“I will have had to remember you, longer than I have known you.” C.C. Aurel
That notion alone makes me immeasurably sad. Can you imagine the weight of having to carry you with me? Knowing you once existed but no longer exist. But that’s not true either, is it? You exist in me, in my heart and in my memories but that will never be enough for me. I so long for the physicality of it all; for one last touch, not whispers of a scent that once was. How is it possible that the years will trickle by, and I can only carry you with me in my mind. I so long to have you back in my arms. The space in my heart you occupy is now weighed down carrying the bits and pieces of a soul you left behind. I hope you’re comfortable in your new confines but oh how I long for you to be free again. To be here again.
Everyday is different, yet difficult all the same. Everyday I want it all to stop. I know, to you, these are just more complaints. How lucky you are, not to have to live this way. I know my mood swings are…an inconvenience. But, everyday I want to cry. To stop trying, stop carrying this lie. Because the truth is, I am FAR from fine. I have moments, precious moments But they’re fleeting, become sparse with time. I am the epitome of misery. At least that’s how I feel, almost every second of the day. It’s come to where I anxiously await a good day. But you know you gotta grin and bear it Because society doesn’t like sad people Face it, you don’t either. So you’d rather believe in “I’m fine” than recognize that this ‘thing’ is slowly eating me alive. A slow sad poison from within. There isn’t enough oxytocin to keep it at bay All of the antibodies, slain. And somehow, I’m expected to not break down. To silently exist, silently resist, silently, anything but loud. Because it’s all in your head. Your head, your mind, your brain is one thing but it’s making you choose sides. Begging you to pick me no pick me While it’s more fuck you and fuck you more on the surface, Lost in a haze of darkness because the light is too potent, too harsh Unlike the silent dark, because that’s what you most wish for, silence, no jitters, no hindsight, no futuristic predictions You’ve adopted a predilection for solitude, Inherited a knack for loneliness, Built an imaginary imagination Where the days are easier, Where the thoughts have dimmed down to a hum, Where human interaction doesn’t make me physically ill. I much prefer that fantasy As opposed to the reality of having never moved from this bed
Getting diagnosed as autistic at 30 is realizing your parents tried to beat the disability out of you until you learned to internalize it so it wouldn’t be visible.
It’s realizing that you were gaslighted into thinking you didn’t need crutches, so you’ve been limping around thinking that how everyone is supposed to walk
And then you’re told it’s not.
I feel cheated, mistreated, ignored, unseen. Because I was well enough to be good enough, but I’ve never felt complete.
Always felt like I was chasing something on the horizon that someone else could see
I kept trusting that the more towards it I got the clearer it would be.
But that line just got further and further and more matter how hard I searched I just couldn’t see what they wanted me to look for.
Could never obtain what they wanted for me, what they wanted me to want for myself.
Now I know my present options are different, my motherboard has been rearranged so the buttons don’t all work the same.
But because it was too hard to figure that out they painted my buttons to look like everyone else’s, made me write down each function and label it.
Blue means laugh, no! Blue means sad.
I had to teach myself how to act, speak, even breathe like them
Now I have to relearn how to do those things as myself.
Unravel the personalities woven into this basket case and determine what actually belongs.
You ever stop to wonder what it is you’re praying to?
If God is actually a little elf in the sky, collecting prayers like post it notes, selecting the ones to answer by throwing darts while blindfolded and hope that it’s nothing they promised not to do, like curing world hunger…
I do, all the time.
I wonder and imagine and try my hardest to paint the plain of God’s face with my fingertips
And get nothing.
Nothing but a dark sky with a gathering of stars for a face.
Do you think that’s omnipotence? Or laziness
Because if we really were made in their image, what if God just really doesn’t fucking feel like it?
If they bob and weave and dodge those prayers because answering them just takes too much energy.
They created us and suddenly, we’re too much.
Those prayers have to be going somewhere.
Because I refuse to believe that we are really this lonely.
That there is nothing, and no one higher in power than this blemish of humanity in a timeline we created.
Do you think they just vanish? Eroding like pennies at the bottom of a wishing well.
How far do you think prayers travel? Are they shot like arrows, bending the breeze to catch their target unaware? Falling back slowly as they meet resistance.
Maybe only some prayers make it to God, or maybe they die in the sky, suffocated by the atmosphere, set aflame and snuffed out all at once, never having reached their intended destination.
Is there anyone actually listening? Do they find our suffering funny? I can almost hear a teenage group of deities, giggling.
But they got to go somewhere right? Like whispers on the wind.
It’s like my vocal cords are wrapping themselves around one another
Constricting my throat so tightly,
It’s hard to breathe.
Being stuck in a hole, and feeling powerless
As to your survival.
What else are you supposed to do but sit.
Wait, talk to the shadows who deem you worthy of conversation.
Because while you’re stuck in this hole, life, the world,
They go on without you.
And say, you manage to escape,
Freedom never felt so great, but,
You don’t know what to do with it.
You haven’t been around people in so long, that being swarmed scares you shitless,
Haven’t seen the light of the sun, that its rays are blinding.
So you go back, and jump into your hole.
Because your prison became your home,
You found understanding, and faced fears in that hole.
But the laws of life consist of nothing but regeneration.
You take one away to be replaced with the next one.
How do I explain how it feels to feel like I do, right now,
And secretly, all the time.
Seething. Desperately hopeful,
Wishing that others can change, that they’ll notice the dirt on your clothes from climbing into that hole every night, and climbing your way back up every morning,
Before the light reaches the windows of those you thought might notice,
But they don’t
No one ever does.
And that’s okay, I’ve mastered slinking away.
Lying about the look on my face almost effortlessly.
And you don’t care, you try not to, but you can’t help it.
And you notice the dirt on their clothes, and because you know what it feels like to be stuck in a hole, you offer consoling words
Only to be struck back, lashed at, leave it alone.
And that’s okay, because you tried and were pushed away, it wasn’t you,
Or was it,
You question and search and maybe you shouldn’t have bothered, maybe they like their hole as much as you like yours.
But digging yourself out hurts too much at dusk.
Blindly seeking hand and foot holds, sliding and reopening scabs that healed from the last falls.
So you ask, and you talk because you know.
But the I’m fines and it’s okays and just forget it, push you further back in that hole.
And sometimes you just don’t have the strength to claw yourself out.
You make dolls out of clay, formed from mud and too many rainstorms.
And then it rains again and it all fades away.
But on my good days, the light from the sun doesn’t bother me so much, it lightens me and lifts me up. Dusts me off and sends me on my way.
My hole, I’ve realized, is a prison, not a safe space.
But it’s where I spend most of my time, locked away from ever having to disclose these feelings
You were once beautiful to me, and now I find myself constantly searching the pain in your face for that beauty.
I don’t know how to cope with what you’ve lost.
Not for me, not for you.
I don’t know how to accept these changes,
In me, in you.
I so desperately want to rewind time to relive life close to you.
I’d gladly suffer through all of the bad of it meant I could also relive all of the good.
And there was good, right?
We were happy most days, even if the dark days loomed above us, behind us, around us.
But we laughed, we danced, we lived.
And now, the beauty has dried up, and all that’s left is this husk of you.
The will to live fled the banshee cries that come out of you.
I don’t know how to get it to come back.
I keep trying to gather the smallest pieces of us, but it feels like life is spilling sand through the cracks in our hourglass.
Some days I wish you were gone, that the present was a wisp of a memory on our timeline and the past a balm to the scars on our hearts.
I want to rush into tomorrow with open arms to welcome my life back but I can’t seem to hit the ground running.
Because I want you to be there too.
I want you to be here now, but everyday we lose more and more of you.
I don’t want to hate you, not in the slightest or at all, I just want you back.
I want it all back the way it was, because you’d smile at me while you chew your food, a knowing smile.
One that rosies up your cheeks and makes your eyes twinkle.
I hate that I hate you, because it’s not you, hasn’t been you in a long while but, sometimes, you look at me and that knowing smile creeps up, tinting your cheeks, letting me see that slight twinkle that shines just for my sisters and me
And I can almost believe that I still love you and you still love me.
But then it’s gone, swallowed up by your screams
Wails of agony that pierce right through me.
You’re still beautiful to me, even if life right now is really ugly.
I might hate you right now but it’s not you I hate, it’s this disease.
This hate exists only because there is so much love for you in me, without a home, without a place to sleep.
I wish I could give you my strength, my years.
I wish I could cure you with my tears.
I wish I could allay your fears.
But alas, there is nothing more I can do but shed sweet poetry for you.
A Poem a Day 