Tally Marks

Becoming a 

psychologist  has opened up my heart space to who I am within. I thought that I was choosing this career in order to save other people from drowning but realized that I leave myself without a life jacket so often. No one is perfect. Not the lady you see in the grocery store with her good looking husband and five children, not the stranger, not your school teacher, your parents, or your shrink. I think life takes tolls on you, making tally marks on the inside of your rib cage, keeping track of everything that has caused you pain and the tally marks add up quickly. Its easy to ignore it though, to push back your pain because society tells you that you are not allowed to feel it, that no one on this damn planet wants to see you vulnerable, see your tally marks. We hide our pain on the backs of loved ones where they cant see them or by pretending we are capable of loving someone else when we cant even look at ourselves in the mirror. We dont talk about the times we cut ourselves on our bathroom floor and our boyfriends turned away from the evidence because they didn't want to believe that such pain exists. We dont talk about throwing up our dinners to be skinny, we dont talk about heartbreak, about 2 am crying sessions, about our addictions to drinking or drugs to numb the tally marks that are being carved into our insides daily. We dont talk about these things until its too late or we become strangers in our own skin, our souls so dark from never seeing day light. I didn't want to be that person, with circles around my eyes and several wounds on my wrists because my tally marks got the best of me. I go to classes daily learning about mental disorders and how to handle crisis's but they never told me how to handle the crisis that was myself. I knew I was not okay but I did not know how to fix myself, to apply what I learned to my own brain. So there I sat, in the small outdated waiting room that only had ten green chairs in it (I know because I counted them over and over again as I waited). The mental health doctor came out and took me into his smaller office where he told me to sit down on a couch next to a box of tissues that were screaming "you will need these trust me". He asked me several questions that no one bothered asking me before such as have you harmed yourself? Do you think about suicide? Whats your family like? I was honest about everything as you should be if you wish for salvation from your own soul. I walked out stronger, with more knowledge and a shiny new prescription for my diagnosis of ADD, depression, and anxiety. No one tells you that it takes courage to admit your defeats, to say you are not okay, to own your shit.  No one tells you that there is light for you as long as you seek help, as long as you scream out "this is who I am! Help me" You cannot hide your pain, your scars, your eating disorder, your drug habits forever. You must bring them into the light in order to burn them. Once I admitted to my pain, it no longer owned my soul, it was weak compared to my light. Do not be afraid to ask for help for pain that seems bigger than you are. Do not be afraid to bring your disorders, your pain, your darkness to the surface and face them. No one is perfect, everyone has their own tally marks. What are yours and what are you doing to own them? Start today, no pain is worth your happiness or your life. End the stigma on Mental Health, talk about it.

Morning Constant

5:10 

every single morning he is out in the bitter air wearing a light grey jacket and slippers a size to big, watching the smoke escape his lips from the tip of the lit cigarette he holds between his two bony fingers. I make it a point to notice him every morning on my drive to work. I watch or him like the world would stop turning and fall apart if he wasnt out on his own personal smoke break. He is my constant, the one thing I can count on to show up and he doesnt even know it. I have never seen him outside of this context. I have never shook his hand never waived, never even asked for his name. He has never noticed me staring for the short second it takes me to pass his house. He has long wavy grey hair that falls upon his shoulders lightly. He is always looking up, always. I wonder what he sees in the sky, what he thinks when he puffs his smoke like a mighty dragon into the dusty air above his face. I dont know what his face looks like due the the way the porch light hits it, casting it into a shadow of nothingness. I  picture him with tired eyes and a runny nose. I want to know what hes thinking and what he sees when he is looking up. Is he talking to some higher power or contemplating his life? It doesnt really matter,  What matters is that he is my 5:10 morning constant. The one thing that makes me look forward to my work drive. The one stranger that reminds me to take the time to take it easy. To sit and contemplate the world when its mostly silent. Sometimes its the people who dont even know that they are making a difference to others that make one.

Soul Stealing Trenches

You 

gave your soul away once. It was locked away, and then you swallowed the key whole until it sank to the darkest pit of your round stomach, covered in stomach acid and slime. I could jump down your throat and go for a swim in the toxic trenches in search for the small golden key. However, I know that once I was down there covered in acid and slime you would regurgitate it and throw it out the car window on your way to your 9-5 job in the city. It would lay on the side walk for a curious stranger to pick up in confusion and toss away not knowing that it was important, not knowing what it could unlock. My point is, you were never unleashing your soul into my hands. You were never wearing it on your shirt sleeve for me to pick up and cradle with cautious, delicate fingertips. I could not find your soul in the window of your eyes which sunk deep behind your eyelids as we made love in between blue sheets of dishonesty and despair. It was gone, your face was blank as you watched me leave you like you once did your soul. You left it in some far away lock box in some other woman's closet for safe keeping because she told you it would be safe there in the dark. I left, I promise I did not take anything with me, as you did not give me a special thing to take except empty canisters of  future wishes and tear drops filled with your sorrow. I screamed out at night for the longing of your soul, for a peak of what could have draped its arms around me and drenched me in sunlight. When in reality I was drenched in the arms of your shadow, of the darkness you carried around in your pocket and handed me on one sunny day along with the air tight canisters of your future wishes that I wish I never accepted. Wishes were all that they were, wishes that you did not give your soul away so easily to a woman who did not know what to do with it. She locked it in that lock box and shoved it in her closet behind her cobwebs while handing you a golden key to give to your next hopeful lover. Sadly, that next hopeful lover was me. All I wanted was to set your damn soul free, but the only wishful thinking soul in this story was me.

-M.D.L

The sheep and the wolf.

Sometimes

I feel like a wolf and sometimes I feel like a sheep. There are days when there are heavy mixtures of both running through my veins. I am bold, and howl at the moon in the middle of the night stalking prey. However, I am also weak and fleeting, ready to run at the first sound that radiates within my eardrums. Its hard being both a sheep and a wolf. I often wonder if sometimes the two take on opposite roles within me, if sometimes the wolf is weak and vulnerable and the sheep is the one who stands its ground. I dont have many predators, just admires. Its hard to hate a wolf for hunting or sheep for being helpless, they both do what they can to keep me thriving, surviving. I battle the wolf and the sheep within my soul daily. There is this urge to run free, to growl at those wanting to caress my fur and tame my heart. Then there is an urge to stay still, cower down and convert to having an owner who can shave my fur and sell it for the highest penny. Do you have a sheep and wolf within your soul? Who takes over your mind when you have to make a heavy decision? Mine is both. Damn it is it both. Both the wolf and the sheep within me go to battle and there is bloodshed every. single. time. When a wolf hunts a sheep, often times the sheep will be so terrified that it will lead itself to its own death by accidentally running of a cliff or right into the teeth of the wolf. The wolf in me will camouflage itself behind a bush waiting for the sheep to come out. However, often if in a group, a sheep may be capable of stampeding a wolf and stomping it to death. I am often a sheep who stands alone and my strategy is to run from the wolf, pleading surrender.  They both have their strategies and I weigh them both heavily. "In this situation do I deserve to be a wolf or to be a sheep?" This is the question I ask myself often and hardly ever have an answer. To be sensitive or not sensitive. I think we all have versions of animals within our souls who battle. Its funny though, because often I find that the wolf and the sheep are both battling over the same cause, to survive, thrive and be happy the best they know how. Do not kill the sheep or the wolf that is inside your soul, because often you may need to be both and that is ultimately okay. Be the sheep and be the wolf.

Do you know where love comes from?

For the longest

time I thought love was something to be received.

Something that you scavengly look for in dark corners, bright book stores, and coffee shops. I thought you would happen upon love if you properly looked in the correct places where it hid.

You would find it grab it by the neck and stuff it in your pocket to carry home. I was wrong. Damn, was I wrong.

Love is something you radiate out of your pours, your smile, your very fucking being.

If they would have told me growing up that love was free, I would have spent a lot more time being me.

You dont have to capture something that you already carry within.

-M.D.L

You will be OKAY.

And he told me

I would be okay. The truth was that I knew I would be. I had experienced gut wrenching, heart aching pain before. I knew I would end up okay eventually but right then; right in that moment I was utterly not okay. Its the little moments that murder you, that leave you heaving, bleeding out at someones feet while they whisper fortunes about your future in your ear. Its the small little stabs with sharp words that make you question your ability to be that four letter word. Okay. He stabbed me over and over with spews of words that formed sentences and still had the assiduity to tell me that okay was something I would be. I didn't know that attempted murder made anyone feel okay, even if you made it out alive.

Forgive Yourself

He

never told her sorry.
There was no apology, no remorse for the gut wrenching pain he caused.
She didn't need there to be.
Her strength to walk away was her own apology to herself.
Her apology for allowing herself to settle for anything less than she deserved.
Sometimes the only apology you need is the one you forgot to give.
The one to you.
Forgive yourself often.
Forgive the scenarios you put yourself through, for you are only human.

-M.D.L