Therapy Tactics - Relapsing

Relapsing is the reason why I have written so many poems. Like I said in the beginning, poetry is like an emotional time capsule. You can go back and see what you've felt and how you've handled it. The important part being that you have handled it before which means you can do it again. In this way writing poetry can be more useful than talking it out. Talking it out is important for immediate processing with immediate feedback and support, but writing it down is providing yourself with future therapy.

You are your greatest enemy and your greatest ally. You might have hurt yourself, but you also stopped yourself. You might have hurt yourself again, but you can also stop yourself again. You're the only one with the power when it comes to relapsing. You can have friends who help and support you, but it's ultimately up to you. It's not easy. In fact, it's one the hardest damn things in the world. We all wrestle with ourselves, but it's not alway so physical and painful as relapsing.

But relapsing means you have already survived. You have already defeated your demons. You can't always vanquish them. They keep coming back from time to time and sometimes they win. And that doesn't make it any easier, but your poetry time capsules can. It's not a pep talk. It's not you can do better next time. It's acknowledging that this is hard. That you've already been hurt, that you've been hurting all this time. It didn't go away. It may never go away. And you know that. You embrace that. You embrace the pain and the comfort together. The pain of yesterday can become the comfort for tomorrow to ease the hurt of today.

This is relapsing. This is the two steps back after the three steps forward. It might seem like you're undoing all the progress you've made, but it's not. Every time you fall down is a chance to get back up quicker. It might be years, but before you know it, you'll regain your balance and forget that you fell so many times. You won't forget that you fell. It's important to remember your lowest points so you can see just how far you've grown. But the further you advance, the smaller it looks. The pain is there, but it's not tempting anymore. It's an isolated memory not an itching thought.

Seeing other people recover and working with them is important. But it means so much more to go back and read your work and see how much you have recovered. That you turned your bane into beauty and you can do it again. And grow your portfolio at the same time. I look back through my hundreds of poems and feel all the pain I felt, but it hurts less each time. And the more you write, the more you can see your growth. Some of my most painful poems aren't my first ones. They're the ones in the middle. Growth isn't a straight line. Sometimes you get worse before you get better, but you have to stay the course. It's better than just giving up.

Keep up the fight. Keep writing. Spill ink not blood. Choose to live to at least tomorrow because something is better than nothing.

I Think I Love You: Part 2

I Want To Know You Love Me

It was only a couple months later that I realized I really liked this new girl at my school. But Ariel didn't really like that I also liked guys. She might have been more confused that I was. I had a girlfriend in junior high but that was my attempt to “force” myself to be straight and to cover up the little crush I had on Elijah before we were friends. I did like Lily but not as more than friends. But I liked Ariel more than I had liked Dustin or Elijah. But I screwed it up by being honest about my feelings. I wrote just as many poems about her than my secret crush on my straight best friend. I stuffed some notes into her locker. Because I could. Because that was normal. And I desperately wanted to be normal. But normal is both relative and overrated. For me, liking guys felt more normal. She was the exception. The one I would “go straight for.” I had hoped that Elijah would be my friend again when I told him I liked a girl now, but he burned that bridged with no hope of reconstruction. 

I lost my best friend, my boyfriend cheated on me, and then my dream girl straight up rejected me. So I gave up on relationships and “Snapchatted" back every guy who flashed me a smile and dropped his pants. But all I really wanted was to hear the "I love you’s" even if they were void of love. It's not like I was going to hear it from someone who actually loved me because they had all abandoned me. So eventually I decided that if I was going to keep screwing around, I might as well fuck up my life all the way. Literally. I thought having sex was normal. I thought sex was the ultimate expression of what love should be, and I so desperately wanted love. So I thought I could skip straight to that climax, but it didn't feel normal for me. Even kissing felt wrong like it was against my nature. With a little soul searching and research I figured out that I'm pan-romantic asexual. So now how am I suppose to find someone who's as fucked up as I am who would also be ok with a sexless love life?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm even capable of love. My girlfriend, my best friend, my boyfriend, my dream girl. I don't think I was in love with them as much as I was in love with the idea of being in love. Everyone seems so desperate to find love. It’s what all the books and movies are all about. So I thought it was normal for me to want it too. But it took me fucking up one last time to finally be in a place where I’m ok with not being normal. And I'm really ok if I never find this love everyone else is chasing after.

    
I’m more than ok with being single. I no longer feel the need to measure my happiness with “I love you’s.” In contemplative retrospect, I was happiest when I was with Elijah, my best friend, you know, before he was bigoted. He never said “I love you.” He didn’t have to. I knew he loved me by his actions. I’m not looking for another Dustin who’s just as screwed up as I am. I’m not looking for another Ariel so that I can feel normal. I’m looking for another Elijah, a better Elijah. A true best friend. Someone I trust and love enough to share my every secret. Someone who will never give up on me. Someone I’m willing to fight for. 

Our hormones tell us that we can find love in sex. Our parents tell us that we will find love in marriage and giving them grandchildren. Society tell us that we can find love in romance and relationships. Our friends show us what love really is. I’m a 21-year-old senior in college about to graduate and enter the “real world.” I don’t need to hear “I love you’s” anymore. I need to see it in my friends who will stick by me till the end. It's not the love I always wanted. It’s the love I always needed. 

Soul Sharing - Relapsing

I've relapsed so many times. I lost count of how many times I've attempted suicide after the 6th grade. I've lost count of how many times I've cut after that one week I cut 10 lines on each arm and leg each night. I've can't remember how many meals I've skipped or forced myself to throw up.

I've never been one to write down or remember important days or milestones. Birthdays and holidays aren't even that big of a deal to me. But I wish I could remember the last time I've cut, the last time I threw up on purpose, the last time I seriously considered suicide. I'd through myself a party every year, hell, every month. When something has so much power over your life for so many years, that victory, every victory however small the increment, is worth celebrating.

Relapsing is one of the worst feelings in the world. Even if it's only after a day, I've been trying to stop. I've been trying to be better, to get better. And then I lost myself to myself. I felt so defeated, hopeless that I'd never fully recover. No one else can know how much effort I put in to not doing something that was my default therapy. No one else even knows that I screwed up again, or even in the first place. No one else knows and that's what makes it so hard. It was all on me. I didn't have a sponsor. I didn't have anyone. It was the world against me. But I just had to be that much stronger. And I'm not strong. I became strong. I found a courage inside myself that I didn't know was there. A courage, a strength that's in all of us. We just need help and time to find it again after so long of forgetting it for whatever reason.

I'm only a few years clean. Maybe less for certain things. The pain, the memory, the temptation are all fresh. I still have to be careful. I still have to guard myself, my heart and mind. I have to keep a careful watch my emotions. I have to know my limits and avoid certain situations. I'm good and getting better, but I'm not completely free. I may never be. But at least now I know I can win.

Miley Cyrus and a Call to Action

"Nobody's Perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days." Yes, that's Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana). Lately it seemed like Miley was having some of those days for quite some time. I liked Hannah Montana because it was Disney and I like Disney. You can say what you want and judge all the questionable activity of Miley, but there's more to the story. You can read the story here at The Daily Dot and Out Magazine. But basically Miley came out as non-binary (but not explicitly genderqueer). Hence, my avoidance of pronouns.  On a social level it's wonderful to have such a famous young icon for non-binary children/teens to look to. Not necessarily emulate everything, but that they now have a voice, a face, that the world can't ignore. Furthermore Miley started a charity The Happy Hippie Foundation that "rallies young people to fight injustice" and is dedicated to helping the homeless LGBT youth.

So this really got me thinking. All these issues that I've been writing about (identity struggles, depression, mental illness, suicide, self-harming, etc.) are more than just feelings to process or conversations to be had. These are as real as the air you breathe and food you eat. They are a constant and daily occurrence whether in your life or a friend's or the person you see on the street. In the side bar to the right I have a small list of different hotlines and information under Helpful Resources. I'll continue to add to it as I come across more resources, but that's for when you're on my blog, on the internet. What can you do when it's that person on the street that needs help? Directing them to my blog or any other online resource isn't the best option. When you're outside in the real world, you need immediate access to real people who can help in real time.

I live in NYC and I see people in need every day on the streets and in the subway. And then there are so many more than simply don't show any immediate physical signs of needing help or don't ask for it. Life is hard. And I'm not rich. As much as I would like, I can't even give a quarter to every single person I see in need. And it breaks my heart to the point where I've gone numb and blind. And we New Yorkers are always in a rush. We don't have the time. We don't think we have the time. Sometimes all it could take is one phone call to save a life, and I'm not talking about 9-1-1. At the very least give a smile. Treat them as the equal human beings that they are.

I challenge you to add these numbers and address to your phone contacts. It takes a few seconds now, and by tomorrow you'll forget that they're there. But when the time comes you'll be prepared to step in and make a difference. I'm doing this right now with you. Here are some NYC information and some of the links have information for other cities as well.

Homelessness:
Covenant House New York (homeless, runaway, at-risk youth)
460 West 41st StreetNew York, NY 10036(212) 613-0300

Bowery Mission227 Bowery, New York, NY 10002(212) 674-3456

Domestic Violence: Safe Horizon Hotline: 800.621.HOPE (4673)

Suicide/Crisis: The Samaritans: (212) 673-3000

Human Trafficking Hotline: 1 (800) 373-7888

Artistic Tips - Repetition Repetition Repetition

Repetition is a really useful literary device. Repetition is a really fun literary device. Repetition can be a really annoying literary device. Repetition is useful in creating a specific rhythm, connecting lines or ideas, making a phrase stick out as memorable, and making it easier to memorize. Repetition is fun because it makes it catchy and it's easy to get into both as a writer and a reader. Repetition can be annoying if it's overused like probably by this sentence you're annoyed at the repetition of the word repetition.

Here's a quick glossary of different types of repetition.

Anaphora - repetition of the first part of a sentence
Epistrophe - repetition of the end of a sentence
Refrain - a phrase, line, or group of lines regularly repeated throughout a poem, usually at the end of a stanza

Alliteration, assonance, and consonance are repetition of sounds which I have defined in last week's Artistic Tips.

I use "I am" and "I'm" as anaphoras for the first and fifth stanza (also "I can"). Stanza 2 and 6 are the same stanza. This is loose definition of a refrain since it's only repeated twice and is an entire stanza in such a short poem. In a song it might be considered the chorus. But in the theme of the poem of relapsing, the same exact words carry a different meaning because of the change in context. "It" in stanza 3 is an example of an epistrophe. It's an excuse to rhyme a word with itself. But it also works well because of the assonance in "damn" and "had." "Good" and "golden" are an example of alliteration, and "better" and "embolden" are an example of consonance.

"Relapse"

I’m good. I’m golden.
I’m better. I’m embolden.
I can do this. I am steady.
I am driven. I am ready.

Day after day. Step by step.
I’m working hard to rebuild my rep.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
But I will do my best to not be vexed.

Damn it.
I had it.
All together again.
I had found my zen.

Now I’m back.
Exposed to attack.
It all happened so very, very fast.
I thought the last time was really the last.

I’m not okay. I’m broken.
I’m battered. I’m choking.
I can’t do this. I’m shaking.
I am trapped. I am breaking.

Day after day. Step by step.
I’m working hard to rebuild my rep.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
But I will do my best to not be vexed.

It's all in the initials - Who Am I? (part 5)

Ok so here is where I’m edging closer to darkness. Now I’m going to preface that I love my family and have actually cleared up this issue, but here are my unfiltered thoughts.

As you may have noticed, my initials are DW. Now I think most of you might remember the PBS show Arthur, and that he had a little sister called DW. Anyways let’s just say that I was around 5 years old. So here’s the traumatic childhood experience. My mom and brother tease me about having the same initials as the girl on the stupid PBS show. I’m a little kid and easily upset and offended. I tell them to stop but they don’t. Little did they know that in that moment I was deeply scarred. I’m trying to be a boy as best as I can even though I’m not as good as it as my older brother. And all I’m hearing is that as hard as I’m trying I’m still like a girl and that’s something to laugh about. Oh and why in this situation am I like a girl? Because my freaking name. You fucking gave me the initials DW. I had no say in the matter. Even linguistically my first name has only one rare female counterpart. So you’re telling me that because this fictional character goes by her initials that makes my initials feminine. That’s just stupid bullying. But wait, here’s the kicker than makes it so much worse. I don’t think they knew I overheard or that I was old enough to understand, but a while back I heard them say how my mom wanted one boy and then one girl. So as the little son who’s pretty damn good at counting, let’s see my brother came first. One boy, check. Then came me, oh fuck, I’m not a girl. Are you saying you want me to be a girl or that you would rather have a girl than me. So I was a mistake? Not like a oops where did that baby come from or a bastard/love child. Nope. They wanted another child, they just didn’t want me because I was the wrong gender. So you can see how that can screw with a five-year-old struggle to be a real boy and the potential (and eventually realized) psychological repercussions those careless but very sharp words were. Maybe the worst part, the part that made it all too real, was that they picked out a name for the her that wasn’t me. Abigail. It made me feel like I killed me twin sister in the womb. Like I killed this Abigail. Except she was never there. It was just me. DW. So for the longest time I resented being called by my initials even when all the guys in high school went through a phase were they called each other by their initials. (So another way I wasn’t able to be one of the guys.)

So let this being a warning, a cautionary tale if you will, that you should be careful what you say to or in front of your child at ages that you think they won’t remember because maybe they won’t but what if they do. And as you can see I took something that might have been small for my parents, but it was freaking the biggest bombshell of my little lifetime. And I think I did an ok job at explaining why I was insulted in being called a girl. It was screwing with my gender identity. It wasn’t this patriarchal dictation that being like a girl is bad thing. Totally a feminist here. And I think I’ll keep saying this, but girls are freaking awesome. And this whole story came back to me recently because this BuzzFeed article popped up on my Facebook newsfeed: 23 Times D.W. Was The Realist Bitch Who Ever Lived And I am now completely proud to be have been compared to this little girl from a PBS show.

Poetry - Relapse

Relapse

I’m good. I’m golden.
I’m better. I’m embolden.
I can do this. I am steady.
I am driven. I am ready.

Day after day. Step by step.
I’m working hard to rebuild my rep.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
But I will do my best to not be vexed.

Damn it.
I had it.
All together again.
I had found my zen.

Now I’m back.
Exposed to attack.
It all happened so very, very fast.
I thought the last time was really the last.

I’m not okay. I’m broken.
I’m battered. I’m choking.
I can’t do this. I’m shaking.
I am trapped. I am breaking.

Day after day. Step by step.
I’m working hard to rebuild my rep.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
But I will do my best to not be vexed.

Therapy Tactics (self-harming) - How TV Saved Me: Don't try this at home (part 2)

This is how a Canadian show saved my life. Degrassi was one of the many, many shows I wasn’t allowed to watch. I also wasn’t allowed to go to movie theaters, not even to watch Winnie the fucking Pooh Bear. So because I knew my parents were simply wrong on that account, I decided I should throw out all the other rules too. Degrassi was on TeenNick so I saw all the commercial while watching regular Nick shows (also wasn’t allowed to watch Spongebob or Drake & Josh). So yeah, if case you didn’t know Degrassi is basically a high school soap drama, but shows real life problems and situations. It’s not Disneyfied to always have a magical happy ending. There’s a school shooting. Someone dies. The school mourns and it shows every stage of grief. A girl gets pregnant. We watch her struggle between choosing to keep the baby or have an abortion and how her friends and family react. So it is pretty hard to find a tv character that you can relate to 100%, but with so many characters I was able to relate to a few different characters that covered all my major bases. There were two bases that were not covered anywhere else in my limited knowledge of the whole world. One, there was a gay guy. Now days that’s not a huge surprise. Maybe not on Disney channel, but most shows now have at least one token gay character. Even Friends had a Lesbian wedding. But here was a gay guy about my age who struggled with coming out. His parents were homophobic. They kicked him out when they found out he was gay. I had that fear from the beginning. So that meant a lot to me to see someone facing the same real world shit I was dealing with. And they even follow his story with the all the normal struggles of dating. The same things you see on every show with straight people. It’s really not that different. It was refreshing to see that I have a chance at finding love and all its pain and suffering just like everyone else.

The second and more time sensitive and extremely controversial thing was seeing someone on screen self-harm. I hadn’t tried that yet.

Super Gender Roles - Who Am I? (part 4)

Like I said I was an inquisitive and imaginative little kid, but I was different. I liked superheroes. I really liked superheroes. Even before I had real friends, I played make-believe which now that I think about it is basically Live Action Role Playing, but when you’re kids it’s more socially acceptable which is something I learned on my own as I transitioned into junior high. At the time I was really into X-Men and Teen Titans, but all the girls had the super cool super powerful powers. Jean Grey and Raven have telepathy and telekinesis. Starfire can fly and shoot lasers. Shadowcat can walk through walls. Storm can control the freaking weather. Even the Invisible Woman has the best powers of the Fantastic Four. There was even an episode of X-Men Evolution that was basically an anthem of girl power and I loved it. What could the boys do? Anything the girls can do but with severe limitations in comparison. Professor X has telepathy but not telekinesis and is in wheelchair. The Thing, Beast, and Nightcrawler all hate their appearance and try to hide it. Cyclops needs his special ruby glasses to keep his powers under control.  Robin doesn’t have any powers (but I still loved him, and wanted to be him for Halloween, except we weren’t allowed to celebrate the only day it would have been socially acceptable for me to go outside in a cape and a mask). Spider-Man was my absolute favorite: smart, witty, fast, strong, thwip-thwip web shooters swing from the skyscrapers of NYC. If I had to be a superhero of my gender, I would want to be Spider-Man, but when it came to creating my own superhero, I chose all the powers that the girls had so I also adopted some of their other attributes when I imitated their powers. Like Kitty’s like total valley girl accent like totally.