wine dark

[thevernalsea]

 “Words are important.  If you want to care for something, you call it a ‘flower’; if you want to kill something, you call it a ‘weed’.”    - Don Coyhis

[thevernalsea]

no greater deeper fear than that of now sitting in the sun suddenly the worries start to fade away but the ache in my head and the ache in chest burn I don’t have anything more to give than what I have given already the question I have that burns in my chest of why did I choose this did I make enough space did I take too much space how I want to be seen and who I am continue to be at odds but what is it that I want why I am doing this it reeks of pain of suffering it seems like we’re all saying; if we had known better we would have chosen somewhere else they call it burnout but it’s aching and deep and difficult I dreamt to be here to work hard and to persevere  but now where I am is a nightmare and the world is on fire the things happening behind the scenes are deeper than you know what is going on and what is changing in me my heart was open once and I feel her closing up, creating a protective shell around my people

[thevernalsea]

it’s hard to focus it’s hard to breathe this has been a terrible experience the constant nagging feeling of have I done something wrong am I deserving of disgust? the constant feeling of exclusion by someone you trust honesty is overrated and the truth is that we are alone in this there is not another person that has the time for the pain we carry with us and it’s painful for that knowledge

oh how am I supposed to know what to do next

how do you carry on at arms length without rest

how do you employ the heart of man with the fear of beast

the catecholemines beating down into my feet

the need to run to feel something other than

panic

[thevernalsea]

it’s hard to not think about it the people you have trusted who have hurt you the people who have faded away usually, I am the one to continue to reach out to always extend my hand and say  I’m here when you’re ready when your heart is prepared for love I will give it to you but this time I don’t think that I can do that there is a pattern that I saw when I met you, of ended friendships, and severed ties and somewhere I saw in the distance our tie being cut too there is no warning, when you are joyous you bring everyone around you joy when you are angry, you make everyone want to make you happy the charm draws me in, the disdain pulls me closer, makes me suck in the palpitations of my heart when you frown, when you turn away, makes me laugh to soothe the air of the moment but I sit still, looking elsewhere, waiting for you to approach, and I hold my breath and hope that you won’t start to hate me, for taking too long to tell my story, for arriving too late, for not understanding your level of patience that day when you call the magic that lives in my heart and the love I try to fan aflame for the golden string of light that twines us all together, childlike it stings me and I hold onto it when you complain about things out of all of our control and your heart aches but you seem above it, we buzz on your periphery hoping that you will smile again when we dance in the right direction that mirrors yours your anger cuts deep, because your love is so good when it’s good but your love is conditional on conditions none of us know and you are unforgiving and so the ties are severed and you move again towards those attracted to your flame, afraid to be burnt but warmed by a light that dances in a way that few do

pome poetry writing

[thevernalsea]

i am fat my footfalls are heavy and  my fatness stirs something inside of you it’s often desire, the curve of my stomach is sexual in a way that is forbidden because you cannot admit your arousal my fatness exiles me to be someone derided, not invited into certain doors my footfalls are those of a giant they announce me  eyes crawl over my body, they judge the curve of my arm and think monster they are happy to not look like I look grateful  for the body that gives me life and laughter and the ability to make love to a lover that adores every arch  of my body so much of me, so tall and so large, gracious as I might seem to some others think of me as the symbol of excess but I am evolved of the disjointed love of my ancestors who survived for me so that my body could bake cakes for my lover and me  so my body could strain with the effort of movement and embrace those who might need to be embraced my body is full of light and gives blood to all pieces of me, even my fat that is made to feel it does not deserve it’s place on my body it is part of me, there is not another me, waiting, somewhere i am already whole my hands know healing and I will heal you if you let me touch your precious body too in whatever shape you might take and you will know when you hear my heavy steps that I am strong and that I will hold you when you need to be held 

[thevernalsea]

sometimes

I think about how in 6th grade we read the Giver. And every time I see rosemary or smell rosemary I think of the little girl who had to take her own life because too much pressure was put on her shoulders. I think about how no one stopped her and gave her a better life.

The thing that continues to haunt me about that book, to this day, and god, at least every month since 6th grade when I read it was the ceremony where all thr children get together and are given their equipment and assignments for the new year. I remember them giving bras to the girls. I remember being so embarrassed, because by that age I was already developing and would not have had access to a bra if I lived in that society.

I remember the teens with our protagonist and I remember their assignments. I remember the girl who was assigned to give birth, for three years, I think, living in total luxury, but forced into pregnancy, and after, forced into a life of hard labor, because of her body. Because she had large hips and a large frame and she was strong. I was terrified, I had large hips, I had a large frame, if it was my class in that book, I would have been that girl.

I wonder sometimes if my whole life was me desperately trying to not become her. Desperately looking for a way out of my body which just got bigger and stronger and more suited for carrying babies for someone else. Maybe that book was why I insisted for years I hated babies, or that I would never want one, and that I was actually weak instead of strong. 

Sometimes I think about her. If I was her I would have already had my years of luxury, and had my body destroyed by delivering babies for a society that keeps them in line. I think about how I would be sent to hard labor now, body broken, babies stolen and killed if there was more than one. 

I never wanted to become her. I studied, I studied, I worked for something that you wouldn’t expect me to do if you saw my body. I wanted to be the doctor. I wanted to be given school, I wanted to be given a good life and a body that was mine. 

My body of a woman, my fear, warped into me doing this opposite of what is expected I don’t want to be used to give birth, I want to be the doctor. 

I just, I just think about her a lot. The character, the horror, of being so young and being told that your body is not yours and your life is not yours. 

I think she gave me so much of what I am. I still hate that book for the fear it gave me. We never talked about that part of the book. We only talked about the boy. We never talked about the terror of it.

[thevernalsea]

there is right and there is wrong and there is grey and there is 

no way to explain to me the differences in sight 

the way

we make 

the people around us feel less than

I want you to try to be better than you are because this is me talking to myself I need to find a way to be better

[thevernalsea]

it feels a little bit like I’m studying for the end of the world

because of the time of year fireworks keep going off and they sound like the gunshots we hear as the police come to kill our neighbors

everything has been canceled a world over

a strange time indeed

and I sit in my tower with my books and alembics and I read

for what? to save someone that doesn’t want it? do suggest a remedy they can’t afford?

to recommend a lifestyle that cannot be supported by the ending world 

I feel like I hold together everything and everyone around me is made of glass

I have to hold them so carefully all the time and I can’t do it a second longer

who see’s me? I don’t know what I am any longer

[thevernalsea]

the external stimulation of the outside world

serves as a reminder of the past I wish I was still occupying

all the sounds and smells take me somewhere else

where I wished that I was here and now I’m here and I regret

not savoring the moment that I smelled the racks of clothes

and gazing on the emptiness of the freshly rolled grass on the hill in the woods

I regret not being more then and I wish I could be more now

my focus occupies the past and future but the present is so transient

how do I exist only here and now

a mystery

surely

one that remains unknown

[thevernalsea]

sometimes I just have so many thoughts that are hard to keep inside my head

I’ve been thinking about the people I’ve stopped talking to in my life, they pop up in my head a couple times a year. I wonder what they’re doing right now. Who are their friends? Are they happy? Are they thinking about me? A couple times a year maybe. Are they wondering how I am?

I’ve been thinking how it’s so weird I went to medical school. How on earth did I get here? Why did I want to come?

I know that I wanted to go to school to get a good job so I wouldn’t have to work retail anymore, or food service, or be yelled at by managers asking me to do work I’m not interested in, or yelled at my managers when I do work that I’m already doing. Some of it is selfish. I wanted to go to school so that I could prove to all the people that thought I was dumb that I wasn’t. 

I’ve been underestimated so many times. Who am I even?

Sometimes all I can think about are the people I’ve wronged. The people I have betrayed, or hurt, the people I have said hateful things to. The people I have not been good or kind to. Am I a good and kind person? Why does it matter if I am?

I don’t know I guess what I’m doing. I didn’t really know what I was getting into

you know, I just decided one day that I would do it. and I was like I guess? and here I am now

still not ever really knowing what was going on, I just dived in headfirst into a marathon I didn’t know anything about

I didn’t know that it was exam after exam after exam for the rest of forever I didn’t even bother to look it up. I guess I just 

I don’t know how to put my thoughts into coherent words, I don’t know what I was thinking. I wanted to help people? 

God people don’t really want to be helped. They just want to live their lives and be respected. 

I just want to do my job and be respectful. Isn’t that enough?

oh and teach other people to be respectful as well

why is this important to me? why does it feel like nothing matters.

I wish I had gone to culinary school instead sometimes, that I could just cook and learn and work with food and make people happy by cooking for them, why didn’t I do that? I love cooking. It makes me happy. It makes me happy to cook and watch people eat what I cook. 

Why did I want to be miserable? Why did I want to go through hell every day pulling myself up by my own heart to understand these challenging concepts to be the bottom of the barrel and the bottom of my class and the fat girl that people ignore as she walks by

being fat in the culinary world is like, fine, but in the medical world everyone looks like a fucking athlete

everyone is straight and an athlete and I just want to be myself and be surrounded by people like me

people who love freely and openly and dance and eat and  create open and welcoming spaces for fat girls and fat guys and queer people and people of color instead of the 7 white girls with blonde hair that post the same photo of themselves holding drinks at a party they threw for 1/3 of the class 

reminding us that if we are other we don’t belong, reminding us that if we don’t look like them they won’t look at us

why did I choose this?

I thought I guess why not, I’m going to be four years older no matter what I do so I might as well spend these four years being as miserable as possible and dragging my loved ones through hell with me where we will all be suffering in isolation and loneliness as we are rejected from a world that demands you act by the straight social rules that hold us all down

I will never be good enough for everybody but I’m good enough for some people I think

I miss my friends who I don’t talk to anymore. once they were the weird ones with me. I would rather spend an hour with the people I’ve wronged than the people that look like instagram models and are thousands of miles smarter than me

the models are always the rocket scientists

I’ve been told that there are things about me that make it up, like I am friendly and people like me

but it doesn’t feel that way 

all the time

what a mess

[thevernalsea]

I have never felt as much like an outsider, as much like I don’t belong, as much loneliness as I have here in medical school.

It’s cliquey. Everyone is in cliques. In your clique, you’re afraid of doing the wrong thing, of saying the wrong thing, of saying too much.

There are so many emotions associated with feelings of failure and inadequacy. How do you feel like you matter? How do you feel like people like you or care about you or care about your success?

Because it feels like they don’t.

It’s hard to make friendships here. It’s hard to get to know professors. They seem resistant to you. 

It feels like I’m repulsive, like I’m always saying the wrong thing, like I cannot be what I’m supposed to be.

When someone says they’re checking in on me, I grab the rope, like a lifeline, and I trust them to pull me up. They then realize I’m too heavy, they didn’t think I’d need it. I’m too much. and suddenly, they throw the rope away from themselves.

It’s stupid to trust that anyone is going to be there to pick you up. You want so desperately to belong and the desperation stinks, your friendliness, your openness is not what is acceptable. 

Who knows. And it certainly sinks you deeper, to know, without a doubt, your worthlessness. 

You are an embarrassment. You say too much. Learn, please, learn how to be quiet. 

[thevernalsea]

always strange to return

some call in the dark

For the past two years I’ve studied medicine, it’s what I asked for. I feel so alone all the time. I made friends, sure, but do they know me? Does anyone know me? What do they think of me?

I live every day with this knowledge that I am unlikeable and unloved. That everyone secretly, sort of hates me. What a horrible feeling. It feels so real. How do ever know? Why does it matter so much?

I always say too much or not enough I never know if it’s too much or not enough. I am invited but I don’t want to overstep, I am invited but I do not know if I am welcome. I take up so much space. I am taller and wider than the people around me. I eat more than them and I require more space for my legs. My family is weird and there are things we don’t talk about but I feel like they define me.

There are things that aren’t normal but it feels like they are until I am reminded they aren’t. How many people can divest themselves from their family.

I know my paternal great grandfather was a butcher and that he came from hungary and I know that my great grandmother from russia came and was admited to psychiatric stays. How much of it was that she was a woman and how much of it was that she needed to heal? My grandmother hated my mom and my uncle and resented them so much. That my mother married an abusive man until he left her one day with no warning and she moved to california and worked as a dancer because her parents were awful. My uncle moved across the world to france had a partner that he loved who killed himself after a diagnosis and my uncle has never healed and is closed off emotionally. My mom was on drugs our whole childhood. she always tried. She was sober and she was so wonderful from when I was 27 to 29. I will remember those two years with her. She does drugs again now, and is always high. She also has the same diagnosis and it makes her sad and sick. My grandfather was a lawyer and my grandmother is a social worker. I love them but I hate them too. 

My dad has been so many things in his life. A car theif that was sent to vietnam, a laborer, a painter, a motorcycle technician, a foreman, in jail, a drug dealer, an oil driller, a dad. I also love him but resent him for how emotionally closed off he is. The history of our family and ourselves. My grandma was left by my grandpa who left my dad and started a new family and adopted his new wifes children who stopped taking care of him when he was old. My dad tried so hard to be his friend again but his brain had stopped being functional. I lived with him for two and a half years and it was too much for me. I tried my best to take care of him but I was so young and he always told me stories about WW2 that I didn’t want to hear. My grandma died when I was 17 or 18 and it was horrible my Aunt was supposed to take care of her but we think she didn’t and my grandma died of complications. My Aunt is sick in the head and was never able to overcome her depression and obesity and I miss her but she was manipulative. My dad gave her money for a long time to try and care for her but one day she got a lot of money from the state and instead of paying him back she bought a trailer and left the state and never talked to any of us ever again.  My best memory of her is when I was a little kid and she told me that wind chimes are the sound of angels of those we have lost reminding us that they love us, and how to do witchcraft and respect the earth. 

My dad always told me he was protestant because his dad was but he never said anything religious except for that he believed in god and we celebrate christmas and easter, but I never knew why, really. My mom is Jewish but ish and her parents had my uncle bar mitvah’d but not my mom and my mom did not for my sister or me. We celebrated passover and we celebrated hannukah and we went to jewish preschool and had jewish friends but never studied torah or went to temple on a regular basis. The only prayer we know is the candle prayer on hannukah. 

Why are these stories so important to me? My dad had a hard time growing up. His older sister was his savior and she got married and pregnant and was killed in a car accident and I never got to meet the only person my dad admired. She died when he was a teenager and it changed his life for the worse. He has been involved with weird people and gangs. Now he is lonely and has no friends. My mom also has no friends. She suffers from depression and mania so much. She always has. I tried so hard to take care of my little sister and keep her safe when my parents couldn’t see what was happening.

She is safe now and so successful and I am so proud of her. I hope that I helped her. My heart is so heavy. So much pain and I guess this stuff isn’t normal. But isn’t it normal to be touched by suicide and drugs and jail and crime and depression? Isn’t that all part of the human condition? Isn’t it normal to have your dad be arrested when you’re 8 and go to motorcycle school for 2 years? You know it’s jail because you go to visit but you agree to play along that he is learning more about motorcycles. Isn’t it normal to have his friends steal from his business and his dad drive the business into the ground? Isn’t it normal for your grandparents to not want to help, isn’t it normal for your mom to starve herself so that you can eat? 

Isn’t it normal to realize you love girls and boys and your one connection to queerness hates children and has no time for you and is emotionally disconnected because the person he loved is dead. Isn’t it normal for his new partner to hate you and be cruel to your mom until your only familial connection to queerness is completely cut off. Isn’t it normal to be abandonned by the skinny white girls in your girlscout troupe when their skinny white moms learn that your mom works as a dancer and your dad is in jail - and isn’t it normal for them to exclude you when you are 10 and have gained too much weight because your mom gives you mcdonalds and doughnuts and pizza and apple pie. As much apple pie as you want because you like it, and when she was a kid her parents starved her because they were so wrapped up in their own shit that they wouldn’t buy enough groceries. That they owned two homes but wouldn’t buy their daughter new clothes so she was always an outcast. So then my mom wanted to make sure that anything I liked I had too much of. So when I was hungry I would lie because I knew she wasn’t eating so that we could. And when I ate it was unhealthy but I was 10 so how was I supposed to know better? Is it any wonder I get scared about having enough food? 

Isn’t it normal to fall in love fast then, when you are 13 and scared of the world. Isn’t it normal to be betrayed by your best friend in the world and overreact when they fall in love with the same person you love? Isn’t it normal to be filled with guilt and regret that the canyon you built between you and the person that mattered is still there even though you still blow kisses from across the cliffs? 

Isn’t it normal to fall into the arms of an abusive white boy that bruises your arms and insults you and tells you that you’ll never be anything and isn’t it normal to love him even though he smells like the sweat of the sick and sucks the blood of your soul from you like a swarm of lice. A demon that hurts you and you seek love, the rare, rare, love. Isn’t it normal to love him even though he dresses like the people that killed your family in hungary and in russia, and to fear him. But isn’t it lucky that he cheated on you and abandoned you because you were too broken to stop talking to him otherwise. But another best friend still loves him and she leaves you for him anyway. 

Isn’t it normal to fail out of high school because when you kissed a girl you were heckled and your friends kept trying to kill themselves and sometimes someone you knew would succeed and sometimes someone you knew would end up in the same kind of hospital your great grandmother ended up in and isn’t it normal to take a lot of aspirins because you might as well join them and isn’t it normal to be threatened with the same thing. Isn’t it normal to be fifteen and to have marks all up and down your arms and to be wearing the biggest black hoodie in 90 weather in new york city looking at the testament to the exclusive modern art spiral of a museum that gate keeps anyone not white and male from art and to say - maybe I want to be a doctor. and she says. you’re not smart enough for that. 

to decide that the only thing you can ever do is produce art because I guess according to her and other people in my life that my brain will only ever be good at one thing, and the insults that I am flaky and dumb and fat only allow me to sit alone with a pen and paper. 

Is it all this that affects me every day? Is it all this that drives me? Is it normal? Does anyone else have this? I don’t want to be alone anymore. I just want someone to tell me this is normal. I just want someone to tell me they had this too. I just want someone to tell me that it’s okay that I’m anxious and scared because of 20 years of emotionally abusive relationships. How did I find the nicest man then? That’s luck. And how did my grandma start believing in me then? that’s luck I guess, and my dad came home and even though he’s mean he pays for everything. and how is it that I’m never hungry anymore my pantry is full and 

I’m going to school to be a doctor and how is that I still don’t feel good enough, how is it that I still feel like a burden to anyone I tell my story to

is this even my story? or the stories of people that live inside me? or the stories of people I have let into my heart. it’s just a little bit too. it’s just a little bit. 

medical school hurts. 

how do you grapple with all of these things inside you