THE DARKNESS

“and so I fell in love with a color - in this case, the color blue - as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.”

Maggie Nelson, “Bluets”

“we love to contemplate blue, not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it.”

Goethe

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1. When I Say I Feel Things Differently I Think I Mean

   Riding the waves

   Falling off the rollercoaster

   Trailing your fingertips across the stars one minute 

   And wrapping yourself in the dark velour the next

   In the space where inspiration is bred 

   And hearts are broken.

   A price that demands payment,

   Shaking hands with the future that includes my own mother at my funeral

   An existence in which I am at war with myself constantly 

   Where my body and mind dance as if it were their last waltz

   Yet, there is no other space I would rather live,

   You could not drag my body across to the alternative,

   To the tope, the settlement,

   I choose to be here,

   In agony and in pleasure,

   Even if it means I despise myself as much as I love myself. 

   (Even if it mean hatred drips from my skin at the same rate that love flows through to my toes)

   I will untie my soul upon the world as my offering 

   And endure each blade placed gently within my flesh, 

   Raw,

   The cost of vulnerability.

   I will live in the valley to experience the peak

   When I acknowledge how all encompassing my emotions are on this side of life I imagine the life of another, the one I have chosen to become:

   An artist tortured by his decision to feel. His poison picked, the glass poured, a toast to creation. The ceremony remains predominantly the same. The metaphorical gutting, the ingredients laid upon the sandstone, the recipe chosen, the meal made. The stitching of my soul through fabrication. It is necessary, and it is better than the internal festering I once allowed, but it is not without sacrifice. There is no choice in this life without a required retribution, so I choose the one that accepts my oblation and in turn offers a glimpse of heaven. Hell with God as a reprieve in lieu of purgatory cut with the Devil. 

   In other words,

   I will either spend my life smothering that which claws at my skin. In its frantic search for release, ripping my soul into shreds as I continue through this outside world, or I will relent to the pressure. I unlock the long closed door and allow the grooves to intertwine my body and mind. I allow the emotions to come go as they please, as they are needed, in their full capacity. Painting with fire on a canvas made of wood.

   So, what I think I’m trying to convey is, I would rather feel, no matter how devastating. No matter how heavy or hard or demanding. I would rather feel and perish, than to live in the numb. Would rather dive head first and cherish the filling of my lungs, than to skim across the surface. Would rather cover myself in gasoline and burn with the house than let the rotting wood spread. That there can be no expectations in this life, and to believe you know the intentions of the universe is an asking for a lesson, a gentle reminder that we must only be open, that we must only want to learn- not control- and that trust comes with an opening for pain, for sadness, but to live this life with an aversion to being hurt is the greatest disservice you could ever possibly do to yourself.

   The highs are worth the lows- the spaces in between, few and far between, are held as my reason for living- the contentment, the peace, the slow ripple of reckoning before the next drop falls

   The cup of your hand on my cheek

   The salt resting lightly on the surface of the sliced watermelon

   The way it feels to realize yourself in this version for the first time

   Trace your fingertips along the ridge and breathe

   I shake my shoulders and watch as the birds fly free

2. Sometimes I lean forward off my balcony just to see my room from a different perspective, I listen to a song four times in a row then just three, I eat from left from right and walk from down to up. I shift the focus two feet to the northeast and nestle my chin deeply into her chest. I find the earth beneath my nails and need no reminder of the meaning. I share my bed with arwen and remember the boy I loved. The way his eyes bore into mine, the familiarity of his touch, how I fit - feet curled into the small of his back - the golden warmth flowing from inside the room and outside the window. I love you, it hurts, I write on the cotton illuminated by the afternoon sun. I love you, it hurts - I’ve never felt joy such as this. I love you despite expectation. Without attachment. Singular not transactional. I stand alone in this knowing, full. Sure. And then the love grows and it changes and I never find your hair on my sheets or the kitchen sink, and I love you, it hurts. But in a different way this time. A lighter way. Another knowing way. I stand alone again, full, but a different color. And it is neither good nor bad or backwards or forwards, it just is. And I am living and growing and experiencing new people with a confidence I’ve never had before. It feels good. It feels really good. This beautiful lens I have built for myself. And I cuddle on the couch with new friends for the first time and we giggle and we share a pizza and laugh until we cry and I think about the beautiful friends that have come before and filled these seats. The beautiful friends that will fill this seat once again. And the friendships still left out there waiting to meet you in this life of random chance experienced floating on a rock in a space, space which we know nearly nothing about. And is this fact not so miraculous that it stops your heart for a moment, steals your breath, summons the rain. There is so much more than we could ever even imagine. And for some reason - some energy you can feel in moments of connection, in moments of nature, in moments of hope - we live in this moment. In this place. With these people. And what JOY it can bring. 

   And I feel the surge of sadness pulled by the thoughts of injustice. The societal capacity to not care about another. To not recognize our shared humanity and to not act to save each other. When we see hunger, homelessness, an inability to receive life saving medical care, an inability to pay for life saving medical care, how we can detach the worth of a human life. 

   And I feel this deeply, and I feel it complicatedly, and I feel it in tandem with the absolute all-consuming joy that it is to be alive. And I see this from my balcony, on my tippy toes, hinged at the waist. This Saturday night in bed, Arwen curled in my comforters, my fingers forming words on the screen. It feels right, it feels like remembering how to ride a bike or clear the pipes or clean the hair out the shower drain. It’s throwing away leftovers you’ve had for two weeks or making spinach eggs and prosciutto on fresh bread for breakfast. I breathe deeply and feel it bubble through my veins. 

   I feel so lucky, I feel so good, I feel so enough.

   Dirt under nails in connection to having had dug myself out 

3. writing about feeling like lying but also the shift in lens the realization of its beauty and its gift and my luckiness and how I have been so cruel to a part of me and how both things can exist at once 

   I have been considering often the concept of identity and its relation to how we show up in life. 

   I feel like a fraud most of the time. My cheeks icy hot with the river of shame through my sinuses. I am constantly battling depression and every time I am joyful or fun or adventurous it feels like a lie to those around me. I stand in the backyard of a basement  rock show with new friends drinking wine out of the bottle and sharing drags of a cigarette in between recounting my recent dating escapades. I am holding court, I am surrounded by new people I am so thankful to know, I am laughing genuinely. I am being brutally honest about one facet of my life and completely discounting the other. I want to scream from the rooftops this darkness I carry. I want to break free from the shackles of its societal shame and remove it from the hushed shadows and festering corners of my life. I am thankful for my mental illness. I have never known a teacher as qualified and demanding as sadness. I would never have become who I am today without the reckonings that have been forced by my depression. And I love who I am today - really and actually - I love being alive in this life and experiencing the simplest moments of gratitude. There are two signs to this coin and in sharing only one I feel as if I am part of the problem. It is a great disservice not only to myself but to those around me, those who perceive me, not to share the struggle that is carried in equal weight with the freedom it allows. I suffer so I can live. There is no reality that exists in which I posses this creative freedom, this self-knowing, this absolute dedication to follow my intuitive wants and needs while discounting the weight that it carries. The darkness that can sometimes consume. The crawling out of the well with my fingernails or the continued support I receive via therapy and ketamine therapy and medication. 

   Re-reading my old work, I feel I have forgotten how to write, but in reality, I have forgotten how to be honest. I have allowed embarrassment to seep into the space that acceptance is begging to live. I have finally begun to reap the oats I’ve sowed and in my relishment of the highs I have become completely afraid, once again, of the lows. I have done them the greatest disservice in their discountment, in forgetting their place and their importance in my body and my mind. I write over and over again in my journal about this curse, about the losing battle against the darkness, about my complete denial of its return every time it pokes its rearing head in my life - I am looking through the lens of dread. I am allocating all of my energy to thrash against its presence instead of laying myself amongst the seaweed and allowing the lesson to occur. 

   And I’m not sure how to change that. I carry this stark, if not somewhat subconscious belief, that there is already enough darkness in this world and I don’t need to add to it.

   1. The way I once wrote about the depths 

      Alternatively, maybe I do know how to write about darkness, but only when it’s all consuming. Maybe I’m not sick enough anymore to be a good writer. I don’t allocate the time to explore my thoughts and feelings through writing without the suffocation demanding the release. I don’t feel things as viscerally, I’ve lost the ability to feel my sadness in my fingertips and hopefulness in my toes and I think I only know how to write in relation to my body. I can’t tell if these are fears or if they are true. If im too happy to write or too ashamed of being sad to. 

      I re-read my own work and can never imagine creating something I am so proud of again. I remember what it was like to run to my journal or my laptop, to leave the grocery store to sit in my car on my notes app, to turn around on my walk repeating sentences in my head so I wouldn’t forget them - as if I could forget the words as the seared themselves into my brain demanding attention. I remember the feeling of my fingers not being able to move fast enough. Misspelling and grammar completely ignored until the second, third, or fourth draft because I just had to get out what I needed to say. I once pulled over on the drive home from Nashville and wrote the most beautiful piece on womanhood. There was no effort to seek creativity on my part. Instead it was as if creativity was seeking me, creativity as a temporarily parasitic entity taking over my body for its physical ability to write and share. I don’t know how to find that again.

      I think there is this aspect of the job I work taking mental energy. Also, not having car rides - empty time with half focus for my thoughts to connect. Im walking aimlessly less because I'm walking purposefully more. I am more content which in itself just demands less introspective exploration. 

4. Work that is continuing to communicate/understand/acknowledge the ever constant work that it is to live with depression - to mitigate it, the effort constantly put forth and understanding between the different shades and feelings 

   In my dreams, the sea is calling to me

   I can’t tell if it’s the beginning or the end - am I coming up for air or spiraling towards the soul; I have opened up the door … 

   Sadness, sensitivity, as I allow my emotions back into my body - feeling easily touched, how do I maintain my sensitivity in a world that is stimulating us more than we were ever meant to be or with the horrors and the grief

   Even just the grief of change, of the fact of life, there is a line of freedom I would like to try and allow myself but without some sort of routine I lose all connectivity but with a small drop of routine it’s black and white - back to finding the balance this never ending question 

5. If, in life, there is to be the suffocation and the stillness,

   I will not drown in still waters

   I will not starve in lush pastures 

   If, in life, there is the suffocation, there is also, then, the stillness. There is the desperation, the running, the need, and then there is the calm, the protective the soft. There is the girl standing ankle deep within the glass lake and there is the rough white scream of the sea. 

   If religious love (devotion) is the articulation of emotions without stillness allowed, then this has the opposite effect. There is no gasping involved but sweet spoonfuls of air. My body unravels into ribbons laid upon the forest floor. 

   I stand on the riverbank with myself once again - relief and grief flood the system 

   The silence is not jarring, it is a silk slip on freshly cleaned skin

   It is lavender tea on your lips

   It is white light soft through your fingertips

   There can be no antidote found - only ….

   There can exist, both an acknowledgment/articulation of one’s own suffering with an awareness of its relative insignificance 

   This weight I carry - 

   I am overdue for a ketamine infusion 

   “Last year I abstained, this year I devour -

   Without guilt. Which is also an art.”

   How many times a year do I wake up to this knowing? How many different forms of abstinence will I know? I meet myself with an increased threshold of grace each time but to what end - how do I learn to touch my fingertips to the sun, is life just one long test of authenticity vs imitation - how will I keep up

   I wake up, I shower, I force myself to eat - I will not drown in still waters.

   I walk, I meditate, I nourish mind body and soul - I will not drown in still waters

   I am leaving winter and winter is leaving me - I will not starve in green pastures 

   I take my pills each morning and night - I will not drown in still waters 

6. This world requires a de-sensitivty I am unable to organically obtain. One I force through little white and purples pills on my tongue each morning and night. A sadness that falls softly over my body - this is not the violent side.

   I want to live on the violent side. I want it in it’s wholeness. I miss being able to connect my brain to my eyes my heart to my soul my fingers to the glass. I talk about that too much - the glass and my fingers. I miss the movement of the grass and your words meaning anything to me. I sit 4 ft off the ground floating through this normalcy. I am regular now. I am functioning - functioning within a world I did not ask to be a part of. Not that I don't want to be here - I do, here being present, existing, alive. But not here, where I have to numb to survive. I love the way I feel. There is immense knowledge in the knowing, the feeling. My inability to hold the suffering is telling of the world, not of me. These human signals were meant to be signs and protectors and indicators and when did we decide that their message failed in comparison to that of greed and wealth and power. 

   The way we feel is a gift 

7. The noise returns with every step backward on the screen. I look forward to next tuesday and hear the demands between now and then in unison, at the forefront, on volume 11. I wake up and conceptualize my day and my feet plant and knees lock in anticipation. Anticipation of the responsibility of 24 hrs felt in one 3 second thought. I can’t remember how to feel the hope or the excitement, I function so greatly in the dread. I let myself bleed without the energy to hold pressure. I prefer the mess to the effort. A later issue, felt vaguely in the grey cloud that is tomorrow. I still would choose this, who I am now, who I am capable of being, the expansion of thought demanded, but I question my ability daily. I keep waiting for the end, the inevitable end. The last day I am able to carry it all. Like the last time you decorated the christmas tree with your family or went to a summer swim team meet or carpooled to school or lived with your sibling or your parents or your best friends. Did I even notice the shift? Was I looking forward too much to the next? I am grateful and I am sentimental and I am scared but I am also proud, and full, and more authentic than I have ever been. I am eating and sleeping and playing and washing. But when’s the last time I brushed my teeth? I do what I can. I’m doing the best I can. I am here. I am learning. I am only this moment in time.