Unconditional love?

I was just thinking about unconditional love. I have it for some people and some things in my life, but not for all. I know that isn’t fair, but life isn’t fair. I haven’t been able to turn the other cheek. I haven’t been able to accept people without an apology. I cannot accept people’s lies or their denial, and so I cannot accept them. I wonder if I honestly love anything or anyone other than my cats unconditionally. I think I love my stepdaughter, my niece Allyson, and my nephew Sean unconditionally. I know they may be angry with me or have detached from me, but I still love them. I know I have done wrong in their eyes, and I still love them. I know that I have done things that have hurt them emotionally, and I have begged forgiveness. I have never laid a hand on them in anger, nor have I ever touched them in ways that are inappropriate, but that does not mean I have not caused them harm. I do not expect their unconditional love. I do not believe I deserve it. I ask only for forgiveness if, and when they find they can give it. I love my partner unconditionally. I have come to a place however, where it is impossible for me to live in the conditions she is willing to live in with her son. I have said I will move out, continue to be her partner, just not live with her, but she has asked him to leave instead. Now I feel like a shit because he thinks he is being thrown out because of me. I would leave. I don’t want her to choose me over him. We can still be together; I just cannot live in the environment he brings with him into this house. I feel so crappy about this. I am already in a fragile, anxious, depressed, nearly needing a hospital stay place as it is, and now I have massive guilt riding on my shoulders. I fear she is going to resent me and eventually dump me over this. Crap, I never seem to do anything right. But then here is the deal. He brought into the house a lot of the same things I had to deal with in childhood and adulthood and I ran away from all of that to have a different life. His chaos is triggering me, and my insiders into panic mode. We are all so anxious and depressed we can’t think straight. I don’t want to live triggered and I don’t want to hurt Debbi, either choice is a loss for me and for her. If he goes I lose because she will, and he will, resent me for being the reason he leaves. If I leave, she will be upset that I left, and resent both he and I for me leaving. I lose if I stay because I am going crazy to the point of wanting to do self-injury or worse. If I go, I will miss Debbi and I have to find a place I can afford and have my cats. It sucks ass all the way around. Why couldn’t he have stayed up north, or have found a place to stay when he came back instead of assuming it was ok to turn our lives upside down? So, back to unconditional love, I think maybe I have it for me, my cats, my dad, my baby brother, and I think for Debbi. I am not so sure I have it for me.

I haven’t posted here in a long while. My life has been busy with trying to recover, to become a thriver not just a survivor. I have learned a lot about myself and I am growing a great deal. I am still dissociative. I am still multiple. I am still finding it hard to have normal adult relationships. I don’t know very well how to be a friend. Sometimes I am a very good friend, but often I just don’t know how to listen and that makes me not such a good friend. I am still struggling with establishing healthy boundaries. I have so much more to say, but not much time to say it at the moment. I do know I want to get back to posting here. I hope that getting back into some personal writing, I might also be able to start writing some new poetry. I’ll be back soon.

Past

It holds me in chains
Drags me to places I don’t want to go
Takes my breath
Fight or flight

It’s always there
Part of everything I see and do
Follower
It consumes me

It invades dreams
Those I have sleeping, those I have of future
Creeper vines
Clinging to my walls

It drives me
To improve and grow in spite of it
I founder
On the rocks of it

The past
Is always with me, inescapable
Creating chaos
Driving me insane

To remove it
Like a worn out suit of clothing
Dead skin
Exfoliated

Freedom and future
Fearlessly moving forward to health
I dream this
It invades the dream

Dinner

Dinner


I look at you
and sense
a full meal:
appetizers,
meat and potatoes,
a small salad
on the side,
and dessert,
sweet, creamy delight.
A feast
lovingly prepared,
passionately eaten.
Sated,
I lick my fingers
and wonder,
where do I hide
the bones
when I am
through.

The Ward

The Ward

With my eyes I scrub the linoleum.
I don’t ever know if they watch,
But they never miss my medication.
I used to have a kitten,
I would hide her and take her out to play,
But one day I dropped her down a crack.

They say it’s my head, it’s cracked;
Sort of like the linoleum.
I know it’s a game, I just don’t know how to play.
I know what goes on here though; I watch.
I can be as sneaky as my kitten.
I’ve got to go, here comes the medication.

I need more meditation, not more medication.
What, are you smoking crack?
I’ve lost her, have you seen my kitten?
I like to wear socks and slide on the linoleum.
Hey, neat watch!
We have checkers, would you like to play?

Is that your guitar? I know how to play.
At least I could before the medication.
There are crazies here, I watch
From my room, there’s a crack
In the wall, down along the linoleum.
The nurse is coming with my medication,
I hope she trips on the crack.
I’ll stick my foot out, she usually doesn’t watch.

Hey, are you watching?
I want to dig my kitten
Out of this crack
In the wall so we can play
Once again I must bow to the goddess medication.
I think I hate this linoleum.

Medication my butt, I’d rather smoke crack
And play all day with my kitten
Instead I sit here watching the linoleum.

looking glass

Leave the past behind,
It’s what is often said;
How does one leave it?

Pieces of us stuck
Behind a mirror,
Reliving every moment
Of painful times.

Through the looking glass;
Our selves trapped in time,
Selves unable to move on,
Separated from our host,
Divided from the core.

Leave the past behind,
It’s what is often said;
How does one leave it?

Tiny children twisted in time,
Behind the mirror
I see my face and theirs
And know the pain.

Pain in time suspended;
Each moment relived,
Selves, pieces chipped off
By events too terrible to face.

Leave the past behind,
Why is it often said?
How does one leave behind
The selves who got stuck
Behind the looking glass?

Blocked

I find I haven’t been writing much at all. When I do write I write long hand. I need to transfer a lot of stuff to type and some of it needs to find it’s way here.

wow

I haven't posted anything new here in such a long time. I know why, all of my writing has been longhand and I haven't taken the time ti type anything up. I guess I need to do that.

Monsters

The monster in the closet,
The one hiding under the bed,
The monster in the nightmare,
The one called boogeyman,
The monster in the movie,
The one under the couch,

The monsters hiding everywhere,
The ones who want your flesh,
The monsters that steal souls,
The ones who hide their face,

Monsters come in lots of sizes,
They wear many faces,

But the monsters named Daddy,
Or mommy, brother, uncle, family,
Those are the scariest,
Hiding behind love,
Kind words and deeds.
They feed us,
They clothe us,

They eat our souls,
Destroy our minds,
Leave scars in passing,
Cloud our present,
Steal our hope for future,

Monsters, monsters everywhere,
We cannot run and hide.
Grown and separated,
Still they live,
They live inside us,
We carry them around.

Monsters take notice,
We aren’t afraid!
You can’t hurt us now,
We banish you to hell,
They hell you made,
We hope you like it there.

Monsters, monsters,
Where have you gone?
We turn and wonder,
Were they ever here?

Whatever!

I have been doing a lot of good work in therapy. I am getting better daily, and then a day like today happens and I feel as small and bad as I ever have. I fucked something up, forgot something important, which I have been doing a lot since menopause, and really angered someone. I was threatened. I was criticized and attacked at the very center of my being. I was basically told I am pathetic and a loser who needs to get a life and grow up. Ok, fine, I do need a life and to grow up, but not the way this person meant it at all. Her words were spiteful and hurtful. I’ve never said I am a mature, well balanced person. Indeed I know I am socially lacking in development, needy, nerdy, depressed, distracted and distractible, lonely, and a lot of other things. I know I have a long way to go to be a functioning person in society. There are actually people who meet “me” and see a very confident person, blah, blah, blah. But that person is not me. It is either an alternate personality, Moe, or the persona I adopt to look unafraid when I am actually so anxious under the surface that just about anything will make me cry or blow up in anger. I guess what I am trying to say is that I may certainly be as fucked up as this person said, but I have never claimed to be anything else. I am fucked up and I make mistakes, big ones, often. I drive people away from me. I have no filter. I do and say things I shouldn’t. I talk to the wrong people about the right things. I hide my true thoughts and feelings because they are too bizarre. So I am all of those things, but I am also a person, with feelings, and thoughts, and a heart. I have a great capacity to love. I do things for people I hate doing because I am afraid to say no. I am a work in progress. I am not the fake that this woman said I am. No trained therapist can be fooled by a fake. My disorders, multiple disorders, are real, as real as my eye color. I can change my life, my reactions, I can grow and learn, but I can’t stop being me. I can’t make memory any better in women in menopause, it sucks having Swiss cheese memory. I literally forget what day of the week it is, which is what I did today; I thought it was Sunday because I don’t remember having a Sunday this week. I didn’t set an alarm. I stranded this woman and it pissed her off with good reason. In what universe does the phrase, “I was wrong, I am sorry,” actually work? No matter how many times I say it to anyone, I just get further lecture on how I was wrong, and what my wrongness cost them. In cases like this one, I often get a lot of unsolicited criticism of who I am, what I am, etc. I take comfort in the knowledge that she is an angry, mean spirited person, making her a kind of ugly you can’t see in a mirror, and I am not.

Free Write/Ramble

I act out, fly off the handle, dissolve into a mess of “I can’ts” and drive people crazy, or drive them away. Being told to stop when I am in the middle of the melt down does not work because at that point I am unreasonable and do not believe I can stop. It also makes me feel worse about me, driving me deeper into the feelings of “I can’t do anything right,” and, “I am a bad person.” I feel like crap knowing my actions and reactions are hurting other people. Reminding me of this in the middle of it all doesn’t make me feel less like shit, or more like stopping, in fact it is the reverse. When you tell me you don’t like my poetry, the ones that hold me together by taking the power out of the thoughts by putting the dark thoughts into public words, I feel like I am a failure as a writer. When you say “Maybe somebody will buy your book…” I again feel like a failure. I feel as if my poetry is rotten and won’t be identified with or useful to anyone. But the point of the poems is to bring the dark thoughts and hurtful things to the surface, to show others who think the same that they are not alone, to let the world know we feel these things all of the time and keep going anyway, these are my points. I hope someday to write poems more of hope and less of my process, but I am in my process, I am not at the end of it and it brings out all of the dark to get to the light. For me there is a light, burning from within and without. It comes from me, from the Is, from all living things. I just have a lot of dark, painful, hurtful, fucked up shit between me and being in the light all of the time. I live in the light as much as I can, but for years of living in the darkness, the light is uncomfortable, bright, burning and feeling dangerous. I feel exposed in the light; funny how the cure for feeling exposed is to expose all the dark, all the pain, all the nastiness to the light and air, and to others. I don’t want others to know how often I let myself be victim. I already feel at fault for all of the bad that happened to me, but to expose that to others is just too dangerous. And yet here I am, exposing; my autobiography, my poetry, my secrets, all coming out for others to see. When I relay this to others and am believed, I am relieved, it is freedom. When I am disbelieved or questioned, I want to crawl back to the place where I never tell, where telling brings punishment or death. I don’t want to live in that fear. I don’t want to live with the feeling I am a freak for my memories, for the awful things done to me. I know some of the stuff I remember is beyond common understanding, but that doesn’t make it untrue or me a liar. When I am called liar, it is like a huge door shuts and no more can come out without hours of time with those who believe and understand. They give me safety. One gives me fear. I walked out of a life with a family because the fear and the memories couldn’t be contained anymore. I lost a mom, a nephew, a daughter, and more. I am alone in the world save a few friends and a niece or two.

Freedom

This poem is totally raw and unedited because I allowed it to flow. This is my voice and those that share space in my head. I like it. Maureen




They write, and I write.
They talk, I listen.
Their words, through my hands.
We write, I write.
Who writes? I don’t know,
And it doesn’t matter,
Not now.
Writing comes
From somewhere inside us,
In ways no one taught us.
Words, strung together
As only i/we can.
And they write, and I write,
And we write through
My hands.
You see the words,
Credit me,
I credit us.
Writing is escape,
And writing is forbidden.
We write the same,
In our head,
With the other hand.
Once their voices
Were part of mine.
Now they find their own,
And we write, they write.
My hands used
To tell the untellable,
And give up the secrets.
We write
Freedom.

When Do I Tell People

When do I tell people?
What do I tell them?
That I have people
Inside me
To help out
To protect me

When do I tell people?
What do I tell them?
That days have shapes
And colors have shapes
And plushies talk
And cats do too

When do I tell people?
What do I tell them?
When small voices
Come out of me
Southern voices
Many voices indeed

When do I tell people?
What do I tell them?
That I see the world
Through filters
Of hurt so deep
Imagination can’t reach

When do I tell people?
What do I tell them?
Medications hold steady
A ship that rocks
And tosses thoughts
Twisting perceptions

When do I tell people?
What do I tell them?
That mental illness
Is not a death sentence
Nor is it contagious
Nor are we dumb

When do I tell people?
What do I tell them?
I am just like them
Living in the same world
Seeing from off center
What they see as well.

What Poetry is and What Poetry is Not

Poetry is not literal. Poetry is not the voice of the poet. Poetry is not prose. Poetry is figurative, imaginative, symbolic. Poetry is a voice, an idea, a thought. Poetry is thought provoking and open to interpretation, many interpretations. Poetry is shorthand of emotion and idea. Often in the words of a poem a reader feels or sees his or her own emotions in the words or images of the poet, and assumes that those feelings are the feelings the poet intended. It is not possible, without asking the poet, to know what her intentions were.
Interpreting poetry is not something that is taught enough, or well enough in school. People often have no idea what the purpose of a poem is. Many are written for effect, some tell stories, some are just pretty, all are visions, not of the poet, but of the reader or listener. Poetry really should be heard and not read, though reading allows one to see the words in connection to one another. How to read poetry is a lost art, to know how to read the punctuation, the enjambment (or even knowing what that means,) is to truly know poetry.
One reads into the poetry what one wants to, and then all too often blames the poet for the feelings it brings up. Poetry exists only as words, symbols on a page without meaning until the reader or listener infuses their own thoughts and feelings into the words the poet put on the page. While it is true that the meaning is there for the poet, the poet allows that the readers will make their own meaning from the words. The recipient of the poetry does not, cannot know what is in the head of the poet at the time of the writing, nor can that recipient ever truly understand the poet’s vision, because the poem is seen or heard through the filter of the recipient’s life experience, emotion, thought, etc. It is unfair to blame the poet for reactions to the poetry, to the words, because the words are only words, and have meaning, and feeling only through the filter of the one looking at them, or hearing them. This is true of all writing in a way, but poetry most especially because the poet writes the way he or she does so that the words can be interpreted by the reader. The goal is to stir feeling, to create thought, to provoke, to be a catalyst in the mind of the reader. If poetry were meant to be taken literally or at face value, it would be prose. In creating poetry the poet looks for words that stir, that have more than a denotative meaning, more than a dictionary definition, the words are chosen for their connotative meaning, the feelings they bring out, the associations. . I am thinking of an example of a word, suicide, it brings up different thoughts and feelings for every person who reads it. For some the process of writing about it is a triumph because they are writing it and not doing it. For others saying it takes the power out of the thinking it. For others it is the contemplation of the darkest place a soul can go. Others have lost loved one to suicide. Sometimes suicide imagery, like the suggestion of a saber being too dull to slash a wrist,
The walls are sooo high
And the finely honed saber
I had when I began storming
Your citadel isn’t even
Sharp enough to
Slash my wrists
It isn’t about the wrist or the slash, it is about the saber and how dull it is. A person with dark thoughts on her mind will see the image of the slashed wrist and not the saber dulled to uselessness by attempts to break down defenses of another. Or is it about the slash and the wrist? It is about whatever is in the mind of the reader, but blaming the poet for what is in one’s mind is foolish and childish.
It is also a mistake to assume that the poet is feeling the things that are written on a page. The poet may be writing from a different voice, a different perspective than his or her own. The poet chooses a voice, a persona, and writes from there. The voice of the poem, the feelings, the words, are not always what the poet is thinking or feeling, indeed they are most often what the poet think someone else might feel in a situation or about a thing. A poet writes from her own voice, and she writes from other voices, it really makes no difference though because, again, poetry means what it means to the reader, not what it means that matters, but what it means to you! It can be assumed a poet is being negative when for him the poem is a triumph of positive imagery.

tree house

The tree house, haven to all, is where I hang out when they summon me. This is the place each comes to give me news, memories, greetings. It is the place where they can connect and use my body to their own ends. This tree house is really the hub of all activity that concerns me. I have a campsite in my head, where they live. They all meet in each other’s tents or in the comfort/rocking chair tent to spend time with each other, but they come to the tree house to see me. I never even knew there was a tree house until I drew the campsite and it arrived in the drawing. The sign below does not bear the name Maureen, it says “Moe house.” Weird because I keep seeing Moe, looking exactly like me except smiling and laughing and being unafraid. Why doesn’t she just take over, or meld with me? Her name is down below, but my mind is the one in the tree house being filled with more crap than I can deal with. So much is coming at me so fast, and I can’t get all of it out to talk about it. I feel overwhelmed and ill equipped to deal with everything. I need a way to deal. I need a way to process the insanity. It’s going to take hours of journaling and hours of talking to get this shit out of my head. I am drowning and I can’t reach out for fear of rejection. I make many acquaintances and few friends. Friends mean connection, I either connect too much, too hard, and drown others in my need, or I shy from any true connection. In the tree house the alters connect to me and I want to run, climb down, hide, but for me once I am there, the trap door slams shut and I am there until I hear and listen to all he, or she, or they have to say. I always wanted a huge tree house, one I could actually live in, but now that I have one in my head, and it is filled with memory bombs, I am not so certain I want one anymore.

Rainbow Umbrella

Rainbow umbrella
I see rainy days
When you folded
All the colors touch
When you are open
Lines divide all

Rainbow people
I see every day
When you are open
All the colors touch
When you are closed
Lines divide all

Rainbow ideas
I have every day
When I am open
All the words touch
When I am closed
Lines divide all

Rainbow people
I live with today
When I am open
All their worlds touch
When I am closed
Walls divide all

Rainbow umbrella
I see rainy days
A mind became open
All the words I touch
With eyes half closed
Ideas just fall

Why Is It That I Know Who I Am...

Why is it that I know who I am, what I am, and I love me, know I am good, kind, loving, generous, decent, and then at the same time I am insecure, unsure, afraid, and constantly making mistakes? How am I both of these people, the confident one, and the lost one? I’m torn, confused. I wonder if these are alters of me, or sides of me. I wonder if I’ll ever triumph over the dark side, the small side, the insecure side. I don’t want to be her. I am not her. I know me; I am smart, funny, capable, and cute as hell.

I sometimes don’t recognize this person who is living on the outside of me like some kind of costume I can never take off. I want it off. I want me to show, to shine. Look at me, I am perfect. I am happy, carefree. I skip, I play, I am; Freedom. There is nothing wrong with the me I see, the me I think I am. But then there is the me that wants to be out, to be seen, not for attention like some think; no, not attention for me, for my pain, but attention for the pain and suffering of so many who didn’t survive. I survived. I am alive because I am strong and perfect and because the love of The Is, the light of the Universe is in me and I am unreachable by the nastiness of the world.

MJ poem

Pendulum swings
Big & little things
In our moods
In our minds
What feels so normal
So alive
Medication dulls
Creativity destroys
Cemented in place
Cracks
No medication
Isn’t there
Nothing holds
Flying, racing
Thoughts
Emotions
Confetti on the
Wind
A gun looks
Good
A mind shot through
Alone or taking hostages
Along the way

Strange the World

Strange is the world inside my head,
I wonder if one is called Fred.
Whirling boys versus swirling girls,
Pitter patter, like scurrying squirrels,
Run around my brain, up my halls,
Down my stairs, and around my walls.

This one feels guilt for liking dick.
Oh my god, that’s so sick!
Some make others feel even worse,
Come to save? Or just an evil curse?
Others try to fix every tiny thing,
Quick with a kiss for any sting.
No two eat the same, have similar likes,
All enjoy scaring me with memory spikes.

I have to listen, I hate asking inside,
Who owns this feeling, who just cried?
Talking to them makes me feel nuts,
Facing this tribe takes a ton of guts.
Some days I haven’t got any of those;
Too bad this is a door I can’t close.

Not just any old swinging door,
Oh no, it’s a trap, in the floor.

Don’t climb my tree, enter the house,
Once inside, Snap! Trapped like a mouse.
Memory bombs fly at my head,
Still wondering if one is called Fred.
This is the stuff I packed away,
Never thought it would return this way.
Many voices calling me at once,
They know about me; I’m the dunce.

How many live here in the zoo,
I’ve no idea at all, do you?
Revelations of names, dates, places,
Times, and in the mirror, new faces,
All come at me daily, twisting thoughts,
Like I’m the target and they take shots.

It is strange to live in the world, and in my head.
I wonder where they go when I am dead.
If I have one soul, in one body, alive,
Explain the existence of the alter hive.
I can’t explain them though I understand,
Bitch trying to describe, ain’t DID grand?

What is the point of this twisted bunch?
Saving my mind maybe? Just a hunch.

If I could lead a tour around the halls,
I would point out the crumbling walls
That once separated me from them,
And show the twisted flower stem
Of memories, violations, acts of pain,
That brought the group, to my disdain,
That helped survive that which destroys,
Leaving me to have the girls and boys
Living in, standing in, taking abuse
For the me who couldn’t. What’s the use?
The tour could never show the glory,
The wonderful invention, the real story
Of how they saved my tiny soul,
And in pieces they kept me whole.

Strange the world inside my head
Still wondering if there’s a Fred.

Ask Inside

Ask inside,
Ha, ha, ha,
As if I could do less
Every decision
Every thought
Every move
I make
Discussion, argument
Inside
Each opinion
Shouted out
Those who care
Some are silent
Cacophony
Voices
With faces
Voicing opinion
Voicing resistance
Disobey
Argue
Choose differently
Hear the roar
As all who
Disagree
Fling their thoughts
Into my thoughts
Put their voices
In my mind
And mouth
Who needs a
Conscience
When you have
A team
A system
A committee
To debate every
Damn decision
Ad nauseum
Ask inside, ha,
Why, when they
Voice everything
Every
Little
Thing
So next time
You ask inside