The oximeter says my lungs are producing enough oxygen to sustain life, so why do I feel like I can't breathe? Thanks, Corona Virus for enabling me to purchase a tool I never once considered owning. Take a deep breath. The air goes in. Is this a panic attack without the sense of impending doom? Check it again. SpO2: 97%. BPM: 93. I studied for nursing-- wanted to be one for a long time but can't get my math score high enough to confidently apply. I'm very much alive. I can't stop coughing though. Asthma, is that you? Somehow I don't think it is and after assuming wrongly yesterday, I do not want a double dose of steroids coursing through my blood again.
The inner poet I buried deep tells me to relax, that it's just the years of unsaid words filling my lungs. It's becoming too heavy and they're ready. They're waiting to be released, waiting to be breathed out, waiting to be heard; waiting to be seen like the first breath of winter. I am the winter. I am dark. I am unforgiving. I am brutal. My cold front impenetrable. Without seeking shelter somewhere else, you'll surely die with me.
Shouldn't have had those cigarettes today. Logic, my old friend, kicks Poetry down. You didn't take your pill yet today. You should do that. I could go grab my water, but I don't actually want to get up. I sat down here because I wanted to get things off my chest.
I'm coughing up full sentences now-- statements that I should be telling you, but I can't. I can't face you right now. Just push it all down until the urge is gone. Logic always knows what to say to keep the raw emotions at bay. Logic, wants me to be angry, wants me to continue to ignore you, wants me to hurt you. After five years you deserve to be angry. I know I have the right to feel angry, but then I feel guilty. Why do care if my feelings bother you? I'm entitled to my feelings. This would be so much easier if I hated you.
Breathe out the dust of long shrouded feelings-- let them flow. Logic doesn't like this. Logic is shouting about the many times the flowing of words became the flowing of tears and he hates tears, He doesn't want me to give in. He slaps Poetry across her cheek and scolds her. Poetry turns away like a wounded child. Why did Poetry have to be my trauma? Why did we always have to hide her?
We're both your trauma, crazy girl.
Logic is smart. Logic is everything I ever wanted to be-- intelligent, rational, grounded... Poetry is so beautiful though. I could never give her up. I'd never find someone like her again. We're going to heal. Don't worry. She is light. She is daydreams and what-if's. She is every fragment of hope I have left. I wish my words did her justice. The way she shines... Cut it out. You want to heal? Stop touching the wound. Damn you, Logic. Always politically, cynically, correct.
Just one? Can we feel one? Poetry begs to be heard. She begs to just let out a little pain; to ease her load.
One; you can feel one. Logic is very begrudging. I don't think Logic has ever admired me as much as I admired him. Logic thinks I'm foolish because I always let Poetry complete just enough of her transaction to remind him that I'm a human with emotions. I try to remind him daily there isn't really a switch to stop feeling, but he thinks I'm being naive. He tells me going back to my doctor and accepting their medication would "flip the switch".
I tell Poetry I'm ready. Go ahead. We're listening.
I'm scared of feeling so much, so intensely all the time, but I'm scared that if I let you go that I won't be able to feel anything again; all the weird and wonderful, and even the scary things. You made me feel. And I miss feeling what I felt and I hate feeling what I feel.
I wish you listened like Logic and Poetry. Even when they disagree they both hear me out; they help me make good decisions. They remind me to be rational and calm. They tell me it's okay to feel, and don't judge me for expressing it. They work out ways to help me heal. They work out reminding me I'm that I'm not only human, but that I am alive. They encourage me to write so I don't lash out. They encourage me to let it go, let it flow free from me. I bleed it out.
Lately, you make me feel dead. The ghosts of words I'm letting die inside me are pressed so close to my heart. The weight is so heavy it hurts. I struggle all day to stay strong. I struggle all day to suppress the many problems I'm facing. I struggle all day to keep Logic at my side. I struggle all day to not cave in and break-- say the things I need to say but that I know will shatter us, damage our foundation like earthquakes, split us at our faults. I stay up at night because I'm afraid of having to start over in the morning when I awake. Poetry always wins at night. She makes waking up in the morning so much harder to do. I spent six years picking up your broken pieces, cutting my fingertips every time I ran my hands across the places that still needed healing. My blood is on you. You were meant to be a mosaic made of all the pieces I found in you. Light was supposed to shine through you and make an ordinary room magical. You were supposed to be beautiful.
Every night I break off pieces of myself to fill the gaps in you that I can't find the pieces to. But my pieces are ugly. I don't fit you like I should.
And what do we do when there's nothing left of me for you?