June's Musings

For those of you who've been concerned I wanted to give a brief update on my health and well-being. Thankfully, lately I’ve been on the lower end of the pain spectrum. Unfortunately chronic illnesses can be offset by depression and anxiety, which can increase pain and the presence of inflammation. This, in turn, can increase the symptoms of depression and anxiety. This is definitely what happened to me. It can be a pretty morbid chicken-egg situation when dealing with mental health and chronic illnesses. Much of my trepidation comes from the inability to be independent and our capitalist society that not-so-subtly equates my worth and value as a human being with my ability to generate income. My insurance finally approved a biologic agent called Enbrel. Its purpose is to treat autoimmune diseases by interfering with tumor necrosis factor by acting as a TNF inhibitor. This coupled with physical and occupational therapy (as well as a ton of other drugs) should help return some norm

Mortally Heart-shattered, bleeding from wounds you authored, Your magnum opus Mold grows in spaces where love did once Insects gather and feast it’s sweet rot pervades my senses And I wonder When my time comes to soar Will I fester? Afraid of this life’s fast approaching decadence before I’ve mixed and made magic of it? My stiffening heart made un-malleable by yours My tongue, longing for saccharine morsels Savors only ash and dust The morsels you have brought me In a box labeled “I love you, I’ll never leave”

Grieving my Brother My brother was found dead by gunshot wounds on June 5 of this year. And I’m not sure how I’m going to endure. Everyday I wake up and sink into the realization that this is not a dream. The journey of grief is certainly not linear if anyone’s wondering. It meanders and topsy-turveys. I’ve pleaded with God. I’ve bargained. I’ve manically (perhaps maniacally) searched for the scientific formula for time travel up late one night. (Don’t ask me what I was thinking, I’m grieving.) And I’ve been trying to keep his memory alive with me. I hear his smart remarks when I’m making a decision. I hear him toughening me up when I’m too afraid to go for something. But none of that is enough. None of it is enough. None of that compares with the gut wrenching feeling of knowing he’s gone and there’s nothing I can do to bring him back Everyday feels unreal. Thinking of the violence by which you met your death, the fear and horror you may have experienced. The pain, all of this p

Desperately anticipating the lonesome narrow roads, bereft of leaves and life’s little crawling things  the twisted, gnarled shrubbery gets caught on my sleeve. lost in the forest, I find myself clinging to those familiar mislaid things Too addicted to the pain they cause,  too terrified of what may come in their absence.

Those of us inclined towards relationships often have the bad habit of hanging on even when we shouldn’t, when things are bad and we know we should leave. This is even more exacerbated with people like myself, who  come from abusive homes, and have a skewed sense of self-worth. I held on far longer than I should’ve. I knew two years prior to our break up that things weren’t right and that they weren’t going to be right. We were never on the same page and had different ideas about what our relationship should be. He wanted my unquestioning trust in his leadership and I have learned due to a very tumultuous upbringing that no one deserves my unquestioning faith. Trust is a foreign concept to me. Needless to say, we were stressing each other out. The stress triggered my arthritis to come out of remission, and my hea lth began to seriously decline, which caused my mental health to decline as well. However, none of that stopped me from being immensely and irrevocably in love with h

In the mornings, I caught the sunrise in your eyes. You were the morning star, my own aurora, my pharaoh, immortalized in my yearning for you, empowered by my idealization, all powerful in your nature, all consuming like the sun and I gave and flowed and poured into you, til there was no more of me.