There’s a story here, somewhere buried deep,
of a girl afraid of what she’s seen.
She didnt know how to live.
She didnt know how to think.
She didnt know how to be,
so please be kind when dealing with me.
Thoughts are second,
and words come first.
Emotions are hidden,
and shes been lost
too many times and too many ways.
She will always come back at her own pace,
and she does it a lot more often these days.
So she’ll be back.
She’ll be here.
And she will be there for you always dear.
I could be anywhere, but I’m here.
With you all
told we weren’t worthy
This the Island of Misfit Souls!
All pushed away, and tried, and forgotten.
How dare we show our smiles so blatantly.
How dare we be happy when they said
we couldn’t deserve it,
when we didn’t earn it,
when we were born wrong.
How dare we dance with the faeries
in their circles of light.
How dare we dance alongside our demons tonight.
How dare we to exist at all.
In this our island of salvation,
we found each other,
us fractured souls.
And slowly we mend,
and slowly we glow,
and slowly we fight the harsh words.
The cruelty
the hatred we lived through so long ago.
We were born perfect
created in magic.
Not to be what they wanted
but to be wanted for what we are.
And that is far more than enough
and as worthy as any star
to shine
and glow
and to be flawless in its splendor
only us other souls can know.
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.
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
Where to start? The first line. The first line. All of my professors used to bug me about the importance of the first line. It must be attention grabbing. It must be profound. It must be different from every other first line of any book ever written. It must be… the first line.
My mind is going a thousand miles a minute. (Which is a horribly unoriginal first line, but at this point it isn’t the first line anymore.) Maybe not that fast. Maybe just about 60 miles per hour, but still that’s faster than I can go without a car, so it’s pretty fast. I was sitting in my bed. I was sitting and doing nothing, and I was hating myself for doing nothing. It’s such a catch 22 you know, those days when you get a chance to sit around and stay in bed only to leave for food or to take a piss, and you hate yourself for it. Because you’re not experiencing life. You’re not learning new lessons, meeting new people, adding pictures of artistically placed flowers to your Instagram profile. You’re not doing anything.
You’re alone.
I like being alone sometimes. I like being alone when my mind allows it.
There are those days when being alone is a blessing. Your mind sits back in the hammock I know that it is hiding up there, and it takes a break and welcomes whatever Netflix binge you chose to watch and not really pay attention to or care about.
Then there’s today. The day when every stupid movie I choose to watch seems to somehow relate to my life and what I’m doing, or more what I’m not currently doing, and what I probably should be doing. Then all of these thoughts start piling in. All of these different profound things that I know I need to write down, but my mind is going 60 miles per hour and my hands are not and I can’t keep up, so I start writing about something completely different and I’m lost.
I’ve always wanted to do something. I’ve wanted to be something. To go somewhere. From the first doodles I ever doodled I asked, I begged, for freedom. But from what?! I grew up in a nice neighborhood. I was raised by nice parents. I had good friends and went to a good school and had a good life.
But nice and good are such shitty words.
I’m sitting here in my apartment that I don’t have enough money to pay for, and all I want is to experience something. Just typing that line makes my mind race with contradictions.
I want to feel my blood pump full of adrenaline.
But on the other side most things that cause that sensation are dangerous. Do we really want to put ourselves into danger? How about controlled danger?
Well control is no fun. Control is what we are fighting against.
But we don’t want to be hurt or get into trouble.
We want to live. I want to live, but I’m afraid of living.
I am living currently. I am breathing, and performing all of the other normal bodily functions. Yet I feel as if time is passing me by and I’m stagnant. I look out of the double doors that lead to the balcony of this perfectly mediocre apartment I’ve been living in for two years, and I stop breathing. I feel a tightness in my chest that I cannot release until I look away. Until my fingers start moving on the keys again and I feel the tightness loosen. I feel the want for something better give way to what is. My perfectly mediocre life.
A part of me knows that I can go out and do something. I can get all dressed up and do my hair and makeup and sit at a bar where some men will talk to me. But where does that take me? It could lead to meaningless sex with someone I don’t know, which will end with me feeling worse than I already do at this present moment. No, that will help nothing.
I can call friends, but that requires money. Doing anything other than leaving my apartment requires money. Even staying here is costing me. I have the lights on. Up and up the electric bill goes. I am trying to save the money. I’m not very good at saving it though, but I try.
I could ask a friend to come over. I could ask a friend to join me in my apartment and we can sit and drink and maybe even smoke and then they will leave and I will be left alone yet again wondering the exact same things that I was before I asked them to come over in the first place.
If I go out I will feel worse, because I will see the other people. I will see them with their friends or significant others and they will look happy. Not all of them, but some. I will be jealous of them. I will come back to my apartment and feel worse or possibly the same.
I looked out the balcony door again … I keep doing that.
I want to make coffee, but I don’t want to stop writing. I want to do many things, but I don’t want to stop writing. I’ve wanted to write for weeks, but couldn’t think of anything worth sitting here in this uncomfortable chair in solitude to write about. Now I’ve found inspiration inside of my own mind. The emptiness inside of my mind has become the words on the page. My only goal in this endeavor is to rid myself of the emptiness. To rid myself of the longing for life, while I am already fully living, at least physically speaking.
The Rant 