The week passes by with my running thought on how I'm not enough.

Being behind on things I didn't even know I was behind on. Trying to stay ahead of the current, before the hurricane strikes. I pack my supplies and save them under the floorboards, knowing damn well that not only the hurricane is here, but I'm being carried away by the winds.

I'm filling up the hole in my chest that conversations with my mother has left me.
I want to fill it with booze, with sex, with laughter with my friends, running, crying.
I feel the hollowness and try to suck away the venom. Spit it into my coffee thermos and leave it for three days, unwashed inside of my school backpack.

I want to get drunk and rowdy, I want to bite and scream, I want to fuck a man's brains out and have him beg me for more.

I want the naughty, the rough, I want my hair pulled and my body kissed. I'm angry and sad and anxious, I want the distraction. I want to run for 10 miles and cry halfway. 

I am sick. Sick of the fucking same cycle that brings me down everytime.

My therapist wants to send me to the psychiatrist, she wants me to get medicated and I'm terrified of losing myself, the only fucking thing that stays the same is my talking to myself like this.

Getting lost

under the weight of your body
the salt of your sweat
and the taste of your loving
heals me of more than one ache
of those I carry around
in the little pocket of my mind.

Tell me, lover,
do you heal your heart
of doubts and worries
when I hold you close
and whisper that I'm yours?

Do you see us belonging
only to each other
because and despite
our little games of fire?

Home is where the heart is
and the only place I couldn't stand
to ever be without you.

 

I am almighty.
Powerful.
Independent.
I don't need help.
I don't ask for it.

I can do it. Let me do it.
I can reach the highest shelves.
I can run marathons.
I can make, work, be, change,
reinvent, write,
take care, raise, plant,
flourish, water, walk,
cook, create, design,
repurpose, plan, achieve.

I can crash down.
I can see myself collapsing.
Like a house of cards, like a line of dominoes.
I can do it.
I don't need help.
I don't ask for it.

I can cry and shake and shiver.
I can stop my breath and not control it.
I can lose my bearings and my state of mind.
For some seconds... maybe minutes 
that feel like hours. 

I can shut my eyes so hard that
little blood vessels burst
and I look like Eren Jaeger after leaving
his titan body.

My anxiety can kind of feel like living inside a titan body
If I think about it enough.

I can do it.
I don't need help.
I don't ask for it.

I don't ask to be held.
To be reasured.
To be taken out of the circumstance.
I don't ask for anyone
to come and save me from 
this hell of a mind I inhabit.

I can do it.
I don't need help.
I don't ask for it.

I can do it, I swear.
I just need some room to breathe.
To hold myself.
To reasure myself.
Take myself out of the circumstance.

I need to be able.
I need to not ask for help.
I won't ask for it.

What if I really need it,
and they let me down.

If you're waiting for me to chase after your shadow
I'm too stuck in my own little world,
inside my perfectly arranged home
my bed, made of sighs and warm embraces,
but you go on, become the stranger at the door
once more, as you should.
Stay outside, you broken soul.
I'm not a collector's item 
for your contemplation.
Go away, with your cigarette-burnt smiles
your lips that dance around my neck
and your soft caress across my legs,
come back only if you must.
Your tongue likes the taste of my name
only when used to beg for your pleasure.
Baby, savor it carefully
like a quick burning candle,
because it's not lit to wait for your arrival.
Show your ever-longing eyes another horizon.
My goals are not yours to reach
and your arms are not my destiny.

 

When I break I cause havoc.

I don't mean to, 

I mean to crumble 

like a cookie soaked into a cup of coffee

i mean to melt away, quietly, undisturbing,

but when I come down, I crash like an 

ancient vase left on the edge of a pedestal

I make a smashing noise and leave my pieces

scattered all over the floor.

I cut your feet if you're barefoot

I ring in your ears long after I'm finished

I squeeze myself so tight I carry the burden for days.

I hate collapsing

and breaking apart.

I hate putting myself in this situations.

 

I like children. The idea of childhood. Of a good one.

I like spending time with them, being a teacher, hearing their stories, making spaces fun and comfy enough for them to actually want to tell me stories. I do enjoy my job, exhausting as it gets sometimes. I do it and I feel satisfied, I see my kids using the resources I give them and I feel proud and accomplished. I think I'm good at it. 

I enjoy spending time with kids, even the ones that aren't my students. I see them playing and join them. I like toys and children's books and TV shows. I like hearing kids make up worlds and invest themselves in their silly little things because I do so too. I like to see them discover cool stuff. I like it when they get into things I got into when I 

I wasn't a very happy kid. I went through shit that I wouldn't want other kids to go through.

I saw way too much, way to fast, at way too young an age. It breaks my heart when I relate to my kids. When I see that they too, have been exposed to way too much, way too fast, at way too young an age.

I want to have kids of my own someday. I've been thinking about it for many years now. I know it's selfish. But I think I'd be good at it. I think I'd enjoy raising human beings in a happy home. Maybe I won't make them myself, but I would like to be a parent. Someday at least. It may be one of those psychological things, I want to bring the safety to a child that I didn't have. I want to be the parent I never got. It would make sense if it were that way, but... is it so bad? 

I don't know. I guess I won't until I get to it. But I expect it to be quite a while still.

I fell asleep after lunch, when I came home from work, in the living room sofa, next to my cat and covered up to the head with the very fuzzy gray throw blanket.

I rested.

I took long deep breaths and I could feel the tiredness leaving my body, shedding away the morning, taking my worries away and leaving me, just me, in my most Loretta self, laying down with my cat on my belly and my head in the flowery cushions.

I've always had trouble with my sleep.

I sleep too much or I sleep too little.

I sleep too late or I pass out during the day.

I think I fucked it over when I started dating a boy from another town and we would talk on the phone for hours until our parents caught us when I was 15.

Maybe it was before and that's the story I keep telling myself.

Maybe it got bad when my mom relapsed and began smoking crystal meth again, 6 years after her last rehab when my father died. Or when her abusive boyfriend stayed over and I would lock my room up and jam the door with a chair from the inside, because I may have been choked and traumatized, but I was sure as hell not letting that man touch me.

Actually my sleep started being fucked up when my dad was sick, and he had to take 10 different pills during the night and it was just the two of us and I made sure he took them all. I made tiny charts with all my colored markers and pasted the timetables with the right medicines at the right times by his nightstand and made sure he took them all, 2:30 am, 4:15, 5:20, I was up and around and fixing everything for the man who couldn't stand, whose skin had swelled up to the point of tearing, the tiny man who on his last day on earth took my hands and asked me to pray with him, for the first time in my life, my father prayed. 

I've had a weird sleeping cycle for about 17 years now. And it takes a while for me to feel rested. I struggle. I read at night, when I can't sleep. I have sex, I write, I paint, I clean.

I lay down and I look at the ceiling and I cry.

Sometimes, I'm about to sleep, to finally fall, and I remember. I remember some fucked up shit my mind had been repressing for good fucking reason and it just comes back and breaks me. It just messes me up again. 

Then sometimes, when I'm able to sleep, I have nightmares, night frights and shakes. So that's another part that I don't like and that has also helped continue the fucking up of the sleep cycle.

But sometimes, like today, I take a nap. And it's cold weather brushing against my skin, my cat purring in my lap, the fuzziest of blankets and the peace of knowing I'm safe here, in my home that I've made for myself, with my partner, in this city on the brink of collapse that just sets my mind in the idea that nothing is forever, that I have a nice sleep, and I rest and I become truly myself. Shed away from everything that holds me back. 

I like those naps.