two selves meet
"To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . ." - Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait in Letters
And that is the rub. To be alone inside a place as dark and awful as a mind. Sometimes i try to imagine a place like the inside of a deaf person's mind. I would be, perhaps, even more lonely. But the issue wouldn't be depression, people could understand "oh, you cannot hear" and the loneliness would be imagined and forgiven. To be truly forgiven for depression is difficult. the caretakers, not unlike those of Alzhiemers victims, they have to care for a torn mind. Predictability is always an illusion. They hope, they pray or this reasonability, but there is none. It, the disease of mental illness, remains a constant blade one must handle carefully, then later, if at all.
I was in a very tumultuous marriage and cuckolded a giving man for the desire to escape my own emotional imbalance, creating more imbalance, but also, rising and falling again and over again for the simple fact that I could. I have always felt a desire to help, but a cruel impulse toward deception. There was no "reason" for my actions, a "devil made me do it" mentality… but I feel I was justified looking back because i could not communicate with my mouth what my head wouldn't make sense out of. Shame, guilt, justification and mania. It was a scent in the air to be that person. I did not dissolve, but I learned to put my following of these stray ideas into boxes called art & poems and writing. I still feel the shame. The devil still makes me do it, but now i negotiate with the evil of emotional breakage, Oh, I barter daily. Take all my things, but leave me savings and love. Give me a park and a fresh coffee, but leave me alone- don't send a smart pretty boy to unravel me. Then i long for it. Secretly. Destroy me, again, life.
One cannot imagine it. The trouble of being so high and incapable of understanding defeat when in the midst of a most alive, manic moment. no bad can come of the destruction, but I keep throwing grenades. Then when i wake the disaster laid out before me like a terrible one night stand, in the midst of a war- the dread returns. "What did I do?' How did i possibly do this to myself again? i thought i was well. I thought I was welcome in the fires and I'd be protected?" this is when I close down. I shut off. I tempted danger, out of longing, out of loneliness, out of greed, out of pain, whatever the catalyst, I know i did it. I can't believe I would do it, but I woke the dragon again, like I always do. Like listening to a song over and over I used to love in college, i just want to wrap myself in that misery.
who would want this? Who would, really? Why does slicing the skin feel so good and the healing take so long? I wish i knew how to answer these questions. I have chosen to remain, because i am afraid of myself. i am terrified of the messes i make. I need a love to forgive me. i keep on writing this same fucking story. I am sick of it. it makes me angry, but it keeps me alive.
I have accepted it. The slicing of the skin. The starving out of the flesh. The need for validation and delusions of grandeur. i have ceased to believe i can be a simple human, full of breakfast, calm & happiness. I am a poem. I am a liar. i am a thief. i am an artist who excuses my amorality with creation. I glorify the best and worst, while throwing the meat & potatoes person into the dump. in secret, the doors are locked here. I cannot reach out to vulnerable love. I can take it or leave it. i just wish i was able to be taken. then taken for granted. then taken home and taken fro behind and then taken aback.
but I will not marry a man who can or could. Is that smart? or is that fear?
And that is the rub. To be alone inside a place as dark and awful as a mind. Sometimes i try to imagine a place like the inside of a deaf person's mind. I would be, perhaps, even more lonely. But the issue wouldn't be depression, people could understand "oh, you cannot hear" and the loneliness would be imagined and forgiven. To be truly forgiven for depression is difficult. the caretakers, not unlike those of Alzhiemers victims, they have to care for a torn mind. Predictability is always an illusion. They hope, they pray or this reasonability, but there is none. It, the disease of mental illness, remains a constant blade one must handle carefully, then later, if at all.
I was in a very tumultuous marriage and cuckolded a giving man for the desire to escape my own emotional imbalance, creating more imbalance, but also, rising and falling again and over again for the simple fact that I could. I have always felt a desire to help, but a cruel impulse toward deception. There was no "reason" for my actions, a "devil made me do it" mentality… but I feel I was justified looking back because i could not communicate with my mouth what my head wouldn't make sense out of. Shame, guilt, justification and mania. It was a scent in the air to be that person. I did not dissolve, but I learned to put my following of these stray ideas into boxes called art & poems and writing. I still feel the shame. The devil still makes me do it, but now i negotiate with the evil of emotional breakage, Oh, I barter daily. Take all my things, but leave me savings and love. Give me a park and a fresh coffee, but leave me alone- don't send a smart pretty boy to unravel me. Then i long for it. Secretly. Destroy me, again, life.
One cannot imagine it. The trouble of being so high and incapable of understanding defeat when in the midst of a most alive, manic moment. no bad can come of the destruction, but I keep throwing grenades. Then when i wake the disaster laid out before me like a terrible one night stand, in the midst of a war- the dread returns. "What did I do?' How did i possibly do this to myself again? i thought i was well. I thought I was welcome in the fires and I'd be protected?" this is when I close down. I shut off. I tempted danger, out of longing, out of loneliness, out of greed, out of pain, whatever the catalyst, I know i did it. I can't believe I would do it, but I woke the dragon again, like I always do. Like listening to a song over and over I used to love in college, i just want to wrap myself in that misery.
who would want this? Who would, really? Why does slicing the skin feel so good and the healing take so long? I wish i knew how to answer these questions. I have chosen to remain, because i am afraid of myself. i am terrified of the messes i make. I need a love to forgive me. i keep on writing this same fucking story. I am sick of it. it makes me angry, but it keeps me alive.
I have accepted it. The slicing of the skin. The starving out of the flesh. The need for validation and delusions of grandeur. i have ceased to believe i can be a simple human, full of breakfast, calm & happiness. I am a poem. I am a liar. i am a thief. i am an artist who excuses my amorality with creation. I glorify the best and worst, while throwing the meat & potatoes person into the dump. in secret, the doors are locked here. I cannot reach out to vulnerable love. I can take it or leave it. i just wish i was able to be taken. then taken for granted. then taken home and taken fro behind and then taken aback.
but I will not marry a man who can or could. Is that smart? or is that fear?