All. Fall. Down. Again.

 Eats away.

Pain eats at everything. 

I used to say pain was clarifying, but - you scrape it out of its shell, throw it in a blender with trauma and exhaustion and I'd ask if any of you to describe it as 'clarifying' the same.  Sure, some kind of toxic positivity bullshit might tell you to think otherwise, but - I haven't found any of that useful.

If I could think myself out of this shithole, I would have by now.

Could you, given the same set of circumstances

Come up with a different solution?

Are you really so strong as you think?

Given absence, given shame, given humiliation or boredom or isolation...

I would offer that you would be just as weak.

Just as prone to reach for the nearest source of comfort.

I have to remove the circumstances.

This isn't about me being stronger, this is about me accepting my particular set of strengths and weaknesses and the things that make me who I am.

And finding better things to do with them.

I am not the problem.

My unique set of memories makes me especially sensitive and vulnerable to this unique experience.  

I can't change the memories.  I have to change the experience.  I can change, I can change- I'm not the same?

It comes in waves.

Grief, I mean.  And growth.

It comes in waves.

Waves of overwhelmed-ness,

Of peace and understanding.

Of connection, or some isolation.

We isolate, we all do.  We carry our burdens alone;

She did

We never learned how to talk to one another,

Or really: how to trust one another.

I wish I could build a boat to keep us all afloat.

But, I guess then we’d never really learn how to swim.

This year, for me, has been about learning to swim.

I’ve been just-barely-not-drowning for so very long.

Had to jump out across the ocean to find a new place to start.

I’m still really just starting.  Finding my way 

Through the waves.

All Fall Down.

 I walked the whole labyrinth, 

Laid my skin and soul bare and left it drying, met a 

Minotaur of my own making.  

I fought him with fists and furious excuses.  

He thought me a mess, a spurious muse.

We ended up making friends and playing some spite-less game of chess 

by the sea.  

My monster, and me. 

 

He schooled me with a sneaky rook or two, but I hooked him in the end.  

I heard from the son of a shopkeeper 

That the son of the sun was horsing around- 

Drove his carriage right into the ground

Left his sister crying

Her tears turning to sweet amber

We all fall down, you see.

The sun and the moon and me,

We all 

Fall 

Down.

You would be, too.

I have escaped, tonight.
Into some foxhole of comfort, walls as thin as paper but somehow 
I'll take it.
I'll take anything fucking anything that doesn't feel like that.

Meditate?
You meditate, motherfucker we are so far gone beyond meditating when all of the wall have eyes and you can smell blood with your fingers and you dream waking dreams of glass and mud and tiny saw-teeth grins and bandages...
You meditate.

I can't be in my skin, anymore, man.
My soul hurts.

My body has been telling me, shouting at me, screaming at me all day:

FUCKING LEAVE.

Only, I can't.
None of us can, that isn't an option so where else do I go?
I've a body committing mutiny, a mind trapped in a faraway place and I'll go anywhere but here.
So, we got another earthquake.
Another tide to ride out
Figure it out. Back me into a corner, got windows to my left and a bottle to my right, I'll take the bottle sir.  This is why I'm drunk.  It's just easier, and: given the same memories, you'd be fucking drunk, too.

Tell me you wouldn't be drunk, too. 

Reli.Able.

 “I am not what I have done.

I am what I have overcome.”

“I could never have done this if I wasn’t sober.”

Well, I wasn’t sober.  But I was trying 

Working hard to find a place to work from.

Trying hard to find my feet

To find the ground.

I am still fragile.

Still have mountains to climb,

“Fourteeners”, they say.

But this time, I got to be there.  

I made a decision that I’m proud of.

Momentum, they say.

Is everything.

Far. Away.

 Some days we weep for sorrow.

Some days, it’s for for happiness, 

Or emptiness.

I’m glad I don’t pour my emptiness into my hands, anymore.

Some days it’s grief: for friends, for memories, for dreams and all the things you dreamed for me.

But mostly, I weep for loneliness.

I know you are lonely, too.

I know you hoped I’d be there forever, and now I’m not anymore.

I know you check in, here: to see what I’ve been up to.

To see who I’m becoming, 

Without you.

I’m grateful, for all you gave me.

I can’t breathe life into your dreams,

Any more than you can heal my strange wounds.

I love you for breathing your own life, fanning your own flames. It took a lot for you to realize you deserved it.

Keep breathing.  

I’ll keep weeping.

Someday, we’ll all be gone to dust and fairytales.

And I’ll miss you.

Shaking the rails.

 She growled and grabbed and gurgled her frustration.

At her body’s sudden betrayal:

broke all its promises too soon.

At me, at God, and anyone walking in the hall.

All I could do is hold her hand as she

Squeezed and gurgled what I imagine to be 

Thank you.

Helpless, each of us, 

Her: to communicate.

Me: to offer anything more than the tiniest of comforts.  

I ache with sadness, grieving a little for her crumbling 

Dignity, and a little for my own humanity.  

I’m not a God-fearing woman, 

But if I were, I’d pray tonight.

Please, O God, someday when I too

Am 64,

Don’t leave me in that terrible half light

Don’t tear my body for the sins of my mind 

To leave me half awake and

Half asleep.

Let me be, or if I am not to be, 

Spare me from shaking those rails, myself.