Tag: thoughts

Autobiography · Poetry · Relationships

Sail

Ruby Pipes3 Comments

I.
The boat arrived elsewhere
by the time you showed up.
Yelling back to the current
that now you have enough.

 
Strength.
Persistence.
Dedication.
Resistance.

We fought the tide together,
but eventually you sunk.

“I’m sorry,” slips from your fingertips
and never found its way to your tongue.
“I’m different now,” is a charming thought,
but I have to interrupt.

Fight.
Lose.
Try.
Refuse.

We said we loved each other,
but I guess we got stuck.

“I’d take it back if I could,” shines
in the dark room.
I turn off the screen
and dismiss you.

II.
You ask if I have a minute after you call.
Send emails, texts, keys in the mail.
It’s over, but you’re not leaving.

I didn’t mean to dissolve you into
smoke signals and shouts.
You’re not broken,
you’re just grieving.

You know what this is all about.
It was our future I wasn’t seeing.

And, yes, I should have done things differently,
but that doesn’t delude the words.
When I say what I mean
you need to know
it doesn’t matter if you believe me.

III.
Movies don’t make better entrances
than when I was standing at your door in the rain.
Hands outstreched, smile on,
palms placed against my face.

Slip shoes off, drop coat down,
press me hard into the wall.
Murmur something sweet into the space between us
then make sure there’s no space at all.

Electric and magnificent.
All the lights powered up.
We created something beautiful
just by using trust.

You tell you love me too early
and it still feels like you took so long.
I exchanged the words and understood
we belong here from now on.

Autobiography · Mental Health · Personal Development · Relationships

Revival

Ruby Pipes8 Comments

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“tide” © snarl , 2005. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Strangers. Our eyes met and I flashed a smile. The earth was magnetic, chest light and fluttering. He was at once my roots and wings. The world melted and there he stood. Alone. Spotlit. Deafening.

And I find myself having trouble writing about him. About the angles of his body complimenting my curves perfectly. The way we dissolve into giggle fits just by exchanging glances. How his hand regularly reaches for mine, like he needs to be touching me to be sure I’m there. That this is real. That we exist. Here. Together. Finally.

I catch myself wondering if I ought to be jaded. How the broken promise of forever-love should leave me unbelieving. Instead I let him put his hands on either side of my face and kiss me deeply upon greeting. I let my knees get weak and my face to ache from smiling.

There is nothing wrong with inviting love back in.

In the morning he gets up for work and leaves me sleeping. Twisting in the sheets that belong to him. Hours later I climb into the shower. The smell of his shampoo engulfing me in the steam. I breathe deep and boggle at my good fortune of just existing.

He is the first one from the new time. From the beginning years. The first one to meet me after the medication is settled. After I rediscover my own spine and plant my own feet. He is the first one to only see the scars and hear the stories. To not have the memory of the woman I used to be. To not remember how empty I seemed.

We recreate ourselves through others, don’t we? And this time I know how I want to do things differently. So when we’re scared we tell each other, just like when we’re pleased. I stand firm on what’s important to me. I make time to see my friends. I keep writing. I talk to my family. I remember to believe there is nothing wrong with me.

Really believe.

This man does not know the way I pulled my knees to my chest and sobbed about living. He does not know the suffering. And I can see it in the way he looks at me. I am not broken or fragile. I am not a time bomb, a loose cannon. I am not the person I used to be. I’m… Happy. Grateful. Ecstatic and thriving.

Autobiography · Mental Health

Something New

Ruby Pipes13 Comments
"New York Transit Museum" © Geoff Wilson, 2008. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
“New York Transit Museum” © Geoff Wilson, 2008. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

My new therapist gives me homework. Tells me to notice when I’m triggered and my thoughts try to get away from me. “All you have to do is recognize that it’s ninety-percent old hurt. You don’t have to do anything. Just recognize that you’re reacting to a situation you’re no longer in,” he says. His voice is soothing, but firm. I can imagine him in a lecture hall with hundreds of students nodding their heads and scrawling notes on yellow legal pads. He tells me, “It’s easy to get swept up in it. It’s an instant reaction. But we can start to recognize it for what it is and then we can work to change it.”

I nod my head. At first because I’m intimidated by him and I want to be agreeable, but then because I know he’s right. I can feel myself opening up to him. A flower unfurling its petals. Slowly at first, and then all at once. “I can do that. I can do this,” I tell him. The sweet sigh of realizing that there are things I haven’t tried yet.

He looks at me over the top of his notebook and says, “You know, it’s not just the big traumas that shape us. Sometimes it’s just a steady drip. It works itself into everything you do, really just ingrains itself into you. And no matter how safe you feel later, or how different your environment is, you are always expecting that drip.”

My breath stops and it’s a moment before I’m able to let out a slow shudder. I crack a smile because it’s the only thing that makes sense. “Yeah, I am.”

On the train ride home I repeat a line from a Shane Koyczan poem over and over again. “If you believe with absolute honesty that you’re doing everything you can, do more.”

It is so easy to think that I’m doing everything I possibly can with the tools I have to work with. Simple to assume that I am at my limit. I swear I feel the strain, the edge of breaking. But I wonder if I’m made of stronger stuff than I think.

At night I find myself curled up in bed, my knees to my chest, and the blankets pulled up over my head. “I can’t do this,” I whisper soft into my palms, my cupped hands catching my breath. But it’s just pulling back, not fact. It’s the automatic reaction to being challenged, to having more thrown at me than I think I can handle. But I’m capable of dealing with it. Of taking a breath and recognizing that I’m not threatened in the way I think I am.

In the morning I put on my running clothes and head out into the dark. One foot after another, I let my body go. My mind finally settling into a rhythm. And instead of submitting, instead of telling myself again that this is too hard and I’m never going to get it, all I say is, “Do more. Do more. Do more.”