I’ve been treating myself like there is something very wrong with me, particularly my emotions. Every emotion I get (most often, my “negative” ones), I’ve been monitoring and trying to control, when all I simply needed to do was to allow for their expression and not do anything. For a long, long time I’ve considered myself to be someone ill and in need of healing; what a difference a label makes. To be “ill”, in essence requires that someone “do” something to fix themselves as a “problem”. The very nature of thinking yourself “ill” promotes action and effort. I’m glad I don’t go to a dr, can you imagine how many other disorders and syndromes I would have to “fight” and contend with.

A lot of the time when someone gets traumatised, or undergoes some sort of negative event, they always look to the happy part of themselves as the “real” them, or at least the part of them deemed to be acceptable enough to be “real”. They lament losing the “real” them. But who are people really? Are they only who they are when they’re happy? Does the extent of one’s being only pertain to their happiness? What if a part of me is in despair, what if a part of me is in intense fear and anxiety — aren’t these parts of me also real and equally valid as happiness? Particularly if they’re perfectly natural reactions to intense suffering and pain. These parts of me scream for catharsis after having been invalidated for a long time and instead of allowing them, I've condemned myself as being ill for feeling them. This is why society is in part sick; repression is healthy and expression is deemed ill. We drug away “negative” emotions for fear we are somehow damaged for harbouring them.

From now on, I am no longer “ill” — what a difference such a perception makes in how you treat yourself. Whatever you do is acceptable, whatever you do is allowed and expression is an inevitability. My intense sadness is not a problem, my intense pain is not a problem, my intense fear is not a problem — do you know how freeing such an attitude towards self is?

Let it caress your bracing self,

Shrinking stones, held in recoil.

Let it travel up your slouching spine,

Tell all resistance it’s safe from harm.

Let it mend your perpetually clenched heart,

Open and expand, finally united with warmth.

Let it fill you with sight,

Sense the stirring of sadness and fright.

Let it all, let it go,

Feel in all entirety, safe from harm.

Let it go, let it all,

Unwept tears, contracted cries.

Let them in, let them all,

Your past and present,

Ups and declines.

Let it all, let it in,

Pleasure of life, the sense of the sane.

Inhale, exhale...

Self-uncontracted, existence begins.

it will always fascinate and horrify me
how the people responsible for bringing you into this world
are the ones who make you rapidly sift through the file cabinet in your mind labeled "suicide attempts you haven't tried yet" in order to exit it

young girl,
you will scream at the top of your lungs
and they will call your cries crazy and your eyes will swell

young lady,
you will run down the streets of a city that will consume you
and you will pray it gets to you before they do

and you will age and you will return
maybe for a visit, maybe for a funeral, maybe for an answer
and you will be quieter, softer, and a little less angry

you might not understand why they pinned you in a corner
or locked you in the garage
or tried to quite literally **** you

you might not understand why they bought you plane tickets
and cars and shiny new things
you might be haunted by long car rides, equally terrible in silence or otherwise

"you know we love you"
"i know"

say it back
say it back, you ungrateful *****
you want to complain about how oppressed you are but they gave you everything, didn't they
everything money could buy, right

what else mattered?

**** your spiritual sanity and intangible desires
what kind of hippie nonsense are you whining about this time
ungrateful
******* ungrateful

then leave
run away (again)
you won't have us when you come back

come back
how dare you abandon us
******* ungrateful *****

don't you know we love you

at least say thank you
at least say thank you
at least say thank you

Isn't there a better way?
O'er this snakeskin shedding,
Than this slow emotional death
Looking for cartharsis
Never to be?

Please, make me, me.
Release me from the birdcage,
And tell me where to dream.

Ah, I look for a tool of my own,
Somewhere buried in the dirt,
Because I am a plow without purpose,
A sword in peacetime.

Sheathed, but mostly lost.
Meaningless, but not wandering,
and so there is no journey,
no art.


Stagnation. Ah.
And a slow morose breath.
Just one long, inhale
For no greater cosmic purpose,
Than the exhale, fleeting.

What a beauty, she said in my agonizing reverie.
Smiling, turning, leaning,
Oyasumi, Good morning.
And the sun's lights ne'er did beam.
The morning stayed dark.
I died, there
heart still beating.

another bullet fired
another one killed
how am i supposed to react?
do i write a speech on gun control? do i condemn a gunman's actions i could never fathom?
should i think of the ones who won't live to see another day?

another gun loaded
another life scarred
let me write a Facebook post about the victim
let me take a deep breath and articulate my feelings
and wonder why a young woman who was living her dream have to die in front of her brother and fans

My own body keeps its secrets hidden; even from myself when I refuse to listen.

It screams and screams for attention and when I refuse to hear; it numbs itself in alignment with my wishes.

My body can dictate how much of life I wish to experience — how much I seek to feel. Whether it be dull or feeling.

When I refuse to feel, it closes like the gates of a prison. Inside, I feel numb to any vestiges of emotion; lacking life and freedom.

My body is an imprint of either acceptance or resistance, of condemnation or allowance, of love and care or distrust.

The body is a mirror; blame it not for sadness, anger, worry, nor a self reflected -- False or Aesthetic.

If you’re sad; let it tell you what you lack, what you yearn for but are disconnected from.

If you’re afraid; let it tell you what you evade, what you need to confront and forgive yourself for.

If you’re mad; let it tell you what boundaries in you have been crossed, what aspects of you have been left invalidated.

If you’re happy; let it tell you who you are — outside the blockages of time and space.

And if you feel a burst of sensitivity; express it in art.

*Express it in art.

A tease, a tease,
oh how I am a tease,
for I write poems of which
you shall never ever read!

I eke, I eke,
these thoughts with blood as ink,
on gasping pages drowning
in the anguish that I bleed!

I speak, I speak,
of demons I've yet freed,
solely expelled for exorcise,
whose omens I must take heed!

I tease, I tease,
I do not aim to please,
for I write poems of which
you shall never ever read!

She listened to music that sung out her vacancy,
Allowing only those chords to be felt,
Keeping the emptiness
To ensure the sacredness of
Her ritual.