Building’s Edge

I have jumped off the building to fly

Yet I am falling

Wrench me free as I drown

Pummeled beneath the waves of these downdrafts

Stalling

The inevitability of a paved grave;

Dawning

Who is out here in this busy expanse of nothing

to save the unintentional dive-drown victim?

It is only once we no longer have the net beneath that we recognize

the weight, our manacled feet; the poison festering in our minds.

When you jumped did you consider the downside?

Surely if you did not sail you could not survive

And what if I released this weight — mislabeled pragmatism,

brittle expectations of achievement — freed myself from comparison?

Would the vessel remain, substantiated enough to float?

Or would the remains be paper thin, spiraling in a whirlpool towards an underground moat.

Fairer waves to the same grave

Fear waxing in its dark cave. Stuffed full with dreams saved — paused

Avoiding oblivion

How do we make it back on to the ledge?

Is that to be a boundary or the world’s end?

There should be life beyond the dead

Drop

Perhaps we find it once the weight is no longer fed.

“How is one saved?” This chorus pounding in my head.

A chant taken up by the brave –

Who can ever be saved

from one’s self?

“Save me” (x3)

Fetch yourself from the well.

“Save me” (x2)

— Self to Self.

Inspiration Prose et Poesie

Atlas

Sometimes self hate looks like trivializing your own trauma; comparing your handle on pain to others’ handles, with your superficial understanding of their metaphysical navigation.

Sometimes self love looks like you beginning to understand that you are strong beyond measure because the things you go through are heavy for you. So heavy, in fact, that you are weighed down. And that weight you feel is in your mind but also outside of it because it textures the fabric of your life. Yet, this weight is sometimes lifted. You are able to move around under it. Yes, it forms the clouds above you and that is it’s own grey issue. But the weight is sometimes lifted, and you are the one lifting it.

So the next time you doubt your own suffering, the next time you feel like you should not be weighed down by the triviality you have decided is your life, understand that you are brave beyond measure, strong beyond will, and that part of the measure of a good life is our willingness to continue shouldering  our barely manageable burdens long enough to receive our light.

Inspiration Prose et Poesie

Strength

Hi you. Yes, you.

You’ve been telling yourself that you aren’t strong. A direct contradiction to the face you put out every morning; the one others filled with their own expectations and emotions judge you by. And that contradiction is killing you. Slowly.

You’re strong! You’re strong. Not every time, now. Not every hour of every day, and certainly not every day of every week.

It’s okay that you struggle with yourself and your mind, and the anxieties of work, which you can’t stop conflating with the anxieties of life. It’s okay when you feel like the people in your life with whom you can be vulnerable for their strength, no longer have their own secure foundation and so cannot carry you. It’s okay to want to take a break from them then, as you learn. It’s okay, too, to forgive them for being human, even as you forgive yourself for being the same. But then, remember, you are strong. You’ve just gotta pick yourself up.

 

Inspiration Journaling