I was almost always told how I felt
It's one of the reasons why I struggle to identify how I truly feel now
Or decide what I want
Lack of connection to self
As some psychologists would say

Mom my shoes feel too tight
No they're not they're fine
Oh okay

Dad I'm full; I don't want anymore food
No you're not, finish everything on the plate
Oh okay

I was told how I felt
I learned to ignore my body's communication
And look to the other
To determine how I felt
Or looked
Or what I wanted

I'm learning to unlearn this
In the minuscule activities to the larger life decisions

So please
Be patient if it takes me time to either speak up or share how I feel

Am I tending to my leaves more than my roots? It feels less painful and more safe.

How do you heal a diseased root?

Why am I scared to leave?

Can we do a prayer together? Can you pray for me? Can you write me a letter or note that I can go back to and read when times get rough for me?

We tell people to go against their bodies...to remove themselves from protection as their nervous system understands it. Leave that person; be MORE in your body; say no.

I desire to live a more conscious life that's not as unconscious and habitual than most people.

I fear that I am luke warm. My faith is not stable right now and I don't want it to be but I know it's how I feel. It's hard. I don't know how to go about it. How to pursue. I worry I have intellectualized the gospel and now I struggle to listen to sermons. I find myself criticizing more than anything.

“Think about what an amazing human being you are to love yourself enough after having come from no love to walk away from people who abuse you; set yourself free.”

“You’re right; it’s real; it’s happening; do something about it.”

- Dr. Sherrie Campbell

I am proud of the woman you are right now in this moment of your life. Your light, your shadow, the contradictions you so boldly engage in introspective dialogue. The way youre figuring out your moral compass. I love the way you laugh before you cry. I love that you allow yourself to feel in such colorful saturation of each emotion. I’m not sure how to do that. To be able to stay with your emotions in an authentic and non-destructive way. I admire that you are doing the tough and lonely inner work that I feel I do not have the courage nor bravery to do myself. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you and continue to hurt you. I’m sorry I’ve shown you what it’s like to cry the most painful of tears. I’m sorry I do not know any language other than shame and abuse. I’m sorry that you are healing the parts of myself that I never got to grieve which I then gave you genetically. You are so strong, diana. Never forget that, even when I scream at you that you are weak as you cry before me begging me to stop talking. I admire your ability to be defiant in your NOs and the way you push back against oppressive systems that are embedded in others and myself. I’m sorry that you cry alone in your room and find more safety in there than in my arms. These hands do not know how to hold your pain and to offer gentle comfort. Please forgive me. I’m trying.

-Love Mom, a messy and beautiful and complicated human being who has experienced horrendous abuse by those who were also messy and beautiful and complicated human beings

I remember your touch as abraiseive
A means to an end
Never an end in itself

It made me feel like I needed to hurry up
That my body was meant to be rushed
For the expense of others
It made me accept a touch that was mechanical
Devoid of a tenderness a 6 y/o deserves
To come to understand and experience
From the hands of their mother

It made me engrain and learn to accept that my body was a means to an end
Never an end in itself

I’m doing the tough work now
I’m trying to discover and unlearn and learn again but differently than the last

I don't even know what the right words are to introduce myself after so long of not having any communication with you, my older sister. I guess I'll get right to it. Fair warning, read this when you're in an okay enough place to hear it.

I consider myself an empathetic, understanding person. I err on the side of being too forgiving or being too accommodating. I yearn for relationship and repair. However, I am now beyond a place of understanding you, which is worse than the feelings I had towards our parents. I no longer wish to understand your perspective nor hold space for it. The distance and events in your life have reflected enough information for me to keep you at a distance. How foolish is it to think I would've easily accepted any hint of conversation from you in these past 18 months. 18 months...enough time for you to have gotten pregnant and just found out her gender.

Your bitterness and ego (this is how I chose to perceive it) are what broke me.

I left scared and hurt by the events that transpired between mom and I the day I left. I knew we weren't on good terms and yet I still contacted you. I extended an olive branch and you ******* burnt it. Your lack of response and absence was felt painfully and hurt deeply. It inflicted additional wounds I didn't think I'd have to tend to in an already tumultuous time.

I used to cry and wonder what I did so bad to deserve no response from you. If you were so worried about me leaving early, why leave me alone completely? I no longer cry over it anymore. Instead, I'm hurt by the fact that if roles were reversed, Marta, I would've called you in an instance. I wouldn't have left my younger sister to fend for herself when she offered an invitation to communicate as she fled our parents home with nothing but her car and clothes. ****, me getting pregnant would've been enough for me to want to reach out to have you be part of my life. You didn't.

I despise you; I hate you. You've surprisingly hurt me the most out of the entire family during this time because I expected more from you than our parents, but I guess I gauged you wrong. I expected more from you as a woman as well. Your internalized misogyny is not one I thought would be so apparent in your treatment, attitude, and behavior you've shown eddy vs. me. You're not that different from mom in that regard. That's how I feel, at least.

I am done being the "bigger person" when it comes to emotional conflicts that rise amongst us. You were the one that would say emotionally ****** up things to me I still remember and yet I was expected to initiate the repairs because my desire to be in good relationship with you was strong. It's gone now.

You learned to despise Roman's silent treatments early on in your marriage and yet you extended that same cold and harsh treatment towards me.

Plea your concerns to God because I don't wish to hear them anytime in the near future. I've plead mine for eighteen months in silence with God hoping to hear from you. I'm done now.

This is the last time you'll ever hear anything from me regarding my feelings towards our relationship or what is left of it anyway. My anger and hurt is a reflection of my desperate plea for love or grace or any ounce of ******* compassion from this family and unexpectedly you.

Life's a funny old time
When I was younger
I thought I knew exactly how my life would turn out and who I would be
Now
After so much pain and trauma and accomplishments and perseverance
I no longer align with who I thought I'd be at this age in my life
I stare into mirrors and see someone who doesn't look familiar
Foreign
She is a glaring reminder that I've grown into someone I am not yet intimate with
I do not know her
She's busied herself with working overtime
Enmeshed in depression
Her first love
Mary
And the night shift life
It's a hard pill to swallow
Coming to terms with the discrepancy between who I thought I'd be with who I feel I am now
It's a constant tug between accepting and denying this reality
I wish I could continue sleep walking in the numbness this long season of depression has granted me
But I move to days in three short weeks
9 shifts left
I honor this time but recognize I am ready to set this time in my life down
It will be greatly missed
But I need day light to find time in my week to fall in love with myself again
Learning who I am now
Embracing the ways in which I've shrunk and stretched and collapsed
Exploring through boredom and hobbies old and new

How sad is it
That I cry
When someone who hurts me
Leaves

I'm not sure I've been self aware of this feeling before

Not as of late

I've tried so hard to refrain from behaving in a way that aligns with the feeling of hating who I become when I'm around another

And yet

Here she is
Mocking me again
I can't escape her
I'm tantalizingly pulled back into this familiar neural pathway of connection

I'm sorry
Sorry I instigate you intentionally

Trying to get you to lash out
So that I can lick my own wounds
Unknowingly giving you the whip intentionally
So that I may cling to the narrative of victim and transgressed
The only one who has the "right" to be upset
So that I may disregard the ugly behavior I myself have transgressed against you

I'm sorry

I know I'll go hauntingly silent mid-argument

I freeze

It's a moment of realization for myself

A mirror pushed in front of my face
A hand squishing my cheeks painfully and around my jawline
Forcing me to look at my many existent shadows in the bright fluorescent lights that cause me to wince

I can't dare whisper it out loud
No
I cannot

But I can write it in a poem
I harm
I hurt
I become brutal with my choice of words

I have temper tantrums as a twenty-four year old woman
I seldomly had the ability to when I was a kid
Not with childhood trauma and emotionally abused parents who passed on less abuse than they endured

And for that
I'm sorry
You don't deserve it
You don't deserve to take on the brunt of my parents' responsibilities

They failed me
And in you I find solace and self contempt and confusion

I'm sorry
I can't fully formulate into words what I'm doing and why
It doesn't make sense to me
And it leaves me with a mysterious shape of confusion

There is a sweetness to it
To know I can hurt you
And you can embrace it
Unlike like those who failed me when I was all too young
Sorry

I guess it's a natural by-product when you have someone you feel safe enough with to enact your trauma onto
But it doesn't take away the chronically exhaustive tone our relationship is colored in

No where feels like home
Not even if I go back
To what once was familiar in youth
It's changed
I have too
And no roots have taken ahold
All soil I encounter is unfit for anchoring

I don't feel as though I am growing
Simply trying to survive
And maintain as much as I can
Mitigate damage from lack of essentials

I'm numb
Maybe in a depressed state
For sure in a depressed state
It's grief
Again

You've left
We've said our goodbyes
And it felt inadequate
Less than what I imagined it would be

I left numb
And it has carried with me since

Goodbyes are sacred
And yet I ******* hate them
Yet this time
There was no ghosting
No bitterness left unsaid

We came
As best as we could
To each session
And as all seasons tend to go
It ended
Maybe paused
We shall see in autumn
What out souls find to be true
About what happens to us
Our dynamic relationship

I feel incomplete
Like there's this itch I must've thought I scratched
But I realize now I didn't
Oh well
The depressed state I'm in doesn't seem to worry much about it now

No one wrote this blueprint in life for me
Much of anything else
So as I've done before
I do now
Trailblaze into a territory unknown
Except this time
I no longer have her next to me
In the way I did before

Conflicted
Where do we go now
I do not wish to initiate the conversation
Nor do you
What will the ending be
Will we still have fond love for one another
Will you hate me
Is this another reinforced lesson for me
My honesty causes abandonment
Of those closest to me

I did it
I ******* did it

I feel the crushing weight of your absence
Sitting firmly and heavy
Right under my sternum

Do you feel it in this exact moment?

I've been thinking about you a lot lately
Part of me hopes that you do too

I miss you dearly
More so than anyone else in my life at the moment

It hurts me to think about you
This I am painfully aware of

Sometimes
I go to museums or the ocean to feel you
I close my eyes and pretend I will open them and see you there
Hear your boisterous laugh sync with mine
Watch as you tuck your frizzy curly plum-red mane of hair behind your ear

Our last few encounters cut me deeper than any other pain I know
The damage is insurmountable
You spat and crumbled the last bits of vulnerability I showed you with what looked like no remorse
As if I meant nothing to you

I still grieve you every time I think of you
I hate you
(I still love you)
I love you
(I still hate you)
Im glad you're gone
(Sometimes I'm not)
I wish I could pick up my phone
And call you like old times
(Sometimes I don't)
I've never deleted your number
I don't plan to anytime soon

I know the extent of my grief is a reflection of how deeply I praised our relationship
So maybe I've been silent in initiating it
The grief
Because I praised it so heavily
I'm afraid to open it up
And begin that journey
I'm just not there
Yet

Im not sure how I'll process this loss

No one ever prepared me for the grief that comes with losing a soul mate birthed in friendship

Products and/or standards of a capitalistic market
Are usually never intended to
Create long-term satisfaction
That is just not how it works
They need to shift constantly

What is "in" or on trend frequently changes
In order to be able to continue selling new products
It is based on promising a temporary product with a temporary high

When you have had a lack of mirroring
And a history of denial and dismissal
Color your harmful experiences

To see another person be moved to tears
Flips the emotional world you have mostly known your entire life upside down

It does something to the internal psyche

I may not cry with them
I may appear apathetic at times
But it's closer to stoicism
Truly

Because deep down within this conditioned mask of controlled and suppressed emotions
There's a little girl whispering thank you

Thank you for seeing my hurt
And being touched by it
Vulnerable enough to mirror for me
The grieving of my trauma

Numbing is so familiar to me
When I was a kid
My body took over to protect me
From childhood trauma and abuse
So I would go numb
My preferred defense mechanism

Now as an adult
I ingest substances to "protect" me
So I can go numb

Isn't it a little amusing  
How I'm repeating my body's natural cycles of defense in my own now
But with external resources
That are known to harm

She missed the red flags
Because they felt like home

Things will never be the exact same way as they were before
and I would like to believe that that is okay
but it hurts too much to hold the thought
I miss her
I wish he would respond to my unanswered texts

these emotions bleed from some of the most deepest parts of me
and I get afraid of the shades they come in
but I welcome them anyway
because I want to honor my midnight black moments like I would my meadow greens and sunflower yellows

I ended seasons with certain people and activities in my life
and sometimes I regret them deeply
I wish I could just text or call
but I know better than to reach out that way
it feels as if it is too late
but the hurt that I bled in front of them felt as if it went unnoticed
as if they just admired the saturated color with the ghost of a smile gracing their pursed lips

Nature should be one of our greatest teachers
It brings us back to our roots
Reminds us that we are creations in our cores as well
Invites us to come back home to our complex yet simple ways of being
Nature does not control nor stop the natural process of whatever is meant to pass or stay
We do that
So as I stand next to this tree
I admire its gift of reminding me
To let the leaves fall where they may
When it’s their time
For there is a season for all things
Some leave even when we don’t want them to
Some let go at the optimal time
And others stay longer than we hoped for
But to trust the timing