A Eulogy of Shadow Words (poem)

In this life
We are given gifts we choose to be curses
Taking our words
And twisting them into furious verses.

[A eulogy of shadow words...]

She spent years studying calligraphy.
Using pen and ink
Imitating the ebbs and flows
Of words
creating a paragraph of water
Her poetry and prose
Going down stream.
All letters, perfectly aligned
Knowing their exact place
On the page.

Knowing their purpose.

Her hand, moving with need.
Furiously scribbling.
Intent on raw images.
Writing was art for her
The art of passion
The art of war
As ink turned to poison in her pen.
Cloaked in the flesh of regal letters
They changed, rearranged
and became stained words.

I weep as they bite me.

All letters, perfectly aligned
Knowing their exact place
On the page.

Knowing their purpose...

And yet, she could not see,
Could not grasp in her hands
That the pen
Is mightier
Than a fist.
Mightier still
Than the bruises
Written on her soul.

So instead
She tasted the rainbow and closed her eyes,
One candy coated pill at a time,
Until I forget what she looked like
When she smiled.
Until I forget if I ever saw her smile.

In this life
We are given gifts we choose to be curses
Taking our words
And twisting them into furious verses
Words that crackle, words that burn
Words turned to ash in the bottom of your urn.

[A eulogy of shadow words...]

I can't help but wonder,
If all that will remain of me when I'm gone
Are shadow words.

Originally written Oct. 13th, 2009, for my mother.

Can You Really Forget The Past?

I did something really weird today. It took until now for me to get reminded what today was. I was going along having a pretty good day. I hung out with one of my best buds, I laughed over stupid memes and bad jokes with folks. I got to have a great dinner with great people. I even had some awesome animal moments with the Katface and my snakes.

I was feeling a little anxious, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Everything seemed pretty great...

Then Facebook Memories reminded me of this post: http://chronicwerewolf.blogspot.com/2015/06/dearly-departed.html

It's the anniversary of my mother's suicide....shit.

I actually forgot for a moment there. I lived my damn life and had a good time. I have been a bit numb lately, but that wasn't connected to anything. Just something that happens after a manic spiral, and I get really tired easily. Been sleeping a lot, though not restfully. It feels like chasing a dragon I can never catch...

But that is just a day in the life for me. My feelings are not connected to my mother.

And I refuse to feel bad about it.

So I forgot. I don't have to honor her. She wasn't an honorable person, and she never added anything good to this world. She doesn't NEED to be remembered all the time. I don't have to torture myself with horrible memories of how she failed me as a mother. I'm owning my shit,  the same shit she threw in my face like refuse. I am loved, in ways she couldn't even fathom. I am strong, and I use the darkness she and many others beat into my soul as healing and hope for others. I don't give up. I have suicidal thoughts, even recently, and I wrestled those demon voices down. I will not be devoured by my internal hydra. I will keep cutting the heads off until there are no more voices left to destroy me.

I am glad I was distracted enough by love so I didn't dwell on hate. I'll do something special for myself later to remind myself I am worth it. I won't let the darkness take me down. Not today. Especially not today.

Stay in the ground where you belong bitch.

I'm over you.

No Tears Please...That's A Waste Of Good Suffering

I believed these words all my life. Before I ever saw Hellraiser or read Hellbound Heart. It's probably why when I read Clive Barker's book, I felt it resonated with me.

But this isn't about that. This is about Tears. Those wet, droplets of humanity that roll down our faces. Everybody cries. But not everyone cries with respect for their tears.

I have spent the last few days crying off and on. From soft, quiet tears that roll down burning cheeks to heavy, deep sobs that wrack my entire being in their power. Tears that have been plugged up for weeks, maybe even months. Tears I should let out more often.

I've had a lot of good reasons to cry. Around this time last year I was put in the hospital 3 times because my mental state was "unstable." I went through a lot, and I am working through the pain. And there is a lot of pain. Pinhead wouldn't be able to even touch the levels of pain I have endured, and I would laugh at his efforts of trying to break me.

But I was raised to fear my tears. To hate them. To feel shame when they rolled down my cheeks. Sometimes I even felt betrayed by them. A sure sign of my weakness. Of my face slipping. Of my composure breaking. It was part of my abuse. And because of that, I hated them with every fiber of my being.

When I grew up, my tears were used as a weapon. From my early years where my mother used them to beat me more, "Stop your crying or I will give you a reason to cry!" My rapists used them to dehumanize me and fetishise what they did. They'd laugh at my pain and get off on it, until I stopped crying and made them face my rage. As they held me down or forced me to do things, I'd glare at them with such venom, Jennifer from I Spit On Your Grave would fear me. Later in life when my lovers would tell me I was being "Too emotional"whenever it suited them to bail out of dealing with me, I would blame myself. Because crying always made things worse. It didn't matter the reason for crying. Tears have always been used against me.

So I tend to cry alone. I can fully feel them that way. And you really, truly need to cry sometimes. Even if you feel weak for doing it after.

I didn't cry until years later when my mother died. Not healthy, grieving tears. Sometimes angry tears slide down my face but they aren't the tears one needs to move through grief. They are a good opener, because my rage for many years was my shield against the shitty crap life threw at me. but angry tears feel like a betrayal. Any time I cry in public, I feel rage. These days, it's just shame, but I still get angry for feeling that shame. Because no one should feel bad for crying.

Crying is normal. Crying means you care. It's okay to care. 

In a world where we are told conflicting things like, "I am cold and rational, therefore I am better than you...", having FEELS is a joke. Feelings are boiled down to a meme and a punch line, because no one wants to deal with them. Even people who feel too much like me. And being bipolar, I feel too much. I am on drugs to regulate my feelings, because my emotions aren't normal. I have a chemical imbalance that sometimes people use to explain me away. I can flip from complete cold asshole to raging crazy person depending on if I am manic or not. But I don't let the drugs mute me. I take what I need to stabilize, and no more. So I can have some rationality back. But I am careful to not let others tell me how to feel ether. Even my doctors. And I refuse to have my feelings belittled anymore. Boiled down to sayings like, "What are you, on your rag?"

Even if I am, I have the right to cry. My periods fucking suck thanks to PCOS. There is a reason I call it my "monstrous moontime." Everyone feels, even those who claim they are above it all.

Everyone feels. We all have chemicals in our brains that cause us to feel. Ignoring this fact does a disservice to yourself.

When you've suffered as much loss and heartache as I have, you have to fight to reclaim the parts of you they took. The parts you tossed out of yourself. Sometimes you have to reclaim those parts over and over until it sticks. The ugly tears. The raging wailing. The punching of pillows. The feelings of being small and helpless. You learn to allow yourself to feel fully. The deep pains as well as the surface stuff. You learn to forgive yourself for mistreating your tears. You learn to stop being "macho" to hide your sensitive, hellbound heart.

It's not a waste of good suffering. Tears make suffering more meaningful.

"Dearly" Departed

I've been a really moody bitch all week, and despite myself, I have set parts of my life on fire and salted the earth. It was an extreme reaction from me, and I realized my bipolar is flaring up right now. Despite the meds. Lots of stressors are pulling at me to help with the flares I am having physically and mentally, and when I saw what tomorrow was going to be, my mood the last few days has made perfect sense.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my mother's suicide. And I am wondering which part of me is deciding this year it's going to hurt. I mean, I always remember the day they found her, not the day they buried her. I sometimes even get the months mixed up. Some years I pretend nothing happened, others I flip out and lock myself away. I'm so messed up I can't even grieve about my mother like a stable person.

But I do grieve. And I always will.

You never get over a suicide. Especially since she was one of my main abusers growing up. Growing up with her taught me you had to scream to be heard, you had to fight to make the pain stop, and you can't trust anyone. Family is a comforting delusion other people get to have. No one will take care of you but yourself. And if I stayed in her house for too long, I'd become an addict and a monster too.

My mother was 41 when she died. She had enough drugs in her to kill an elephant when they found her dead in her hotel room. She did it in a place I had fond memories of before the incident, Niagara Falls. I used to love watching the rushing water. Forces of nature are amazing to me. I recall Houdini went over the Falls in a barrel once. I try to focus on that now.

I have speculated why she did it several times, but I honestly will never get that answer. It's just another mystery, like so many things in my life, that most people don't have to deal with. And the thing that really makes grief about my mother hard is that there are no real good times to fall back on. I have a memory here or there, but I can tell you they would fit on less than 5 fingers if we counted them. Which is a sad, horrible state of affairs. My mother was not a happy person, was untreated for all sorts of mental disorders, and was usually on more drugs than she needed. I'm sure she was probably trying to self medicate, because there was shit wrong inside her body as well as her mind. When they did the autopsy on her, they found growth on her bones. She used to try to scare me and tell me, "One day Kweeny, your body will betray you too. You'll get sick like I am. And your life will be all pain."

She wasn't right often, but when she was...

When I broke my tailbone it felt like my mother's curse had come full circle. Like I couldn't escape a life of pain and madness. And when I went into the hospital this year, it shattered me. I have had a hard time returning to my core self since. I wake up in drug hazes, I go to sleep in drug hazes. I have cold sweats and nightmares. I wake up in horrible pain that makes me grit my teeth every morning. I am a pariah to some, to others, just a moment in time. I still have bipolar swings, and I am not happy with how I am coping.

So I am not okay this year.

A friend suggested I draw, but my pain about my mom might make that actually physically too much for me to bear. My mother never supported my creative pursuits. I told her I wanted to be in a band, she laughed at me and told me I was too ugly. When I drew things for her, she would only point out their flaws and tell me to quit trying...

Sometimes she literally beat the dreams out of me.

But I am going to try finishing my painting I started the other night. Even if the voices are really loud tonight and my pain is really intense. I will see how far I can get before I just cant do it anymore. The painting is emotionally relevant to what I am dealing with right now.