For days each morning starts
with wiping away the salty river bed
across my face
Dried tears I’d never allow to escape
during the day
make their break during the night
I don’t remember them leaving
I don’t remember letting them go
But their path is there each day
Telling me more than any conversation
ever can.
You’re a ghost of something I wanted but never had
reached for but could not hold
searched for but you were never there
not when you said you would be
You’re an addiction of a drug I hit one time
A need so deep it was a part of me
You weren’t mine
not to have or to hold
No part of you belonged to any part of me
but I guess thats the thing with a need
not a want
Alcohol doesn’t mix well with us
it was our courage our escape
it allowed you to walk across the room to me
it glamoured the things we should have seen
and I craved you always
Until I didn’t.
Half imagined thought and half lived dreams
Is this the curse of the lonely?
A life where nothing is complete
Not myself or what I do
Incomplete poems and half hearted smiles
Is that all there is here?
Please come back…
© Courtney O’Connor
It seems as if I owe you boys some thanks
Without you all and your flaws that drove me away
I may never have known what to be grateful for today
If you hadn’t answered for me assuming I didn’t know the answers and slyly dropped hints that my intellect was lesser than your own
I might have never known to love how he compliments my intelligence and my mind
If you hadn’t needed constant contact and attention because of your unrooted fear I would be as they had been
I might not appreciate his understanding that I’ll get back to him when I can
If you hadn’t suggested I be a housewife with a hobby to keep me entertained
I might not go weak whenever he shows off my career and the accomplishments I’ve obtained
If you hadn’t pushed your erection up against my back while your hands roamed and called it cuddling
I may never have realized the phenomenon that is my happiest sanctuary in the warmth of his arms
If you hadn’t tried to make me less, fearful of my confidence
I wouldn’t cherish how much he builds me up
If you all hadn’t tried your damndest to control me
I may never have realized how amazing it is to have someone who sets me free.
Someone who believes in me.
Thank you all, and I hope you find happiness.
I wonder what you learned from me.
©C O’Connor, 2018.
I’m good at writing about the sad things
the bad things
It’s easy to find the words to describe the dark and lonely times and parts of my mind
But why can’t I find words for the light?
Why can’t I find words to describe how much
I long for your touch,
or the feeling when your arms tighten around me while you sleep?
How do I even begin to start
writing the peace I feel listening to your heart?
Or how it feels when you look at me, touch me, or say my name?
How do I describe how grateful I feel
knowing that you, the one I dreamed for, are real?
No matter how many times I begin
the words are never right in the end.
No words can convey how happy I am.
I’ve had a life of writing the dark things, and I never learned the words for the good.
My only option is to continue to try and find
a collection of words worthy of this man of mine.
©C O’Connor, 2018
Come back to me.
Let me dream again.
You are the destination where my dreams begin and end.
©C O’Connor, 2018
©C. O’Connor, 2018
I have been walking this line for quite some time. Walking like some kind of sick acrobat with a death wish I walk one foot in front of the other with the edges of my feet hanging over the sides.
I am good at walking the ledge.
I can move at a steady pace with no fear for years. I don’t look at the drop off. I don’t see the distance down to the assured body mangling splat at the bottom. I just walk with one foot in front of the other. My life moves on at this pace and my life is good.
Every once in a while I throw in a dance or a flip because I’m feeling courageous and want to flirt with the danger over that edge. Then I walk on and on.
Then every once in a while I glance down out of habit. Even if it lasts only for a second, in that second my mind remembers the danger here. My brain clicks on to the peril I am in and in another instant the walking stops.
Everything halts and I am stuck in place with my eyes trained on the bottom. My body rocks and my head spins, my legs shake, and my blood boils in its veins. My face heats up and my eyes are unable to focus on anything else.
Part of me knows I was walking fine a second before. I know I’ve been moving fine. I know I will again, but in this moment I can’t think of that. All I can think of is the fear of falling. All there is now is the drop.
There was no momentous occasion. There was no near fall to get me to the point of clinging onto the edge with both hands white knuckled. No one pushed me. No one scared me.
All it was was the slightest practically insignificant change in perspective, and my mind was gone. Lost to the fall. Walking is now not an option. I’m just holding on to survive. I can’t think. I can’t.
My pride forces me to look up to the edge. I look down the straight line of this walkway that ends when I do fall. I was walking a minute ago. I remember that now. I was walking fine. So with a deep shaking breath I push up onto my arms that feel like they might give out. I press my weight back into my rocking feet and raise my body from the floor slowly.
Don’t look down.
Don’t look down.
Look at the step in front of you. One step. One small step at a time. One unsteady foot moves in front of the other. At a glacial pace I move forward not trusting my own body or mind. I am hyper aware of the drop. I am focusing on falling almost as much as moving, but I pretend the fear isn’t there.
A few steps and my mind remembers the rhythm. I remember how to walk. I remember how to go on. One step. One step.
I move gradually regaining my confidence. The ledge is all I have and I will walk it each and every day. Some days I will dance. Some days I will lie down with shaking hands and racing heart and grasp it with an uncontainable fear of falling off.
There is no grand cause or scheme to change this. There only needs to be the smallest glance. A minute change in perspective and everything comes tumbling down.
Don’t ask me what happened. Do not ask me what went wrong. Nothing did and everything apparently did all at the same time. Things I am not conscious of happened within this mind of mine to send me clinging to the edge. I am always aware of the fall. I feel it in each and every step I step.
The fall is the out of focus section of the picture. Just a glance though in the wrong direction can make the fall the main attraction.
I will get up again. Moments of fear only make me stronger. They make me walk tall. I walk with pride knowing what I can survive within this war against my own mind.
Step by step.
One step.
One step.
©C. O’Connor, 2018
Today I’m having a panic attack.
What a fucking horrible sentence that is. It is one I never wanted to say or write again, and yet there she is! Right there. I don’t know why.
I was doing so well for so long. It had been a little over one year. One year since my mind and body threw me through another one of these shit storms. Stupidly, part of me had hoped I was cured. I enjoyed talking about anxiety as a thing of the past. I partially believed that it was gone.
The other half of my brain knew very well that I would be right here once again, and it laughed at the first half of my mind for its idiocy.
That I guess is the part that annoys me about all of this (other than the general fact that I’m having a panic attack of course). I knew it would come back. I knew in the right circumstances I would be right here again, but I had so hoped that I wouldn’t be. I hoped for it so much that I convinced myself, at least partially, that it was true.
Never again would I feel the heat in my face and the shaking of my hands. Never would I feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins without a proper cause for it being there. Never again would I fear passing out before realizing that it was only another attack. Only…
I tried reading poetry. I definitely cried. I cried full tears loudly as I walked around my empty house. There was snot. It wasn’t pretty, but crying isn’t supposed to be. I tried to eat but my appetite is gone. I tried to unpack my clothes that are still in their boxes. A simple meaningless task such as folding however was just TOO MUCH for this mind of mine. Folding sent me right over the edge again. I was back in the panic pool shivering while burning up, and shaking, and ugly crying all over again.
This is all ridiculous. I have a stressful job, but it isn’t anything I can’t manage. I’m good at my job. I enjoy my job, yet today my job was too much. Today my mind decided that life was just a bit too much and a new house, and taxes due, and money being money and never being enough, and my job, and my life, and my fears all just became too much and now I’m crying again. Fuck.
I don’t know what to do from here. I can’t keep running away from everything that gives me a panic attack. Living in Spain gave me panic attacks. A random day at work gives me a panic attack. Doing nothing gives me attacks and doing too much gives me attacks.
But it’s been a year.
I thought I was okay.
But today I had a panic attack.
And I will probably have another.
But I am living and I will be okay, and eventually I will once again get to a place where I stupidly convince myself that they are gone. I will live in that beautiful bliss, fully aware that it is smoke and mirrors. I will be happy there. I just need to make it through a bit of dark reality first.
Today is not my day.
©C. O’Connor, 2018
I have spent hours upon hours of my life gazing at the stars. I have always been so enraptured by the peaceful feeling that permeates through my mind and soul while staring into that endless space of sparkles. It makes me feel so small and so insignificant, but in the best way possible. It reminds me that life itself is a miracle. We are all, all of us humans, small bits of magic. The problems that I believe are problems do not exist. The possibilities of this universe are infinite. Each and every moment is a gift of chance. The choices that speed up my heart and keep me awake into the hours of the morning are not worth the worry.
The stars remind me that it will be okay. The world will continue, and life, this life we live deserves to be enjoyed. Life needs to be appreciated and loved. Life deserves adventures and laughter. I deserve all of these things.
Worry, stress, and rage have no place under my night sky, the color of my soul, black, sparkly, and infinite. If you are in the right place away from the rest of the world. If you take the time to step away from the rest of us humans and our lights every color is there just waiting to be seen.
When I stand there in the darkness and look up at the flickering lights older than life itself; I feel endless, infinite, and invincible. And you, you beautiful bit of magic, are one of the only human beings I have ever known who makes me feel the same.
©C. O’Connor, 2018
The Rant 