Elspeth Penn

We are never punished for our own wrongdoing by anyone but ourselves.

[wonderworldmotion]

[elspethpenn]

the past lives in my sobriety

I look around the room restless. There’s no wine left. My latest lover and I drank it last night, the flat mates wine or whoever s’ it was anyway. She touched me and it takes a lifetime to relax. I close my eyes and try any way. We get there on the 2nd attempt. Im damaged goods. Damaged goods buried in memories of rejection. I look up my ex on Facebook as soon as she leaves. Theres’ no weed left. I feel uncomfortable at the thought of myself without any of these distractions. I sit leg tapping with my ex's ghost. There doing well, flying in fact. And I daren't get in touch to rub sand into open wounds. So I sit restless with those memories, that only lovers, and weed and wine can hold me safe from. I want to be sober, and free of you.  I am sober and miles away in your successful new life you dominate me. Like you always did. All the reasons I had to run, and still I pine gently and consistently for your love. Sitting in the past. Because I know that’s where you and I live.

[elspethpenn]

Dear Louise 

I am writing this to you. Freely and honestly, because I know I can. I need t express it. Let it all out. The whole of the last few years. I still haven't got to grip with it where I can look back and smile. Its all choking up in my throat and behind my eyes. I just fucking cry all the time. The worst thing is.. the numbness has gone, and instead is a restless energy. One that squits around looking for weed or beer, or wine or company or coffee.. anything that stops me quieting. Resting. Feeling. Because if I feel.. I feel my body is filled with fear, pain, upset and despair. So I spent the year desperately trying not to feel it. It still bursts up often enough, I try to push it down with the same culprits. Sometimes I cry out desperately and needily to friends or on facebook. They respond. But none of this shit makes it go away. Makes it stop coming up. Makes it stop being there. I try to feel it. Use the healing tools I've learned over the years.. but it doesn't do much on yourself. And today I headed into town to start a new job, manically drank coffee to make the feeling shift, dropped my phone and smashed the screen and came home again with tears in my eyes.

There are things I can do to improve my life. There is work to be done on my life. And all I can manage is scraping out the grinder to grab the THC and bringing some beers to bed in the afternoon. God this heartbreak bullshit hurts.

I traveled this year. Numb and privileged. Facebook demonstrated manipulatively by my own hands the beautiful sites that were seen. Obvious needy desperate tings were disguised under poetry and music and cryptic statuses. To my friends that think Facebook is my real life. Get in touch more often. Its not. I’m breaking over here starting a herbal business and thinking if anti depressants are going to save me. My shadows has never been darker.

I'm not sure who my friends are. I felt this really strongly earlier in the year and am feeling it again. Though I know my privilege and class guilt are permeating through it as those at the squat judge me. Not working class enough.. not middle class enough.. some fucked up place born in thatchers era when people bought houses and began to value sending their kids to uni. I’m one of those in between educated ones whose mum slogged her guts out for a house we could inherit which makes me belong apparently above and below people. I feel both middle class guilt and working class pride. I’m a privileged wreck. I thought the fetish scene would help. A middle class chap from Ramsbottom turned up at my house with a riding crop. At first I loved every minute of it as I breathed out in pain years of sexual tension. The second time round I couldn't even look at him and released my sexual being over the years had slowly turned into a small shy basket of both desperation and shame. My eyes diverted quickly inside to averting my soul as I saw in a screwed up craving for intimacy I had invited someone round to hit me until hurt in order to feel touched and wanted. I quickly uninvited him and went back to my usual diversions of wine, coffee and weed, tears and bed.

I am hurting.

I feel better now. I am one beer down and a small joint over.

I can not feel my insides as much.

I feel self obsessed. Like I need help. Real help not that that the doctors can give you. Or a rifle. Either will do.

[elspethpenn]

[elspethpenn]

[elspethpenn]

[elspethpenn]

If everything is bound by an opposite then I will find;

If I am capable of great hate I am capable of great love.

If I am capable of great betrayal then I am capable of great trust.

If I am capable of bad illness then I am capable of good health.

If I am capable of great poverty then I am...

[zoeandhermagicboots]

When they say strengthen your will, they don’t mean will how you see it. Something you can pick up and put down like your vitamins. Its your inner core, your inner truth, your gut, your base. Its returning to your divine blueprint.

Zoe and her magic boots (via zoeandhermagicboots)

[anothernuday]

[liberatingreality]

Your ignorance is their power.

[scalpelink]

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself.

D.H Lawrence (via publius-assholeius)

[fucktherulesofsociety-deactivat]

[the-daily-dose-community]

➳ Brought to you by The Daily Dose One Love, One Life. Click to be inspired! ♡

[tickle-brain]

We blame society, but we are society.

(via girlofherdreams)

[iannakhan]

Yup!

[fuckyeahfeminist]

Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.

Sara Ahmed (via fuck-yeah-feminist)

[thepeoplesrecord]

“Remember that consciousness is power. Consciousness is education and knowledge. Consciousness is becoming aware. It is the perfect vehicle for students. Consciousness-raising is pertinent for power, and be sure that power will not be abusively used, but used for building trust and goodwill domestically and internationally. Tomorrow’s world is yours to build.” - Yuri Kochiyama, Japanese-American activist (May 19, 1921 - June 1, 2014)