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.

Soul Sharing - Cutting Words

Walkthrough of "Cutting Words"

Why do I let words hurt me

More than these cuts and bruises

I bleed and bruise

Because I choose

To control some hurt

Make all else feel inert

There are so many reasons why people cut themselves or other forms of self-harming. One major reason is for control. You don't hurt yourself because your life is so great. You hurt yourself because you're already hurting and you can't control it. When you inflict pain upon yourself, you finally have control. How much pain. What kind of pain. To start and stop the pain. And the current pain, even if it's just temporary, makes you forget all the other pain in your life.

Why do I seek approval 

When I don’t approve of myself

I need to be wanted

Because I am haunted

Of being alone enough

That suicide won’t be a bluff

Cover up with sleeves to hide the scars even in the summer. When you're that depressed, you need to find comfort in other people. And if you don't then who knows what you might do on this path alone.

Why am I jealous of friendships

When I know that they all have to end

I know everyone leaves

Taking my treasure like thieves 

The only thing I desire

Is to not fall for another liar

When you rely on others for your sanity, you usually need them more than they need you. You tend to take everything personally and everything hurts more when it doesn't work out. It feels like they're stealing your happiness when they leave because they are your only source of happiness. And that makes it harder to open up to new friends since you're afraid of going through that painful process again.

Why do I feel a need to bleed

When I know I won’t live much longer

I live from day to day

Not knowing what to say

If anything at all

How badly I want to fall

Self-harming isn't the same thing as being suicidal. You might feel like you're in so much pain that you want to die. But you don't really want to die. You want to get better, but you don't know how. The only way you know to keep going is to self-harm. It's a way of self-medicating. It's a temporary solution that gets you to the next day. Well, it's not really a solution since it doesn't address the problem and because of that self-harming on its own will not get you to a place of healing. Without talking or working out the problem in a healthier way, you might just get to the point where you do want to die.

Suicide Songs: Intro

The last few weeks were an introduction to poetry and to myself. I started writing poetry because I was hopelessly depressed and I had no voice. I had no one to talk to. No one I trusted. I was alone. Alone in my pain. Poetry kept me alive. Poetry gave me life. Poetry gave structure to my chaos and confusion. I was mentally ill but wasn't sure. I didn't want to accept myself because I was afraid of what my family and church (i.e. everyone I knew) would do to me if they found out I was gay. So I tried to drown myself when I was 11. I started cutting myself when I was 15. I also stopped eating. I don't know how I would have survived without poetry. If I couldn't say everything I needed to say without actually saying it.

But as I mentioned in the mini-memoir, I did end up in a mental hospital when I was 16. It really was the best thing that could have happened to me. Even though the boy broke my heart and I let that screw up my most important friendship, I was no longer alone. There are so many people out there just like me. Suffering from the same depression and oppression. But that's where traditional therapy ends. It gives you the tools to overcome obstacles. It provides a system that reduces your risk of relapsing. But it can't make you forget. And I'll talk more about this next week.

For these next 7 days, I'm just going to share 7 stories. 7 completely different souls. 7 completely different circumstances. 7 same "solutions" to those 7 very different problems. Just 7 ways suicide happens in our society.

Soul Sharing: I'm not straight, but I'm also not gay

So yeah, this poem is basically my way of coming out as asexual after having already been out as gay. Not much more to say about that, so here's my coming out video.

Coming out as Pan-kAce (Panromantic-Asexual)

(pronounced "pancake")

Coming Out as Bipolar

Soul Sharing: I'm Bipolar

For the Soul section, I'll walk through the poem line by line or stanza by stanza and explain why I wrote it. I'll talk about word selection, inspiration, multiple meanings, and where I placed a part of my soul in the piece. Let's begin.

"Apathetic Artist" 

First off, the tittle is alliterative which is one of my favorite and one of the easiest and most recognized poetic devices. You are going to see this a lot from me. For me, the title is usually a brief summary or my favorite line of the poem. A lot of times the title is the last thing and sometimes even the hardest part to write. This one came pretty naturally combing the first line and the theme of the poem.  And this is the first poem in my book of poetry because it embodies the theme and inspired the title of the book. (Spoilers!)

Bonus Art Tip: The Wright Way to Count Meter Like the Tone Deaf First Grader that I am

Bonus Monday Video! "About the Poet"

The Wright Way of Writing

This blog is dedicated to serve as a crash course tutorial on how anyone can use poetry as an artistic and therapeutic expression of the soul. Poetry has been my therapy in dealing with everything from bad breakups to dark depression to identity issues. You don't always want to talk about things with a therapist or sometimes even your closest friend, but it isn't healthy to let some things stay bottled up inside of you. When you take the time to sit down and write down your feelings, you force yourself to actually process your emotions and put concrete words to those elusive feelings. Something I did learn in therapy is mindfulness. There's so much power and control of stopping to say, "Hey, I am angry, and this is why, and it's ok," or "Hey, I am angry, but I don't really have a good reason to be angry. I should stop being angry." And then you can take those words and rearranging them and create something beautiful. You never have to share it with anyone if you don't want to. There are plenty of poems I may never publish. But you can still go back and read your art from years ago and reconnect with yourself and see how much has changed, for better or worse, or maybe nothing has really changed at all. It's like your own personal emotional time capsule.