The minute
the very exact minute
i opened my mouth
out flew every disease i ever caught.
And so i buried myself
under the pine
with worn words as a companion.
A silent celebration
i invited no one.
I am about a month away from my Little Free Library grand opening. Which means I am busy constructing my first collaborative chapbook and I am eager to let everyone see it soon! Thank you to those who have contributed.
Felt brave -well enough, so i peered into the book and read his words. Our words.
Jan 19, 2017, 2:13 PM
Stopped my thoughts
and when i stopped
writing you
voices flooded in -mocking
“Why are you bothering?”
“You’re not going to make it?”
Concentrate on anything
but this
this tight chest and lorazepam.
The knife digs in -relentless.
“Just take it.” I hear.
Forced to give in
I conquer fear.
i feel safe.
i’m home.
And that can be
a problem
i need to overcome.
Do u think it is social anxiety because i read something and it made sense. But also about attachments and neurosis.
Do u know when u dont answer i can find myself growing anxious. Second guessing myself, not feeling safe for saying stuff i mean to keep to myself. I havent been bothered lately. I find myself looking around but im okay. Just a couple times, anxious, and
upset with myself because of this.
I cant be still not knowing what to do. Should, or rather, i need to talk.
I dont know and that makes it bad. Then another thing, this taking medicine. Should i try to stop. Maybe ill be all right. But what if not. Will it just cause more harm. Fretting that im stuck in this hole. But i dont feel stuck now, everyone is gone. Its okay. Its better that way. This is long.
Sorry.
I only notice when I leave the house. Looking out
the top floor window seemed safe to leave; leaving was a totally different reality.
“What do you think? I feel like i should be able to go outside but find myself sleeping, not able to move.” He didn’t have an answer.
“I think ill be okay. Thought maybe if i came to talk every 2 months…” She continued the conversation but never realized he was closed off to her after too many years of stagnation.
The escape. A shadow dances, from out the corner of her eye. Her mind unable to override the dark sky.
——–
Stopping my thoughts today? Good luck. I finish my papers but when i stop writing it all floods in, mocking me. “Why are you bothering? Your not going to make it?”
After a while, trying to write, i just couldnt write. Couldnt concentrate on anything but this. My chest is tight and hurts. I tried relaxing, taking lorazapam. Nothing works.
Its all front and center reminding me its not over no matter how much i wish and want to be free. I have no answers or know what im doing wrong.
All i did was stop and something took advantage of the weak wall.
The old broke through.
Church is poetry. Poetry is life. A life well lived.
Like Dicken’s “Tale of Two Cities” I have lived a tale of polar opposites. I have known a dark night of the soul and the fresh morning dew of enlightenment.
No memories can ever be forgotten but they can be forgiven. And the forgiveness allows me to wake up and be grateful for everything. Even the memories that still cause sharp pains. Those are the memories that led me to despair and wrestle in a black, plastic garbage bag until I finally took the knife, I once used against myself, and started cutting open breathing holes.
What am i doing here this morning? Did i not say i was gone from WP? Well a thought entered my head after reading a post in a closed group i belong to on FB… and decided to share here as well.
So, what is the group? Survivors of Suicide. A group i did not sign up for but was rather pushed into. And i reside there eternally.
I am healthier today. Actually quite happy. It hurts to say i am happy. I wear my brother’s pain… my grays and blues. Back in black on sunny days. No hat can hide or sunglasses conceal my tears.
Regardless i have survived two suicides and countless hopes to die myself. What follows is my posting to the group this morning…
“At some point life becomes unbearable… my mother was miserable and trudged through life. Her desire to die was known growing up and affected us children, as much as if she had died. I started to desire death at 8 years old. Then my grandfather did die by suicide… gunshot to the head, two months before my wedding. My desire to die increased and my happy day was miserable… it rained as my dad drove me to the church. Then, a rainbow appeared as i got out of the car. A tinge of hope engulfed me. That sparkle flickered for years. Fast track to March 1 2008 and my brother died by suicide. I was still a broken girl with dashed dreams (moments of hope sprinkled in) and felt compelled to leave this earth too! I spent days staring out the kitchen window while holding a knife to my neck, ever gently scraping… singing a lullaby to myself. Oh! and the knotted ropes in my mind would magically turn into snakes, dance in my head while telling me peace came with death.
“Lies!!!” i screamed back.
Today? Ten years later and 51, I have never felt so alive!!! I do not think about the past… my environment has changed. I live in a new house, a new town/state, surrounded by beauty and inner peace… everything before today was all a nightmare.
(To everyone in the FB closed group i told them ‘So glad you all are here. Talking. Suicidal thoughts are a disease. A product of overgrown emotions that do not know to express themselves outward. I went to therapy for ten years… my escape was to pack my bags and get the hell out of hell… i stay in this group because i cannot leave my brother. I so wish he was here. He would be happy to know i made it out alive.
Hope this isnt too harsh. It was my reality for 50 years.’)
I am always available to listen to you too. promisegardens@att.net
One person lost, is another person found… sorry if laughing is rude… i am highly entertained by you lately.
Oh my! You are a riot! Please tell me if i am wrong in understanding you… what i perceive may not be registering correctly.
And my high school days… ummm… 🤐
Once when I was in high school…
— Read on handsinthegarden.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/once-when-i-was-in-high-school/
lie under,
stand over,
peer inside
answers
what is it
about burning…
remembering
and forgetting
a drag on a cigarette
pleasing…
squeezing life
from a stone
Dear diary
war is crumbling
this peaceful way,
children hungry for more than scoldings
growing food -alone.
She tells me
a warrior child
easily wounded,
her soul cries for man,
she tells me of the shelter
a cup and bread and blanket,
how he faced the end.
Great, great grandmother
Elizabeth her name,
proud to share the same.
Born ….. Died …..
Blackhawk and his squaws found peace in the hills and home of my GGGrandmother Elizabeth Gregg Matthes
as a child i nagged my parents to stop smoking… my dad was happy to quit and exclaimed “i can smell and taste again!” what should have been a breakthrough was left a defeat, mom moping and poking around, complaining as usual… she wanted her cigarettes… not wanting to smoke alone, she subsided the habit, never lit another cig again… she also never let me forget her misery was my fault…
today i am suppose to be packing… what little we brought to our temporary apartment, so i better scoot and tape up some boxes to haul stuff over to our new house… it is our home tomorrow! it feels like a Christmas, as it hasn’t felt since i got a Barbie Townhouse from Santa in the 3rd grade… i won’t go into a diatribe about the evils of believing in nonsense (perhaps another day i will reminisce about breaking my brother’s heart and getting an ass whooping) or how Barbie and Ken evokes sexual feelings in kids… might just let that be forever…
not going to fix humanity and i have given up trying… my egotistical complex has been put to rest… now off to calm this racing heart… and pack!
tomorrow waits for no one ☀️😁
We really do not know each other, do we?
Years were spent cultivating all these hateful thoughts. Up until today, all that is wrong with life, seemed to be my fault. I easily accepted blame and never fought the day my mom banished me from their life. I was not the daughter she wanted and I constantly told myself it was my fault. I really believed awful things, that ruminated in my inner conversations. I tortured myself with thoughts of hangings, driving over bridges and splashing into rivers, jumping from a third floor apartment window while pregnant with my first daughter. Or recently, recklessly scraping a knife across my neck and wrists, aimlessly staring out the kitchen window above the sink, while I witnessed a small trickle of blood seep out. The drops slid down and pooled near the drain. Blue dreams turned red. Hot and bothered, I quickly fed myself more lies. I truly believed I did not deserve life. Lies I recognize now. Lies taught to me. Lies I easily fall back into when I am not staying present in the day.
I am not looking to place blame. Oh, well I will blame myself for getting caught up in a web of lies. Lies that told me I am no good…
I believed that I was no good for the longest time. Therapy has done wonders for my soul. My heart and head no longer bleed needlessly. Only when I forget who I am. I have learned to fight back. I am not cut by my own hands or any one else’s for that matter. Not anymore.
During this personal awakening, I have ventured to places I should not have. I became too brave and traipsed where I did not see the wrongdoing on my part or the wrongdoing of another. I enticed it to go on longer than it should because of feeling alone. Sometimes I want to indulge myself more. Whisper sweet things to strangers. They do not mind. Neither do I. But I am hurting people, including myself. It just has this turn on not easily turned off. Then realize I am not truly alone.
I live in a self-enclosed loneliness because I am afraid of true love. I begged for love during childhood and I simply do not understand real love. When it showed up, I fought and fight against it. Trying to convince others I am no good. They should kill me too. Surely make it easier to die, than by my own hands. I even had a cop ready to take his gun from his holster. I pushed just enough. But really not enough. I retreated from the edge. The dryness I remember. The trying to swallow while the heat rose from my feet. What was I asking for? Was this fight really worth anyone causing harm to another?
All these words sprout from somewhere deep… some words remain shallow and swim close to the edge of my skin. Others are dying for air and I happily let them out. Luckily for me, the words mostly die the minute they hit the atmosphere. Nothing survives without oxygen and these thoughts greedily suck up all the oxygen my body consumes. Often I am left with little but carbon dioxide. I am not a plant. Not even a humble clover or Venus Flytrap, as some men like to portray me. I need oxygen. I need to breathe.
——–
I know what would have happened to me had my past plans come true. But do you? Or would you even care?
Heck! You do not know me. Why do I think you do? Or want to.
How much do we want to know about others? Or others to know of us? It is easy to write. Well, not always. I struggle and then I struggle again, with posting. But I do write. And I do post. It is all here to read. Until it is no longer.
I think and rethink myself over. Over and over I turn the bells in my head and they always ring twice and I still never hear them. Do you?
I wrote the above to help me through a day, last week. It was not meant for public consumption, but after reading Aguycalledbloke this morning, i decided to share. This is but a snippet of my relationship with my mother.
Is it worth returning to this planet? Of trying to understand why i am so crazy today? Am i not making progress any more? Am i not rebelling against their prison, set-up to chain me to the past?
I am my own person. My parents are gone. They had their chance to live. I have today and i cannot live in their fear… a person cannot fully live, regretful.
My love of nature is born from my dad. For that i am eternally grateful.
Direction, June 2, 2018
Run free Jeanne! Run free…
Who the hell knows if i will be here… today, tomorrow or any other day. If i am, hope your near by. If not, i will find my way… forward.
Always have… been a survivor. Even of my own thoughts to die. Withholding food to starve my heartache. Suffocation, in moments, while i prayed for death. A child. Yes, i was a child who believed there was a God who heard my prayers for sweet, sweet death. Until He never answered. Turned His back on His daughter… wished her to suffer more. Then whispered “Peace.” at her half-opened door. Caught her peeking, looking for answers. Cold.
Wouldn’t tell my whole story. Who cares anyhow? Well meaning people spout sugary words to the despairing child but their words always spoil once swallowed.
I have been poisoned by this world. The cream in my coffee swirls me down enough…
White Mountains New Hampshire
seasons: a poetic journey 