She told me she didn't know how someone like me could love her, because of all the little pieces of her that were broken.
I told her that little broken pieces were some of the best things we had in common, and if we're both broken, then at least we'll get swept up into the same dustpan.
We've all got little hurts speckling our history like pimples on porcelain, and in those lonely moments when we play connect the dots on each tiny puncture, the lines become cracks and our structure splits to pieces like shattered glass in a vaccuum...one little push, and each piece flies off until it meets something solid enough to cut.
A friend once told me that I was more than a broken heart. We stood in the middle of a lightning storm as the sky painted its own cracks and I thought how foolish and small mine looked in comparison.
Then I thought how beautiful they must appear to anything that sees us as vast as we see the sky.
When our voices cry in thunder and we weep floods to drown the tiniest things, when the splits in our spirit illuminate the clouds above our heads we are each of us, inclement weather.
Our scars are the dotted-line paths charted across the maps of our bodies that detail a route from "love me" to "it's over" but love, like any other journey, must always take the journey back and bring us home again.
We are all fragmented spirits - having lost more blood from our cuts than we carry in our veins, but like wrinkles are signs of people unafraid to laugh in spite of this world's horror show, scars are signs of people unafraid to love no matter how much blood they lose.
I told her it doesn't matter how broken you or I are, because love in this world is less like a jigsaw puzzle that fits together and more like a bucket of mismatched Lego - Leave the perfect fits in the commercials they came from, here, we slap together an array of shapes and colours and no matter the outcome, we have built something beautiful and entirely unique.
So expel the hurt like a sickness, cast it from your body like a gift from Hell and stand open, armoured, proud, and prepared to reclaim your place among the strong.
She told me she didn't know how someone like me could love her, because of all the little pieces of her that were broken.
I told her I don't know either.
But I love you all the same.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Instructions for Living with, and Surviving Depression.
It is imperative to note, before reading this manual, that you are powerful, you are beautiful, and you are not alone.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIVING WITH, AND SURVIVING DEPRESSION:
1. See a depressive episode descending before it lands. Like the moon crashing lazily into your home, there is nothing you can do to prepare. The sky is falling like it has so many times before, so close your eyes, and let gravity take over.
2. Watch your eating habits deteriorate, along with your social life. Try to force repair to both, and withdraw, feeling defeated when you find yourself bringing down those around you, and come home to vegetables spoiling in your fridge beneath a half-empty pizza box and beer you bought with bill money.
3. Open up to friends and be prepared to be met with a mix of uncertain support and inexperienced advice. They can't all see the crater where your bedroom used to be. Hear, once again, that you are choosing to feel this way, and that the amateur psychologists that live in your social circle-jerk know your mind better than you do. Spend the day feeling like a waste of everyone's time.
4. Read everything you can about depression. Online sources, comics, books, anything you can get your hands on for a quick boost. Solidarity becomes your morning coffee.
5. Feel weak, horrid, and alone. You don't get a choice in this matter; your mind has taken over. Realize that the energy it costs to want to get better is more than you have right now. Find yourself wishing, not to die, but to simply stop being.
6. You are chained to a telepathic stalker that periodically reminds you why you don't own any good, sharp knives. Your logic in this state is faulty in its eyes. Try to tune it out as best as you can, it knows all your secrets and will use them to press its lips to your wrists and siphon blood from your veins.
7. Suicide is not an option.
8. Suicide is NOT an option.
9. Acknowledge your nothingness. For all your inability to move, you are not allowed to stop moving. Focus on the paradox of what others would call your "wasted days" and let it anger you. Let your heart become rage and thunder because feeling hate is better than feeling nothing when you've lost faith that feeling is still possible. Scream and curse, spit vengeance at your pillows, you are a beautiful disaster and this is your reckoning.
10. Hold tightly the memory and energy of your outburst. Channel it anywhere you can, making sure that its destructive potential does not exceed your creative energy. Draw pictures in the ashes, and push yourself to new challenges, breaking apart typical conventions because your glory is anything but typical.
11. When the dust settles, step back and observe your creations. Draw conclusions about the artist as though you were in any gallery, speaking in hushed whispers of the power and beauty exhibited here. Collect it all together as an instruction manual on building a new moon whenever yours falls from the sky.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIVING WITH, AND SURVIVING DEPRESSION:
1. See a depressive episode descending before it lands. Like the moon crashing lazily into your home, there is nothing you can do to prepare. The sky is falling like it has so many times before, so close your eyes, and let gravity take over.
2. Watch your eating habits deteriorate, along with your social life. Try to force repair to both, and withdraw, feeling defeated when you find yourself bringing down those around you, and come home to vegetables spoiling in your fridge beneath a half-empty pizza box and beer you bought with bill money.
3. Open up to friends and be prepared to be met with a mix of uncertain support and inexperienced advice. They can't all see the crater where your bedroom used to be. Hear, once again, that you are choosing to feel this way, and that the amateur psychologists that live in your social circle-jerk know your mind better than you do. Spend the day feeling like a waste of everyone's time.
4. Read everything you can about depression. Online sources, comics, books, anything you can get your hands on for a quick boost. Solidarity becomes your morning coffee.
5. Feel weak, horrid, and alone. You don't get a choice in this matter; your mind has taken over. Realize that the energy it costs to want to get better is more than you have right now. Find yourself wishing, not to die, but to simply stop being.
6. You are chained to a telepathic stalker that periodically reminds you why you don't own any good, sharp knives. Your logic in this state is faulty in its eyes. Try to tune it out as best as you can, it knows all your secrets and will use them to press its lips to your wrists and siphon blood from your veins.
7. Suicide is not an option.
8. Suicide is NOT an option.
9. Acknowledge your nothingness. For all your inability to move, you are not allowed to stop moving. Focus on the paradox of what others would call your "wasted days" and let it anger you. Let your heart become rage and thunder because feeling hate is better than feeling nothing when you've lost faith that feeling is still possible. Scream and curse, spit vengeance at your pillows, you are a beautiful disaster and this is your reckoning.
10. Hold tightly the memory and energy of your outburst. Channel it anywhere you can, making sure that its destructive potential does not exceed your creative energy. Draw pictures in the ashes, and push yourself to new challenges, breaking apart typical conventions because your glory is anything but typical.
11. When the dust settles, step back and observe your creations. Draw conclusions about the artist as though you were in any gallery, speaking in hushed whispers of the power and beauty exhibited here. Collect it all together as an instruction manual on building a new moon whenever yours falls from the sky.
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