Shuffle Me Straight Up and Down.

There are certain details in romantic relationships that aren’t always blatantly obvious. These details are full of subtle nuances and often their true meanings get lost in the shuffle. It’s the shuffle inside our heads or the shuffle of everyday life. It’s the shuffle of the missed furtive glance your partner makes when they drift off to one side in the recesses of their mind. There is also a lot of shuffle from side to side that plays out inside our own heads. They make the persistent sounds of self doubt, of the preconceived notions that were either instilled in us from being force-fed the black words our parental units shoved down our gullets, or the failure of our own misguided adventures.

It sounds like the slow ripping of cheap basement brand notebook paper, or of itchy bed sheets that won’t relax no matter how many times you wash them. It’s the sound of disquiet sighs your lover makes when in their mind, you are the problem. It’s you who won’t let the noise persist and tries to cleanse it with setting fire to the itchy sheets that your lover has clung to because they didn’t know that there were better options, or because they simply forgot what it was like to be loved without the underhandedness of back ally conditions. They are mad at you for threatening their cozy uncomfortable existence, and they may not even know why they are so perturbed.

After all, you mean the best. You love them so deeply, with all that you are, and you so desperately want them to be able to understand the language you are desperately repeating, like an S.O.S cutting through the darkest night in the most bitter of storms.

“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! Mayday, mayday! We are goin THE FUCK DOWN babe, the water is cold and black and the coldness is creeping up through my toes and I’m losing sight of you and… I CAN’T BREATHE I CAN’T BREATHE I CAN’T BREATHE, I CAN’T………”

WAIT….! *sigh* Ok, let’s dial it back a bit.

So you question yourself, and ah! There it is! That… shuffle. It’s the self doubt you have as you fight to move left or right. Burn it down or let then have it? If you set it ablaze, you may lose them in the fire, because after all; fire cleanses and destroys with no regard for what is sacred to either of you.  If you do nothing, you sacrifice your own well being. The shuffle becomes impatient. It grows louder because it is stuck in place, waiting for you to choose a battle plan.

“Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire…” Richard Siken, Crush

The shuffle becomes too loud sometimes so we try to down it out with the use of tactile vices or by switching frequencies, and tune into channel Self Doubt. It’s playing 24/7, and always in the background, like shitty elevator music. Honestly though, it’s only one album that is specifically hand crafted to each individual. We all know the hits. “You’ll Never Be Happy” has been remixed about a million times. “Why Are You Like This?” is another stellar track. “What If I Never Get It Together?” is also a sad song laced with the fear of failure.

So now you are stuck revisiting the old favorites and rehashing the old familiar shadow creatures.  The viciousness of the shit circle we have found ourselves in is revolving like a carousel of chaos. 

What dastardly depressing fun. How…..do you….stop. It? What kind of tourniquet is required to stem this kind of spiritual bleeding? Well…..sometimes, you don’t, because you can’t. Sometimes, you have to save yourself. Sometimes, the ship is going down and the langoliers are nipping at your heels, and there isn’t anything you can do about it, except amputate the appendage because darlin, it’s dead and it reeks, and boy that infection is spreading. It’s coming for whatever is left of you, and you NEED to value yourself enough to get the fuck out. GET OUT. GO. RUN.

Depressing right? Guess what? The fun part is the rebirth. The regrowth. It’s the moment when you stand at the top of the hill that has been burned to the ground and still smoking, and you know that this future is yours to reshape. It’s yours to rebrand. So shuffle. Shuffle forth, like an inchworm, and be kind to yourself.

The Power of Resurgence.

My glasses never stay clean here lately because I can’t seem to stop crying. 

Depression is….getting up every single day, and following the same comforting routine because it’s the only control you know that you have. It’s the small things that you cling to, like forcing yourself to get out of bed before ten am, or making sure that you put exactly two teaspoons of sugar in your coffee and drinking it in the exact same chair, every single day.  Not because you want to, but because you know you need to.

Or maybe, depression is not getting out of bed for days on end and sleeping your life away and ignoring the familiar chime of texts and facebook messages. Depression comes in all forms, and it’s not always the most obvious, stark contrasts of colors that are advertised on the billboards of the highway that is life.

Ah but, none of these things are news to any of you, simply because in this day and age there are so few of us that haven’t been tapped by the dark bony finger of mental illness. These previous paragraphs are emotional cannon fodder; a useless segway into the meat of the matter. There is a pandemic raging, and I don’t mean Covid. The pandemic is the downturn of our hearts and minds, and the dissolution of what it means to be able to love each other purely and with no ill intentions or underlying malice.

To be able to truly trust our partners these days seems to have become somewhat of a commodity that is strictly regulated within our own glass houses we have constructed not only on our own, but with the help of others. So many of us carry this necrotic baggage from house to house, like a dying houseplant we think that we can revive. Only, the reality of the matter is that once something has died, we cannot revive it. We are not shaman or magical creatures from fabled faraway lands. We are human beings living in a post modern age and coping with the emotional fallout that has somehow become the social norm. Our magic has now become the abnormality in an atypical world.

To be perfectly clear, there are an exorbitant amount of souls wandering this world that are at their core good and decent, but have had the sharpness carved from soft edges in ways that should never have transpired by those that are not good and decent. These souls now float around in the social atmosphere like snowflakes that have been sharpened against the grindstone of cruelty. It’s a pandemic that is causing the death of love, the death of kindness, and the atrophy of light that this word needs to survive. There is a deep sadness and an abject void within so many of us, yet it seems that we all have the same downward facing perception that nothing and nobody can make it better. 

Sometimes, love isn’t enough. You can’t force it. You can’t force someone to love you back, no matter how much you love them. It’s a terrible truth that some of us will never have to learn, and if you have found yourself on the dark shores of this island, I hope that you quickly find your way out and you find a way to offload the baggage that attempts to attach itself to you in this journey of life. 

Then there are some of us that are just…spinning…like a compass that has lost it’s orientation in dark wooded areas that were never on the map. Whatever tragedy that has befallen us has shaken us to our core and now we find ourselves transplanted into this strange faraway land that seems more toxic than the last. How do we adjust? How do we let IT go? How do we heal? Can we do any of these things? If so, how long will it take? How do we know when and if we are…healed? There is this sense of trust that we forfeited unwillingly into the hands of a dark dealer who never had any intention of giving us a fair payout. And now…now we are bereft of a former self whom we can never get back.

What. Happens. Next?

In your head, you can hear yourself screaming in utter agony. “Where do I go?? What do I do?? How can I…exist and HOW do I come BACK from this?? Everything…and I mean EVERYTHING..has been taken from me. My soul, my mental wellbeing, and my bank account has been emptied past the point of no return.” A checking account may have a negative balance, but you never released that the intangible can be negatively affected as well.

My darling, I’m so, so sorry.

There isn’t an easy answer. There isn’t a blueprint to rebuild your fortress of tranquility. Just like the house in the woods, you’ve been burned to the bare bricks. You are a creaking, looming skeleton and when the sun sets, you remember that you are a shadow of who and what you used to be.

So the coming cloud of depression slides in under the doorframe. It’s a draft that you can’t seem to offset, no matter how many blankets you pile on. Just like your heart and mind, the apartment is dark and cold. 

What a black turn of events this life has taken. It seems cruel and unwarranted, no? 

So let’s attempt to end on a positive note, eh?

My glasses never stay clean here lately because I can’t seem to stop crying. I am depressed, and the medication can only do so much, because it’s not meant to do the heavy lifting. That’s solely my responsibility. You see, my heart has been ripped from within so many times and reformulated each time in a way that often seems grotesque and malformed. There are a lot of days where I am certain it causes more harm than good. The fuel has been foolishly rerouted next to the flammables but I keep swallowing the fire in an attempt not to burn everyone else and only myself. 

I still try. I still love. I do so with the underlying trepidation that the gasoline will probably trickle back towards the boiler and cause a backdraft. My super power is that the fire doesn’t scare me. Oh, it still burns, each and every time, just as painful and powerful as the last…but it doesn’t kill me. It consumes me for a moment, and only just, but the fire and I dance with each other like angry tango dancers on a sweltering Miami summer night. I laugh, and cry, as it trickles over me because I know I cannot be killed. 

We must all become familiar with the power of Resurgence, should we hope to make headway in this emotional jungle. 

The Art of the Anxious Girl

When it comes to anxiety, I’m really not much different from your basic, run of the mill person who has been designated with the GAD sticker. (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) I hate crowds, I don’t trust strangers, and I have been social distancing way before it was a form of protection against a virus. Unless I am drunk, I am almost always in a heightened sense of awareness. Should you sneak up behind me or make a sudden sound, you will most certainly see this in action. These days, the anxiety is most certainly in the upper echelons for not only me, but so many others who are living through these unprecedented and unpredictable times.

It is. Exhausting. Yet I, and so many others cannot sleep.

So how has this pandemic been affecting me? How has this pandemic been affecting you? Your family and friends? The world is on its head. We are on this big beautiful rock, spinning through space at roughly a thousand miles miles an hour, but who is at the helm? We are all looking for a sense of serenity, and grasping in the dark for an aspect of our lives that we can demonstrate a semblance of control over. Seeking control is a perfectly normal concept as a human being; our brains are hardwired for congruency and a sense of order.

My dear fellow Earthlings, can you feel that? Can you feel the sheer tension that hangs in the air thick like fog rising over the swamp after a summer storm? I certainly can, and do, every day. It is entirely evident that whether people realize it or not, this anxiety and tension has found its way into the hearts and minds of this country. When people find themselves with no sense of control or autonomy that our routine lives offer us, we start to… think. Our hearts and minds begin to shift gears because the brand of static that we usually subscribe to has faded.

So some people give into these feelings of extreme anxiety and lash out. They take to the streets. They take to the liquor. They take to the online shopping. Have you found yourself lashing out? For me, I have been catapulting through time and space by attempting to turn inwards and get in touch with the parts of myself that I filed away as “one days”, “if I had the time” or “if I had a partner in crime to do it with.” I have found ways to mitigate my anxiety by exploring new mediums of art, and getting out in the woods which I have so desperately had a distanced love affair with. I like to think that I have found a weirdo, like me, but a different shade of lovely. I like the idea that my life has taken a turn that spontaneity truly exists.

Mind you, my anxiety is still raging strong and barreling through my being like the proverbial runaway train. I have had (and still continue to have) bad days and good days. Better and best days. Like so many others, I am acutely reminded of just how fragile our lives are, not only financially but also in the literal sense of existence. The art of cognitive dissonance has been put to the test in 2020, and while we may find ourselves doing our damndest to rail against the reality of our own fragility, you have to wonder if perhaps we should turn and face this shadow that is chasing us.

“I can’t drown my demons; they know how to swim.”- Paramore

For so many of us that suffer from anxiety and depression, the pandemic is just another stroke of paint on the maudlin canvas. We aren’t weak. You are not weak. Perception is damn near everything; and I try to perceive my anxiety in a variety of different lights. I try to regard my own anxiety as a form of slow poisoning for my own protection, much like Father Mithridates The V. I don’t deny that this is perhaps a…macabre point of view, but nevertheless I feel it remains a valid comparison. (never you mind that in the end, he was eventually poisoned to death)

But I digress. *pours another drink*

So hit me baby, hit me with that sweet, sweet 100 milligrams of zoloft and dark red wine, and I’ll smile at you and whisper sweet secrets in your ear all night long like a swamp gypsy who’ll put that spell on you.

Again, I digress. My deepest apologies.

I feel as if my anxiety has kept me alive and given me a certain evolutionary advantage, versus those who do not suffer from anxiety. You see, anxiety has rewired my brain. It has taught me to be on the offensive, as I am sure anyone reading this who is intimately familiar with anxiety will understand. However, you mustn’t let everyone know you are on the offensive, because it can and will be viewed in a negative light. While it is exhausting, it is often a delicate form of art, much like finding the balance on a tightrope. Sometimes you fall. Sometimes you waver. Sometimes it seems as if the line is never-ending. Regardless, you keep creeping forth.

The Initial Awkwardness

Why do this? Well, why not? I’m an overly passionate woman who drinks a lot of wine, loves to online shop, and has the best dog in the entire world. Stevie Knicks is the Ultimate Supreme. The moon revives my spirit and the thunder calms my inner beast. There is more than a possibility I will post when I am mildly to moderately intoxicated. I talk a lot about love, life, and the trauma that results simply from existing in this cursed timeline.

That Certain Shade of One AM

It’s nearly 1 am on a friday night, and sleeping should come easy at this point. It doesn’t. It never does these days, especially since the world is imploding all over the damn place. So here you are, sitting in the dark, wondering if this odd, grey state of limbo will ever dissipate revealing something more definitive.

Your heart is desperate in it’s anxiety and despair, and that little voice whose only purpose to torture you is chortling away as it mocks you. So you take another sip of liquor and try to drown it out. Screaming in the middle of nowhere under the stars in a field might help, but instead you sigh. You know that sighing is more polite and easier on the vocal cords. and should you be around others, sighing is easier to be overlooked. Sigh, sigh, sigh….

The limbo fog makes you sleepy, or maybe its the liquor, coupled with the fact that you don’t really sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, and when you do, it’s usually nightmares that are so vivid in their own brand of reality that you often wake up with residual pain from whatever wound your subconscious assigned you.

There seems to be a global shortage on so many things these days that are intangible yet felt more deeply than anything you can you can wrap your fingers around. We seem to keep robbing each other of these intangibles, as if they are somehow finite in their existence, like batteries or toilet paper. We withhold kindness from each other and dam up our hearts in an effort to protect ourselves from what has become an onslaught of attacks of words and actions that act like the sharpest of swords. The marauders must be stopped, but at what cost?

The stone walls keep getting higher and thicker, until some of us have completely bricked ourselves in, almost like a reverse Cask of Amontillado, and then its too late. Jack Sheppard said it best; “If we can’t learn to live together, we’re gonna die alone.”