Perpetual Chaos

Photo Credit: Harry Cunningham on Unsplash Extracting the physical presence of your hurt is almost done. I say the presence of your hurt and not just your presence because all you have ever brought is pain in the end. You were supposed to be a parent, and the relationship that grew on that space has been twisted and painfully grotesque. Like a diseased tree that infects everything around it; your influence has cost me dearly over the years- in friends, extended family, romantic relationships, and especially my own mental health. So it is beyond time; to yell timber and walk away. I feel a strange mix of joy in all this grief. Because even though this means cutting off the possibility of there ever being good parts, it also means I am done. You won't have the same leverage to hurt me and wreak havoc on my world. Soon, there will be no new stuff to process, I will just be working with the residual effect of your poison, without being forced to drink more. That to me feels like a stra...

Photo Credit: Matthias Neufeld from Unsplash   You're gone now, not that you were ever there to begin with. But with the hole comes the affirmation that the pieces never really fit, like that Daniel Sloss comedy special that breaks people up. But instead of my romantic pieces being the problem, it is the family corner. The pieces never fit, one of my corners has always been kind of fucked. That hole has always been there, because you never fit, it's just when removing the pieces that have been jammed in place, actively hurting the progress, do I realize. Now I finally mourn, because I can see other people's puzzles and how mine will never look close to that. You warped me and hurt me throughout my childhood, in a way that I can never fill and can never forgive. Even if I heal, and I will, the scars of your handiwork remains in my puzzle. Instead of being a normal child, I became a highly anxious one, trained from years of walking on your eggshells, discarding myself so that...

Photo Credit: Ahmad Odeh from Unsplash I have a lot of left over feelings from years ago, insecurities, sadness, anger, and feelings of loneliness that culminate in an inner child that sits in the back of my mind. Sometimes the sadness culminates in quiet tears when something gets too close to an old wound, as my inner child hides in a corner of my mind. Sometimes the insecurities bubble up when I come across something that is hard for me to handle, especially if it is something conventionally easy, like making a phone call, talking to strangers for the sake of errands, or dealing with an insect that has wandered into the house. Inside I start feeling shaky and it's as if I am younger than the rest of the world again, struggling to do things others do without consideration. I know this aspect can instigate frustration in those around me, as I put off ordering take-out for an otherwise fun night (when it isn't online that is), angst for hours about calling to set appointments fo...

  So, I work/study in the science field, which is awesome, and a good portion of my day I know what I am doing and feel amazing at finally getting to contribute in a field I love. Photo Credit: National Cancer Institute through Unsplash However, there are 5-10 minutes every morning, where I wake up and it hits me that someone was fooled enough by my impression of a real adult to give me that chance. I have to go through the steps of reminding myself that I am an adult, that I worked for where I am, and even then it takes a while for the feeling to fade. This feeling is often described as "imposter syndrome" and is very common, but what I find myself wondering is if everyone feels this way occasionally. I almost find the idea comforting, that Albert Einstein, or Marie Curie may have felt this way; people hailed so highly as major historical influences that sometimes we forget they may have had their own fears, doubts, and feelings of inadequacy. It calms my inner child, to kee...

Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema from Unsplash The other day I was talking to my very close friend, let's call her Calico, about a bunch of old memories and feelings from my childhood. It felt so good just to get it out of my brain and into a space where she could help me discern if they were normal or not. At one point I looked up from my firehose of emotions and she hit me with a very honest sentence, "I don't know how to respond. I don't know how to help." She felt powerless when, in fact, the sheer act of listening to me and reaffirming that it isn't ok to be treated so poorly was the best help I had received in years. To feel heard and not to feel discounted. I think that's a subtle but life changing point that people can easily miss the importance of. I grew up receiving a weekly dose of emotional abuse, and I am in the process of taking the tangled memories and thoughts back out of my head and trying to make sense of it with grown eyes, instead of the ey...

  “Books are like flypaper, memories cling to the printed pages better than anything else.”   -Cornelia Funke, Inkheart Photo Credit: Patrick Tomasso from Unsplash This is a quote from one of my favorite books, I disappeared into it frequently as refuge from my own head. However, lately I have been thinking how the same really applies to the brain. It is also flypaper and both the best and worst memories cling there. The best in the form of scent bound memories, fuzzy thoughts, and sunlight filled dreams. The worst, however, is much more insidious. I can't count the number of times a song, innocent phrase, or behavior has left me trapped inside an old memory. The worst for me is whistling, it's so innocuous and travels easily through spaces. But instead of facing the anxiety of explaining my maze of memories every time I request that someone stop, I often find myself gritting my teeth and hiding in bathrooms to shake and hold myself together as I get trapped in my own memory f...

Photo Credit: Daniele Levis Pelusi from Unsplash Welcome, I created this blog as an exercise of sorts. I may seem normal to the casual observer. However, there is a mire of tangled thoughts, quirks, and memories along with an ever-present fog of anxiety that is often invisible on the surface. I have been long ignoring most of what's below the surface, but I am now going to try to start untangling. You are welcome to read along, and if any of it is helpful or makes you feel less alone in your journey, then it was all worth it.