Thursday, August 27, 2009

Bonfire - 8/3/09

I was huddled in the corner
teeth chattering
white eyes
terrified of what I know
but mystified

I've been battling my demons
on all fronts
I invited them to tea
I invited them to leave
I want to hear what I want

Somewhere I knew
what I needed
but no one showed me how
the desire just receded
and I just shut my mouth

Time stacks the regrets
like rotting corpses in your heart
and you have to inhale the stench
before the bonfire starts

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Embrace - 7/30/09

i was laying on the floor
and in the corner, huddled
a little girl
dirt on her cheeks
tangled hair
hiding something
between her hands
clutching desperately
didn't want anyone to see

a dirty, tattered ragdoll
i went to swipe that dreadful thing
right out of her hands
her girlish grip
would not loosen
white knuckles
bared her teeth
i tugged
she pulled
heels grinding into the ground
i let go
her black eyes bore back at me

this creature
so sad,
so set on holding on
to this faded toy
maybe it's the only one she has
maybe it's the only one she's ever had
i open my arms
to offer a hug
she opens hers to me
and the doll falls from her hands
embrace

Monday, August 17, 2009

Too Far - written in junior high (at 11-13)

Water clouding my clear eyes
The weather to match my mood
And now I guess I realize
That this whole world is screwed

When you can't tell
The difference between your tears
And the cold raindrops streaming down your face
You know it's gone too far

When you can't tell
The difference between
Your friends and enemies
They must be make-believe

And you, a dim shadow
Beneath a dim, dying light
Might want to know
That I cried for you tonight

Friday, August 14, 2009

3010 - 7/26/09

We were standing in a meadow
You handed me some fruit
you must have heard me wrong
what i asked for was the truth
there's a creek that trickles by
it reminds me of my youth
imaginings and trapped tadpoles
but what's that got to do with you?
it feels the same somehow
the way it felt being at home
the silence the sadness
the shame surrounds what i don't know
i guess this means it's time to go
cause it's too soon to remember
go through all that again
a good time for me is never
but let's re-convene in 3010

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Capacity - sometime in junior high (at 11-13)

The tears will easily wash away
But the pain always remains
Filling me up with emptiness
Everywhere it goes, it stains

Bleeding from the inside out
Hollow and incomplete
Conspicuous and abstract
If only it were discreet

They say the sun will always shine
The moon will always glow
But perhaps for a Time
In search of nothing they will go

I was obsessed with the sun and moon around this age. I wallpapered my room in sun and moon patterns, bought journals with the sun and moon on the covers, and wrote about it a lot. I'm trying to figure out what that was all about. I'm thinking something about a mother and father to me or some consistency in my life that they provided... I don't know. I'm still sitting on that one.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Current - 8/3/09

Sleeping with a wet rag
I want to feel a dream
I've been overly exhausted
and towed downstream
currents push and then they pull
my body's an open sore
my past just keeps on surfacing
I can't ignore it anymore
the deeper it gets
the uglier the wounds
the more I forget
the more I get confused
didn't anyone love me?
did anyone even try?
I was a lonesome girl
with a propensity to cry
and now I'm struggling
just to stay afloat
my dream to swim upstream
feels impossibly remote

Thursday, August 6, 2009

My mom's little girl

So I asked my mom to read some ACoA lit, so that we could begin to talk about the elephant in the room - our alcoholic family. My mom left my dad when I was around 13, and she did a lot of work on herself to the point where we have had a fairly good relationship, but we haven't discussed or healed from our painful past. I decided to give it a go by asking her to read some books to inform herself. I felt that was the best way to broach the subject and I was so angry at her that I didn't trust myself to give her the information in an impartial way. I wanted her to learn about alcoholic families first and make her own connections.

So, she called me Sunday and said she read the first book I suggested, Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome by Kritsberg, in one sitting. She said she went through a whole tissue box too. All those years she thought she was protecting us, she realized she wasn't. She said she saw me and my two brothers throughout the book. She apologized for getting help for herself, but for not getting us help and for not seeing how much pain I was in. When she asked how I was doing, I shrugged and said I was fine, and she regretted not probing more and taking my responses at face value. She hopes I can forgive her. I told her that I do too, but I have to feel the anger that's been coming up before I can forgive her. I said I wanted to continue talking about it because it's not the type of thing that's resolved in one conversation. She was open to that and even got online to look up Al-Anon meetings. All in all, she responded better than I could have hoped to all this. I've been trying to turn it over, but must admit I've been feeling a lot of anxiety about how our relationship will play out now that I'm in recovery. With one brother not speaking to me, I feared losing another relationship in my family. I know people have survived and recovered without the support of their loved ones, but I also knew it would be very painful for me to experience that lack of support from my mom.

She also shared with me some fascinating details about her past that I never knew. She said reading the book made her realize and remember a lot about her own childhood. She said her dad wasn't an alcoholic, but he had a very volatile temper. She remembered him throwing her and her sisters on the bed and beating them. She relayed a painful memory of her older sister going out with a boy she wasn't supposed to in high school and when she got home, her dad was waiting for her on the front porch. He beat her with a belt on the front lawn and then dragged her inside and continued to beat her. My mom said the next day at breakfast, nobody said anything or talked about what had happened. She didn't want to tell me those stories about her dad because she wanted me to love my grandpa, who died 10 years ago. She shared that two of her sisters were molested by her younger brother. Her family was totally dysfunctional. She said that she was always walking on eggshells and reading the book made her remember the constant fear she grew up in.

This conversation with my mom definitely filled in a missing piece in my story. I was wondering why my mom would have been attracted to my dad, and why she put up with him for 25 years. She grew up with the same rules Kristberg identifies in alcoholic families - denial, isolation, silence and rigidity. I wondered if my mom had become a co-de through living with my dad, or if she found my dad because of her co-dependency. It was a chicken or egg conundrum that I wanted resolved - and now it is. My mom wants to talk to some family members to find out if her paternal grandpa was an alcoholic, which would mean that my grandpa was like me, and my paternal grandpa, the adult child of an alcoholic. She also shared that one of her uncles was an alcoholic who died of liver complications. I think knowing that my mom was also once a little girl living in fear will help me to get over the anger I have towards her. My mom has an inner child too and it seems that she's never done the work that I'm doing now to heal her, so maybe this is something we can experience and share together.

I really recommend Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome. It's a great, easy read that really breaks down the dynamics of alcoholic families. I think it's a good read for adult children, co-des raising children, and recovering addicts alike since all of us probably have similar upbringings and without recovery, we re-create the rules and roles we learned as children when we start our own families. See review of the book on Guess What Normal Is.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Untitled - 3/16/97 (At 14)

Bitterness
an infected confection
deriving
from lack of affection
anger and pity
self-reflected
lonesome desire
long neglected
I took some time
to resurrect
the plants that
died of pure neglect
You just watched,
standing erect
recalling words
you now regret
But thoughts and words
won't soon connect
We'll forfeit all
that we protect
You never gave me much
respect
And now it's my turn
to collect

I think the line "plants that died of pure neglect" is interesting because it made me think how you don't have to do something horrible to a living thing to kill it. You can kill something by not tending to it. I wonder if that's how I felt about my feelings and self-worth, etc. Sometimes the harm my parents did to me wasn't physical or antagonistic, but the pure isolation and sense of abandonment alone were killers.

At the end of the poem, the tone turns vengeful. I carried a deep sense of victimhood with me and I fantasized about getting revenge and proving everyone wrong. I even sometimes fantasized about getting kidnapped or hit by a car so that my family would regret the way they had treated me and show me some love and attention. I came to see by example that the way to get people to show their love for you was through having a crisis. I wanted to have one of my own so that everyone would revolve around me for once. When I really did have a crisis with my father last spring, I felt uncomfortable with all the love and attention, because it didn't feel right being at the receiving end of it all. I didn't want people to worry about me. I felt like I was putting people out and monopolizing conversations when my friends called to check on me. Hopefully, this is something I'll be able to accept from people as I recover.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Untitled - written 9/4/07 (At 25)

some unsettled sand
slipped under the bathroom door
somewhere someone screamed
and someone begged for more

can't believe the things we see
and the ones who we adore
some sort of shifting light
darkens the parts we long to ignore

i've seen a lot in this here life
quite sure i'll see some more
some unsettled thoughts
slipped under my front door

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Nothingness - written 3/25/99 (at 16)

There is
nothing really i should say
I've never felt so ordinary
in such a lifeless way.

It's not just the way
I've looked or dressed
but the way I feel:
plain, thoughtless, depressed

i'd love to talk
of my nothingness
and write it down for all to see
except I'm ashamed of who I am,

and who I'll never be