Beauty & The Beast
I've tasted the River of Red. It's loaded with iron and carbon. It's musky and dank and sits on my tongue like a thousand souls in purgatory.
All week I've worked to find something to do with my time, desperately scratching out my heart with ragged fingernails, laying my head between unstable concrete slabs, battling with the devil of self failure and life failure.
It's been a difficult time. There's no alignment with my abilities and my resume; no way to convey the gifts I once knew would rescue me. I'm floating in a sea of fear. I felt, not more than two days past, that I was actually drowning in it. A wave would break on me and I'd hold my breath then I'd gasp for air and pull more marine madness into my body and sink further down into the cold waters.
I cut off all connection with the world minus Puppy who was driven to the point of telling me to "stop complaining" and begged me to seek refuge in El J Land. I just couldn't face anyone, even him, but habit is stronger than embarrassment and I kept that line alive. I thought to cut it (temporarily) but I needed to hold on even if I had to be quiet.
Everything I've ever known or thought about myself was brought under the guillotine and severed in front of me. It was a complete annihilation, total carnage, absolute death. I didn't even cry. I just watched each hope, skill, gift, redeeming quality, and adored character trait fall mangled, screaming and bleeding out of my life.
Someone told me to "stay calm" when I attempted to hide my terror and failed. It became my mantra. Stay calm, Steph. Stay calm. Things began to shift. Just a little. Ever so slight but enough to begin to breath again, or remember how to start.
I'm not looking back but I am moving forward in slow, painfully tender steps. My mind can block out the agony of this last week but my body remembers and my soul keeps it crystal clear.
When one feels like parts of them are dying, parts that they loved dearly, interesting changes occur. Changes that make reality difficult to face. It's as if a gigantic magnifying glass was placed before every thing your eye and minds eye saw. Those details don't fade, but remain crystallized, too real to forget.
Some say looking closely at yourself is constructive but I think they are too vague. If you look and you see a toy box full of used and discarded (through disinterest) toys and have nothing left to play with and no hope left (it was in the old box) to find more with then.... it's a very sad space. If you look so close that the positive morphs into the negative, you've done yourself a disservice with the exercise. You've pulled a muscle, to keep on the fitness analogy. It's better to NOT look at yourself too closely or you may just lose the humor and find the horror.
I found the horror, the bones, the spilled milk and I didn't laugh, or cry. I began to die.
Some say that, to really live, you must face death, look it in the eyes and rise up in defiance. They say Rome wasn't built in a day and many a city fell before it was built strong enough to withstand the elements of time and earth. Each symbolic death I endure I learn a bit more about myself and I hope to, one day, be strong enough to stand in defiance and not crumble under the storm.
Until then, I'm just a pair of trembling hands trying not to hurt anyone as much as I am hurt, and failing. But I'm trying, and I'm learning, and I keep scraping my innards out of the blender and reassembling them so that's something, right?
All week I've worked to find something to do with my time, desperately scratching out my heart with ragged fingernails, laying my head between unstable concrete slabs, battling with the devil of self failure and life failure.
It's been a difficult time. There's no alignment with my abilities and my resume; no way to convey the gifts I once knew would rescue me. I'm floating in a sea of fear. I felt, not more than two days past, that I was actually drowning in it. A wave would break on me and I'd hold my breath then I'd gasp for air and pull more marine madness into my body and sink further down into the cold waters.
I cut off all connection with the world minus Puppy who was driven to the point of telling me to "stop complaining" and begged me to seek refuge in El J Land. I just couldn't face anyone, even him, but habit is stronger than embarrassment and I kept that line alive. I thought to cut it (temporarily) but I needed to hold on even if I had to be quiet.
Everything I've ever known or thought about myself was brought under the guillotine and severed in front of me. It was a complete annihilation, total carnage, absolute death. I didn't even cry. I just watched each hope, skill, gift, redeeming quality, and adored character trait fall mangled, screaming and bleeding out of my life.
Someone told me to "stay calm" when I attempted to hide my terror and failed. It became my mantra. Stay calm, Steph. Stay calm. Things began to shift. Just a little. Ever so slight but enough to begin to breath again, or remember how to start.
I'm not looking back but I am moving forward in slow, painfully tender steps. My mind can block out the agony of this last week but my body remembers and my soul keeps it crystal clear.
When one feels like parts of them are dying, parts that they loved dearly, interesting changes occur. Changes that make reality difficult to face. It's as if a gigantic magnifying glass was placed before every thing your eye and minds eye saw. Those details don't fade, but remain crystallized, too real to forget.
Some say looking closely at yourself is constructive but I think they are too vague. If you look and you see a toy box full of used and discarded (through disinterest) toys and have nothing left to play with and no hope left (it was in the old box) to find more with then.... it's a very sad space. If you look so close that the positive morphs into the negative, you've done yourself a disservice with the exercise. You've pulled a muscle, to keep on the fitness analogy. It's better to NOT look at yourself too closely or you may just lose the humor and find the horror.
I found the horror, the bones, the spilled milk and I didn't laugh, or cry. I began to die.
Some say that, to really live, you must face death, look it in the eyes and rise up in defiance. They say Rome wasn't built in a day and many a city fell before it was built strong enough to withstand the elements of time and earth. Each symbolic death I endure I learn a bit more about myself and I hope to, one day, be strong enough to stand in defiance and not crumble under the storm.
Until then, I'm just a pair of trembling hands trying not to hurt anyone as much as I am hurt, and failing. But I'm trying, and I'm learning, and I keep scraping my innards out of the blender and reassembling them so that's something, right?