I don’t usually add disclaimers to my poems, nor should art necessarily necessitate a caption – just a captive audience, if you’re lucky. HOWEVER, this poem is special to me, and if my therapist didn’t convince me this poem could help a lot of people, than I probably would have kept it in my personal archives, sentenced to burial.
As a girly pop that is blessed with the opportunity of mental health distress (thank you capital T trauma), I’m no stranger to the plague of self-love dissonance. After a series of low weeks, I was beginning to understand what loving yourself meant less and less. Have you ever received a compliment from someone you love, and that compliment hurt so badly that you became filled with rage? How dare they lie to you? Say your smile lit them up today – how dare they pass passive aggression. If they hated you, why didn’t they just say that out right?
I’ve been in every type of therapy for over a decade – I’m the poster child for “doing the work.” I’m the child of destiny if destiny were an independent, enlightened woman of the modern age. If a therapist recommends a workbook – I bought it. The psychology books on my shelf – I BOUGHT ‘EM. Within my journal each evening – I WROTE ’bout IT. Cuz I depend on me, if I want it (see also: healing).
And even so – I still struggle with self-acceptance. In parts therapy, we work to identify and resolve conflicts between different parts of the self. In my own writing, I do this work – dialogue between all the parts of me: the firefighter, the manager, the exiles, the self. We have a Grand Ole Opry of a good time trying to find resolve through the conflict, the dichotomy of self-hatred and self-love, of opposition and integration.
This poem is a letter between my higher self and the most broken parts of me, a salve to self-defeat. Through writing this piece of work, the darkest parts of me shed their load, light entered through the fissures of the psyche, a cold dawn rose from the never-ending eve, and I understood again, what it means to love yourself. To really love yourself.
I hope reading this poem reminds you how much you are cherished, how much you are loved, wanted, and looked after (especially) by your own beautiful self. Wherever you go, there you are and all that crap. Nothing lasts forever – even your pain. And if I could just have one more sentence, if your ego wants to fight me on that one, go ahead and live in misery, but baby even the darkest rains let up. I promise. Remember that next time you are hoisted upon the sails of a wayward ship, sailing toward abyss after being safely docked. Shore is always imminent, so long as you pay attention to your own self. You are your own damn compass.
If you ever lose direction, your way, then remember you always have a bottle that yearns for a message. Write to yourself.
I love you.
“Write to me.”
said my broken heart
“Tell me, your troubles.”
I told her, beating
That I felt unlovable
that I deserve the pain
it’s unmovable
That I can’t make her full
I’m ridden in chain
and that I’m scared to pull
to yank
to stand the rain.
I told her I’m broken
cracked beyond shatter
I think I might be sinking
weighed by my own matter
plagued by my own thinking
frozen and drifting and silent
drenched in dread.
I wrote to her, that I feel like a wet towel
Churned like butter
heavy-sopped
wholly gutted.
It’s too dark
too lonely here
I can’t brave the cavern
It’s cold at night
Silence, here, echoes
I feel contorted to pattern
I wish I could fill this cavity
placate the nothingness
succumb finally to the gravity
And bury the scribbled mess
“But where would I go?”
humbly replied my heart.
“I want to be with the one I love.”
Then go find her, I retort.
My head is dizzy
throat a tightrope
stomach in fracture
I’m fending all the ways
I’ve learned to tell myself I don’t matter.
“But, little one, don’t you see,”
gentle was my heart’s reply.
“I’ve crossed stars and galaxies
reviewed every home
It’s you I choose to love
and make to feel less alone.
Why, I say, shaking my fists.
Why do you love me?
And don’t reply with counting the ways!
I am tattered
I carry scars much deeper
Than the grooves of this hearth
All I do is weep here
beneath the magma of the earth
I have ghosts that haunt
my most unreachable core
If my soul were a deadened sea
no sailor near to explore
oil-spilled and lost at flee
nor captain to take the helm.
I’m hidden in the darkest trench
I’ve lost most of me
I’m submerged, in a trance
I don’t know how to just be.
Go find another soul, my heart
one more poised for loving
I’d leave to find her now
or else we’ll both
be in mourning.
I’m deafened,
rendered by sonic booms
I didn’t launch
covered heavy in stone tombs
I didn’t ditch.
“I want to tend to your wounds.”
nobly said my heart.
“I want to be the unbroken spark,
the one that keeps you alive.
“I want to warm your numb fingers and toes
beneath my ceaseless fire
I want all the love songs
notes, rhythm, and poems
written for me to admire.
“Every tear you lend
to this vastless sea
is part of the wave
that brings all things to me.
“I have space for you
more than you know
more than this ever expansive
universe could bestow
“I have space to kiss
your soft cheeks matted in shame
I have space to caress
those limbs you since etched in maim
“You are worthy of love
My love
the Love that matters most
there could never be another
who’d be as worthy a host.
“Let me sit beneath
the redwood tree with you
under a cold, full moon
let me never leave your side
hold space for your stride
until you alter your tune.
Let me swaddle you in sand
coating your skin in grain
share seashells buried in land
treasure hidden in sights plain.
“I want to hear all your verses
every iteration as they expose
Let me read the scratched syntax
the deepest parts you won’t disclose.
“I can borrow a ray from the sun
I promise
Shine bright until you warm
reach all unreachable corners
thaw until solace
I won’t give up on you
I promise
no matter how forlorn.
“We’ve turned lead into gold,
You and I,
made angels of demons
we’ve evolved beyond the mold
made lessons with lemons
we’ve sanded down rough edges
made soft the most unholy
I just want to draw you a bath of rose petals
soaked in candle and moonlit ceremony
dip you into the steam like honey,
make a tea of your sorrows
I want to swim in your sprawled hair of cacao
sodden in the richness
I want to kiss the small folds of your eyes-closed
and whisper wishes into your imagination.
“Please don’t leave me again
I’m only broken from missing you
all the times you leave me, that’s when
I’m split open in two
where a shadow is cast
and I’m waiting for you
choking on hello- one last
while you linger in the empty place inside.
“When you are writhing
from beyond the shores
If you let me, little one
Love you, fully,
I’ll tend the tides, their roars
I’ll set onward the craft, the ore
to be docked in your port
I’ll send messages in bottles with reminders
from me, the commander
that I love your heart
and to love such a heart
is truly, to love me
because in loving you
we continue to beat.”
Sunken and swollen, I’m in plight or flight
I don’t know how or why you love me,
Sweet heart
Everything seems so bleak
My tired eyes are kissless
There’s no caress on my cheek
To me all things are listless
this lifeboat has a leak.
It feels I am giving womb
to darkness as I speak.
“Thanks for writing to me little one
For sharing all your troubles
I hold them here and now
they’re safe in my temples
Let me show you how
this love comes from within
I hold space for all the parts of you
even the ones you’ve deemed a sin
what a difference a day makes
I’ll take care of you
If you let me, that’s what I’ll do
I’ll tend to all of your worries
all your cries and emotional flurries
I’ll be the one inside you
to dry your dreary eyes
and hopefully, maybe, one day,
you won’t find the need to ask Why.”
The moats, I felt them draining
The bridge drawn across the sea
like a welcomed weary traveler
I’ve come home to me.
If I need to cork a message
enlist the sirens of said sea
I’ll sing songs of this concealed vestige
And next time I’m weary, I’ll write to me.
Mind The Mess On Mondays 