Poetry Thursday : the negative self

Life is important. We only get one chance at life – but that does not mean we get only one chance to attain our goals.

I often read and hear people talk of their dreams, the younger the person is, the more exciting, amazing, magical the dream is. As we grow, the dreams fade into something more 'realistic'. The trouble is, where do we draw the line between something unrealistic and something possible when time and effort is put in?

The trouble is, for some reason, it is human nature for us to put ourselves down. Tell yourself you want to be a singer 'don't be stupid' your find your mind shouting back at you 'you will never make it, you're too ugly, fat, tone deaf, shy' etc etc. I think it takes a lot of courage and a very brave person to turn around and realise that it doesn't actually matter if you fail. It does not mean you fail as a person, it does not mean you fail other people. It does not mean you have to stop, give up and go back to something more 'doable'. Many people fail many times before they actually get somewhere. You must believe in yourself and remember you can learn the talents, the skills, everytime you make a mistake you can take something positive from it so you do not repeat it.

I'm not just talking about a high fly job like being a singer, or an actress. I mean things like moving away to a different country, taking a chance on a relationship even if it is 3000 miles away, attempting to run a marathon and raise money for it for a charity, setting up a business, many different dreams that we have always wanted in the back of our minds, but kept them there out of fear.

There is no set number of times you can attempt your goals. There are set backs, such as money and time of course, but I really believe if you really want something but fear is stopping you, you should try to get over it and give it a good go anyway.

Even if you do fail, you know you have not lived a life of regret. Attempting something and not quite getting there has to be better than spending the rest of your life thinking 'what if?', right?

~~

Poetry Thursday -

These ugly things I birth

I was under swept in red wine
holding a diagnosis with my teeth,
I should not share the paper work,
the blood work, or the morning sickness
that curls up inside me like twins
(one black, one white)
with the rest of you.

I should tuck it inside paper airplanes
and with my sticky fingers, push
through the earths atmosphere
hoping it won't boomerang.
Though it always does,

last time it took 7 months,
I spent time in rivers with the apples
and pomegranates. I swam
inside their colours
until one child returned,

I could smell the amenorrhea
in her short-fused hair,
and I could see her skipping,
smiling, with a toilet bowl in her arms.

Poetry Thursday: caught in that place

I am not a fan of passive aggressiveness, it makes me feel uncomfortable because for some reason it does not seem to warrant me pointing out when comments have been directed at me because somebody can easily turn around and make out you are being paranoid, or it is about something/someone else, yet they can still hurt. This is something I find hard to deal with and therefore will vow to try my very hardest to not be passive aggressive towards anyone from now on. I shall either say what I meant to a persons face, or not say anything at all. If you are not willing to talk about a problem or issue then I do not believe you should hold the right to make comments, digs and hints.

Also, I fear I have a problem of giving all my care and support to one person, even if it isn't always needed. This scares me and also saddens me. I have recently managed to balance friendships more evenly gained the ability to take support/advice from multiple people rather than just one. The truth is that I have a hell of a lot inside of me to offer to people and I'm going to start giving it to multiple people who need/want whatever kind of support. I have become better at doing this in the past few months, but I am not completely happy with this part of me yet. I feel young, foolish and like I am too much. Or not enough. Or too eager. Or too useless.

I keep trying to remember what Chelsea wrote on a post it note for me last year – 'you are enough, you do enough, you try enough'.

Hopefully I well get there in the end.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Poetry Thursday: cancer of the Kardia


My heart did not speak, but howled - 'I feel more like a tumor'

I didn't want to admit it was right,

instead I pushed it through tensed intercostals

and carried it in a red tractor. We drove on A roads

holding up traffic for miles

and would not let edgy vehicles pass.

It pushed back through me singing half-truths I was not ready for

- 'you have hands like clamped cars

and they have not yet learned to listen'

the syllables sounded like symbols and I was afraid

to admit it, but I was on the transport to a nuclear war

with myself and we could not find enough white flags

to shove between my ribcage, only foul words

and realisations that I wanted to pluck out

and hide in wheelbarrows, but could not.

Poetry Thursday - On friday

This Entry is a day late because I've had an exam today, so I was busy studying.

Anyway – my exams are now over and I feel a sense of relief, but also a sense of emptiness. I cannot believe I have finished my second year of university. The relief comes from being able to relax and take my time to indulge in other things.. get a bit of fun back in my life, but also emptiness because three of my flatmates are leaving tomorrow and I know I am going to struggle to find things to do. I have to stay here to work weekends and do Race for Life. I still have some friends up here, and one of my flatmates is still here. I have to take some stuff home at some point next week so I'll have enough room in my car when I move out for real.

My main focus this week has been studying, so I don't really have much to update. I've learnt a few things about my ability to express myself to others and I'm going to stop waiting around for contact when I am in doubt, as it ruins my day worrying and I can never really know how things are interpreted or what people are thinking unless I ask. I need to remember that my feelings are valid and so are other peoples. People have a way of thinking their problems are bigger than everyone elses, when in reality it is not true a lot of the time. Feelings are valid simply because they are there and nobody should be made to feel that their expression of their own suffering is not merited simply because the next person is suffering more. Maybe if people just accepted that their own problems and feelings are unique to them, and that other people are problems that are also undeniable the world would be a much nicer place. It is not a competition of who is suffering more, or whose problems are worse because that attitude just causes self doubt and resentment.

There is nothing worse than trying to confide in somebody and when you express an emotion, the come back with something about themselves 'well that happens to me but worse' or 'i felt like that but i got over it'. Saying 'I understand' is not always what we need to hear, downplaying are problems does not always help – most of the time it makes us feeling like we have no right to verbalise a situation in fear of somebody blowing it of as not a big deal. It is a big deal to the person with their heart hanging out of their chest and their brain running marathons with no finish line in sight.

Sometimes to get over things, we simply need to accept and express to be able to finally let it go. We need to stand up and say 'you know what? I have this going on right now and things are hard, and it is complicated and it is hard work and it is exhausting and I do not need to hear how lucky I am right now. I just need to feel'

~~

we just need to feel

I guess I was the hallway girl

who gave you narcolepsy, I ran through you

at three-thousand miles an hour,

I ran through you mid sentence

and you could not speak

as well as I wanted you to.

Fall in love with me, I have loud speakers

for pores and I cannot hear you

under the volume of the love bite where

my heart beat used to be. Hold candle light

to my chest and do not burn me

even though I want you to.

I'm the handstand girl
in your playground, in your lake

in your ice-cream van, in the mirror on your wall

opening and closing my summer legs

as I somersault and cartwheel

through your covered up skin. and I asked you questions

about the your insides

and you could not speak

at all.

Poetry Thursday: My Terabithia

I watched the movie 'Bridge To Terabithia' on Tuesday night - It's pretty much the most amazing film I have ever seen. The trailer does not even do it justice. The cast were amazing, the effects were amazing but not too overdone, the story line was magical and beautiful. This is a film I shall watch over and over for the rest of my life. It was inspiring and exactly how I was as a child.

For todays 'thursday musings' -
I see my life as a learning process, I view it as an adventure full of dreams that come true and nightmares that happen. I've come to understand the importance of sadness and despair - you cannot live in a world where positive exists and negative is extinct. If such a world did exist, it would be rather 'neutral', boring and full of no meaning, void of all goals. There is no 'happiness' if there is no sadness to compare it with. The concept of Good is lost in a black hole without an understand and the presence of Evil. The trick is to use each negative experience as if it's a page from the big old Book of Life. You learn about yourself, you expand your ability to grow in to a more solid person of the 'you' which was prior, you learn who your real friends are and it helps you appreciate the positive things in love when they come around (and they will).

I do not know if I believe in God, but if He is out there, I'm a strong believer that poverty, evil and natural disasters happen for a reason. Poverty allows us to experience compassion for those suffering, it allows us the choice of trying to help others. Natrual disaster brings communities together = it shows peoples true colours - we pray, we hope, we give money to charity, we hold silence, we come together. A world that was perviously full of faceless strangers suddenly becomes a community of human beings with big personalities and even bigger hearts - it brings out the best in most people.

So the negative experiences insures we are able to feel emotions, which is what life is about, which is what makes us humans. Evil makes us become stronger, more grounded people. Sadness, hurting, bad events are necessary.

This week I have decided to stop letting people hurt me and get away with it. For a long time I believed in just letting everything go and keep quiet, as to not cause drama, confrontation and upset. This eventually led to me holding a lot of hostility within this skin - anger has a funny way of turning into hate, and hate has a funny way of turning into self-hate when allowed to fester. Feelings always end up being turned on myself. I allowed people to walk all over me. I'm not going to hold grudges, I do not want negativity in my life - but when somebody upsets me, shouts at me, acts towards me in a way that is out of line, I will take some time to think (but not obsess) and then tell that person it's not okay to treat me in that way. If they listen, I can let it go and carry on with the relationship. If they don't, then they are simply not worth my time if they don't see my feelings and my upset as valid.

I'm not going to allow myself to be treated in some of the ways I have been treated in my life. Everyone has people who treat them like crap at some point - that is unavoidable and beyond my (or their) control. But how I (and you) deal with it is within your control.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Poetry Thursday this week is inspired by 'the randomizor' on poetrythursday.org

We are taproots.

I will not panic in the absence,

of your xanax hair that makes you feel like those things

you try to believe in. Like your humor,

like your smile, like you're inflated to the bigger person

you wish to chew on

without letting the fat cells sink

to thigh-level and your skull

to sky-level.

Your scowl is the one thing

that makes my eyes turn into spiral stairs

at 8am. We are more than car park friends now,

I wait in phone boxes and you sit on rooftops

with your theorem-lids vomiting sleep --

you should not let them hit the ground,

we do not know this gravel well.

You speak in half truths --

you say I'm a victim of finger nails

that bleed like water fountains.

You say I am fourteen and lost

inside a house of mirrors. You say

I collect mistakes for the sake of a story,

for the sake of a laugh, for the sake of a desperate poem

that I will not-send to you,

but I imagine your reaction anyway.

Becoming me.

I've been reading other peoples blogs, many are inspiring, some seem to echo my own thoughts. So, aswell as having this as my photoblog, plus the highlights of my week, I've decided to update on my personal progress - my growth as a human being.

In two months, I shall turn 21. I still feel very much like that 9 year old child in a pink summer dress and multicoloured roller skates, we used to spend hours skating lampost to lampost on our street, between our next-door-but-two houses, my best childhood friend and I. That was back when our world was massive and our dreams were far away, back when we would be best friends forever and marry handsome men on the same day, have our first child in the same month.

You see, when I was a child, I envisioned my dreams as magical clouds that would fall out of the sky into my lap, and *poof*, I'd have what I want. I never imagined a 20 year old me actually having to work for what I want. Yet here I am. I've learnt many things over the past four months, I think probably the most valuable lessons of my whole life -

1) Make your goals doable and your steps to them manageable.
2) You only get out of this world what you put into it. You only get out of friendships what you put into them.
3) Happiness is an attitude you can learn. You do not need love, you do not need a perfect partner, you do not need money. All you need is those little things that make you happy, positive music and being able to resist wallowing on depression and negative things, while focusing on the positive events that happen in your life. And appreciate them.
4) Your friends are amazing people when you really get to know them.
5) If you smile and laugh at people, they shall smile and laugh back. Even if you have never spoken to them before. There is nothing more uplifting than a new friendly face to share both your experiences with.
6) I am afraid of being loved, but do not know why.

I am planning to live in france next year. I have applied through the British council to be an English Assisstant in a school or a university. I shall find out about it later this month. If I don't get in, I've decided that I am going to go to france anyway for a year. I would do pretty much any job that allows me to be in France, talk in French, meet new people and learn how to become independent, strong and confident.

~

Poetry Thursday:

(6) I am afraid of being loved, but do not know why.)

You cough like pneumonia is laughing
in places you have not yet uncovered.
And if I were honest, from the tip of my phalanges
I would say I am afraid of us,
together in this rowing boat.

We jigsaw together in new ways
that make you uncomfortable.
I was sitting on the porch this morning,
at 5.43am and waiting for you to rise,
with your yellow face throwing gazes
in front of the clouds. You are heart disease
undiscovered, an earth quake in my eyes only,

but they will find you one day
inside loud speakers
next to mobile telephones that will not
call my name. I will be filled with regret
for not telling you the things they did,
in such inappropriate ways.

It was raining and I wanted to fold you
inside umbrellas and you said no,
and somersaulted twenty feet from me,
about the distance my lungs reached
when I unbuckled them
and said breath.

16/04/07