Category Archives: Poetry

Snot and Tears.

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My husband
didn’t change
the laundry over.
That’s all.
He’s asleep,
burrito’d into a fuzzy blanket, oblivious
to the world around him.
My world.
So I chose
To go downstairs.
To my grandmothers bed.
Which,
six months later,
still smells like her.
I wish I
couldn’t feel.
Couldn’t sit here,
drinking her in
while wondering
what exactly
about her
wrinkled, knowing smile
that I’m forgetting
at
this
very
moment.
I need a goddamn hug.
A whisper and a cuddle.
Someone to wipe my tears away
and tell me that she loved me,
she cares,
that this pain isn’t without reason
or without end.
But I hate to wake up valuable, contributing members of society.
Not for me.
Not for this.
All he had to do was change the laundry over.
Then maybe I wouldn’t be
percolating
in snot and tears.

Doing and not doing

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I haven’t been blogging lately. Or writing at all, really. Or exercising. Or getting up on time in the morning. One thing that I have been doing is drinking.

Depression and alcohol abuse are really a chicken and the egg problem. I know the depression came first in my case, since the first time that I told someone I wanted to kill myself was second grade, and I certainly wasn’t abusing alcohol then.

Together, my drinking and my depression spiral with each other, in an elegant, lumbering dance to the shame pit.

My husband mentioned to me regarding my recent binges “I don’t know what happened, you were doing so well.” It was hard to hear my sobriety as a thing that I would or could be doing well at, or think that it has a moralistic view to it, not drinking good, drinking bad. This is because I like to pretend alcohol doesn’t have a grip on me, or at least not that bad of one. These are the lies I tell myself.

I know what drinking does to me. I know what it did to me, the damage it’s caused. A hundred pounds of weight gain, 2 institutionalizations, a brilliant mind that’s become twisted with doubt and fear, wasted time
wasted life
getting wasted.

Why did I write today? I don’t know. To be honest, I had given up on me writing. I guess it’s because I was thinking about the measures of success. For me, today was a failure because I didn’t get up on time and I had drank the night before. I viewed it as a failure before it even started. I’m crying right now at that realization, the standards I hold myself to. I know I wouldn’t want anyone else to think the way that I think, especially because today was a good day. I cut a lot of wood with my husband and my dad. I spent 6 hours with some of my favorite people planning for an Artprize project that’s bigger and more out of my scope that I would ever dream of accomplishing, and I’m honored to be a part of. But as we were packing up, I was overwhelmed by the sense of emptiness that sank in my chest. I don’t ever seem to remember the good moments, the laughter, the productivity, the engagement with the team. But I know I will remember that feeling of emptiness. In fact, it’s creeping in right now.

Maybe I’ll go have a drink.

And maybe tomorrow I’ll try to focus my self sabotage making me human, not a failure.