The Beginners Circle

The chaos is in the silence, and the silence is deafening.

[thebeginnerscircle]

I’m not ok.

Honestly, I haven’t been ok for years. It’s the kind of not ok that slowly seeps into your bones and just becomes a part of every day normal life. It’s taken up residence and lives quietly in the corners of my mind. I don’t know when I started lying about it. And I also don’t know when I started telling the truth again.

When Austin died and people asked me how I was, I’d always say “just making it.” Eventually that turned in to “I’m ok.” And then turned to “I’m good!” But the good was surface deep and even though there has been profound joy in the last six years of my life, the not ok has sunken in and now I don’t know how to get rid of it. I’ve ignored it for awhile now. But when Liam almost died, it stirred up all the loss that has sat dormant and now I’m shaken and it won’t leave me alone. I’ve noticed the gaps in my memories, the places where grief or joy should sit, and instead there is only emptiness. My subconscious is trying to save me from something but I know I can’t get past it if I can’t face it. But can I face it? Can I look at the girl I was and forgive her? Can I remember the memories of holding my dead baby, and not die?

Can I accept that Liam is here and healthy and beautiful and I’m still allowed to be completely and absolutely traumatized by what we went through? Can I live with this deep survivors guilt, and accept that just because he is alive doesn’t mean I have to be ok?

I don’t have these answers. I’ll probably be in therapy for years trying to fill in these gaps and accept everything that’s happened.

But today I just wanted to get the truth out, that I’m not ok. And if I try to brush it off whenever you ask, it’s because I simply don’t know how to put words to the emptiness that comes into play when asked.

[thebeginnerscircle]

Her heart was golden through and through. Even in pieces it shone like the sun.

[thebeginnerscircle]

She could stand here forever

This little girl on this cooler, watching the world. I wonder what she’s thinking of. If her mind can comprehend the vastness of this world, or if this little apartment with the store just a short walk away is all she really can know. She’s the happiest being I’ve ever met. She waves at every person who passes by, along with every bird, dog, or chipmunk. When we left the ocean for the first time, she blew a kiss and said “bye bye” like maybe she knew it was in her soul, just like me. She knew it was her friend. When she knows I’m frustrated, she comes to sit on my lap and quietly stroke my face while whispering “hi hi hi” as soothingly as she can. It’s most likely the sweetest thing I can imagine. I can’t imagine life without this curly haired beauty in my life. She’s the magic I was always looking for. ✨

[misswallflower]

“You can decorate absence however you want- but your still gonna feel what’s missing.”

— Siobhan Vivian, “Same Difference”

[thebeginnerscircle]

So I’ve started putting my writing to actual art and I have an art show coming up so I’d thought I’d share some of the pieces that will be a part of it ❤️

[thebeginnerscircle]

But I miss him the way I miss the ocean. It's a deep ache that starts in my neck and travels down my spine. It's a silence that was once a crashing roar; sea against rock and feet against ribs. I painted him into every California sunset; I wrote his name on Victoria, Laguna, and San Onofre. He reshaped me the same way I watched the waves reshape the coastline, and I can still feel the pieces of him pulling me back to those beaches, back to the place I always knew he'd be. Someone take me back to California before I lose us both.

[thebeginnerscircle]

Depression while parenting is weird because it sneaks up out of nowhere, and sometimes I have a really hard time recognizing it. Especially since I’m pregnant again. My life is a lot of “am I depressed or am I just more tired because I’m currently growing a baby while also running after a toddler?” Or, “is this random feeling of nothingness when I would normally feel a burst of love me just being in a mood because C has been teething and hardly sleeping this week, or do I need to see a doctor?” And, “am I actually really stressed out, or am I constantly at the end of my rope because I can’t settle into any sort of happiness?” As the nothingness grows I know I need to tell someone. Mainly because it used to just be about me, fighting an illness step by step because I always knew I could handle it. But now it’s about C and the tiny baby growing inside of me. It’s about being the best mom I can be and that might mean more pills or a counselor and this time, I can’t wait two years. C will be three by then and I can’t do that to her, make her think some part of me doesn’t love her enough. Because the love is overwhelming. I just can’t feel it when the fog sets in. So this time, I can’t let the fog set in. This time, it has to be about them. And I need to fear hurting them more than I fear telling someone I’m not ok.

[catfromjapan]

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief” - taken from Anne Carson’s “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form”

[thebeginnerscircle]

21 with a child growing beneath my heart. Excited and terrified of not being good enough. 21 sitting on a table as the doctor explained my child was dying. 21 choking on air as I felt the world shift. 21 losing any innocence left. 22 as I watch my son choke on the same air I had. 22 and telling him that it will be over soon. The pain won’t last. 22 and knowing no doctor would help us. No doctor could give him lungs. 22 in a post partum ward with no child to cling to. 22 wishing the world would stop turning. 23 facing May 31st with dread. 23 not knowing how to honor a son that should be a year old. 23 and wishing my lungs had collapsed with his. 23 with a lifetime left to live.

[thebeginnerscircle]

I dated a boy I’ll call fate. He snapped me up at my weakest and called me beautiful when I didn’t feel it. I was young and madly in love with an idea that love could conquer the differences in us. He told me no one could love me like he did and I believed him for one summer too long.

I fell for a boy I’ll call anger. He raged and raged at the world and it’s unfairness. He showed me how to hurt myself without leaving any scars and promised me the pieces of him that didn’t show on his surface. His fire was all consuming and his laughter always bit harder than I expected. He taught me the art of twisting words and never speaking my mind. I dreamed of him as he broke apart my smile.

I loved a boy I’ll call air. He breathed a life back in to me I thought wasn’t worth saving. He shattered the walls I had built inside of myself and showed me the warmth of a sun I had all but forgotten. He showed me new worlds and pretended to never notice the cracks in me. His joy was so infectious, and his smile so consuming, I promised to follow him to the ends of the earth.

Now we sit here on the tops of the mountains and watch as our children grow older. We’ve suffered together but never because of each other and I have decided that has made all of the difference.

[untamedunwanted]

[thebeginnerscircle]

This is love in its purest form. Holding this child as she sleeps.

I want her to grow up with happiness leading her life. I want her to laugh every day for the next 100 years, and maybe even after that. I wish her years of simple joy and when everything gets tough, I wish her peace in knowing she’s going to make it through. I wish for her a childhood looking up to me and her dad, that we’ll show her what real love looks like, so she won’t have to wonder if that boy who wants to kiss her only wants it for himself. I wish her to know from our lives that love is choice. And it’s a choice she will make over and over again, with the same people, or new ones. I wish her faith, that she won’t question the God that made her into the person we don’t even know yet. I hope he makes himself known to her as often as he has to me.

Overall, I wish her a life. One that when she looks back over it in 100 years or more, she’ll laugh again, and say it was a joy to live. A joy to love.

[perrfectly]

“Hell is other people.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre (via neckkiss)

[thebeginnerscircle]

Can I love myself? Or am I too lost in this body that can’t do what I love or look the way I love or shine the way I love. Can I love my soul and hate my body? Can I show this little girl how to love herself if I can’t even find it in me to love me. Can I ask someone to love me when I’ve changed and I’m not the body or the soul they said they loved ages ago. Can I hold on to these hateful thoughts toward myself and let them fuel the change I want to see, and still love me?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

[conifae]

[ashleymacleanblog]

what hurt the most was having to pretend that i had stopped hurting long before i was ever healed.

the beginning of recovery - a.l.m (via ashleymacleanblog)

[theadventurouslife4us]