When I was in high school
They told me it'd get better
Once I got out of there
& Went to college
When I was in college
They told me it'd get better
Once I got out of there
& Got settled in my life
Once I got out of college
They told me it'd get better
Once I got out of debt
got out of California
got out of the panedemic
The therapists said:
You'll feel better once you
quit drinking
find Jesus
excercise more
No one offered me
Medication, it was all my fault, &
Entirely within my control
After a decade or so it's been
Tell me why it still surprises me to
Hear the psychiatrist tell me
My depression isn't situational
It's a factual vein underpinning my life.
Which means that now's the time to take action.
Medicate.
You've proven well enought it won't
Go away on its own
Sweet Time
Why did no one save me the lies
Give me back a decade of my life
Tag: mental illness
Yoga
When I started doing yoga
no one warned me
that I carried the weight of my
childhood in my hips,
that while lying in a pigeon pose,
I would release a greater energy
I was not yet prepared to face
Years later in my practice
I was reconnecting with
my soul, spirit, body
I let go of a fear I’d been holding onto
and found a weakness in my bones
A spot my masseuse once thought
was a nerve wrapped in scar tissue
I didn’t know my nerves could
be wrapped around emotional scars,
that what I carried with me
in my soul, was also in my body
I didn’t know that when I let go
I’d feel my legs give out from under me
as my body let go of what
I’d been holding onto for so long.
I should have known
the moment I told my body it
was safe, took a pill since for
years I couldn’t shake the
feeling I was in danger
That the gut feeling
wouldn’t know where to go
or how to let go
I went to the hospital
for the pain
My soul is in my body
My pain is in my body
My healing is in my body
So breathe, let go of any
tension you’re still holding onto
Prozac
One 10 milligram Prozac
hits my system
I see spiders I know
aren’t there
feel the fear, panic, paranoia
rising in my throat
Breathe, I tell myself
just breathe
You know this is all just
a side effect
A few more waves of anxiety
crash down on my reality
The storm passes, for now
the worst is over
the coast is clear
I’m out of the danger zone
where I might hurt someone in fear
I know, I’m no longer in danger
30 minutes in
my depression lifts
like a fog
like someone picked up the rock
that’s been sitting on my chest
my brain flipped a switch and it’s gone
I can finally breathe again
& I am so tired
not the depression kind of tired
not the exhaustion that comes
with waking up every day
and having to convince my brain
that I am okay
just, tired
2 hours in
A friend comes
we go for a walk
go down by the water
I don’t tell her about the spiders
just that I tried a new drug today
I say that I am mostly okay
just cloudy
8 hours in
I’m taking a shower
Alone, naked in my body
when suddenly
I am no longer in my body
I’m somewhere, I’m just
not sure entirely
where it is I am
I know, logically, there’s a name for this
It’s called dissociation
when your brain tries to run away
& can’t take your body with it
knowing it’s name doesn’t
take away the fear that comes with it
or put me back in my body
I sit on my couch for an hour
wrapped in a towel
shaking, crying, terrified
Googling when it’s time
to go to the hospital for side effects
Everything points to suicide risk
because the one thing society understands
about mental illness are those
that can not stand it anymore
Everyone wants to help
when there’s nothing left to do
My phone has an invitation
to play beer pong downstairs
my friends are there
asking for help from strangers
is hard enough, yet easier
than facing my friends
I take a Lorazepam
break glass in case of emergency
drive myself to the
emergency room
sit at the door
and wait.
I feel better
I think I feel safe
I drive back home
turn on the stove to make food
I hear laughter coming from
downstairs, and cry
say it’s time
I really did need to go to the hospital
Thankfully I have health insurance
I go back to the hospital
a yes or no question
determines my fate of if I’m
allowed to walk out or be forced to stay
for my own safety
They don’t ask you if you’re lying.
I don’t know if I’m lying
to them or just
to myself
Someone gives me a blanket
tells me you are safe here
tells me these are the normal
side effects
of SSRI’s
I might get better, if I give
it time
somewhere between two weeks
and a month of my life
But I don’t have time to go insane
just to get a rock to go away
I’ll have to get stronger some other way
They can not get ahold of my doctor
after a second hour
another blanket
another person telling me you are safe
a motrin for the pain
of Titans clashing in my brain.
I don’t know if it will
get worse before it gets
better how long will it take
my liver to get it out
the kind doctor tells me
I know where to find her
if the fear comes back
once my eyes are no longer
those of a hunted animal
they send me home
I see my friends downstairs
a well intentioned friend laughs
says it wouldn’t be worth paying for
an ambulance, for that
I go back home
upstairs
the stove is still on
I only almost
burned my house down
First performed live at the Berkeley Poetry Slam, June 26th 2019
Do You Feel Good In YOUr Body?
Do you feel good in your body?
An honest question from a well-meaning friend.
The answer is long, and short.
I’m getting there.
Exercising makes me feel more connected, I like making her stronger, seeing what she is capable of. Her shape is changing and I do like it better, but the shape isn’t driving the why. You see my body and I, we’ve had a bad wifi connection for a very long time.
It’s hard to feel good in your body when your body doesn’t feel good. The past two years or so I’ve been fighting SIBO. I didn’t understand what she needed to feel better. I tried to give her food, started cooking my own meals, still so many times I was violently ill. I finally found the culprits. Found out what food to make, and what to avoid, to nourish my body and make it feel good.
This was me at my biggest, fighting a struggle to connect with her.
When I moved to California I found yoga. It taught me to listen to my body. Be accepting of where she’s at, understand each day can be different. I learned my body carries old pain, and trauma. Deep within my bones, under layers of muscle mass, sometimes you would find pieces, scars. This is okay, natural. Breathe it out. Cry if you need to.
During a deep meditation I found her for the first time. This small, crying, scared broken lost little girl. I picked her up and carried her out with me, told her everything was going to be okay now. No one was going to hurt her anymore. We began to heal.
During my first semester of grad school my body changed rapidly, fast. It got bigger and I didn’t understand why but I knew it was probably because of my drinking all the time. I wasn’t happy, living in the my body. My body paid the price, I poisoned it more and more each day. Year 2 I got a job at a restaurant so I would have an excuse not to get blackout drunk every weekend. I was merely trying to survive, get my degree, move on. I didn’t know then how much there was to heal from. I was struggling too much in my mind, I stopped looking at myself in mirrors.
When I was in undergrad I used my body for sex. I didn’t like it and thought it was too big, because in high school I’d been smaller. I still had a stomach, if only barely. If the attractive men “out of my league” wanted to sleep with me, I must be more attractive than I believed. Sex validated me. I’d internalized what my mother and society had instilled in me – your size and sexual attractiveness matter. Eventually when my body got bigger and my confidence low, I smelled more like desperation than sex. I thought the issue was my body, when really it was my confidence. The man I’m sleeping with now is bigger and more confident than almost any other man I’ve met. I enjoy him, and love his confidence. I wish I’d known how to have more.
When I was in high school, my body was still something that had happened to me. Cover it up! Don’t you know what those boys and men want from you! I stopped loving summer. I no longer wore shorts, they weren’t appropriate. I couldn’t wear tank tops, that was too promiscuous. I never owned a swimsuit, besides my old racing ones. My body was not my own, it belonged to the world of men.
When I was a child, my body was small and weak. It couldn’t do anything to protect me.
____________________________________________________________________________
When I was a child, I did gymnastics. I fell off a balance beam and got hurt, and learned that I could get up again.
In middle school, I spent hours staring at the mirror. Drawing my face, trying to learn to paint. I spent days learning every line in my hand. My drawing skills stayed buried until I had time again.
When I was in high school, I was depressed and anxious. My body and I went running, pound pound pounding down on the pavement, trying to get away. I wore my body out so my mind could finally sleep. We ran away together.
In college, I learned to take control. If men wanted me for my body, then I could objectify them too. I learned how to manipulate, play dumb, get what I want. I had a lot of fun.
In yoga I began to listen. How are you today? What are you feeling? You’re tired, body? Are you really tired, or is that depression? What do you need to feel better? I needed calm.
I learned all the different ways my body is connected. The minute I removed the anxiety, figured out the right meds, I wound up in the hospital in pain. My stomach had been in knots, survival, bad feelings in my gut, for as long as I could remember. It didn’t know how to let go. I got diagnosed with SIBO. I learned what my body loves, and hates. I learned that if I want a healthy mind, the gut neurotransmitters creates. We started moving forward. Crawling slowly. Listen to your gut, it knows when something’s wrong.
I realized my body and I had been fighting for a very, very long time. It’d gotten lost, buried underneath the other trauma and drama. I needed a different kind of mirror, today it was a pen.
In the past year my body has been healing, as one, Mind & Body. It’s getting smaller, but stronger too. My goal is not to whittle it all away. We just keep going forward, one step every day.
Do I feel good in my body? – It’s getting better every day.
Cycles
I feel like someone flipped a switch
and sent my personality away
now I’m wandering in the dark
Wondering how long until myself again
Good days are my highest highs
Bad my lowest lows
I just want to sleep until this cycle ends
I just want to be at home
Defeat
If I could beat depression
I’d run five miles every day
Waking up at five a.m.
Before the sun comes out to play
If I could beat depression
I’d have so much more to write
As it is I’m too sad
To drum up energy all the time
If I could beat depression
I would be a queen
Instead today I’m crashing
From having way too much caffeine
Entanglements
Constantly fighting
inner entanglements
of neuropathways
overlapping clogged intersections
soul & mind
Reminders that you’re fine
over fear escapades
mental health is a yoyo
a multi-vertex graph
searching for symmetry
on a level
what’s the right combination
of chemicals
Some of them exasperate
then calm
others destroy
your insides
Homeostasis not achieved
Now you’re cold
Go home?
You tried enough for
today, another wasted
time you’ll crave to get back
tomorrow
Scars
You’ll only ever love part of her
She won’t show you the rest
Her heart is a maze with walls to climb
You only cleared the first labyrinth.
The first time you said ‘I Love You.’
She had a panic attack.
Too many others have hurt her
Now she doesn’t know to love you back
Shaking, terrified,
She can’t breathe
She knows it’s not your fault
She only wanted fun and games
She never meant to fall
Those others who came before you
They left scars in her veins
Use those vines you’ve got walls to climb
She won’t catch you if you fall.
If you make it to the top she’ll be surprised
You even bothered at all.
#Pretty
Originaly written on 11/7/2015
I wanted to be someone
Whose sadness made her pretty
The insta # mental illness
Those girls looked nothing like me.
My sadness made me fat.
My skin still scarred with the marker of rapid gain
The unrecognizable body in my mirror
Only added to the pain.
I became desperate for someone to love,
Hold me, say I was still beautiful
So I tripped, tumbled, & fell
Till my soul too, unrecognizable
Told myself when I graduated it would end
I’d start a new life in a far-away land
So you can imagine my shattered surprise
That my sadness too the move had survived
I’ve told myself I just needed time
To go on a walk & clear my mind
A whole year came & went
I haven’t quite found my happiness yet.
My friends here say they’ve had enough
Time to get over it and grow the fuck up
I’ve decided I need some space from them
As I focus on finding who I am again.
Account For Me 