On Recovery and Loneliness:

Recovery happens slowly now. From good or bad. It’s a longer stretch when you’re alone. For there’s no-one to hug you back to life after triumph or failure. To cradle you in their arms And hold you close as the warmth from their body seeps in, warming your own insides, soaking your tears on their shirt. So you move through time. Like a slug. Heavy and solitary. Slothily charging forward, leaving a trail of tired across the stagnant air. And you’re ok. Because this is what is in time. But you need a few days more than someone who comes home to filled space.

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On the New Year:

And as I scroll, endlessly, on an app that I’ve deleted a thousand times before, I feel as though everyone is moving forward. Advancing into the future of their present. With baby cheeks and rings, partners and trips, glamour and celebrations that make sense. And I feel myself falling. Pulled the opposite way, as the brushes of “life” surround me like a perfectly curated tunnel of the shadows of others. It’s hard to describe this feeling in any way other than moving backwards. 

Other. O-ther. O-there. O, O FUCKING O! 

As others go forth I am left behind. Further and further from the things that I too want but am not yet ready for as they race past me, around me, waving and smiling but unable to stay. Or, perhaps, I am too ready, but meant for other things. Things that don’t yet leave echoes of their existence on the internet. But that, hopefully, will flood my sense of self in this new year. The time marker for a clean slate. 

We love a clean slate.

The future feels much like the past. But the air is thinner here. And people are hopeful still.

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On Fullness:

What is this? Is it torture? IS it love? No? Just the curse of being either unbearably full or devastatingly empty of feelings at all times? A gift. They say. To feel so much at once all the time. To know yourself so deeply. Well. Well, well. The tornado of my mind whirls around every thought come to visit and infect me with... What? My soul presses against me from the inside, stretching my skin thin, translucent in light, desperate to escape. Trapped in a tube too small for its vast expansiveness. Confining it to fit an unfit shape. Square peg round hole. It is so so painful. To feel. So much. not knowing what kind of moment it will be. Will I burst open and flood the air with what pours out my eyes? A joke. But a sweet one. She always cries. Or, will I collapse inward as those same eyes, now full of doubt, squeeze from within the last dregs of hope? You are an emotional creature. And just when I believe I have a grasp on the nature of my nature, it turns and twists, slithering out of my reach. Tangling itself tighter. Each time a thread is pulled a forgotten crevasse of my heart twinges. Hoping. Losing hoping.

This gift I hold bares a hearty burden. Too big a burden to bare with no known purpose. For I become too much the burden borne and big feelings bury me.