Confession 4/12/19: DOA

I knew we were over
the day we started

Because

Sweetheart,
you couldn't adapt to the reality
that there are definitely degrees of trauma
and you are standing in a puddle.

You think your pain is the same as mine?
That's cute.

You think you're ready for the deep end
because you got teased a little
and you kink a little
fine--that may be the deep end for some

but, sweetheart, I'm the mother fucking rocky coast of Maine
with waves that'll tear you under and beat you against cliffs
and cut you with barnacles
and sting you with jellyfish
bash your brains out and drag you under
your body will never be found and if
somehow you manage to survive the initial undercurrent
if you don't drown in the first few minutes
the hypothermia will get you
and I'm just the coast.

The girl behind me?  My sister--
thrown down the stairs by her father
by the neck
raped by her brother
she stretched her body out as a sacrifice
a diversion to shield
her mother and sister and brother
take me instead
beat me instead
rape me instead
she's the fucking Atlantic,
deep, astounding, unknowable, full of
organisms we have never ever laid eyes upon
and spirits
and ghosts that reach up from the dark to claim your soul

another one dreams of her uncle's body
forcing into hers every night of her childhood
and her mother slapping her
and calling her a liar
and forcing her to go back
so she ran away and lived out of her car
she still wakes up screaming
every night,
her lover
tells her she's safe, it's over, she's alright--

sweet lies we choose to believe
to keep ourselves calm
to mitigate the paralyzing sensation of powerlessness
(how can you know you're safe in the
sulfur saturated dark
under metric tons of Pacific
when you can't breathe)
as our nightmares rip us under
wave after wave
you can't negotiate with the ocean
can't fight it
don't know if the air is up
or down or back or front or right or left
and it never changes--
it's always just the same water
the same ocean
thrashing you around, cycle after cycle
sometimes it lets you take a breath
and you think maybe you've escaped
maybe you've gotten better
or mastered your demons
but the triggers and the trauma are always there
the next battery of assault crests over you
because the waves never stop coming

and our trauma is a different level
than...

the woman behind her? skin spotted
and loose like leather chicken skin
is the Mariana Trench
her story stretches to Auschwitz
another's took root in Manzanar
a third from the Agent Orange fields of Vietnam
and their offspring from the rooftops of Iraq
Rawanda, Syria, Boca Raton
Afghanistan
Sudan

I cannot presume to understand
the horror of those survivors
(I do not have the audacity
to tell them what they need to do
they can do whatever the fuck they want
or need to make it
I am wise enough, self-aware enough
to know I have no authority there)
I have no point of reference
but you?

You think you can fix me, love me, match me
get to know me
support me?

Girl, you are out of your depth
with your
take a minute to enjoy yourself
recharge
relax
love yourself platitudes
there are different levels of trauma

You got cocky, with all the Fb likes
thinking you knew anything
when you don't.

Your therapy is child's play.
Your level of introspection
and self-awareness is basic
demonstrated by the fact that
you think the fact that our trauma
is worse than yours somehow disenfranchises you
We're not saying your pain doesn't exist (it does)
or that it wasn't life altering (it is) or
that you weren't victimized (you were)
or that your 10/10 isn't a 10/10 for you (it is)
we're just saying there are definitely
different levels of pain
and that the scale is scalable and--

     bitter laugh

--sweetheart, what would make you think
anyone competes
for the gold medal in trauma
This is not a humble brag
this is hot tears
steeping the truth--
there is real evil out there
that cannot be defeated,
there are wounds that no medicine can heal

I wish there was therapy for people like me.
But people like me, we're too fucking smart
to waste our time with people who can't understand
We've therapized ourselves--
and we know, there are some cases that you just--
you have to be realistic with your treatment plan,
and that means facing reality

and you're not being realistic.
Because for some there is only a dream of rest,
reprieve--
which is not the same as homeostasis
or health or peace--
and our hope of rest does not rest in the vain hope
that somehow, we'll unearth something
talking to someone with an MD or PsychD
that we haven't already unearthed a million times over
working the flint of our past,
the glass of our trauma into our fingertips
cutting ourselves
on our own damage
poring over the serrated edges
trying to heal, trying to understand--
trying to help you understand--
trying to beat the acceptance into ourselves--
cognitive behavioral therapy is a recipe for disaster.
Therapy teaches you how to think

we don't need to think
we need to stop thinking
we crave
blissful blank silence
so our hearts can stop feeling like exploding
and our hands can stop shaking

You think therapy is a panacea
because you are in the little leagues
playing with a whiffle ball
we are veterans--
we already know how to examine,
differential diagnosis in a state of shock
our training ground was war
we know how to self assess while twisting
the windlass,
pushing past the pain
to find the source of the bleed
slicing into ourselves, high enough to find
the pulsing artery and pinch it off
knowing that the search might cause more trauma
than it solves
we've sacrificed limbs to save the core
we do not need reopening
Retraumatizing ourselves is counterproductive--
we don't need to discover our hidden monsters
they aren't hidden for us
their makeshift cages are splattered with
brown, oxidized fingerprints
we tore off our own fingerpads
quarter size chunks from our palms from
hauling raw timber
ripped off our nails
scavenging for nails from the wreckage
that we could hammer with rubble
of the dreams of what our lives could have been
instead of this
crushing bottles
to mix with cement slathered
along the walled perimeter--a poor man's defense
bracing the hinges
desperately shoving the chair under the doorknob
barricading the thing we can never kill
the thing that paces on the other side
we watch the shadows in the slit
underneath the door
growling, scratching, making the door shudder
with the force of its body
we slide to the floor with our knuckles wrapped
in crusted cloth scraps
not sleeping
(we never sleep)
just to rest our throbbing bodies
existing in this perpetual state of exhaustion
we just learned to live with
until we're so fucking tired we don't
even know we've closed our eyes
we don't even care
the monster can eat us
it is what it is

We are a different breed
Therapy doesn't help people like us--
examining our damage doesn't improve us
It just makes living more painful

You're cute thinking that there's therapy
for people like me
people like my sister
and the girl behind her
with broken hearts
and broken souls
spines knit together with scar tissue
woven from desperation
that all humans who have been to the brink
recognize--it's the fabric made from people
who can barely be called people
and I am the least damaged of them--
It's why I keep going back
again and again and again
because I still have legs to walk
and a back to carry
and arms to thread under theirs
my shoulders can still support
I am coming back for you, I say to those
I leave behind
Hold on.
I know the way
I've been here before
because you can't search and rescue
if you've never clawed your way up the sheer face,
never swam into the silt obscured maze
I am coming back for you
Just stay alive

I will always go back
Those are my people
You do not understand us
(and I hope you never
have the privilege of understanding us)
so let me explain this to you one more time:

There is no therapy for us
There is no peace for us
There is no fixing it for us
There is just
treading endlessly
in an ocean with no horizon.

Confession 5/10/19: Laura Matheson

She said to me
He loved you so much

I cried into her hair
I honestly don't know why

And I don't know why
I need a why

and why I still
think perhaps she gave me a lie
as a mercy

(I wish I could trust
her truth)

because

I don't know
who convinced me
that I was undeserving

but I will miss
the man who
loved me simply
for existing

Confession 4/16/19

Lie down, sweetheart,
he says to me
Sleep, my darling,
you need to rest

But the world is burning--
I hear the broken
sooty voices keening

the once perfectly delicate
naively beautiful things
now melted and shattered

I can smell the memory
of my own hair singeing
my fingers grasping
if someone would have just reach
through the flames
and pulled me through

I never questioned
the weight
I just saw the Nomex
in a pile on the ground
the shape of a tired man
sprawled
so I wriggled into it
and filled its empty sleeves
with body
clomped around in the boots
tilted my head back to
see my reflection from
under the rim of the helmet

and before I knew it
the wildfire
consume everything around me
it had stopped being make believe
and the brief moments of child's play time
with Fischer price walkies
had melted into
armor, molded to my flesh

I can't peel it off
even if I could
how could I?

In those suffering I see
my familiar agony
when no one came for me

My conscience tells me I must keep going
further back in time
to the beginning

reach back and stop
the insult
to keep that hollow look
in my eyes
from ever seeping
into theirs

Confession 3.26.19: Make Love to Me (Make Me Love Myself)

When you make love to me--
--even when it isn't making love to you--
unawares
you have brought me
closest to acceptance
and love
of myself

because saying I am beautiful
is different
than tangling your fingers in my hair

is different

than when you kiss me
and kiss me
and
taste me
and cradle my thighs against your cheeks

so when I grasp your fingers
it's because I'm scared

and sometimes when
I breathe fast it's from excitement
and sometimes it's from fear
that this is a lie
it's all a lie
and you're the greatest con man to have walked the earth

when I let go
of you
and have lost myself inside the sheets
because you have taken my fears
into your mouth
and refused to let me squirm away
from the agony and terror until
they give way in a
leg shaking, core aching baptism--

I am briefly born anew
without fears and flaws and preconceptions--

I am, for a few moments
able to believe that this body is desirable
and worthy of being loved
--that I am worthy of my love

When you make love to me
--even when it isn't making love to you--
it is the closest I will ever be
to loving myself.

Gibson (Confession 3.9.19)

It was a building I lived my best years in
playing the piano and singing
and learning the melodies and harmonies
and dissonances so achingly sweet
my memories should be of enjoyment
and bliss, of fervor and passion
so thick I could taste it
with every breath between Nina
and Ella and Billie
and Brahms and Schumann
and Mozart

but all I remember is that one night
under the fluorescent buzzing lights
the pitch dark in the arched windows
the smell of scores on weathered paper
I remember how I suddenly felt it coming
like peristalsis of the soul
braced myself
in the corner of the librarian's desk I was manning
in the wee hours of the morning
my legs spread in a squat
I exhaled and then
nothing

everything clenched
mouth open, eyes wide in shock
every muscle tensed
like an invisible bat had knocked me in the chest
every nerve ending on fire
from the adrenaline

and then the sound from my mouth
like that of a woman in labor
or a person released from a chokehold
I pulled air into myself with a
deep, primitive
grating,
keening
as I pushed the pain out from deep inside my core
and I remember my thoughts spinning
I could not understand
why this was happening
--I was mourning
for a man
whose death was far too long in coming
and a sweet release from daily terror
disgust and disdain--
he was finally a burden I could let down from my shoulders--
why, in the world
how could I be feeling this way

I did not understand then
what I understood now
that my subconsciousness had finally
caught up to my heart
had finally caught up to the reality
that there was no redemption.
There was no hope of winding back that clock
there was no prospect of ever
reconciling--
his eyes would never dawn in understanding,
there would never be expiation--
he would never think or attemp or realize
his responsibility to redress
the injury he forced upon me--
there would never be atonement.

As long as he was alive there was a chance
that one day he would wake up--
he would see me
really see me
and I would get the father who
perhaps maybe confused
or lost or baffled or uncertain
but would still strive to understand
to listen and be present
and bumble through trying to comfort me
or support me
and even embarrass me
but want, desperately to be involved with me
and to make me smile
to pick me up when I fell and fight for me
and love me
more than he loved himself

any chance I had to feel that love
that should be given--that should
have been as natural to him
as his own heart beating--
was dead, in the grave without ever living at all

There will always be
a part of me empty and unfulfilled
because of him.

I would give anything
for a taste of that.

Confession 2.24.19

I don’t know how to tell you
that I’ve bolted a hundred times in my mind today
;
my sisters have had to talk me into stillness
and remind me
of the years of compacted intimacy
and vulnerability
before I learned to trust them

"it is easier to reject someone
before they reject you
try to be braver than that"

I weave her wisdom into ropes
to tether myself
but I never learned how to tie knots

and I don’t think you understand
I am waging a battle
against myself—
against the instinct of a millions cells
in my body telling me to run from you—
from the end of this high

and I don’t know
how to tell you
that I know all of this
is external of who you actually are,
but I am struggling to maintain
the distinction

and I am losing against myself
(I don’t know how much longer I can sustain
this state of vulnerability)
and slipping away

because as heady as this is
as alive as you make me feel
the numbness and disconnect
the comfort of space on my
raw soul’s flesh
feel safer

part of me wants you to give up on me
because I know how to process that—
the resolution of abandonment
is familiar
and easier
and solitude is comforting--

and I am terrified that telling you all of this
that speaking it
even just writing it here
will breathe it into reality

and that pain
I cannot bear

Confession 2.22.19

These are my confessions
on my first yoga session
shirtless:

Even in the dark
your hand cupping my fingers
your palm cradling my ribs

the voice in my head
whispering I'm repulsive
is stronger than your voice
telling me I'm beautiful
and perfect

I know you're not lying--
I can hear it in your voice--
be patient
I'm trying to believe you