
I was a placeholder for something else  
And I always knew it but tried to ignore  
As long as my head was on your chest that was all I needed to know 
When all I wanted was you to claim me  

And maybe somewhere in there a glimmer of hope you'd save me
There is not a shred left of a silver lining that would make this all worth the pain  
Because there's no beauty in being half loved  
I tell myself I'll wait for a love that will never come  
Yet the door stayed open anyways  
The light stays on still hoping that someone,   
Eventually, 
Will see me for more than what comes between my thighs  
I never understood what makes me so forgettable  
I'll keep waiting for a love that's never coming  
I think I've realized the truth I keep burying  
This warrior officially doesn't have any fight left 
I want to see the world for what it can be

And not for all that it has not been all along 
I want to hold the Earth down until it apologizes for existing  
In the way I feel like it keeps doing to me 

Please don't leave 

 

A Deep Dive Into Grief

"I sat with my anger long enough 

until she told me her real name was grief"

~C. S. Lewis

If I have learned anything this year, it is that I won't ever be ready for what life throws at me. I won't have the right words when it counts; I won't know what to choose when fate itself is staring me down. But now I know I don't always need to have the right answer. I didn't always feel that way. 

I don't feel like this is the place, or rather the right time - avoidance being my superpower and all, to go into details with regard to exactly what has transpired, but to put it as simply as I can, I watched in slow motion the losses I knew were going to be catastrophic, and suddenly they happened together within less than 90 days.  To say what I'm about to, is coming from a place I never knew I would access within myself. And I'm not sorry on one hand, and destroyed on the other. I guess it's fitting for the Pisces in me.  An Irish one. Stubborn until I process, realize what I've done, and depending on who you are I still won't apologize until the day I die. 

This is me, apologizing. To everyone in my life.

I've chosen to grieve privately, and that's not good enough for everyone. Unfortunately, it'll have to be. I got hit with the stunning realization that I don't know what to do,  for the first time in my life.  I have never been shown how to deal with loss.  Sure,  I have all this training, mental health and psychology are my jam.  But there's learning, experiencing, and the ocean in between.  My healing journey has taught me, if nothing else, it's that I must stop drowning myself for people who wouldn't dip their pinky in a teacup for me. And this has historically proven itself as fact. I'm always the one drowning, and I'm not even asking people to blow the life raft up before throwing it to me, I just need that tiny effort of throwing it in my general direction and it's still too much. 

I've always been the one who everyone relied on to swan dive directly in the middle of their chaos and make it all better.  And now, I find myself completely unable to be there for anyone else when I haven't been able to be there for myself.  I simply don't know how to be sad and do life at the same time.  I'm finding myself having visceral reactions to interactions that I fear might be taxing when before I could deal with anything and take anyone's shit that they wanted to throw my way, my safety coating is gone from my nerves. And even in my best efforts not to bother anyone with my emotions and what I have going on, it has cost me. And I realize that, now. It was wrong of me not to explain honestly what was going on to those within my house. I was trying so hard to push away all negativity that in those efforts my child needed me, and I couldn't be there for them. And then as a result of a stupid misunderstanding, I also lost the one person who has come to mean everything to me. I can be stupidly impulsive and found myself to be very reactive to the needs of others. One phone call where I was impulsive with my emotions with my daughter was the catalyst for the amazing path we're on now. Perhaps it needed to happen. We've been sad about the same things, however caught in a cycle of avoidance and crashing. I was seasoning a cast iron skillet in my oven and because my living room and kitchen are so open, I didn't realize how smoky my house had gotten down the hallway.  She was sick in bed with a migraine, and she called to request that I open the hall windows.  I yelled at her to do it, forgetting that this wasn't one of her usual attempts to run my life, she was really in distress.  However, after getting off the phone, I realized that she was right, that they did in fact need to be opened and I felt horrible. I still feel horrible that I was so quick to react and that I didn't have the emotional foresight to just pause and assess.  And then I made things even worse by thinking that I was making it better. That person has been cut out for half a decade, and in my thoughtless panic I reached out. I cannot explain what on earth was happening. This is absolutely not like me, and I am so disappointed in myself. 

I would give and do anything to rewind time and go back to 11:13 am Sunday, July 28. I was so happy, a day out of a storybook. I'll leave it, vaguely, at that. And you, I know that asking you to come back might feel like a lot right now and I have no leg to stand on to ask you to trust that things are better, but they are and a life without you in it just doesn't make sense anymore. In my defense, I wasn't trying to tie up your evening by wanting you around, I was trying to tie up you.  (**insert wink, I've got jokes for days, but you know you love it) Seriously, at least please come take away the 2 dozen muffins that I baked for you.

I've learned I can go on waiting for something, sustained by hope and nothing more — and have, for years.  Or I can put it aside and shrug my shoulders. Bravely, radically even, accept the fact, despite my best efforts, that I can't keep my heart safe anymore than I can stop love from taking everything from me.

I am learning (changed from my previous "learned" because I definitely am a work in progress) to stop saying yes when I don't mean it — to live as authentically as I know how. To allow the tips of my fingers to skirt the darkness, as long as I remember to keep my eyes fixed on the light. We know how much I like my hidey holes. And as one door opens and another closes, I will move forward with the knowledge that unlike so many others, I have another year ahead of me, another shot at making it all the way around the sun, and a chance to get it right this time round.

Be good to each other. And if someone tells you that they see the universe in your eyes, maybe don't be a dick to them on a regular basis. It was a compliment they were vulnerable enough to tell you, not a marriage proposal.

Becoming

I have never 

Met this version of myself before
Anyone else 
Would have been told to fuck directly off
Strong feminine energy
Reduced to ashes
With every step
I unraveled
A little more of me 

Revealed the further I went
Daddy's home
Wait
That's weird
But it's all my brain will excitedly say
My heart
It turns out
Is both the strongest 
And weakest thing about me
It's just that
I feel so peaceful
There are no butterflies
Because this is not triggering my anxiety
Just a burning desire to be 
Who I'm supposed to become
I'm so wildly hopeful
And I know I should know better
But I have yet to witness a sunset 
That I didn't want to watch in your eyes
Balanced 
Mature
I feel like I can do anything 
With you by my side
What you're failing to realize 
Is that our greatest failings
Hold the seeds of our biggest blessings
There's beauty 

In the process of becoming 
Have faith
It's okay to explode and rebuild

Until you reach the realization
You don't have to anymore
I keep reaching out for my sword 
And find that my shield is mere splinters
Where we drew the line in the sand
I still see the universe in your eyes

Do not ask me 
If I hold space 
In my love for you still
In any other language
I would simply say 
You don't exist to me
But if you ask me to explain in poetry
I would tell you
That I'd cut my own heart 
Out of my chest while it beats
So neither of us 
Could be disappointed 
By the fact that you never left it

Cynicallovebird 

The Suck

 I seek to find peace for my world in pieces.

I need to find a way to relax.

All this stress from recent sadness and other life-insanity;

my anxiety cloud offering nothing but darkness, 

decompressing from my anxious mind that ending in something closely resembling Wile E. Coyote free falling 

- watching the boulder that was about to fall on him the whole way down - 

had me ready to punch my keurig for needing water when I turned it on to make my oatmeal this morning...

If you can't laugh at yourself, what can you do?

My journey into no longer reaching for familiar coping mechanisms has been tested greatly,

something that I've been trying my best to ignore.  

We all know how that goes.  

I will say I'm pretty proud of myself for sticking the landing. 

Rather than running to the bar or a stranger's bed,  

I'm running to the hills of Vermont for the weekend. 

I need to make myself inaccessible and since my impulsive brain is trying to take control the only way to shut the bitch up is to let mother nature help me along with zero service and beautiful views. 

Just a girl,  her tent,  the sky, a recorder app on her phone, and sitting in the suck. 

My white flag is flying for all to see.

It's not what I'm used to.

But what's a girl to do?

You can't make a home on a windshield wiper.

Silly me for trying just the same.

TALKING YOURSELF OUT OF IT

 You’re fine. 

Say it again. 

Until those two words reach your limbs. 

Look in the mirror. 

Ignore the tired in your eyes. 

Implore yourself to smile. 

Don’t cry. 

You’re fine. 

Get dressed. 

Go be perfect. 

Go be incredible. 

Go be the friend your friends deserve. 

Go be everything you’re in need of. 

Try again. 

Try harder. 

Don’t quit.

You’re fine. 

Remember better days. 

Disappear in them. 

Come back stronger. 

Stop complaining. 

You’re fine. 

Be happy. Be happy. Be happy. 

Be ashamed for not being happier. 

Pull yourself out of it. 

Find your footing. 

Find your dreams. 

You’re fine. 

Look for the light. 

Be the light. 

Work harder. 

Work more. 

Work. 

Laugh, despite that sinking feeling. 

Swallow the knot in your throat. 

Step over the pit in your stomach. 

It’s not your fault that it’s your fault. 

It’s ok to not be ok, 

but hurry up and be ok. 

You’re fine. 

Say it again. 

Say it until you hate it. 

Say it until you can’t stand the taste of it. 

Say it until there’s no air left in your lungs. 

Say it until you cough on your own exhaustion. 

Say it one final time, 

then swear to never say it again. 

Don’t leave the raging tempests within you untouched. 

Let the heavy rain soak your burnt-out frame.

Stand still and beg for the lighting strike.

Feel all of life profusely. 

Learn the rough weather you’re made of,

until you love the storm you are.

A Reminder

the next time 

you refuse to sing

because you’ll never 

fill a stadium

or decline the joy of dance

for fear of looking ridiculous

or you resist risking

the new adventure

because you’re 

not entirely ready or

you dim your shine

because you’re not

completely healed and whole

the next time

you hold yourself suspect 

because you’re not

entirely qualified

just remember

a bird doesn’t sing 

because it’s talented

a bird sings because 

it has a song

the moon doesn’t only shine

when it’s whole

it can show up with 

a single sliver of itself

and still light an entire

night sky

show up

sing

shine

the world needs you

as you are

The What If

This is a ramble.  Consider yourself warned. I'm so working out out.

I don’t need to know. 

I don’t have all the answers. 

I don’t even care where we go from here, 

so long as it’s together. 

What if we just drifted without worry, 

and chose to float freely through this wonderful, sacred space. 

Without aim. 

Without the end in mind. 

Without the weight of expectations holding us down. 

What if we just watered one another -

blossomed and grew roots.

What if we got out of the way, 

and allowed fate to unfold before us? 

Something brought us together. 

You feel it, too – this connection. 

This energy and pull towards one another. 

It seems almost otherworldly. 

One moment my life was recognizable, 

familiar. 

Then, everything was vibrant all at once. 

Now I can’t look back. 

It’s taken a lifetime to trust what touches me deeply. 

Even though I don’t always understand it, 

I owe it to my soul 

to make the most of the journey. 

It’s easy to overlook the future when the space you’re in feels like everything. 

If forever never arrives, please know

this will still be enough for me.

Don’t tell me you’re not ready.

We’ve been twisting in the wind

for long enough.

Let me have my way with you,

raw, entirely.

Give in.

Let go.

I want your out of body experience.

Your eyes locked onto mine.

Your lip-bitten pleasure.

Your nails raking my bare skin.

To hear you begging.

   I’m not stopping.

Don’t tell me you need to rest.

We’ve been dreaming this dream

for long enough.

Let me learn you in ways others

couldn’t.

We’re safe in these sheets.

Let me in.

I want your hair by the fistful.

Your screams for more.

Your throat in my hands.

You, dripping on the floor.

 I’ll love you like you need me to.

Don’t tell me you’re tired.

We’re not done yet.

Let me take you to the other side.

Keep going.

   Hold on to me.

      Come with me.

I want your teeth against flesh.

I want to taste the sweat beading on your chest.

Your hunger - carnal and rising.

Your expletives wet.

Your every goddam drop of every goddam thing.

I’m in you so deep now.

Don’t tell me it’s too much.

I’ll love you until you’ve had enough.

Tell me you’re ready.

A relationship is a living thing, it needs to breathe… 

When You and I come together with love, we create “Us”.

And us is a real thing.

We know this because we refer to couples in particular ways…

We think of couples as a unit.

Because they are. 

As social organisms we are designed to bond and create tight units with other humans for biological and evolutionary purposes (and spiritual). 

We survive better with others. 

There is a significant part of our nervous system dedicated entirely to this process of bonding. 

Our Attachment System. 

When healthy, we attach smoothly with those who are values aligned and who feel safe to us.

A relationship, as we know it, is the synergistic blending of two (or more) lives together in order to co-create a new direction.

The better our synergy, the more abundantly we are capable of co-creating…and the better life we have. 

As long as our Attachment System is functioning healthily. 

Because like every living organism it needs to breathe…

Breathing in, we come together in connection.

Breathing out, we rest back into our individual selves

Space and togetherness

If we were to only breathe in, we would die. 

Relationally, this is enmeshment. 

If we were to only breathe out, we would die. 

Relationally, well this isn’t a relationship.

Yet because relationships are composed of two beings dancing together, we tend to polarise to one of the events.

One partner is always trying to make the relationship breathe in.

The other is always trying to make it breathe out.

And so the relationship hyper-ventilates… it can’t take a full, deep breath.

Not breathing deeply severely impacts human health. 

So too in relationship…

The desire for deeper connection is healthy. The desire for space to be ourselves is healthy

WHEN THEY ARE BALANCED.

Most of becoming secure is just learning how to do this.

Learning how to breathe together.

Remarkably simple in concept

Significantly challenging in action

It takes time to find this beautiful rhythmic breath.

Yet I also completely believe anyone can.