You hear at both ends
of simultaneous conversations.
Your mind splits
cut by the the pounding of their voices.
The vibrations
slowly turn the key
to the lock of the beast.
The nails at the end of its fingers
scratch your throat from within
with a deafening screeching
as it presses its way up.
Raises pine needles
alert behind your neck
and that is how you know!
You growl,
try to hold it down.
But it jumps out!
Like vomit,
kicking you back,
claws drawn,
roaring thunder,
of fur naked.
Its scales
color the floor of holes
scatter light by the edges
drawing its slithering silhouette.
Before you straighten
from its rejoiced punt
your eyes see through its.
The eye-leads,
those rarely lock dark blood
surrounding a deep pit
from the sides.
In those instants
you try to pull it back in,
but it's been shaded too long,
it hungers for the sun
and it almost eats it whole
for he is a black hole.
The voices stop,
recoiled glares instead,
that it is immune to,
won't stop its rage.
My rage!
And its name.
For there is not a most terrible beast
than the one I cannot tame within.
Apprehensively extend unsteady fingers
confirm externalization of the beat I hear.
Heat waves tighten my lungs in hollow breaths
and quick sanded is the lock on my knees.
The moment approaches with inescapable aura
trapped on my own irrevocable stubbornness
my body ignored in the ambition to tame
this frightened drum that sounds the rhythm of life.
I focus on the increasingly distant instant
in which I look back at this nonsensical state
and laugh at my disproportionate frail disgrace.
Eyes travel to fruitful ground of conquest
that requires dominance over this, a test
which is the control of our spirits vehicle.
My eyes flooded rivers of pain
that just wouldn't settle in
that would not dry
that would just not end.
Cut by papers a million
words whispered the wind.
I broke, I fell
and scraped it all
more times than I recall.
My heart has burned to ash
while compressed lungs
brought acid to my mouth
just to phoenix to a mess.
I wish I could weep today,
I can feel the bottling
the raising of the level
the silent build up of strain
small things altogether.
I crack and burst easily,
waves rush from my chest
lava eruption of fears
as I roar wildness of despair.
I stutter and shy
I find myself lashing
cowardly at a child
at a tiny heart of mine.
How could I?
What is wrong with me?
My brain tries to decide,
but what if it does not?
What could even justify?
Wait do not... don't cry.
His eyes focus wide
in the deepest of mine.
He knows this sound too well
he recons I'd rather not yell.
But what is he learning?
From my lack of restrain?
How much damage
am I ultimately making
and where does it begin?
where will it end?
I wish to find the possession
the source of this pressure,
and rip it out this time.
My ego finds only excuses
they are too light to blame.
What should I?
or what can I do?
What does it mean?
To me and to you?
My heart torches inside,
with the agony of my sight
in his tiny shiny huge eyes...
I need help! I need it soon!
Like lungs filling with water...
like tides need the moon...
like all else shouldn't matter...
His heart needs me full.
I need to meet this demon,
reach it in the darkest pit
of my cold hidden structure
pull it by horns of its,
bring it to the lights
of this glued smoked
faint heart of mine,
to answer for its crimes.
But much as I try
all I could find
is empty echo in the black
no end to pull or grab.
Am I so broken assured
I cannot save child I owe
from these explosive spurts?
And to the dark I return!
Thinking the wrong answer in a test
could make me miss by a hair the grade
for courses that I valued to have the chance.
Ending up in a degree I could not embrace
with soulless teachers questioning again
on maters that intensely forgo my taste.
Culminating in a career bursting to emerge
in a economic drought without singularity to trust
for lack of interest in a forced paved path.
Thinking the wrong word would alienate
the eager boy that could have been a good date,
maybe even the perfect gene pool wrapped in grace.
Ending up with a conventional tolerant mate
that mind not or notice my awkward state
just enjoy the mild beauty of my face.
Culminating in a regular sensible marriage
and fair unimaginative children who behave
dulling my longing for spontaneity or adventure.
Thinking the wrong phrasing in my professional cv
would discourage a boss that is nurturing,
from picking me from a pile of prospect employee.
Ending up in the unflattering job that dismisses
all my elaborate efforts to somehow innovate,
for lack of color on my unimpressive experience.
Culminating in a reasonable regular office
in a routine that continuously dulls my brain
for being unappreciated and under payed.
Now, just about too late, I realize a truth:
One does never know when hunger,
war or flood are about to ruin
all those carefully analyzed solutions
based on such fragile predictions.
For chaotic is the random development
of the nondeterministic fate.
Delicate is the balance that made us
and saw us to our current state.
Any change in the number of kisses
and we would have been a sister,
a brother or solely another,
in other words not be at all.
By the mere flapping of a butterfly's wings
life would be too different to consider.
One can only therefore chose
the best that allows one's conscience
what little that can influence one's chance
should only allow a peaceful sleep
Ultimately a life of good decisions
can shape up to great mentions.
That is the workings of statistics which
promise nothing in particular
just a whole lot of generic hinting.
So breath, decide and adjust as best you can,
for flighty is our time and little we can mend.
This might come to a shock to many, but I am a woman.
I was fortunate enough to never feel like that meant much, though I never felt any different or question my gender. I just never believed that being a woman entailed more than being a person that holds the potential to eventually bare children.
Although nowadays I fear the concept of tomboy or tomgirl might offend many, due to the lack of a simpler way to express what I mean to say, allow me to use these terms as their definitions allow. Not going into the detail of who does the considering
or what typical means, for argument sake admit that there is an
underlying and statistically endorsed general consideration that, associated to ones
culture, attributes characteristics to define the "typical girl" and the "typical boy" and that tomboy is thus a girl that exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of a boy. Full disclosure: I was graced with a tomboy spirit and never felt the pressure to be any different, probably because my mother was already a great athletic tomboy and my father.. Well, he married my mother, so I guess of all the ladies he could have tried to pick he rushed to close the deal with the lady that made him warmer and cozier inside and that was a tomboy girl. My mother sisters and cousins were all female and all were clear tomboys. This means that in my family tomboy behavior was actually valued. Independently of our gender we all came out with a high athletic prowess, incredible sensitivity for words and arts in general and good abstraction and logical thinking. I always took my upbringing for granted, considering that I was born to a family in sufficient financial well-being that nothing ever missed on the table or school ground, but looking back I realize that I was blessed so much more than that. My great-aunt was a woman that studied while caring for her younger sisters because her mother was ill and ended up with a maths degree giving high-school classes, divorced from a cheating husband and absolutely selfsuficient. That is a woman that blew over 95 candles and still has a wit to shame me. Most of the women in my family ended up in science. My grandmother was never that good with maths, she was a stay-home woman that took care of the household until she embodied the emancipation. She studied after her children were razed with little opposition from her husband that missed the "real cooking" but knew better than to try and stop her. By the time she was able to retire she took a master in "woman condition"she wasn't a brilliant study, but she had a shy strength that sounded like "why not me too?". This way, since very young I learned that there was no underlying reason why being a woman meant more than that you had some reproductive organs that aren't always nice to handle. Nowadays I know mine was a very limited and fortunate view of life.
A phd, a baby and a husband later I can say that looking at statistics and reports I now understand that not all women got the chance to fulfill their true potential, many due to some cultural pressure even within my own culture, other due to unequal funding. It saddens me to know that little girls can't imagine themselves following courses that they get inspired by because they are told that they wouldn't be successful "because it is not a subject/job for a girl".
Worst than that, I fear that this is only perpetuated by the confused and mishandled media movement that assaults the concept of gender equality. There is no such thing as gender equality, by definition genders are different, that is why we came up with the genders, to mention the difference between humans in two kinds.
There should nevertheless be gender equity! I am all for it, but how do we get it? Assuming that what we need is to force science down little girls throats or that little boys should be forced to play with dolls is absurd and treating equally inherently different individuals equally will only result in more differentiation.
Studies show the impact of hormones on our career choices, career according to hormones. There is also no doubt that hormones control our brain functions: "Verbal memory scores are frequently used as one measure of higher level cognition. These scores vary in direct proportion to estrogen levels throughout the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause" -Estrogen wikipedia; "There are some differences between a male and female brain (possibly the
result of different testosterone levels), one of them being size: the
male human brain is, on average, larger. ... Attention, memory, and spatial ability are key cognitive functions affected by testosterone in humans." -Testosterone wikipedia. Now as all men like to point out, size is not always a good measure. And for a great investigative journalism on the subject watch: The gender equality pradox - documentary NRK - 2011
where you can easily get the idea that the social movement is guiding and creating biased on the undeniable truth, men and women are on average different.
Women can have their brains wired differently because biologically they were selected to perform different tasks, does that makes them dumber? Well, maybe? Now, before you rage out of this blog understand that language was developed in this patriarchy that has since been progressing into what we now know as modern society. Although we attacked the concept that only males can be clever, wasn't the measure of cleverness devised based in men abilities, by men and to measure men for men jobs? Couldn't it be that this new emotional coefficient helps complement the previous idea that cleverness was limited to the intelligence coefficient?
It all boils down to statistics, the numbers that don't lie, the data, the science, the undeniably reliable source of probing reality. Does anyone doubt that although you can define very accurately the average woman there probably isn't such a being? Statistics my friends was developed to use in bulk, to predict, and see traces in the many, but fails miserably to define or predict the singular. Are you sure that given any woman she will be more likely to be alike her sister than her brother? Can you not think of cases where that isn't true? Then fighting any statistics that prove men to be different from women, which is to be rationally expected since we are biologically different, is not only illogical but a perversion of science. Then why are we so concerned about the amount of women in science or engineering? -women scientific researchwomen in science
Shouldn't we rather be concerned about the fact that socially we have created a higher relevance to all men-prone jobs and discredit the importance of women-prone jobs. Why is the kindergarten teacher, that possibly has more influence in designing our future societies, less relevant in our culture than the engineer that helps design the landscape? Why are nurses considered less important, when they have such an impact on patient recovery, than the doctor, that might be replaced by an artificial intelligence with access to an inhuman size database (comment). Why did career women look down on stay home mothers or women that hanged their career for few years to attend closer to their children? Why do we make it sound like only maths and science is a smart subject, when psychologists that aren't extremely smart aren't only useless but harmful?
Maybe, this "woman's day", instead of praising the women that less look "like women" to you, praise the diversity that makes each woman and man unique. Instead of parsing equality that is imposed forcefully and unnaturally on society, praise equity that allows minorities to feel welcomed and secure where they are valuable for their diversity contribution. Praise mothers for being mothers and fathers for being fathers, teachers for teaching, nurses for nursing, lawyers for defending and accusing, doctors for researching and devoting, and society for learning to adapt to the human concept that has evolved so much since my great-aunt's time. Embrace a new era in which we no longer need to fight tradition for the sake of breaking momentum. Instead of steering boys and girls to behave accordingly because it is tradition, or to behave the same because it is the new fashion, one can nurture their curiosity to explore what they like and allow people to fall in love by professions that fit them best, whether that means equal statistics or not, whether that means being a minority and learning about your own uniqueness.
From a place of absolute freedom, because I know that I was free to be as pink as I'd like -I did have that phase- and I was free to dream of becoming a painter, then a dance, then a physicist and then an engineer and finally managed to follow through on the last two:
"I have a dream, that one day every person will feel free to explore and define his/hers own self and thus contribute more efficiently to society."
I am sure of only one thing, that everyone experiences feelings and in particular pain for different reasons in their own peculiar ways. I won't try to pretend to know what happens inside others bodies or what crosses their minds. I can only explore my own pain and hope that understanding it will shed light to people feeling it themselves or to those closest to them.
I want to start by making it very clear that I love my life, I have been too lucky too often and would not switch with anyone else's and yet I considered only too often to part from it.
In my understanding there are two types of people, those that are consistent that they exist and therefore deserve a shot at being happy and those that are constantly wondering if they deserve all they have been given be that what may. I would never correlate this distinction to their altruistic or good nature nor their common sense.
The first won't often wonder whether they should be alive. They don't understand that need, they are alive and nothing you can say could make such a question less nonsensical. They expect that life is to be cherished and lived to the fullest of their abilities. Their most common question seems to be what can I do to improve life, mine and that of those around me. Their understanding of the question "should I be alive?" is reserved for extreme cases of pain, when life has nothing to offer and nothing to live for.
The latter, as you may well expect by now, will constantly consider "should I be alive?" in other words whether they are consuming resources that would be better spent on someone else. This is a strange concept I know, for the first type of people, but the question sums up to whether another would have taken better choices and be a better son/daughter or husband/wife or father/son. Mostly the question ends up in "would the world be a better place without me in it"?
I started wondering if my family would be better of without me when I was 5, first time I decided to run away from home. I don't remember it well. I do remember very well though by the age of 10 when I decided again to leave home. At that time I didn't have much common sense, if I ever got any, I just ran. I was enraged, I was panting and frustrated and I couldn't even understand what was coming over me. I was violent and afraid, my thoughts were all over the place and I couldn't seem to calm down. The view helped. I had this place close to the drive way, a large open field that I used to use to run with my dog every morning. My dog had died and I hadn't been there for what felt like to long. I guess it made sense that my feet took me there although I couldn't remember deciding it or anything else that leaving for that matter. It was cold, but not too much and it wasn't raining nor was the floor wet, there were no large piles of leaves from the trees that spread erratically through the field, which means that it was probably spring time. I had had a major fight with my mother who I loved, and I felt awful. I found a place close to the moving cars that was shielded by a large enough bush that I could sit behind. The sound of the cars helped. The coverage of the bush too. I couldn't cry, until I could and then I cried like I had just murdered someone. I revisited what happened, which was so meaningful I couldn't tell you today, 20 years later. I know I didn't fell like I had to change, or improve, I felt like it was something about who I was and how I was incapable of hurting someone even as close as my mother or sister, even with as much love as I had for them. I felt selfish so it all probably started with me not willing to borrow something to my sister, my father stepping in to force the good sisterhood in me and me reacting in plain fury. Time passed and I ran through my problem, I broke it down to myself. Then I focused on options, but I could find none. I was not autonomous and had no money, there was no place I could get a job at that age, and I was not prepared to go hungry and die. I considered crossing the street, and getting hit by a car, they were passing so fast, so close, and they wouldn't have time to see me since it was night and I was just jumping from behind a bush that covered me well. I thought that I could kill someone, and that is no way to end my life. I would at least break some innocent person's car and leave them thinking they were responsible for my decease which was unfair. I considered going to my grandparents house, they would love to heroically take me in and save me from my parents, but my parents weren't bad parents and they didn't deserve that sort of pain. The whole idea was to spear them more hurt and they had enough bad blood with my grandparents without me pulling this one on them. So I went back home. My mother pretended not to be too worried or mad, and just tried to calmly say that it was not alright for me to run off like that and I too pretended it was no big deal. That is the first time I remember thinking of shutting my eyes completely for good. Since then, many times over I considered it. Not because my life was unbearable but because my pain was. Over the years I came to recognize this anxiety that takes over you and the despair afterwards, the feeling worthless and a guilt thereafter. I don't control my temper too often and many times my feelings of guilt are related. Sometimes I notice that the immense pain comes first it takes a hold of my heart and doesn't seem to let go. My patience is then reduced and I am bound to pick up a fight and feel worthless again and feel this all too familiar feeling that it could all end, the pain, the strain of trying to be better at every turn, the despair of not being a better person, the guilt of hurting those I love. Last time I felt it I cryied myself to sleep next to my beloved husband and I had no reason what so ever, not a real one. I could feel my brain searching for a reason to make sense of it, something to fill guilty for, something to explain this angst. I had years before noticed that all these episodes do happen within a certain cycle of the month and that I was brought down to this abyss of internal pain by biology. Not the hormones alone. The same way it is not reasonable to question the sanity of a woman that screams for something she asked you thousands of times not to do, just because she has her period. Biology just gets you in a lower starting point, on a higher nerve frenzy and closer to pop. I know the pain can feel so real that even having noticed the biology contribution and rationally sensing my brain fighting to make sense I went through my options. Pills, jumping, scenarios... having many options and none immediate helped. Mostly I felt like anyone else could become a better wife, and that my family would be better of without the disappointment and heart break I bring. I can honestly say I felt this, and I can honestly say that rationally there is no reason for me to be such a logical disappointment to anyone. Some people just have this internal dialog on pause in their head, it is destructive, it is impulsive and it sneaks up on you at any time you go a bit lower. These latter people gain a lot having someone or something depending on them, they want to be part of something bigger that relies on them and justify the oxygen they steal from unborn innocent futures full of potential. I haven't had such a feeling since my son was born, and I am certain it is because he needs me so that it can't cross my mind not being here for him. I wonder what I'll have when he reaches 21 and my husband is naturally exhausted of loving me to his fullest and with all my crazy.
I am sorry if I scared anyone reading, and hope this story helps someone needing answers that the self can't sometimes find. I felt many times that it is usually because it is intrinsic to us, our way of thinking and our biology that we can't make sense of it. It is so incrusted in who we are that we can't probe and have a hard time externalize. I believe also that trying to externalize this phantom pain and hollowness that leads some people to hurt themselves.
I wonder what makes me boil so quickly,
I want to believe it is love hence vulnerability,
I would like to think the screams are on you
that admit to poke for a stronger reaction.
I am not sure though if you are right,
that it is way too easy for me to complain,
that I get way too upset way too fast,
that the triggers are multiple and irrelevant.
Maybe I do burn inside with uncontrollable rage,
and you are the closest on my face
or the one trying to get under my skin.
Regardless, wish I could be the bigger man,
that I could listen to sharp knifes and keep my calm,
that I could hold my ground when it is so far gone.
My heart cries!
I wish I could do the same but life just goes in such a pace it is hard to breath. I know that if I could just start my heart would feel lighter and no longer drown in its own tears.
My heart cries and for as many good things I leave as many good times I had I can't blame it, for these are weary tears for the love I hold dear.
My heart cries!
It sobs at the thought of having hurt you, at having hurt us, at having driven yet another nail to our tears.
My heart cries and will for many years for it doesn't want to let go of what it holds most dear, your love and our life together.
My heart cries!
... silent unseen tears.
It cries for help, it cries for forgiveness, it cries for the hope that we find a way to fix this distance.
My heart cries, yours does too and in the middle of all this a tinnier one fears.
My heart cries with wishes and urgency, for a way to fix before the hole is too deep, before the structure is damaged, before the language is so different our attempts will be lost in its length.
My heart cries!
Because it cares too much to let life stumble on in my hands fast as they go to catch up with the moving sands.
My heart cries because it misses beating at yours speed and feeling it close to mine.
My heart cries because we had something so precious and something as mundane as life is tearing it apart to make up for the constant run to the shop, to work, to the laundry basket, to the dishes, to breath... But what good is air without a heart beat? And hence the crie of my heart, your heart, the one I gave for you to have and you've been parting slowly since.
My heart cries! And yours too!
And in that they find the sync nothing else seems to get and while there are tears shared deeper than our eyes we can fix us and it is not too deep, too broad, too torn, too broken. While mine and your heart long for each other in silence we can mend the spoken words and speak the missing ones and bring forth the healing tears.
It sounds nonsensical that you should surround yourself by the spirit you harbor inside.
It looks unreasonable to shield from the forces that could carry you back from your depths.
It sickens as ironically moronic to search for perpetuating circumscribing circumstances.
It is absolutely irrational that you dig a deeper hole when you find darkness crawling at you.
And yet, after all and thereafter, here we are, drowning willingly in our own misery,
gorging ourselves in our own ecstasy, finding our paint for life's editing.
All because we are and want to keep being who we chose to become.
When the moment calls for it, you honor it, by clinging to the feeling you should fill.
So you seek for rain or you seek for sun shine,
you seek to fill the day with pain or pride,
removing the plain paint of life.
You find the power to live life to the fullest,
by deepening into your primary sensation,
thus vulnerable to the spiral of emotions.
Some days you can't feel fun.
No matter how funny something is, no matter how much you can remember that is was, you can't feel fun.
These days you are numb to mostly anything, wandering around the house like a zombie attacking the fridge for nibbles and floating to life wishing to wish to feel.
You can't even lie to yourself long enough to pretend you wanted to feel, you can't even start searching for why you don't. What you are blocking outside your skin.
Some days you can feel the building of pain across your chest, crushing it out of air... and you know that if you could only let a tear drop.
If only you could feel the tiniest connection to this world, the pull of its gravity to uncertain fall, the iciness of the wind's breath, the burning heat of the beaming sun, the cut of your feet soles walking heavily through the shattered glass of your existence.
If only you could release some of this rage, of this suffering, of this transparency, of this unexistency. of this meaningless thought... you could just breathe.
And like awaken from a drowning experience your lungs would spit the sharp cold water out cutting their way through your throat and frizzing air would rage in descending with fierce and brutality to the core of your being and you could be ripped from undeath with such violence you wouldn't stop leaking until the last drop of water in you had converted to blood or tear.
But it isn't easy to find this razor of souls, it isn't easy to want to feel, not when you know that so much devastation awaits on the other side of this thick glass.
And then a bird lifts off, you watch its wings beating gently in the breeze, not knowing what let your guard down or whether you wanted this little ray of sunshine to pierce but it is done. You are shattered into a million pieces and the healing begins. It will hurt so much more before it gets better, but you can feel and that shows you are alive and therefore capable of finding again that brief ray of sunshine, that slick moment of pure beauty that creeps at the corner of your eye all the time.
I have been fighting for the words to say, anything that could push you the right way.
And I am disappointed to say I didn't get that far anyway.
Here goes:
This sucks! - This isn't fair, nor reasonable and you have the right to hate everything!... now.
Life's a devious bitch! - When you get a little air to breath it punches you right in the nuts and knocks you down!
Love hurts! - Love is as hurtful as leaving is deadly! We weren't build to be treated this way, our fragile existence is torn to pieces with the wimps of this treacherous adventure!
Please, please... don't forget how much yesterday felt worth it all. Sit on your fingers for a while, gorge on chocolates and as many endulgements you can get your hands on... but remember life will still be here waiting for you. You have many people on your corner, I know you can count on me, when you decide to fight back. Remember, for every present there was a past and there will be a future, and the laws of physics dictate that better days will come.
This night I dreamed of the best way to go!
It was not a depressive thought, or a cry for help.
Dreams are often a simulation of a hard situation,
when they aren't senseless fragments of memory processing,
to prepare your reasoning for "in case", or yet another case.
I dreamed I was homicidal and that I realized it.
In realizing it I dreamed I should end it.
You know, to save those closest to me!
Amazing that in a reality you control
when you're given a horrible conundrum
you can still twisted making yourself the hero.
So I found that the most important is
the audience and hence the stage.
You don't want to be found by your loved ones.
You want them to be told and prepared.
You don't want to be seen by children.
You don't want it to make a mess.
You could jump of a bridge,
a classic if somewhat dramatic option.
But when and how would they get closure?
I have no exuberant expectations of leaving hearts broken,
but I have some trust in the addictiness of human heart in pain,
why else would I dream of ending?
I don't expect nothing else from those few loved ones.
Those I find everyday when I wake and when I go to sleep,
and those I remember fondly then and again.
So I am left with one dirty but simple solution,
poisoning myself in the bathroom of a hospital.
How anticlimactic, indeed!
But raw, and effective and clean and painless.
I apologize to medical staff that endure the worst
for the best of our society,
but they would endure it eventually,
might as well save them the trip
and with it save the others the pain.
Just don't forget to leave behind an apology:
You nameless angels of the hurt
will silently save the world from its own.
I'll ask you for one more.
To who I love the most, I did it for you.
