If I could sleep forever

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2.

The voice hates me still.

I take pills for it, but still

I hallucinate.

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I am not confident in my poetry whatsoever but I'm giving it a shot for kicks.

1.

Sometimes it rains hard.

The light comes from you sometimes,

When you stop raining.

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Doris Lessing:

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about “petty personal problems” was to recognise that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one’s own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can’t be yours alone. The way to deal with the problem of “subjectivity,” that shocking business of being preoccupied with the tiny individual who is at the same time caught up in such an explosion of terrible and marvellous possibilities, is to see him as a microcosm and in this way to break through the personal, the subjective, making the personal general, as indeed life always does, transforming a private experience—or so you think of it when still a child, “I am falling in love,” “I am feeling this or that emotion, or thinking that or the other thought”—into something much larger: growing up is after all only the understanding that one’s unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

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1) I have a deep interest in interpersonal relations, life stories, and psychology. My favorite movies are people talking about their feelings and my favorite books are memoirs, biographies, and personal essays.

2) I like to think I have good if not just eclectic taste (music, video, books), but that's subjective.

3) My spiritual path is important to me but I don't shove it down people's throats. (Is that in service of others? Nah.)

#3goodqualities

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I also feel like reading and writing, work, and self care, through therapy and green, are the keys for me getting better. Wellbutrin also helps!

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An infusion of actual optimism

It's hard to sum up 6 years worth of trauma. I haven't been writing for a long time. I struggle with whether it's better to focus on getting better and shouting platitudes or chronicle the living nightmare I've been a part of for so long. I don't want to bum everyone out. Or myself.

Shout out to [diagnosed] crippling depression, anxiety, phobia, and the cherry on top--psychosis.

I recently binge-watched this UK drama called Flowers (on Netflix rn) about an eccentric, dysfunctional family. One of the characters is this young Japanese illustrator who loses his whole family to an earthquake. Eventually, he gets to illustrate for this writer (the father of this kooky family) and they form a close bond. One day, the illustrator breaks down. He talks about losing his family. He found his little sister under the rubble. He was inconsolable. Then one day, he picked up these dark children's books written by this author and starts feeling better. He tells the him how, through his books, he was able to see that horrible things happen in the world and you could talk about them and that it's okay.

This made me start bawling for some reason. I felt myself in that moment, that I was being seen. It was the first time I cried like that since I was put on medication that has the side effect of making it impossible for a moment to build to tears. Try to deal with all that unreleased tension and then write a love song.

That scene motivated me to believe maybe if I write about the macabre workings of my mental illness, how I've learned to snap back, someone else will see that horrible things happen in the world and you could talk about them and that it's okay.

Shout out to 1:1 CBD for making this soul-baring possible.