This week, I dove DEEP into my mind. I wrestled and wriggled and fought with myself. I straddled extremes and struggled to land in the middle. A symptom of this condition, I wrote two things. One - a gentler take. A description of the place I want to be, instead of the mind cavern I’ve been wandering through. The other - the cavern itself. The harsher environment and what it feels like to be there. I flip-flopped back and forth, a little of this, a little of that, unsure which was IT. That paralyzing uncertainty is all too familiar, so I’m choosing the third way. Here are both, co-existing.

Something Softer

I want something softer.

Something softer

than sticking my hand in the sharps bin of my mind.

Something easier

than wading through thoughts lined with booby traps and black holes.

I want to bathe in warm sand. 

Curves cradled, floating

in an ocean of shifting dunes.

Wearing each tiny grain like a stand-alone diamond.

Touching twinkling stars in a sky of smooth skin.

Lying peacefully under the blanket of the setting sun 

that falls and rises each day like slow, even breath.

Trusting the sky to stay open and the ground to stay firm,

I can rest.

The magic of nature’s wiser hand

carries me beyond my wildest dreams

and through my willful-est worries. 

There’s something about being humbled

that makes me feel safe. 

A cosmic smirk woven into every thread.

A pattern I don’t understand,

but must have a place in.

The Part of Me That Wants to Hurt

There’s a part of me that wants to hurt, that insists on it. It’s not as loud as it used to be. It’s not as much of me as it used to be. Usually, it’s not even there. But when it’s there, it reminds me of when it was all of me. When I was drowning in the fog. When I would lay down and pray to be taken, somewhere quiet.

Relief. I craved reprieve from an inside world that didn’t relent. It cast its shadow on the outside world, too. Every interaction threatened to confirm my worst suspicions. The walls closed in around my smallest parts.

Escape. I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was. But I couldn’t leave my body, so I shut the windows and boarded the doors. Might as well be swallowed into darkness. 

I visit this boarded up house from time to time. My nails remember scratching at the walls. My voice knows pleading to no one to let me out. If I stay for too long, I can feel the shrinking. My options narrow to two: explode into chaos or delete my existence. There is nothing between. There is no right amount of space to take up. It’s all, or none. There is no some. Some is too fragile. Some is too scary. Some doesn’t compute. And yet, life is lived in the some. Life hurts some. My body gets tired some. My mind slows down some. People move closer, and further away. And on it goes. No final rest. No perfect solution. The part of me that wants to hurt wants self-destruction, if it can’t have self-transcendence. Just being my self seems impossible.