starting anew

Not too long ago, I always had my creative outlets. When I was younger, I loved to sketch, to write poems and stories, and to dance. I still love all of these things, but I've traded these passions in for avoidance tactics. I realize that need for an outlet will never die, nor is disallowing myself from engaging in these activities going to promote good mental health.

I've been cheating myself.

Writing is a personal thing, it always has been for me. Sure, I write a lot of crap. I never could keep a diary--this is analogous to my general lack of life structure. I brush my teeth every day but that's basically the only sameness to the days as they pass. I lack routine, repetition. But when I sit down to do something that was previously daunting (say writing when I haven't in a bit--it's ugly at first, or pirouetting after lapses in dancing--it's a mess), I find myself joyful, happy.

There exists so much beauty in this world, and so much ugliness at the same time. For without the ugly, beauty would be nonexistent. Profound, I know. But honestly, this year I want to start fresh. I always say that, and nothing ever comes of it. But the more I think about my life over the past year, the more I replay the ugliness inside my skull till, the more I enable my bad habits and behavior: I am the victim as I subject myself to the past. And this is another sort of ugliness in and of itself. I want to be free, and I want to choose to be happy.

So I am committing myself to a new project: I shall post something each day. It may be short, it may only be a brief account of the day, but it will be something to build upon, a foundation of sorts.

The past was a void. The year of my 23rd birthday was the one, I told myself last 23 July. It was my golden birthday, after all. It had to be a golden year. But I felt alone at school (I did that to myself in part), isolated. My parents weren't getting along, my dad filed for divorce and took it back and said he was going to again. My beloved dog, Cassie, was 15 and showing signs that her life may not be long on this earth. I found out my father was cheating on my mother...with men. All these things, all these ugly skeletons in my closet, all the things I can't tell anyone...well, the page can sit with this secrets and know them. The page can hold its judgment of me and of my family, it doesn't talk back. On the page, I can be myself. It's frightening and scary. I mean, I want to scream sometimes or shout one thousand venomous spears and ask God why but I can't do these things. So I hold it in, hold it in, can't tell anyone, and then it comes to a head and I've screamed and said something horrid and mean and I'm chipping away at myself and my desire to strive to be better. When I don't write, I don't have any way of writing down the bones (not my line, stolen), any tangible manner of letting the ugly seep out of me. I hold my father's betrayal inside and keep it together for my mother and sit stoically and keep my head above water. But inside it's all tsunamis and chaos, lightning and gulls circling panicked overhead.

I told the only person I've talked to about all this in some small way that it was okay because I haven't cried. I measure things that way. For years I didn't shed a tear, like when I went to three different high schools in three different states, when I felt like I hadn't any friends like me, that I didn't fit. I didn't cry because to me, this is weakness. And then college came and I was always crying. I fucked up my direct path to becoming a doctor, I screwed up my social life, I was so lost. And now I'm back to that drought. It's a funny thing.

I think there's a lot to me that people don't know because I keep myself so guarded, so hidden, while appearing perfectly vulnerable at the same time. I learned to be a bit of a chameleon with all the moving, how to fit my square peg into a round hole. I went through a phase where I was fed up with that and did the exact opposite--daring someone to make me move, going right when someone said left. Hopefully now I have that out of my system. It's hard to trust the world, but I know that's an excuse. I can sit here and feel badly for myself and tell you all my ugly secrets, all of the hurt and the domestic violence and the suffering. I can tell you that's why I can't let you in, why I won't call you back or why I play computer games instead of dealing with life. Or I can extend feelers into the universe, and wrap tendrils around the safe, strong trees, instead of gravitating to the diseased ones that eat me up. I am not proud of how I've dealt with things of late. I can also tell you I wouldn't wish what has happened on my worst enemy. Sure, I am hurting. But I can't deal with this the way addicts do. I can't turn to an event (e.g. gambling) or a substance (e.g. alcohol--by the way, I don't drink anymore; I used it as a crutch for my social anxieties before and I hope everyone who put me down and made fun of me can realize that for every person who does this, there may be someone scared and hurting below that surface exterior) and take the intensity of the mood change these things produce and swap it in for intimacy. People need people. By avoidance, by not communicating with friends and by disallowing myself to write things that could potentially hurt myself and someone else because the things may be vile or may be secrets only I feel I can know, I am removing myself from humanity. I am cutting myself off. And that, that is the worst crime of all.

I need to learn how to trust people, how to believe. I need to have faith.

I do believe in love and compassion, in empathy for all things. So I need to trust in my own love and know that sometimes I can't fix myself, and that inaction only makes everything worse.

Right now I am writing this for myself, but maybe eventually I can share these pages and trust that I'm as bad as I make myself out to be.

It's also funny in that I want to be a psychiatrist at this point, and I have all of these tools for everyone else to use, all this compassion for others. I need to have a little bit for myself and employ my own damn techniques and positive coping mechanisms. So for anyone who has had an overweight doctor lecturing them about the dangers of hypertension or tipping the scale a bit too much, I'm a wannabe doc who is going to try and correct this hypocrisy in myself, and I'm gonna be a bit kinder and a lot more active in my quest to be mentally and physically healthy.

Love
k


Also, how gorg is this poem? I feel like yeah, you don't have to be the victim, but sometimes it's okay to wish yourself out for a minute and just sit with those feelings, so you can move on and out of the shit rather than just stew in it:

1999

We were driving to your funeral
& our father was not crying
because he has a way
of tying ribbons around grief.
It was the year we learned
the piercing that prefaces the blood
holds the most delicate of darknesses.
Then it was the year we opened
all our faucets & waited for the sea
to bleed to death. Then it was the year
we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly
the year we started to believe
every thorn was just a bridge.
Then the year all we talked about
was boxing. Then the year
my stomach hurt all year, & then
the year no one spoke of you.

If there were an antonym for suicide
we could all choose when to be born.
I would have been born after that day
so I could not remember you.
So my fingers would stop pointing
at all the things that aren't there.

Kevin A. González