Mental Health · Personal Development

Shed

Ruby Pipes

“dawn – a modification of darkness” © Jenny Downing, 2012. CC BY 2.0.
Hopeful and angry. Desperate and begging. Shedding our skins. Bursting forth all raw and tender.

We’re furious. We’re terrified. We dissolve into tears on a daily basis. Every time we walk over a bridge we hold our breath and stare at our feet. We can’t look at the skyline without wondering about how to get to the balconies. Everything hurts and life is completely overwhelming.

But we’re not staying quiet about it anymore. We’re making the phone calls. Asking for medical leave. Requesting new appointments with psychiatrists. Keeping all our therapy sessions. And when they ask if we are dangerous, we look them right in the eye and say, “Yes.”

This is progress. This is forward motion. This is the cusp of settling.

A calmness is climbing in. Filling up the spaces between our ventricles. Wrapping tight around our spines and holding us up tall. Refusing to let us suffer in silence.

We will not sit idly. We will move and we will not go back. So we strip down to the bare minimum. We focus in. We put all our fight into this.

It begins to feel less like the end. More like the moment in the morning when the birds don’t even sing. The whole world holding its breath, waiting for the sun to signal another new beginning.

25 thoughts on “Shed”

      1. oh. ok.

        thanks for taking the time for clarification. i guess I’ve been asked that…

        i just don’t know what it means anymore. life is hard and entirely weird. and somehow worth it all too.

        anyhow I feel a lot of strength after reading your blog so it must be in you even when you’re in doubt. it just must be. i’m drawn to your light not your dark, if that makes sense in the “darkness”

        thanks for taking time with me. i appreciate it.

        love and healing and blessing to you,
        kj

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  10. I just want to let you know that you are so, so fucking badass. Seeing you do your best to keep your head above water and take care of yourself during the storms makes me want to ask for your autograph or hug you or both. Thank you for sharing the fight with us, and thank you for fighting. I don’t know you, but I believe you’re worth the fight.

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  11. ‘We will not sit idly. We will move and we will not go back. So we strip down to the bare minimum. We focus in. We put all our fight into this.’

    Truer words. Beautiful.

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