fearlesslywritten reblogged
“I keep wanting to dye my hair something different, something new, something I haven’t tried before, but after a few weeks of unfamiliar locks, I always manage to go back to purple. Going purple feels like a return to home, to my roots, to my core, but sometimes, it’s more like a reversion, like cutting back trees or clipping wings: it’s hard to tell which. What I mean is that it is Spring and I feel my roots finding water, stretching oh so deliciously, leaves unfurling to sunny days, my gaze turning up and in as I see my glow. It’s starting to grow stronger, warmer, and I’m dancing and laughing more; and my hair is sort of blonde, waiting to lighten enough to add a splash of something new, maybe blue. But in the back of my mind, I whisper ‘stick to what you know,’ which is to say that change, no matter how much I want it, is something I fear so much, I remain stained purple. No matter how much it fades: it lightens, it stays, which is my way of saying that stains are my brain’s name for what feels like trying too hard and not trying enough, which is my way of saying that no matter how much dye I bleed, how much light I see, how much hope I seed, it still somehow seems to always come out PURPLE. Depression isn’t something I can bleach out of my life, I can’t leech enough light to make my own every day, and even when I can, most days, there’s a haze and it’s purple.”
— purple roots 4/11/17 mrm
When did you decide that the only
roots you were allowed to keep
were the ones you'd stained
in the process of trying
to mask your trauma?
.
Do not mistake your trauma
for your foundation.
There is a You underneath
the scarring, the bruises,
the cracking, peeling scabs
that don't seem to want
to stop bleeding.
.
Depression may color your life,
but it is not the color of your life.
.
Even when you've returned to purple,
even when you keep going back
to that which you know,
what's always remained the same
was not that color,
but rather the growth.
.
Under every purple "root", the hair
refused to stay the same length:
it would continue to push,
like a sapling
emerging from a seed,
.
and it would grow.
.
Your roots are no more purple
than the blood pumped through
your beating, bleeding heart.
.
So go ahead, return to purple.
Think of it as pruning
or wing clipping if you must,
but remember that either way,
you will always
continue to grow.
.
.
a return to purple roots
February 23, 2020
mrm
fearlesslywritten reblogged
Sweetheart, just let go. You don’t always have to know the answers to every problem, to every question, to every wondering thought that crosses your mind. Life is not an equation with a solution assigned with a set numerical value. Drop the pencil and ease your mind and breathe. Accept that you don’t know. It’s okay to not know.
~MRM~
Close your eyes and hold your breath
as you draw a card for your day.
Frozen faces look into your soul
and see the hurt and confusion,
but also the strength and courage.
They whisper what you already know.
Those who do not learn from the past
are doomed to repeat it, we say,
but those who dwell on it can
have their visions clouded by it.
It's a difficult balancing act,
and most will never master it.
Sometimes intent is the only thing
that separates manifesting from
self-fulfilling prophesies.
-misFortune teller
mrm
december 2019
Come,
rap against the window of my being once more,
gaze upon my soul and show me
all that is misplaced, mishapen, misused.
Here,
take my shaking hands once more,
place them on my chest to feel
what should be beating, but remains hollow.
See,
the scale is tipped askew once more,
my spirit aches and cries and shakes
under the weight of nothing and everything.
.
.
mrm
July 13, 2019
The world may be quiet, but my brain buzzes, words without meaning and sounds unheard by human ears thundering through my skull. My stomach may be full, but there's an empty feeling in my gut, a sinking void trickling down to my toes.
cognitive dissonance
mrm
June 8, 2019
This is how the heart breaks.
It beats itself into a corner, basket case brain and beligerant belly begging for something to feel.
This is how the heart breaks.
The bloodied baby barely had a chance to speak, save for the boom of a broken bellow before it ran.
This is how the heart breaks.
It bleeds its breaths beyond the barrier of night and day, wondering which way to the beginning.
This is how the heart breaks.
It bends beneath the pressure beset upon it, it bends and cracks and caves just the same.
this is how the heart breaks
mrm
2/2/18
I woke up at 4:30 this morning.
My eyes opened like broken shutters
and refused to shut again, so I
rolled myself over, placed my back against
the cool of the wall, and watched my love
sleep for a few minutes, the warm glow
of streetlights illuminating his serene face.
I shifted, and as different parts
of my body protested my early rising,
a stream of wants flashed through my mind:
I want to sleep,
I want my knee to stop aching,
I want to be held,
I want the world to stop,
I want, I want, I want, I want...
The vague emptiness I'd felt
during the day returned for a moment
as all that echoed through my
hollow bones was constant want.
I don't even know what it is it wants.
It's not that I don't want what I have,
it's just that my brain, my heart, my soul
doesn't know how to stop wanting,
even when it has everything
it could ever need. It doesn't know
what it feels like to be full, or how
to stop asking to be fed; it just cries
and keeps me up at night.
My brain, my heart, my soul doesn't know
how to process stray aches
the way my body does. My body
has always thought itself to be
much older than it is:
ankles, knees, hips, and back
singing a sore song of pain
with no known cause.
My body has grown to expect
and accept their tantrums.
But for emotional ache with no apparent cause,
my brain combs through memory
after memory with a magnifying glass,
my heart beats itself up, and
my soul searches itself, bent on finding a flaw.
It's not a foreign feeling, and yet
every time it comes,
I search anew.
I ache anew.
I want anew.
katzenjammer September 28, 2017 mrm
Rays of light grace my sight
as I wake to words from her pen.
She’s already been awake
for half a day, and it shows.
Always tired, never sleeping,
she is the Sun, bringing
light and life to my
darkest corners, unearthing
my dreaded secrets and
deepest fears and
coloring them lilac
and periwinkle,
puce and chartreuse.
She makes my flaws
beautiful
with her light.
Some days that bleed into nights
see another glow to show me
I’m not alone. Quiet and poised,
she sleeps while I run in
circles of worry and wakes
when my mind cannot sleep.
She is the Moon, sometimes
shrinking in shadow until
she’s just barely there.
Though her light struggles
against the night, she’s the absent
celestial I constantly believe in.
She waxes and wanes,
but she remains
present
even when
she’s unseen.
heavenly bodies July 20, 2017 mrm
Some days, I feel like existence
is a foreign concept to me.
I don't know how else to say that
to make it pretty or make it make sense,
but there are days I feel like I'm not really
experiencing the things that happen to me,
like I'm piloting an elaborate automaton,
but there are no controls, no levers,
no buttons, no brakes: I'm just along
for the predetermined ride.
Most days, I feel floaty, but not
in the way that a bird or a cloud must feel.
It's more like a shadow, appearing just
a moment behind the light
that illuminates an object.
When I'm not puzzling over existing,
I think about Nothing a lot.
On the surface, that sounds
like an admission of vapidity,
but what I mean by Nothing
is the opposite of Existence:
an all-encompassing, oppressive darkness,
like I've swallowed VantaBlack
and it's filling my heart
and it's crushing my lungs
and oh god,
is this how it looks when everything ends?
I don't know if I understand
existing most days,
but I'm not ready to not exist.
Existence and the Nothing (the constant existential crisis) 4/24/17 mrm
It's easy for me to forget
that this battle
isn't just mine to fight.
I get so caught up
in how my brain
doesn't remember
the things it has to do
to keep moving forward
that I forget that my love
also fights faulty memory
and patchy concentration,
just in very different ways.
Reminders pop up,
like the pile of dishes
we haven't touched
in over a week,
the garbage that's getting
too close to full
to stay in the house,
the cluttered bathroom
and the unwashed clothes.
It's easy for me to forget
that this battle
isn't just mine to fight.
My written silence echoes
back to me so loudly,
I forget that others' words
can mask a hollow crevice,
torsos riddled with
edited phrases and
empty metaphors,
butchered ways of saying:
"help me, I'm drowning."
Ink can act as a life preserver
or an anchor, but if it
isn't fastened correctly,
its use is lost to the waves,
bleeding out into water.
What's the point in floating
if your nose is underwater?
What's the point in staying put
if the water level's rising?
It's easy for us to forget
that this battle
isn't just ours to fight.
the isolated fight 4/23/17 mrm
The house is burning,
but the tide is turning
if you find yourself resigned:
does the ocean squall
or the forest call
to the bones you leave behind?
forest fossils and ocean glass 4/22/17 mrm
Two years ago, I walked out of my house dressed in what I considered a smoking outfit: a black and white floral crop top just short enough to flaunt my tattoo, paired with a high-waisted black skirt shorter than I’d usually wear, red lipstick, and black pumps.
Some would be bound to see my clothing as a flare, while others would see a smokescreen, and still others would only see flames from the hell they thought I must be bound to enter into.
I knew this very well.
Within a minute of walking, I received my first call of the half hour.“Gorgeous!” was thrown to me out of the window of a passing truck.Not what I was expecting, not warranted, but not bad by any means.
I continued walking down the busiest street of my town.
Less than ten minutes later, as I was crossing the same street, a truck that was flying down the road (and that I had my back to) yelled at me in such a way I felt as though he’d whispered it into my neck with a knife pressed to my ribs:
“Tramp!”
The word seared to the back of my brain with icy hot pain, even if I expected it. I jumped and scampered across the road, fearing I'd be run down, and jerked my unwilling legs into an awkward gait down the sidewalk as I caught my breath.
I took a different road home.
I am not entirely naive; I know what some of you will think.
Why did I openly dress in a way I knew would attract unwanted eyes and crude words? Surely, this is like giving myself a papercut in the ocean: pouring salt in the wound, as well as drawing dangerous animals that just can't help themselves.
In response, I ask you this: why are men compared to sharks smelling blood? Why is female sexuality compared to an open wound? Why don't we respect all subjects compared?
Sharks are more than killing machines; blood is the life-force we strive to protect, and wounds become scabs, become scars, become stories of endurance.
I believe in the soft nature of the shark and in the healing of the open wound, just as I believe in the plush of man and in the expression of female sexuality.
I ask you to do the same.
This world could use a softer touch.
And for those who refuse to see the beauty in self-restraint,
in respectful admiration, in radicalizing my self-expression:
Is it because my hips swing wider
than your narrow-minded opinions will allow?
I do not dress to be undressed by
the wretched eyes you train on my behind;
I don't dress to impress or impose.
My crimson lips do not act as a scarlet letter
to decry my self worth and reputation,
but the words that spill from them are tainted
with the blood of a world full of men like you.
leave the sharks out of it 4/21/17 mrm
What do you fear?
Losing the person I love the most
because of my addictions;
never having a child;
not being in control of my body;
alarms;
abandonment;
myself at times;
my parents finding out my sexuality;
hell, in this life or the next;
that the answer is what I'm thinking;
of losing a loved one;
of my eating disorder
coming back with vengeance;
of gaining weight;
of not reaching my goal;
of living on my own;
sharp things in my eyes;
being hurt by those I love.
The thing about fear is that it's raw,
it's invisible and tangible,
it's baseless and logical,
it's common and unordinary.
The thing about fear
is that it makes us human.
(draft from 5/11/??) 4/20/17 mrm
Two steps forward,
One back: pause,
Where are we now?
A cold sweat, but
Where is the threat?
Rinse, repeat, relive.
palpitate 4/19/17 mrm