5/4/2023

The shame intensifies. Shame, a familiar friend. It always seems to find me in my lowest moments. I’m trying my best. I’m depleted. I think it’s my best. (Enters shame)

My best most days, is ugly and messy. It’s too loud and I run. I seek the escape and the distance. I’ve stored jars of this stuff for years. They’ve collected dust in the back of shelves in forbidden rooms. I’ve cracked one open and realized it soured.

It’s poison. How could so much poison live in one space, one person?

I look at this wall of jars and realize I’m in the fight of my life.

5/4/2023

I’ve tried to pick up the brush. I fill the cup with water and line up the paint. I set the palette and rags. Ready.

I stare at the blank canvas.

The images and clips move through my head but I can’t pick up the brush.

I’m frozen. I’ve been here before. 10 years ago.

I abandoned the brush and discarded the canvas.

It’s so loud and it moves through me.

It’s the only way.

It’s like a current of suffering moving down my arms.

It moves the paint and aches on the canvas.

This act is the connecting of two forces. Two worlds.

Existing in the in-between rips through me.

I walk away and wonder if it’ll be another 10 years

4/27/2023

“I contemplate texting you

I sometimes miss your charm

You’d say something about how the stars

Have been looking like the freckles on my arm

Or how you thought about me

That’s always nice to hear

How I’m the first thought you have after downing each beer

How you considered reaching out

How you didn’t know what to say

How you remembered and then forgot

To speak to me each day

I contemplate your actions

The meaning in your eyes

How your “unintentional” silence

Cause a multitude of lies

Or whole reflection of truths

I honestly don’t know which is worse

You hit the gas

But our car is stuck in reverse

I tell you to be careful

But You don’t like looking back

I bring up responsibility

“But you really need to start cutting me some slack!”

You don’t understand

This mentality puts us in danger

You played with my heart when you could have just stayed a stranger

I’m reaching for the break

I don’t care to be understood

And when the car suddenly stops

You ask, “so are we still good?”

-Celia

My eyes are flooded. It starts in my chest and rises like a wave. The strongest wave of loving grief. I can’t make my heart stop loving. I can’t reset or reboot. It envelops me. The love wasn’t lost. I don’t grieve losing love because mine exists within me. I grieve the loss of something I once thought I understood. I once knew, you.

There is a space you have left in my life. I hadn’t realized how loud the echo in here would be. I’m wounded and perhaps this will always be my loving wound.

4/27/2023

If I don’t speak fear into the room then maybe it isn’t happening. Maybe I get to keep him. I’ve never been ready for these kinds of losses. They’ve always left just as fast as they’ve come. Not him though. I’ve had twelve years of companionship. Twelve years of being loved, cared for, seen, and protected. Why does he have to go? I need him now more than ever. The roles have reversed. I ease his anxiety and fears. I hope to regulate him just as he has for me all these years.

I’m not ready to live with the spaces he will leave in my life and in my heart. It’s selfish to ask him to stay. I know he can’t but man how I wish he could. I would take care of him forever. My King.

4/26/2023

I count the objects in the room. Shapes, shades, and textures.

I’m surrounded by air and I pull for it.

The frequency fills the room.

But it’s louder.

Stronger

I rock, I tap, I rub.

Her screams explode out of me

I implode in shame

Their voices slide down my spine

I drown the noise

A refill- exchange fear for courage?

Just for the moment

I keep a tally of losses

The stripes cover these walls.

Will I ever stop marking the walls?

4/26/2023

Why is the narrative about what men have done to me? My name echoes down the hallway. The intensity comes back with such force it squeezes the air out of my body. I’m flooded. All over again. This isn’t love. I’m on fire. They tie me down and burn me at the stake. My skin parts and I’m exposed.

This isn’t love.

They take me in. Like vultures, I’m worth more dead. Empty, hollow. Piece by piece. They swarm me. Nothings left. Nothing.

4/20/2023

I keep wishing he would have shot me. I’ve had this fantasy for as long as I could remember. It wouldn’t be so bad. It’s never scared me. Death isn’t suffering, living is. I fixate on what it’d be like…. *click*. The yelling stops. It’s not so loud anymore. Least, that’s what I’d hope it’d be. If I’m truly honest, this indifference is a fantasy.

I’m exhausted. I’m told over and over it’s supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to be hard and tiring. I’m not special or any different in my response to this suffering. However, I don’t think this was supposed to be my life. I don’t think shit just went wrong, over and over again. I also think I’m a good liar. Where people find or see the strength in me is beyond me.

I’m exhausted.

4/20/2023

I’m angry.

So, fucking, angry.

It’s consuming me. Holy shit how do I let you go?

4/9/2023

My ears are underwater

The world moves around me

I try to hold my gaze on a blur

My lips tingle… numb

My teeth fold into each other

My mouth? Dry

My throat? Silenced

Move, I think

Focus, I try

But I can’t

So, the world moves around me

4/8/2023

I know you needed love

I know you needed safety

I know you need these things and more

I hear you

And when I don’t, I feel you

I know but I’ve been scared

I’m sorry

I’m trying

I’m trying to be who you needed

I want to love you

It’s scary for me too

You’ve been on fire

And I’ve been too scared to walk back in for you

Your screams burst my eardrums

I know you’re here

I’m learning for you

I’m coming for you…

4/8/2023

My footsteps echo down the long hallways

The ceilings are high

And the air is crisp

The hairs on the back of my neck-at attention

I have no shoes on

The space comes into me from below

My vision is narrow but I feel it all

The vibrations of these spaces move through me

The stories are smeared all over the walls

Shades of black layered and moved

There’s a door

It’s so dark. I can barely make it out

It doesn’t get any clearer

Regardless of how much space I close

There’s heat here

It’s hell.

The bolts and locks on this door are bright red

I reach out

Hesitate

Her screams get louder

So loud I can’t think

I can’t breathe

I can’t move

I can’t be

I can’t!

I reach out and pull the locks and bolts off

They sink into my hands

What have I done?

3/25/2023 Soulmate

In the rush of running

Which I still am very much doing

I’ve missed the truth in this fight

I’ve missed her face

It’s been there for 25 plus years

But it’s a faint blur

I’m hyper-focused!

I’m zoned in!

I’m starving!

I’m blind to the details around me

She’s been here…

It’s quiet…

Not a sound…

My eyes refocus

There’s warmth in this space

The light hits her face, reflects back at me off her eyes

I tell the optometrist- “this one, hold it here… this one’s clear”.

A reel of images and stories flood my mind as they always have

This time I catch her…

Split seconds of stillness in these moments

Her face again, it’s the same-

Warmth reflected back at me

Regardless of my inability to see it, to receive it

I come broken, wounded, dark, and messy

She doesn’t fix it, she doesn’t change it

She doesn’t resist it

She’s still…

The silence is broken

The words burn like alcohol on a wound

“I love you”-she says

I love you too xxxxxx.

3/24/2023

Pandora’s box

It’s not a gift to me

But it is luring

The juxtaposition of this box terrifying me yet luring me…

It’s odd

What’s in this damn box?

I don’t know

My body knows

The corners of my mind know

But, really,… my soul knows

And man is it tired

Not the tired that sleep can relieve

This eternal tired

It’s been around for eons

It has known great suffering

Could it maybe know,…

Great healing?

3/23/2023

Love is supposed to be hard

When is too hard?

How do I know when to let go?

I miss him

I try not to let it show

I don’t know what was real

He didn’t know how to love me

But it doesn’t mean he didn’t try

I wanted it to be him

I believed it was him

3/20/2023

The feeling has always been, “not enough”

Never enough

But I’m beginning to wonder if it’s been, “too much”

Maybe the things I seek and represent are too much for the rooms I’m standing in

Not for any other reason than they are just the wrong rooms for me

I mull over the things I must filter

The ways I must make myself small and take up the least amount of space

Don’t be too loud

Don’t laugh

Don’t show what I might know…

3/14/2023

I made the choice

This is the difference between you and I

I didn’t find myself here

I didn’t fall

No sweeping off my feet.

I grabbed your hand and walking right into love, into you

You sold me a dream

I knew better but just maybe, this dream could be real

She was denied the opportunity to believe in dreams

To believe in fairy tales

Life was consumed in nightmares

You may not understand these nightmares

But I know you saw the pain

Maybe you were too busy selling me a dream

And in the end, only giving me a nightmare.

3/14/2023

I’m the daughter of witches they couldn’t burn

I forget this

I’m full of eternal life

I know I’ve been here before

Many times

I know it

I know I have chosen this to be my lesson

3/6/2023 Art Gallery

You found the cobblestone structure fascinating

Or perhaps intimidating

Regardless, interesting…

It’s different from the other buildings

This one has been here long

It’s an art museum

You wander the halls and floors

Maybe get drawn to one exhibit

You gaze at the strokes and layers expressed in pieces

You remain distracted with the movement of traffic

Never fulling investing into the stories painted on these walls

Its inconsequential

Disengaging is easy

There was nothing of interest on display

Maybe one day someone will walk through and see

3/6/2023

I’m irritable.

Annoyed and maybe angry.

I don’t allow the praise and I certainly don’t like the acknowledgment

Such a silly thing to praise-

Someone loving someone who hurts them

Guess I’ve done that all my life

It hurt to beg someone to stop hurting me

But there is one that hurts the most

The hurt that came from a woman I could never stop loving

What a tormenting thing to feel

Feel love for someone who could never give it back

When I say I love you

I promise I mean it

Cause even when I don’t want to, I do

3/5/2023

The authentic and fearless love I give away…

I deny Her access.

I withhold. I neglect. I abandon Her.

I don’t know where I found it- Love.

It should be gone. Empty. Justifiably so.

But I can access it. I can feel it and give it to others.

I wonder how much more pain I have caused Her as She watches me give it away to people who don’t know it’s worth…

To people who can’t understand how extraordinary its existence is

I give this gift away.

She watches me run from Her into the arms of people who can’t see me, can’t see Her.

I seek to be seen.

I desire it more than anything but I hide the parts that need to be seen.

There’s nothing poetic about it.

There is no way to twist the ugly and messy into beauty.

It just is, heavy, dark, messy parts of me.

I don’t need you to see the beauty in this.

Know that this darkness in my mind and soul is a void of something once stolen long ago.

What was stolen and what is left is irrelevant.

Maybe, just maybe, the ember is worth the heaviness of Her pain.