I was browsing through some poetry the other day and stumbled upon this gem.
I'd like to dedicate it to a very close friend who's experiencing a couple of her "firsts" and I just wanted to tell her this, and decided to post it here as well.
So I kinda forgot to save the name of the amazing poet who wrote this, but all props and credits and whatever else goes to him or her... Thank you for writing this. You're amazing!
Because you'll find how hard it can be
To tell which part of your body sings,
You never should dally with any young man
who does any one of the following things:
Tries to beat all the yellow lights;
Says, "Big deal!" or "So what?"
More than seven times a day;
Ignores yellow lines in a parking lot;
Carries a radar detector;
Asks what you did with another date;
Has more than seven bumper stickers;
Drinks beer early and whiskey late;
Talks on a cellular phone at lunch;
Tunes to radio talk shows;
Doesn't fasten his seat belt;
Knows more than God knows.
Wants you to change how you do your hair;
Spits in a polystyrene cup;
Doesn't use his turn signal;
Wants you to change your makeup;
Calls your parents their given names;
Doesn't know why you don't smoke;
Has dirt under his fingernails;
Makes a threat and calls it a joke;
Pushes to get you to have one more;
Seems to have trouble staying awake;
Says "Dago" and "Wop" and words like that;
Swerves the car to hit a snake;
Sits at a table wearing a hat;
Has a boneless handshake.
You're going to know soon enough
The ones who fail this little test.
Mark them off your list at once
And be very careful of all the rest.
I love you so much my SecondHalf. Remember this little test okay?
Wednesday 20 November 2013
Sunday 17 November 2013
g r a v i t y
Somewhere in the distance, a dogs hollow bark sliced through the silence of a busy street. The faint sounds of cars passing by and people going about their everyday business reached the stained windows of her bedroom.
The air was bone dry, and every breath felt like it was suffocating her fragile lungs. The stale smells of life hung in the air like old coats long forgotten, and she sat there on the floor, breathing. Just breathing. Her arms were laced with delicate drops of scarlet tears, a self inflicted nightmare. Her wrists said death, but her eyes shouted for life.
She wished she could just scream. She wished she could have found some place beautiful to get lost in, but she knew that no matter how far away she went, it would always catch up to her. Running away would not help, not today. Not on a stifling Tuesday afternoon filled with the agonizing cries of demons that she thought long buried.
The only thing keeping her here, was the devastating pull of gravity keeping her down. The funny thing about gravity, is that even when you're ready to fly, it finds a way to chain you to the ground.
Her fragile strength leaked away from her, pooling on the ground at her arm. She forced a gulp of air into her burning throat and her thoughts drifted back to everything left on her bedside table. A pen to write her story. A torn and crumpled piece of paper to listen. Her favourite book carelessly tossed open next to a small stone that glittered like the broken heart she was hiding in her chest.
She remembered all the coffee mug stains from nights spent up way past midnight and the songs on repeat that brought a melody to the darkest parts of her dusty sad soul. She saw the way the light reflected off the murky water outside and watched as it danced on her ceiling entwined with the most beautiful music she had ever heard.
Somewhere in the distance a lonely dog barked, but this time she was not there to hear it. The light had faded from the sky and the moon softly shone down on the nearly dry scarlet tears shed cried. Her wrists said death but this time her eyes agreed.
The air was bone dry, and every breath felt like it was suffocating her fragile lungs. The stale smells of life hung in the air like old coats long forgotten, and she sat there on the floor, breathing. Just breathing. Her arms were laced with delicate drops of scarlet tears, a self inflicted nightmare. Her wrists said death, but her eyes shouted for life.
She wished she could just scream. She wished she could have found some place beautiful to get lost in, but she knew that no matter how far away she went, it would always catch up to her. Running away would not help, not today. Not on a stifling Tuesday afternoon filled with the agonizing cries of demons that she thought long buried.
The only thing keeping her here, was the devastating pull of gravity keeping her down. The funny thing about gravity, is that even when you're ready to fly, it finds a way to chain you to the ground.
Her fragile strength leaked away from her, pooling on the ground at her arm. She forced a gulp of air into her burning throat and her thoughts drifted back to everything left on her bedside table. A pen to write her story. A torn and crumpled piece of paper to listen. Her favourite book carelessly tossed open next to a small stone that glittered like the broken heart she was hiding in her chest.
She remembered all the coffee mug stains from nights spent up way past midnight and the songs on repeat that brought a melody to the darkest parts of her dusty sad soul. She saw the way the light reflected off the murky water outside and watched as it danced on her ceiling entwined with the most beautiful music she had ever heard.
Somewhere in the distance a lonely dog barked, but this time she was not there to hear it. The light had faded from the sky and the moon softly shone down on the nearly dry scarlet tears shed cried. Her wrists said death but this time her eyes agreed.
Monday 4 November 2013
Self Harm. My Story.
I've been wanting to write about this for some time now, and well last night I relapsed.
So today I decided to sit down and just write down everything.
Okay so where to start. The beginning?
I was in Grade Seven, just turned 13. My first year as a "real" teenager, and I was ready to conquer the world. I had just been elected as The "Head Girl" of the primary school, my parents have never been so proud of me, as they were on that day.
I will never forget my Dad emailing the ENTIRE family the day it happened, as it also happened to be on his birthday, and reading all the wishes of support and pride my family had for me. It seemed like Grade Seven was going to be a fantastic year.
It was. It really was an awesome year, but I soon discovered how much was going to be expected of me, and it was a lot. I had to attend every school function, no matter how late nor if it happened on a school night. I had to deal with the pressures of being expected to be the role model for my entire school, and I learned to navigate my way through it, as we all do, I adapted.
I found ways to finish my homework during the school days, so that I could play sport after school and then go off to wherever I was needed. And it worked! It really worked for i would estimate 5 months.
And then one day I woke up and felt... different. I just felt tired. Worn out. Run down. I felt like all the colour from the world had suddenly been drained out. Everything was just so, lifeless. I remember thinking, "What the hell has actually just happened?"
I had become depressed.
Yes, only 13 years old, and I was depressed. That doesn't happen right? I was just upset? Thirteen year olds don't get depressed... Well it happened to me. Of course I still had a job to do, so I never took the time to address what I was feeling. I never stopped to ask myself if I needed help. So everyday I would get up and paint on a fake smile that would never show how I really felt inside. Dark and lifeless.
Grade Eight rolled around so quickly, and it all happened so fast... Looking back now its more of a smudge against my high school career, but all of a sudden I had to step down from power, hand over my responsibilities to someone else. What?? I had just got the hang of it! I had just figured out how to balance everything, and now my school had just pulled the rug out from underneath me, and naturally, everything I had managed to delicately balance came crashing down.
I fell deeper and deeper into my depression. I battled with my weight, and school became so much harder and everything seemed to be going wrong, but on the outside, the people that cared about me only ever saw the wonderfully bouncy happy girl they had always known.
I was so unhappy I started to feel numb. Numb to everything around me. I felt alone, scared and hopeless. It was absolutely terrifying. I wanted to cry everyday. I wanted to run away and just sit in the dark forever.
I remember the first time I heard about "Cutting" it was being covered by a documentary team and my family and I were listening to an anonymous source describe why she intentionally hurt herself. I am nearly a hundred percent sure my entire family thought about how weird and scary and completely insane that was. Inflict pain to try feel better? Everyone except me. The second after she had finished speaking, I understood exactly how she felt, I UNDERSTOOD.
I went to my room that night, and found a scissors, and took a deep breath and slowly sliced into the top of one of my fingers. Suddenly I didn't understand anymore. It hurt, and didn't make me feel better! I immediately began to regret doing it. Scolding myself internally, wondering where I could find my refund and then I noticed the blood. The scarlet liquid slowly forcing itself out of my body, out of something I did to myself... it ran down the length of my finger, and in that second I became addicted.
It sounds like a horror movie right? Being addicted to your own blood. That's some really messed up shit, but it's what happened, and soon i would find myself doing it whenever I felt numb.
My addiction to the pain developed after the first couple of times, the burning sensation as steel pulled my skin apart. The feeling of my blood running out. It was all a relief, and escape from the cold dark numbness I had been trapped inside for nearly a year.
As all addictions do, it began to grow and grow as I got braver and braver. I had started taking the blades from sharpeners and using them to slice multiple times across my arms. I had to slice more than once because otherwise they wouldn't bleed, and that's what I was looking for. Whenever I felt upset, numb or lonely I would shrink into my room, and tear myself apart.
Some people draw to express themselves, others paint or write, some may even listen to music to draw their emotions out, well in the same way that would help them, I convinced myself that cutting was the same. It took me away from everything that seemed to be crushing my airways, and let me breathe, because as long as I was feeling the pain, I knew I was alive.
Those nights are some of the darkest nights I have ever experienced. They grew in regularity, and then in length and my cuts grew in depth. Until one night I found myself cutting over cuts I had made no less tha 30 minutes ago. I wasn't afraid, I was absolutely paralyzed by the fear.
Showers were the worst, I knew I had to keep my arms clean, and every night I would let the hot water run over the incisions. Some nights I would bite down on a face cloth to stop myself from screaming out in pain. I had taken to wearing hoodies, jerseys and long sleeve tops everyday in the fear that someone would see them. I was scared to be around people, because whenever someone touched my arm, I could feel the scabs ripping open. I shied away from contact. Hugs and games and mere social interaction became a thing of distant memories. I felt more alone than I had in the beginning, but at least I had my blade. The one thing that felt real to me.
One day I decided to open up, and show my closest friends. I cornered them in the bathroom and cautiously lifted up my sleeve. I thought they would embrace me, start crying and whisper that everything was going to be okay, but I received a reaction no person should have to endure. They were disgusted. They would never admit it, but from that day, they never looked at me the same way. From that day I became a monster, a freak a suicidal girl to them. We remained friends but things were forever changed.
It got out, and the rumors spread. I would walk down the corridors and have people looking at my arms, curious to see if I had gotten to my wrists yet, curious to see how deep they were and how many. They called me names. Hurtful Ones. Told me that I shouldn't live if all I wanted to do was die.
Die? Who had said anything about dying?? That thought had never crossed my mind before.Well not until someone said that to me. Suddenly I became obsessed with the idea of suicide. My first suicidal thought. I knew it was downhill from there, but someone had cut my brakes and I was spiraling out of control. Death, blood, pain and blades began to rule over me. My every thought, emotion and action was dictated by them.
It was exhausting.
I couldn't sleep without dreaming, and I couldn't dream without dying. I would dream of ending everything with a knife drawn across tight skin, and then instead of dying, I would find myself stripped of everything but bleeding cuts before my peers. Forced to face the humiliation of them pointing and laughing and whispering about me, without being able to do anything about it. No running, no crying no nothing. I would wake up crying and shivering and drenched in freezing sweat that would burn my sores. Needless to say, I slowly stopped sleeping, slowly stopped eating... and my cutting escalated out of control. This lasted until Mid October 2009. My first and second suicide attempt soon followed and both failed, and after that I finally knew I was too far to be saved.
I was proud of my cuts and scars, I looked at them with adoration in my eyes. I was proud of what I had created. I was proud because I had finally found a way to depict the chaos that was inside me in a way that other people could see.
And then it happened. My school had phoned my mother, and told her what was happening and caught her up on what they thought the reasons were. Curtains Up and start Act Three: The worst day of my life.
Her tears weren't because of how I had dissapointed her, but instead because she was afraid of me. I could see the fear in her eyes when I showed her my arm. Hear her pain through the breathless sobs and I could feel her urge to get out of the car and just leave and never look back at the monster that had consumed her daughter.
She took me home and told me to show my younger sister. Her and I have never spoken about it since that day, partly because I'm too much of a coward to face her and partly because we try to avoid it at all costs.
I never told my dad, I suppose my mom filled him in on everything but we never spoke about it either. Its good that we never did because I don't think I would've survived another person rejecting and being afraid of me.
My mom gave me an ultimatum that day, I either stopped effective immediately or went to a hospital for the mental unstable. I guess you can fathom which I chose.
I was clean for about three days after before I had my first relapse. It was more difficult to stop than I could have ever thought. After that I threw out every blade I had hidden, every razor within reach, and every slightly sharp object was removed from my room. For 3 months to follow I didn't even keep a scissors in my school space case.
Bravery is not the absence of fear, but rather the power to overcome it, and I owe some very important people in my life more than you could ever imagine for everything I am today is because of their decisions and bravery in the face of adversity and I can honestly admit that I am alive today because of them.
You know who you are. And I will never find a way to properly say thank you. But know you saved my life.
I have been clean for close onto 2 years, without a single incident. I slowly introduced sharpeners and scissors back into my life and was have tried to help people understand just how dangerous this is where I could. I get urges and craving but the difference now is that I know how to control them. I control my addiction, it does not control me.
The name calling at school stopped, and people are no longer afraid of me, but I know that every time we sit in assembly, and something about cutting comes up everyone's minds jump back to what I was. I can immediately feel the eyes examining my arms looking for traces and scars, and I suppose that's normal. I can see how hard my friends fight the urge to look at me as well because I know that from time to time their minds skim across those years of hardships.
And the scary thing is that I'm perfectly okay with this.
My scars, my blades and my cuts are a part of who I am. They are an essential piece of me. They make me Chay. I am proud of them today, but not because of the destruction I created but rather because they are my own reminders that I am strong enough, brave enough and human enough to get through anything life could throw my way.
I can't say that you ever "Recover" from something like depression or self harm because you don't. I fight it everyday, and I do this by waking up and looking at my arm and knowing that I am better than that. I do it by getting up and choosing to be happy. I do it by choosing life. Choosing Me. Choosing Love.
Relapse is always a tiny black fleck in the back of my mind, and unfortunately last night I did have a relapse. I cracked under pressure, and hurt myself. But today is day one of starting again. Day one of recovery and fighting for everything I had. Everything I know I am.
I am beautiful. You are too.
If you ever find yourself thinking about hurting yourself, or in a dark place that seems hopeless, know that there is love out there.
www.twloha.com
www.lifesigns.org.uk
or comment below and talk to me. xx
There is hope. It starts with you.
So today I decided to sit down and just write down everything.
Okay so where to start. The beginning?
I was in Grade Seven, just turned 13. My first year as a "real" teenager, and I was ready to conquer the world. I had just been elected as The "Head Girl" of the primary school, my parents have never been so proud of me, as they were on that day.
I will never forget my Dad emailing the ENTIRE family the day it happened, as it also happened to be on his birthday, and reading all the wishes of support and pride my family had for me. It seemed like Grade Seven was going to be a fantastic year.
It was. It really was an awesome year, but I soon discovered how much was going to be expected of me, and it was a lot. I had to attend every school function, no matter how late nor if it happened on a school night. I had to deal with the pressures of being expected to be the role model for my entire school, and I learned to navigate my way through it, as we all do, I adapted.
I found ways to finish my homework during the school days, so that I could play sport after school and then go off to wherever I was needed. And it worked! It really worked for i would estimate 5 months.
And then one day I woke up and felt... different. I just felt tired. Worn out. Run down. I felt like all the colour from the world had suddenly been drained out. Everything was just so, lifeless. I remember thinking, "What the hell has actually just happened?"
I had become depressed.
Yes, only 13 years old, and I was depressed. That doesn't happen right? I was just upset? Thirteen year olds don't get depressed... Well it happened to me. Of course I still had a job to do, so I never took the time to address what I was feeling. I never stopped to ask myself if I needed help. So everyday I would get up and paint on a fake smile that would never show how I really felt inside. Dark and lifeless.
Grade Eight rolled around so quickly, and it all happened so fast... Looking back now its more of a smudge against my high school career, but all of a sudden I had to step down from power, hand over my responsibilities to someone else. What?? I had just got the hang of it! I had just figured out how to balance everything, and now my school had just pulled the rug out from underneath me, and naturally, everything I had managed to delicately balance came crashing down.
I fell deeper and deeper into my depression. I battled with my weight, and school became so much harder and everything seemed to be going wrong, but on the outside, the people that cared about me only ever saw the wonderfully bouncy happy girl they had always known.
I was so unhappy I started to feel numb. Numb to everything around me. I felt alone, scared and hopeless. It was absolutely terrifying. I wanted to cry everyday. I wanted to run away and just sit in the dark forever.
I remember the first time I heard about "Cutting" it was being covered by a documentary team and my family and I were listening to an anonymous source describe why she intentionally hurt herself. I am nearly a hundred percent sure my entire family thought about how weird and scary and completely insane that was. Inflict pain to try feel better? Everyone except me. The second after she had finished speaking, I understood exactly how she felt, I UNDERSTOOD.
I went to my room that night, and found a scissors, and took a deep breath and slowly sliced into the top of one of my fingers. Suddenly I didn't understand anymore. It hurt, and didn't make me feel better! I immediately began to regret doing it. Scolding myself internally, wondering where I could find my refund and then I noticed the blood. The scarlet liquid slowly forcing itself out of my body, out of something I did to myself... it ran down the length of my finger, and in that second I became addicted.
It sounds like a horror movie right? Being addicted to your own blood. That's some really messed up shit, but it's what happened, and soon i would find myself doing it whenever I felt numb.
My addiction to the pain developed after the first couple of times, the burning sensation as steel pulled my skin apart. The feeling of my blood running out. It was all a relief, and escape from the cold dark numbness I had been trapped inside for nearly a year.
As all addictions do, it began to grow and grow as I got braver and braver. I had started taking the blades from sharpeners and using them to slice multiple times across my arms. I had to slice more than once because otherwise they wouldn't bleed, and that's what I was looking for. Whenever I felt upset, numb or lonely I would shrink into my room, and tear myself apart.
Some people draw to express themselves, others paint or write, some may even listen to music to draw their emotions out, well in the same way that would help them, I convinced myself that cutting was the same. It took me away from everything that seemed to be crushing my airways, and let me breathe, because as long as I was feeling the pain, I knew I was alive.
Those nights are some of the darkest nights I have ever experienced. They grew in regularity, and then in length and my cuts grew in depth. Until one night I found myself cutting over cuts I had made no less tha 30 minutes ago. I wasn't afraid, I was absolutely paralyzed by the fear.
Showers were the worst, I knew I had to keep my arms clean, and every night I would let the hot water run over the incisions. Some nights I would bite down on a face cloth to stop myself from screaming out in pain. I had taken to wearing hoodies, jerseys and long sleeve tops everyday in the fear that someone would see them. I was scared to be around people, because whenever someone touched my arm, I could feel the scabs ripping open. I shied away from contact. Hugs and games and mere social interaction became a thing of distant memories. I felt more alone than I had in the beginning, but at least I had my blade. The one thing that felt real to me.
One day I decided to open up, and show my closest friends. I cornered them in the bathroom and cautiously lifted up my sleeve. I thought they would embrace me, start crying and whisper that everything was going to be okay, but I received a reaction no person should have to endure. They were disgusted. They would never admit it, but from that day, they never looked at me the same way. From that day I became a monster, a freak a suicidal girl to them. We remained friends but things were forever changed.
It got out, and the rumors spread. I would walk down the corridors and have people looking at my arms, curious to see if I had gotten to my wrists yet, curious to see how deep they were and how many. They called me names. Hurtful Ones. Told me that I shouldn't live if all I wanted to do was die.
Die? Who had said anything about dying?? That thought had never crossed my mind before.Well not until someone said that to me. Suddenly I became obsessed with the idea of suicide. My first suicidal thought. I knew it was downhill from there, but someone had cut my brakes and I was spiraling out of control. Death, blood, pain and blades began to rule over me. My every thought, emotion and action was dictated by them.
It was exhausting.
I couldn't sleep without dreaming, and I couldn't dream without dying. I would dream of ending everything with a knife drawn across tight skin, and then instead of dying, I would find myself stripped of everything but bleeding cuts before my peers. Forced to face the humiliation of them pointing and laughing and whispering about me, without being able to do anything about it. No running, no crying no nothing. I would wake up crying and shivering and drenched in freezing sweat that would burn my sores. Needless to say, I slowly stopped sleeping, slowly stopped eating... and my cutting escalated out of control. This lasted until Mid October 2009. My first and second suicide attempt soon followed and both failed, and after that I finally knew I was too far to be saved.
I was proud of my cuts and scars, I looked at them with adoration in my eyes. I was proud of what I had created. I was proud because I had finally found a way to depict the chaos that was inside me in a way that other people could see.
And then it happened. My school had phoned my mother, and told her what was happening and caught her up on what they thought the reasons were. Curtains Up and start Act Three: The worst day of my life.
Her tears weren't because of how I had dissapointed her, but instead because she was afraid of me. I could see the fear in her eyes when I showed her my arm. Hear her pain through the breathless sobs and I could feel her urge to get out of the car and just leave and never look back at the monster that had consumed her daughter.
She took me home and told me to show my younger sister. Her and I have never spoken about it since that day, partly because I'm too much of a coward to face her and partly because we try to avoid it at all costs.
I never told my dad, I suppose my mom filled him in on everything but we never spoke about it either. Its good that we never did because I don't think I would've survived another person rejecting and being afraid of me.
My mom gave me an ultimatum that day, I either stopped effective immediately or went to a hospital for the mental unstable. I guess you can fathom which I chose.
I was clean for about three days after before I had my first relapse. It was more difficult to stop than I could have ever thought. After that I threw out every blade I had hidden, every razor within reach, and every slightly sharp object was removed from my room. For 3 months to follow I didn't even keep a scissors in my school space case.
Bravery is not the absence of fear, but rather the power to overcome it, and I owe some very important people in my life more than you could ever imagine for everything I am today is because of their decisions and bravery in the face of adversity and I can honestly admit that I am alive today because of them.
You know who you are. And I will never find a way to properly say thank you. But know you saved my life.
I have been clean for close onto 2 years, without a single incident. I slowly introduced sharpeners and scissors back into my life and was have tried to help people understand just how dangerous this is where I could. I get urges and craving but the difference now is that I know how to control them. I control my addiction, it does not control me.
The name calling at school stopped, and people are no longer afraid of me, but I know that every time we sit in assembly, and something about cutting comes up everyone's minds jump back to what I was. I can immediately feel the eyes examining my arms looking for traces and scars, and I suppose that's normal. I can see how hard my friends fight the urge to look at me as well because I know that from time to time their minds skim across those years of hardships.
And the scary thing is that I'm perfectly okay with this.
My scars, my blades and my cuts are a part of who I am. They are an essential piece of me. They make me Chay. I am proud of them today, but not because of the destruction I created but rather because they are my own reminders that I am strong enough, brave enough and human enough to get through anything life could throw my way.
I can't say that you ever "Recover" from something like depression or self harm because you don't. I fight it everyday, and I do this by waking up and looking at my arm and knowing that I am better than that. I do it by getting up and choosing to be happy. I do it by choosing life. Choosing Me. Choosing Love.
Relapse is always a tiny black fleck in the back of my mind, and unfortunately last night I did have a relapse. I cracked under pressure, and hurt myself. But today is day one of starting again. Day one of recovery and fighting for everything I had. Everything I know I am.
I am beautiful. You are too.
If you ever find yourself thinking about hurting yourself, or in a dark place that seems hopeless, know that there is love out there.
www.twloha.com
www.lifesigns.org.uk
or comment below and talk to me. xx
There is hope. It starts with you.
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