The Curse
You abandoned me inside a well filled with lonely
The depths of which I struggled to fathom
I thought of you not thinking of me
Never thinking of me
And I foundered
I was chained to a myriad of haunted memories
The way you made me feel that I was odd and unloveable
The way you raged at my need and starved me of affection.
In that moment the plural pain that you all inflicted became one devil
A single obstacle I needed to overcome.
You imagined Iâd be too defeated to climb out
To scale the dark walls
Slippery with moss
Scaly with grime
Too intimidated by the darkness of rejection
The emptiness of unrequited love
But I wove the rags on which I slept into braided rope
And I climbed my way to freedom
Exchanging the skin on my hands for each inch of progress
No light to guide me but the faintest glow of hope
It would soon evolve into certainty that I deserved better
Years later I sit in a crumbling cottage
While you preside over a palace
Thinking yourself large
Making others feel small
Riding a wave of avoidant confidence that never hears its own echo
Arrogance that doesnât see the wrecks it leaves behind
I keep the journal entries from those days
And the little trinkets you gave me
Right there on my bookshelf with my prized possessions
They ward against the charisma that once seduced me
The unkindness that produced the tears with which you filled your moat
These totems take me back to the moment I escaped
The moment I finally grasped the earth around the well
Cold blades of grass sliding through my shredded fingers like cold spaghetti
Sweat and blood comingling on my tear stained face
While the stars greeted me with open arms
And the gods lit the path to a new world
I began a new life
Reborn
Your names are tattooed on my chest
But I donât feel the sting of them like I used to
I sleep in a lumpy bed with a broken frame
Propped up with the books I wrote about your crimes against me
This bed is warmer and softer than your thousand count sheets
The sleep finds me sweeter and deeper than yours
Knowing I loved and did not lie
Knowing I could never have loved you correctly, only honestly and unselfishly
As I always did
Knowing that the deepest, most precious love I have ever given lives on inside me
And not in the hands of those l gifted it to
You do not remember me
It is not just the mark of sinful pride
But the majestic nature of karma
For you will never learn the lesson that might have saved you
The same one that saved me
The lesson that we are all consigned to deliver heartbreak at some point in our lives But we need not deliver it without the seriousness it deserves
We need not hurl it across battlefields
Nor tiptoe around
Secretly silently selfishly planting in our loved ones gardens
Destined to become a plague upon the people we vowed to protect
But I am not merely your wounds and your lessons
I am frilly white socks
And sandwich triangles
The crisp sound of a page turning
And the laughter that collects like a bubble in my throat
I am all the pieces of happiness I collected for you recycled into new joys;
The handcrafted compliments on a silver platter
The buffet of ego-stroking sentiments to which you always returned
The commiserations and celebrations of someone who truly adored you
The things you enjoyed for a moment but not a lifetime
The repackaged treasures you left on my doorstep
Return to sender
And oh how grateful I am that you did!
No, I am not the school gate latching
The empty seats at the dinner table
The lazy the weak the slovenly
You deemed me to be
I am not the excuse to be cruel
I am not a sponge
Soaking up your vitriol
Anymore
I am the ocean pulling away from the shore
A sunflower growing up up up
And away from the cold, unyielding mud of the earth
I am the sherbet the gold rush the waterfall
I am soft and bold and irreplaceable
I am not the in between moments I cannot fill
The cratered skin and flares of white hot rage
The shutting down of my system in a revolt against the senses
I am the persistence of health within illness
Of happiness within the greatest sadness Iâve ever felt
I am a person who resigned herself to dropping burdens and playing dead until the threat had passed
I am the woman who found the strength to continue through hardest winters and soul crushing droughts
Over and over and over and
I am the forgiving and the faithful
The parishioner on her knees
Making oaths to be better
To be present
I am keeping them
I am the reimagining of a classic childhood tale
Bursting from the pages
I am becoming and becoming and becoming
Real
Realer than the naĂŻvetĂŠ and euphoria of my dreams with you
Realer than the person I dreamed of becoming
I am a changing wallpaper
A glow in the dark puzzle
A paint by numbers
Dot to dot
Slow reveal
I am for the patient
And the kind
I am a mile wide rainbow stretching over the enchanted woods
A pot of good for those who wait
For who study me as I study them
So that we may become experts on each other
In a world where feeling known is rare.
I am a midnight picnic beneath the stars
The sound that soft rain makes on a canvas tent
I am a strange and stubborn endurance
Who will love you always
In ways you do not return
I am the wisdom and the kindness that this makes me
I am a student of love and loss
And you were my teachers
I keep the cruel things you said to me in ancient jars coated in dust
Spelled close with white magic
I bring them out every full moon
To remember the spell you cast
The curse you enacted on my youth
And the day I finally broke it
A young witch finding her power
In the hands of those who took it
Attempting to vanquish her
Unaware that the attempt would only embolden her
You are my compass
You are the threads of wisdom woven through my self esteem
You are the waves of the ocean carrying me to better things
I will always miss the way we ran with hearts and legs pumping
Laughing as hard as our straining bodies would let us
Iâm never too far from the crinkle of fish and chip wrap
Yet always too far from the way it made ne feel
I will always miss the wilderness you planted inside me
And will forever mourn the day it began
The overgrowth
The misuse and neglect
Kindling
One day we were holding hands on a playground
The next it was aflame
I never breathed as shallowly as I did then
In the aftermath of you leaving
A burning utopia
A shattered snow globe
Strands of pink feather boas and the leaves of our once evergreen tree
Littering the blackened landscape
A hopeless wildfire
Where once grew roses and lillies and the strands of a trust I never thought would be broken
Yet I watched as it collapsed with the heat of the fire
Never to be rebuilt
I carry these little reminders of how tenderly I loved
And how bravely I lost
Reminders of the way that these ships sail,
Into that long dark night
Carrying the cargo you once shared
Never to appear upon the horizon again
I peer out the window of my cottage to see the clouds swirling
The purplish black of the bruises you continue to leave on this world
Thunder rumbling as you tread on hands and hearts
A careless giant
A smiling assassin
But I am safe here on the outskirts of the kingdom you took
I am happy here in a valley of new friends and family
The likes of which I found in the ashes of a kingdom just like yours
I tended to them as they tended to me
I made bandages from the letters I wrote you
Elixirs from the tears I shed in your name
We were victims of different plagues united together in healing
And we have built a life of careful words and gentle hope
I nurture these people as I was not nurtured
I love them as I hope to be loved
Here roses and lillies and evergreen trees bloom once more
The sounds of crackling fire and bubbling brooks reign supreme
With the smell of barbecues and salt water on the breeze
And the taste of caramel in my mouth
I am whole
There is music by the river in the evenings When the sun hangs low and heavy in the sky
Full and glowing as the faces of those around me
Whose souls shine through like silken gold
Acoustic guitar and a soft summer rainshower sing to my once beleaguered senses
I am soothed by the twinkling of the same stars I used to looked up to and pray to
I count every smiling face and every blade of grass and every word I write in this poem
I tally them in a notebook titled blessings
And read them like a lullaby just before bed
They are the magic with which I created this hidden valley
And the deep joy with which I expelled you all from my heart
They are the karma I earned while I was making you feel special
And the strength I found when you cursed me to believe that I was nothing
I am not nothing
I am the first blessing and the sixth and the one thousandth
I am not nothing
I am free
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A quote from one of my fave shows (well...Kinda. Can you call it a favourite if you quit twelve seasons in?) popped into my head the other day that was particularly pertinent to how I was feeling. I didnât think much of it at the time but later I realised it had been many, many episodes since I heard the quote and my memoryâs not good at the best of times. I realised I had remembered it for a reason, even if I didnât consciously know why. The quote was this:
You do what you can, when you can, while you can. If you canât, you canât - Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), Greyâs Anatomy.
It sounds simple enough but itâs something I and a lot of people struggle with when perfectionism and a lack of self belief takes over. When you feel like you are a bad person or are bad at things in general, any time you feel overwhelmed or under the weather can be proof of that. Feeling like you need a break or to slow down stops being a warning system and starts to become a trigger for negative thoughts.
We live in a society of âpush throughâ and âget on with itâ and âdonât complain because someone always has it worse than you.â And thereâs a time for that. Thereâs a time to challenge yourself and test your limits and achieve things purely because you held on the longest through the most amount of pain. But thereâs also a time to step back, to say no, to forgive yourself for being human.
You do what you can, when you can, while you can. And if you canât, you canât.
She was talking about someone who didnât want to have a baby and the guilt she felt about aborting it. But to me, it applies to any situation in which you feel guilt or shame or self loathing because you didnât meet some impossible standard you set for yourself.
Hereâs some things that have happened to me lately that I know were signs I wasnât coping, and needed a minute to recuperate, but that I took as signs of weakness:
I had dreams that the world was ending every night for a week.
I let my blood sugar drop so low at work, I could barely walk up the stairs to get a hypo treatment.
I spent an hour of my shift feeling like I might burst into tears at any moment.
When someone told me I was being difficult and paid more attention to my mistakes than how hard I had tried, I not only believed them, I did the same.
I slept for hours and hours and still felt like I was carrying the whole world on my shoulders as I got out of bed.
I thought that it mattered whether my problems were objectively bad, whether someone else might handle them better, whether I âshouldâ be strong enough to deal with them. But by telling myself that, I was pummelling myself so hard into the ground, Iâd never get up if I didnât stop. I needed to take a moment. I needed to forgive myself for not being perfect in order to let the things go that I couldnât change and try again with the ones I could. Because you canât make changes when youâre holding a gun to your own head. And you canât take a breather when youâre convinced all the strongest people are holding their breath too.
You do what you can, when you can, while you can. And if you canât, you canât.
People will push you. They will let you be a perfectionist because it benefits them or because they canât tell the difference between a high achiever and a broken one. And when they point out things you did wrong, or make a big deal of them, you wonât be able to cope because youâve already been pummelled by your own brain. Youâve fought the wars of 10,000 men in your own head and they donât see it. They canât.
So stand up for yourself. Be your own navigator, your own spokesperson. Trust your inner voice when it tells you something is too much because the more you stop and and recharge, the better youâll feel when itâs time to try again. Donât be perfect. Be a phoenix, rising from the ashes. But only when youâre god damn ready.
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