Dissociation Avenue

2023 started as hopeful. Like every turn of a new calendar year, it ushered in a spark of hope that our normal will be slightly different than the previous 365 days. Muddling through January into March has shown me that the hopes I have for change feel stagnant, empty. Nothing feels good enough to even

Symptomatic

Love. It’s been quite some time since I experienced romantic love. The type of love that cocooned me into a feeling of peace that I never wanted to end. To feel understood by someone else. To give anything to see the other person smile. You get it – I won’t wax poetic about love. Shakespeare

Let’s Do the Time Warp Again!

A wake-up call. Time has slipped by me and it’s as though I have woken from a months-long dissociative episode to find life is exactly where I left it. In the corner like a pile discarded clothes I have been too lazy to put into the hamper. These months away from any writing at all

Great Expectations

Reemerging to my very small corner of the internet feels weird. It’s like I have been hiding in a cave for months, to come out of it to find the world has moved on without me; as it always does. Everything is in constant motion, even if time seemed to stand still for me. I

(Not) An Ode to Past Lovers

It has been so long since I have been heldby a man who respects women.I have been in their beds,no sheets, dust settling like a sheen on my body. Men who took.They promised me delicate adoration,but I was left used and pressed into the mattresslike an old flower between the pages of a worn book.

A Constriction of the Soul

Deep pockets of gloom,anger sits like a sieve on the soil (soul).You are alone in this uncertain place. To acknowledge a life that is broken,seams frayed like the edgesof your forgotten joy,discarded on a shelf 20 years ago.It is time to dig yourself out of this nightmaredisguised as a dream.A dream down a rabbit hole

The Great Conditioning

Who was I before the world got its hands on me? On my body, my mind, my emotions, my self-worth? I feel like I’ve been run through the washing machine 1,347 times and come out a version of myself I don’t recognize 20% of the time. Granted, I give myself immense credit for the version

Slow Your Own Sacrifice

There’s a story of mine that has gone untold for almost 20 years. A repressed moment that broke through my tender memory while making breakfast. A padded room. I was 14 and the most angry I’ve ever been in my life. I spent time in a padded room when I was 14. No, there aren’t

Isolation Island

Since the pandemic hit, I feel like I’ve created my own island for myself. Where I feel safe, can open the doors to the ghosts that demand attention and heal the parts of myself I long ago buried. You see, we are all haunted by something. Some days we don’t think of it at all.

The Places You Have Come To Fear the Most

A couple of months ago, I wrote about my cat, Mr. Buckley. Tonight, I write to tell you and to grieve the fact he is no longer here. As soon as I left the vet clinic, empty carrier in hand, the skies opened up and poured rain the whole way home. It felt a bit