Song of Another Day

Song of Another Day

The morning wakes me with its own melody,

the call to keep living,

keep breathing,

keep moving.

“Life isn’t going to stop because your heart’s broken,”

it seems to chide,

the bright sunlight shining to emphasize the point.

I look to the four walls around me,

see a cage and a shelter intertwined.

I hear his footsteps retreating in my mind,

the rhythm I can never escape.

Steps leaving, steps taken far from me.

The shallow thrum of my own heartbeat

replaces his footsteps in tangibility

and already the world is

urging me to rise and

dance to its unrelenting melody

regardless of what I want,

but then again,

nobody ever asked me what I wanted

or even needed,

not a soul,

because what you want in a futile life

doesn’t really matter when the days

drag onward in endless succession anyway.

I lay for a moment hearing the beckoning,

grasp for something to hold onto as the world

sways and shudders

until at last I can no longer ignore the call.

In a shroud of reluctance, I rise,

stepping out of my lilac-hued shelter

into another day.

The Modus Operandi of Madness

The Modus Operandi of Madness

The world broke into a million shards, versicolor fragments of people, places, and states of being falling into oblivion. Every last shred of hope binding it together dissipated into nothingness, the evanescence sending its stability into collapse. All around me, reality lost form. There was only the grief left in the maelstrom, tethering me to existence in the absence of happiness. And that was how I found myself adrift, unable to place reason in this void without structure. My mind unraveled, the fibers regressing to the fight or flight mania I’ve found myself embracing many a time. The ticking of the clock remained in the distance, never ceasing to accommodate the death of sanity. Tick. Tick. Tick. One constant thrum shoving me further down an ink-black tunnel. This time there were no stars to burn through the murk, only the ashen shroud obscuring nebulas and myriad planets untouched. “Call me Wisteria,” I said to no one, just desperate to hear a voice disturb the silence. This is the modus operandi of madness, the telltale makeup of an entirely unclassifiable beast. Nothing ascribes to sense. Fervent pain is the only constant. The sky shifts from day to night in the flutter of a bat’s wing and sometimes no one can understand why. Unlike the physical body, the consciousness of the mind has different parameters. Those of us afflicted can only wade through the deepening mire in search of stability to bring us back to the real world. Alas, stability doesn’t want to be found, not here in the dark. Sometimes people can find us in this unstable labyrinth and lead us out into the waiting sunlight. At others, we despair and spend days trying to reach anything resembling normality. Death follows us like our own shadow, invisible when we collapse back into the darkness. We weep. We scream. We throw ourselves into the nearest object of our interest to stave off returning to these endless depths of uncertainty. It’s never enough. Distraction doesn’t extend itself into permanence. The cycle may be interrupted, but it never truly ends. Chained to our own minds, we remain helpless and afraid of the many sunrises to come. A world under the lens of madness is as tremulous as mist. Once your mind falls prey to the harsh reality of it, you’re branded with a mark that finds its way into the depths of your being. This is insanity as it speaks to the addled. It will be the language our minds speak until the earth stops spinning on its axis. Like travelers lost in the wilderness, we will keep on searching the universe for our refuge, never to reach the solace that doesn’t wait for us.

Waking Up

Waking Up

For a year, you were the sunrise that my world awakened to, the beating heart around which my whole existence centered. I saw nothing but you, could not spend a waking minute without your presence on my mind. What could I see beyond the most perfect element of my life, the most wondrous magic ever to grace my soul? 

It took me the longest time to learn the truth, to see that the dawn did not materialize at your behest nor did the stars glimmer because of your majesty. The world did not hold its breath when you entered a room. Cosmos were far greater than you could ever dream of being, and I had been so blind that my eyes could not see that. In many ways, I woke up, let the dream fade from my vision to view the reality it concealed. So much time was spent longing for you that my perspective was limited to black and white. For that tumultuous year, my grasp on reason was obscured by the brilliant light in my eyes. I let myself fall by the wayside, cried tears of lovelorn agony when left to my own devices, and wanted nothing more than to be yours. True, I could see the perfection in nature’s grand works of art, but to me, they were all tied to you. Separation was not a concept I could fathom, my mind so deeply besotted that your shadow fell over every surface. 

And then I woke up. 

Angels wept, hope shattered into a million shards, the earth stopped spinning for one terrified moment. Life was baffled by the shift in reality, by all the stars falling out of alignment as they tumbled back down to the world below. The Mirror of Understanding cracked, the truth so distorted that none could ever see things as they once were reflected on its visage again. The pages in the storybook reached their conclusion, leaving me with only The End instead of Happily Ever After. It was a goodbye, and alas, there was no beginning to follow it, only uncertainty hovering all around. So lost was I, without direction, unable to see the world as it had once been. Nothing held familiarity. For so long, all I had seen was you. Sun, sky, moon, shadow. Not one was without your mark. I’d written about them in relation to the feelings you gave me, and when at last, I had to cast them aside, I found myself alone in a world I did not know. That is the world I traverse now, direction eluding me as reason once had in the folly I knew to be love.

For now, I move through an unfamiliar landscape, seeking a path out of the endless labyrinth towards a future absent of your presence. The terrain is rugged, the sky overhead raining down on me at the darkest of moments, but still I persist. Far from the blissful Valhalla of newfound love I’ve ventured, past the jolt of emerging unprepared for reality’s bitter glare, I’m somewhere in between melancholic loneliness and wholehearted acceptance. A world without you still waits for me, and until my heart heals, I ache for another sunrise to warm this gelid void of night.

The Color of Childhood

The Color of Childhood

When the color was taken away, I was still a child. Nine years old, innocence still clinging to me like a comforting blanket. The rooms of my childhood house had been bright with color. Moss green covered the walls of the living room, evoking the jungles and forests of the books I read to conjure images of the world beyond my small sphere. Vivid coral warmed a little kitchen where I sat on weekends with plates of fluffy waffles doused in maple syrup, all a comfort to me that I never thought I would lose. The formal dining room, where I seldom got to eat but still found to be a lovely space, wore ochre gold from floor to ceiling, magnifying the brilliance of the sun’s rays when they filled the house with their undying warmth. I grew up in the embrace of wonderful color, my memories painted in these shades that rivalled those I’d seen on the canvases of even the best artists.

That year, I received the news that we were moving to California. This comforting house, with its green shutters and colorful rooms, would be lost to me once we vacated it to make way for this next phase of our lives. In all honesty, none of it felt real to me until the rooms were repainted in shades of cream. Our realtor had said this would help us sell the house, so the vibrant walls were concealed by lifeless tones without personality or distinction. I remember walking into the kitchen after it had been repainted, barely able to recognize it for the safe haven it had always been. Eggshell paint had drained it of all its beauty, leaving a drab and uninviting eating area that felt nothing like the one I’d previously known.

Green and gold became pasty white slabs within which I was expected to go about my life. Though I tried to keep living within this space, my heart told me this wasn’t home anymore, not really. My surroundings felt cold and distant, unrecognizable as the quaint home I’d spent my entire life in. When everything I loved was being taken from me, I no longer had the option of taking comfort in my warm childhood home. Only this pallid sepulcher greeted me each morning as I woke to another day.

After we left Texas and moved to Poison Oakley, I really did lose everything. Even though it took time for things to truly unravel and scar me deeper than any pain I’d known, I can still trace it all back to standing in a colorless house feeling my heart weep at what it was losing. That was the moment my childhood became devoid of color, forced to take on the somber shade of a world without mirth. Never again would my life be the same.

My New Year's Resolution

Tonight I reached a breaking point that made me realize I need serious help for how depressed and suicidal I've been lately. For those of you that don't know me, I struggle with manic depression, anxiety, and OCD. At this point in my life, I have spent more years with mental illnesses tangibly present than I have without them. The treatment I've had so far hasn't been enough to sufficiently help me. Suicidal thoughts and the former two mental illnesses I listed have been something I've been fighting since I was nine years old. It's nothing new to me, but I've been so afraid of spending the rest of my life battling this soul-crushing trio of disorders that I couldn't bear to keep living any longer. My depression has been a lot worse lately, which factored heavily into this. I've been wanting to die and the fear of that has been tormenting me like you wouldn't believe. Something in me broke tonight and I realized that it was time to prioritize my mental health.

I still don't want to live and it'll take time for me to get past that, but I can't let that lead me to actually go through with killing myself. The people I love and care about would suffer the most and I don't want to hurt them in any way. As a first step, I started making a list of reasons to live. There's a range of things that go from not wanting my dog to miss me to getting to see movies I'm really excited about in theaters. Nothing is too small or too trivial to include. Anything that gives me a ray of sunshine to look forward to is more than enough. Looking back at this list when I'm too depressed to keep fighting will remind me of what's most important to keep living for. I'm going to try to find the will to live again and I need anything that might help me.

My New Year's resolution for 2019 is to get additional help for my mental illnesses and regain the will to live. There's so much I still want to do with my life and, truth be told, the idea of ending my life so soon frightens me and breaks my heart. It's become more important than ever that I continue living and get myself together. Every now and then, I'll probably blog about this struggle and I ask you to please bear with me. I appreciate any support and kindness you might send my way.

Lastly, I encourage anyone who's also struggling with mental illnesses and/or being suicidal to get help, too. You may find that you want to live more than you think you do. Find something that motivates you to keep going through the struggles. It may end up saving you.

Love,

Debbie