Friday, November 27, 2015

Healing is hard

Trigger warning - I am in a spin cycle of suicidal urges. The kind where I am at risk of a "fuckitall" attempt. I am fighting them one at a time as they crop up. It's harder somehow this winter.

Gee, thank you so much Season Affect Disorder...you sadistic bastard. And I'm sure his buddy Peri-Menopausal Hormone Fluctuations is just as much to blame.

I want to share this poem with you.

It was written the year I decided to stay alive and not kill my self. The decision to stay alive was still in its infancy. Literally 2 and 1/2 months old. I was battling urges like I am now. I was 23 years old.

I am sitting in Richards tan chair facing him December 28th 1988. I am burrowed into my dirty coat. I was dressed in baggy ripped purple sweats. My hair in a unbrushed sloppy pony tail. I had worked the night before. Maybe 3 hours of sleep under my belt. The depth of my depression was a tangible entity in the room.

He looked at me softly. As if he was trying to decide if it was worth delving into the madness in my head today.

Deciding it wasn't worth it, he finally leaned back and just waited for me to engage.

He always knew just how to talk to me. Or in this case not talk to me. 

At last I forced my woody arm out of my coat pocket and handed him three sheets of folded note book paper.

He leaned forward and took them. Unfolded them and read what I had written.

(C) 12-26-1988 P.

Healing is hard

Healing is hard.
facing fears that loomed so tall,
battling voices that taunt and beckon.
Dealing with truths and lies.

Healing is hard

accepting the past and all its contents,
for what it was and no longer is.

Healing is hard

Learning to trust and share,
to express pain and joy
is a new experience
Accepting what was not, and lo longer can be
is hard, very hard.
Facing the real me is difficult.
Loving the real me is a new idea.
Admitting what happened is hard.
Sometimes its so easy to fall
back into old patterns,
old ways that are familiar and comforting,
rather than charge ahead into the unknown.

Healing is hard

some sessions we rip scabs
off festering old wounds,
and suddenly I'm five years old again
and I'm very frightened.
I want my mama to comfort me.
There's never been a mama there,
not then and not now.

Healing is hard

Existing in half a fantasy
and half a reality...is crazy.
I know the shadows which whisper to me
aren't really there.
But I see them.
And I was taught that seeing is believing.
The voices that shout at me
are my own
Why would I want to harm my self?

Healing is hard

I silently try
again and again
to find someone who will listen to me
and see
that something isn't right
before I end my life.
To help me find a way out
before I'm trapped behind my walls
for ever and ever, which ever comes first.

Healing is hard

Battling over my sanity
I fight and fight
I'm a survivor, I'm strong.
Some days though, I'm a broken willow reed
trampled in the field dirt.
handle me with care.
I give the illusion of great strength.
That is just a mask I cower behind.
I am six years old and lost again.

Healing is hard

I reject the offered love
and I need it the most.
I can't understand why
I must run and run.
Not everyone will hurt me
I don't deserve to be hurt
I didn't do anything,
I'm not a bad person.

Healing is hard

All through school the children have laughed.
"Pa-SHA" they'd call "Pa-DGA"
"she is ugly, she is different and crazy."
oh how their words hurt!
But I wouldn't give in,
My outer shell just grew thicker.
They could isolate me,
whisper behind my back,
Laugh at me.
I pretend I didn't care
deep down inside
I'd cry and cry.

Healing is hard

I feel like I'm a tightrope,
that is beginning to crumble.
I scramble for footing
snatching at the rope as it unravels.
I'm falling again.
Just as I was falling when I was fifteen.
It doesn't hurt to fall anymore
I can't feel the pain
nothing hurts me anymore,
nothing but life.

Healing is hard

I've come so far
I've fought very hard
I won't give in
Their not going to win.
I'm not crazy
I'm not insane
I'm in control of me
I'm responsible for my own actions

Healing is hard

behind my stormy blue eyes
lie many untold horrors
sometimes I'm tempted to
speak them aloud.
My soul screams them out
but they get silenced
by the cold brick walls which engulf me.
I'm unreachable
I am lost.
The hurt runs to deep.
healing is not possible.

I had not watched him read it. I was starring at the ripped hole in my sweats, picking at the loose stings. When I heard him lay it on his lap. My eyes flicked up and met his.

I needed him to agree with my last line. This was his one chance to jump ship. I was presenting him with an out. If he wasn't in this fight, he held his walking papers in his hand.

He glanced down at the paper and back to my eyes. We stared for what felt like an eternity. He finally nodded, as if he had fully digested what he had just read.

"Its a shame to end this on such a sad note." He said. touching the paper. "what can we do to change that?"

I thought for a few seconds then twisted in my chair and dug a pen out of my pocket. I stood up and reached over and grabbed the poem from him. Scribbled seven words and handed them back to him.

He glanced down at them.

I'm unreachable
I am lost.
The hurt runs to deep.
healing is not possible, in the darkness
turn on a light.

His huge smile lite up the room, and we got down to the business of saving my life.

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