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It’s been 207 days since my mama died and all of the parts of me that died with her are somewhere buried in an abyss under a lifetime of regrets and 207 days of mourning. I’ll wake up tomorrow in a room full of things that remind me of her, things I put there but can’t make eye contact with. It will hurt, because it always does. I’ll smile when I think I should, because I always do. I’ll make the right noises in the right parts of conversations like I’ve rehearsed and practiced and I’ll put one foot in front of the other and I’ll crack the jokes and roll with the sarcasm and say thank you and I might even mean it but if you look into my eyes, you’ll know.

There’s a book on my shelf called ‘I’m glad my mother died’ that I bought when things were the way that they used to be, a little over a year before that phone call, a little over two years before she died and at a time when something like this happening to us seemed beyond any realm of belief. I thought I’d find resonance in the words and like some crazy premonition I never got round to reading it. Now that book mingles in with the rest of the things I can’t make eye contact with, all of the happy memories from the cancer haze and a reminder that I don’t know who the fuck I was then and I don’t know who the fuck I am now.

Once upon a time, I was a little girl who had never heard ‘I love you’ and then I was a teenager crying out for help and then I was an adult so lost and lonely it should be a crime. I cried and fought and battled and sat on leather couches spilling secrets until I grew, grew, grew and forgave and tried to forget. Who knew that it would be the cliche of death that would ruin it all. Out of 27 years, I got 17 months with the mum that I wanted, deserved, needed. I could fall to my knees and weep with gratitude for the holes that were healed in that time. I learned that time is short but you can make so much of it, if you really try. I learned that we all have wounds and we all have scars, there’s no shame in that. I learned that we all have light and dark within us, we all deserve love anyway. And maybe I’ll be the child that wasn’t loved enough forever, I’ll always be the teenager who hurt herself to ask for help, I might always be lost and lonely. But for 17 months I was a daughter and a friend and a confidante and a carer and a personal shopper and a hugger and a hand holder and my mum, my beautiful and strong and brave mum, she gave those things to me. She lived with her demons and she shared them with me and it was and is complicated, it will always be complicated. This will hurt forever. But my mama gave me happiness and sadness and hurt and anger and love and hope and dreams and she gave me life… I’ve spent 207 days trying to find the will to live it. Tomorrow it will be 208 and I’ll look up at the stars and thank all of them for you.

Mama. I miss you, I love you, I need you, I am never moving on. I think of you all the time. 💙

#Mother’s Day #quotes

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Saeed Jones, How We Fight For Our Lives

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Today the exhaustion felt like it had seeped into my bones and even to have my eyes open was fighting the greatest war. I did the things I had to do and inbetween I lay in bed and prayed for sleep to take me under, just for a little while.

I wonder if the exhaustion is linked to the sadness. That wasn’t in the self help books or on the Google results when I researched what to expect when your mum is dying. I read all about the changes in breathing, the change in skin tone, changes in eating and drinking and sleeping habits. Change, change, change. I close my eyes and wish it would all stay the same. Even in this moment where she’s the worst she’s ever been and I feel like I’m made up of 50% worry and 50% grief, she’s here.

I’ve poured my heart out on these very notes pages more times than I can count… screamed about my hurt from the rooftops. I cried about everything and now none of it seems worth it. In all that time, I never once doubted my strength or ability to carry mountains on my back. I thought that’s what I was doing. But this has taken me down, day by day, minute by minute. I feel this physically slice through my heart 700 times a day and my legs go so weak that I have to sit down and I never know which will be the time I don’t make it back up again.

I just downloaded The Carpenters because she listened to it when I was growing up and I know even now that it will take me years to press play. But if life is all about those little threads and invisible strings then mum, I want spider strength to tie me to you forever and ever and ever. I want to see your face in real life, I want your smiles and your sarcasm and your sharp tongue to be the reality instead of the waking up in the middle of the night with your sadness haunting my dreams. I want it all to be over so badly that I’ll never stop feeling guilty for wishing time to move faster when you have so little of it left. And if we had a thousand or a million seconds to go, I know it would never be enough.

How am I supposed to ever fall in love or buy a house or get married or have a child without you being a part of it. Who do I call when I can’t call ‘mama’ from my phone. How am I supposed to go on living when you’re not here? Up to now, it’s been 18 months of grieving for someone who still takes breaths. Not once in those 18 months have I felt true joy or happiness, not once have I laughed without thinking of all the jokes you’re going to miss. And mum, I am so, so scared. I’m so terrified that I feel sick so often, I cry when I’m on my own for more than 5 minutes, I never put my phone down when I can help it. TV lost its interest a long time ago, songs that I loved became reminders of the biggest loss I’ll ever know. I’m scared because I know what’s coming and I know that I’ll never be ready. All of this I guess is just to say, that if this pain is the price for getting to love you extra these past 18 months, if this pain is punishment for all those years of conflict, if I have no choice other than to sit here and take it then I want you to know that I’d hurt and bleed and cry for you a billion times over. If there was any way on this earth that I could help you to stay then I’d have already found it. And I love you, I love you, I love you. You are a part of me forever ❤️

#mum #brain tumour #stage4 #endoflife

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“I’m not too gone to be healed, am I? / I’m not too gone am I?”

— Alice Notley, from In the Pines

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Of course I know that maturity doesn’t come in closing myself off. I know that not really caring anymore doesn’t actually make me strong. But my heart is wrapped in barbed wire so carefully crafted from all those years of teaching myself how to no longer feel the pain and even if you wanted to, even if anybody ever wanted to, my spikes and knives wouldn’t let you cut it down. My poison ivy winds itself around my neck and it’s choking me, makes me splutter through laughter and tears… how did I get here? I ask myself. I sat through hours and days and years of therapy - I put in the work! I showed up and I did the homework and I talked until my throat was sore. Still, I am alone.

Aidan says to me ‘maybe I don’t mind being in cramped spaces so much because at least it means there’s no monsters’ and my tongue is bleeding from biting it so hard because I said ‘baby, monsters aren’t real’ when I really wanted to say that the scariest monsters of all are the ones inside us, inside our heads. That there’s no running from those ones, no escape. I was driving home and there was a hedgehog in the road and I swerved my tyres so that I didn’t hit it. My headlights showed it curled in a ball and I thought about the terror it must be feeling and it hit me like a freight train that the emotion I haven’t been able to label for days and weeks and months is fear. I’m completely truly utterly terrified of the hurt that’s about to barrel my way. I flinch when the phone rings cos there’s 20 bad things that it could be on any given day. My mum is dying, any song or quote or tv line or sentence that reminds me of this feels like an electric shock. I’ve lost friendships and relationships and my family is so broken and they all need my help and I’m always working and never good enough and I’m pulling from an almost dried up well.

I guess after all of it. My question is. How do I know when I’m healing? When it feels like my chest is ripping open and someone is squeezing hard enough to make me cry… is it then? Or is it in the quiet moments when I feel peace at the centre of my soul?

Spring is on its way. Spring means yellow flowers and baby animals and chocolate and lighter evenings and brighter sunshine. Spring represents new beginnings but I’ll stay the same. I’ll sit and I’ll watch and I’ll wish that in another life I’ll be another person who’s broken pieces didn’t turn into shards of glass and who can be soft and gentle and sure and brave. I’m so tired of trying to be brave. For now, I go to work in the dark and I come home in the dark. I resent the light because I want to hold it in my teeth or breathe it in and I want to become it but exhaustion fills my bones and instead I curl up like the little hedgehog and I lean into the fear because it’s more comfortable where it’s familiar and the darkness is all I know.

#quotes #depression #love #recovery #friends #friendship #sad #mental health #therapy #cancer

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e.e. cummings, from “in time of daffodils(who know” (in 95 Poems), Complete Poems: 1904-1962

[Text ID: “In time of daffodils(who know the goal of living is to grow)”]

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Carissa Potter Carlson  

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"the curtains weren't blue on purpose. why should we care?"

my love! let me ask you this - did you eat breakfast today? this tiny moment in your life. just think about it. did you?

for some of you, the answer is yes and for some of you it is technically and for some of you it is does coffee count. some of you reached for cereal or gmo-free overnight oats or frozen waffles or 3-day-old pizza. sometimes we eat the same thing, every day, for weeks. i get tired of eggs randomly, only to go back to craving them desperately. i'm cuban; i take my coffee like my father showed me, very milky and sweet.

some of us ate in a hurry. some of us hate eating breakfast but if we don't we will get nauseous later. some of us took our meds first or took our meds after. some of us have a kitchen 5 feet wide and sometimes it's the biggest room in the house. some of us are confident there will be food in the pantry and some of us flinch and say well, the paycheck is coming. some of us turn on a podcast while we eat or we scroll our phones or write in our diaries.

some of us are choosing, specifically, not to eat breakfast. some of us are too busy. some of us are pretending we "just forgot," but we are ignoring the warning signs that everything feels too-heavy. some of us are so consumed with anxiety or grief that we can't eat. some of us can't stand up long enough to make our coffee. some of us have no table to sit down and eat.

i cannot tell you what an artist "meant" by their choices. but they did have to make a choice, conscious or otherwise, to give you information. to give you a little bit more light. each of these choices are little stars of data; connecting speckles for you to weave through, drawing a line.

you cannot use a mirror in a dark room. for some of us; we will not care that the curtains are blue, because that will just be a data point and not enough light to see by. for some of us, the blue curtains will be the same as our childhood bedroom. it will make us seasick. for some of us, blue will be the color of frostbite. it might look like a pixel up close; but from a distance, oh! the picture blooms.

i cannot tell you what will stick out for you. what will carry meaning. some of you will read the sentence "i didn't have breakfast today" and say "this means nothing." some of you will read that and say "oh, me neither." some of you will say "this means the character is probably a little grouchy." some of you will say "oh, i wonder if they're okay. why didn't they eat anything?" ... art is a mirror. i am holding hands with you, over space and time, and asking you to feel something with me.

i want you to read my work and find a blue pair of curtains. i want you to read my work and find things in it that i never imagined placing. i have no way of knowing what will resonate with you, that's true. and maybe i just was hungry while i wrote this, and thinking about the eggs in my fridge. but if you found meaning, that meaning is yours. it cannot be erased just because i didn't "intend" it. you created a different world by interpreting my work. it's collaborative! that's beautiful! that's stunning!

just! imagine looking at the night sky and saying - it's stupid to have a favorite constellation or a favorite star. they're just there.

because here's the thing - across centuries and cultures, we look up. we still find meaning in the stars. these beautiful, lovely scattered accidents. are you looking? they call. and we look back and say oh! of course we are!

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sometimes i think that the worst part might be that what you did permanently changed me. the rest of my life is shaped by what you did to me. there is an after you, bleak and bleeding.

and i have to carry it around. i have to take care of it. i have to step around all the broken glass of it. sometimes i think i have finally outrun it; only to find it dripping from my sink. panic attacks in grocery stores - the acrid taste of you suddenly overwhelming. i cannot touch with clean hands; i'm too covered in this silken slime you left on me.

sometimes, though. sometimes i think the worst part is actually that despite all evidence to the contrary - how i scrambled for your approval, took ever-smaller pieces. despite the red flags and the warning signs and the days i spent angrily saying i deserve to get what i need. despite all of it.

i loved you anyway. and knowing that. absolutely broke me.

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Give me back my girlhood it was mine first ❤️

#midnights #taylorswift

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I used to think that maybe we all get the things we deserve eventually and that maybe the pain all leads you to the greater good. That maybe people will see your goodness. That maybe one day it all makes sense.

I don’t know how to be in this body anymore because I feel too lonely and too sad and too broken to ever be part of something bigger. I wake up and I’m heartbroken, I go to sleep and I’m heartbroken. I can’t say it was all for nothing because it’s a disservice to all that I felt and the tears I cried and the bruises and the years I missed and the smiles I never saw the laughs I never heard the tears I never dried. I don’t know what to tell you cos whether the scar was accidental or self inflicted or visible or hidden it still stings just the same.

My mums dying and with it she takes the hope I could never quite reach and the dreams I never wrote down. She takes the love I’ve been fighting for since I was 5 years old and I saw regret in her eyes when I looked too deeply. I never fit, and now she’s dying and I didn’t have time to learn how to shrink for her.

I don’t know what I am. Can I call myself a writer if I forgot how to write? Can I call myself a daughter if I don’t always pick up the phone? Can I call myself a friend if I have excuses on my tongue?

All the words I want to say never make it to the atmosphere and some things are second nature, aren’t they? Switching from 4th to 5th, the water goes before the milk, it’s left then right then cross, it’s double knots and scratching the itch and toothpaste before bed. Sometimes life is fresh pyjamas and clean sheets, sometimes it’s power cuts and traffic jams and broken promises. What I mean is, I know it’s bad and it’s good. I know it’s up and down and rainbows and rain. I know that. But I haven’t cried in months, I haven’t really done much of anything lately. Sometimes I don’t press the brakes until the last second when I’m driving. Sometimes I stay awake so late that I know it will hurt when the morning comes. Sometimes I buy flowers just to watch them die. What becomes of pain? That’s what I’m asking. How do I take all of this pain and put it in a box and wrap it with a bow and leave it where I can find it when I’m ready? How do I grieve the life I’ll never live? How do I find who I am in the midst of losing all I’ve ever known?

#hadn’twritteninsolong #mental health #words #poetry #writer #writing #taylorswift #taggingcosshegetsmethrough #quotes #parents #cancer

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Reginald Dwayne Betts “BALLAD OF THE GROUNDHOG”

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“and nothing was burning, nothing but I,”

— Denise Levertov, Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967

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I watched life and wanted to be a part of it but found it painfully difficult.

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 6: 1955-1966 (via wordscanbeenough)

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taylor said fuck around and find out

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Never forget how they gave you distance when you needed love