Stigma

Something has been on my mind for a while now. When I first got on FB, some of my friends and family would tell me to stop airing out my dirty laundry on social media. All I did was bitch about my life, my dad, my depression, etc. I hated my life and didn't really have any friends to express my heartaches to.

Fast forward 8 years, I don't talk to those friends and family members anymore, and some may say that I still bitch about my life, my dad, my depression, etc.
But, I beg to differ. I don't bitch, I recollect by giving a name to the specific forms that my deepest aches take every day.

Everyone around me expects my life to be great; after all I am married, am extremely educated (intellectually and empathetically speaking) and have good friends, but to be brutally honest, even if I may not hate my life anymore, I am not at all happy. I just can't shake this feeling of loneliness.

Every day I wake up and wonder if today will be any different. I still post about my dad and my depression on a daily basis and even though I have survived the past, I am still fighting for peace. I believe that I am not broken anymore, but I am undeniably bruised, and I want you all to know that I don't think the marred skin that has protected me through years of instability will ever grow anew over the dark welts only I am familiar with.

I say this because I wonder how many of you see my posts and perhaps block them or bypass them. This is not to say that I care if you do. I just need to express my thoughts on this platform so that I can move forward and conquer life whether or not God has given me the courage to do so.

I don't know what I am going through. I have stopped taking part of my depression meds, and maybe that's why I am feeling this way. I am becoming a social worker, and I feel like I am drowning. Part of me wants so badly to give up, and I haven't felt like this in so long. It is so fucking frightening to have so many people around you, and feel like you don't have a soul in the world fighting to keep you alive.

I have tried to uphold this truth that anyone can make it out of the darkness, because I believe it. I wake up every day to prove to my clients and people I connect with on social media that living with a mental illness is possible and that the notion of suicide can be a far-fetched idea if we all come together to fight the stigma, but I just can't today.

I began this status with a purpose and now I don't know what the purpose of it became. It may seem disjointed or might make perfect sense; I'll leave that up to anyone who reads it.

I am tired more so today than yesterday.
Whether tomorrow will greet me with pain or comfort is a mystery to me, but chances are I'll awake with all the energy I can muster to greet her with a smile.

Thankful

This Thanksgiving what I am most thankful for is this moment right here. Moments like this nothing compares to; not my dear mother, my tumultuous life trying to convince my father I am worthy of his love, not my wonderful cousins whom I love more than life itself, not my one and only grandmother whose spirit is lying without worry in the clouds, not my childhood memories that I cherish with each and every breath I take, and not my knight in shining armor; my humble fiance. This, the way words make my body feel potent, warm, frigid, sad, in love and obsessed with having to endure cataclysmic events that leave me torn and forlorn for the rest of my days here on earth. This; the way poetry makes me yearn to crawl back inside my mother's womb for the chance to be birthed into someone with talent that could never be touched. This; the way poetry and music remind me that no matter the pain, the hardship, the smiles, the years of lost happiness and the years my heart will continue to spend trembling over the loss of my past, I am still here. This; the way everything I am not, everything I wish I was, everything I am, and everything I have yet to become becomes the amalgamation which wholeheartedly mirrors the exact person I am, but without a name, without a definition, without an image, without any identification except for a speechless face in awe of the world of art and writing that resides before me, and the hairs on my arm that stand up and speak for me as the chills run down the small of my back trying to explain how much I wish - I wish they could understand that it; that poetry; that each time a line is written I realize that I am alive and each time it is read, I refuse to feel anything more or less than life in its one most pure form.

I live to endure the exquisite feeling of paralysis by the truths that others fear; The truth in ways only poets have the fearless tenacity and power to express.

http://www.upworthy.com/watch-this-guy-misspell-father-at-a-spelling-bee-for-a-beautiful-reason-5

"For all the times you said I got your back..."

I can never forget how empowered this song made me feel; How I'd play it over and over again while sitting alone in my room; A 16 year old who was going to prove everyone wrong someday. Though I haven't fully reached the point of success I had envisioned for myself, I've undeniably come pretty damn close.
How heartbreaking the days of adolescent worries were. How resilient my worn skin has become.

Kina was such an inspiration to me. She gave me the confidence to push through all the difficulties in my life back then. And I'm still pushing through because of her. I pray she realizes what a lasting impression she had on many of us.

http://www.youtube.com/v/iZocOj4FJ0k?autohide=1&version=3&showinfo=1&attribution_tag=nGpzjQVL06py6IJQttxaqg&autohide=1&autoplay=1&feature=share

Marina Keegan

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/

What more can I say? Can anyone say?

The sentiment that this young & brilliant writer has left me, and those whose lives she has touched before and after her haunting exit, with is one of cataclysmic fear and tantalizing warmth.  I wish I wrote like her.

Frightened - July 23, 2013 - 1:47 am

I wish I wasn't so sucked into these social media sites. Especially Facebox or Soorat Ketob as Joel and my mother, respectively, like to call it. It's such bull, really. Instead of furthering my studies and having faith in my ability to reach the summit of my career endeavor, I find myself wanting the lives of those who show up on my newsfeed. I wonder how many people on this entire site are really genuine about their experiences. I wonder how many of you might feel the way I do at times, and I wonder how many would admit it.

It's weird to think of myself as an engaged 29-year-old who is still trying to find herself.
It's weird to think that besides the semester I took off in the autumn of 2005, and the year between undergrad and graduate school, I have been in school since I was 4-years-old.

I wonder if it will ever fully make sense to me; this life; the paths I have followed and the reasons behind doing so; the hurdles and the bullshit events that have transpired. I have spent forever crying. I have learned to keep my mouth shut though. I don't bitch about life anymore, at least not as frequently as I used to. I smile here and there. Laugh a lot. But still, feelings of inadequacy and loneliness remain all too real. I have Joel, my friends and my family, and yet I still can't help but feel alone, confused, and tired even though there is proof of my undeniable restlessness given my obvious love affair with insomnia at 1:30 in the morning.

I don't know why I am writing this note, and whether the point that I am trying to get across actually exists.

My paper was due 11 hours ago. There have been many "11 hours ago" in my life as an undergrad and grad student. It's weird to think that I actually miss the teenager that once resided within me; she always had every assignment done on time, and never felt the need to stay up all night thinking. Nowadays, my mind decides everything for my body and itself.

I'm worried about the future and uncomfortably scared, but I know that I acquire all the strength to overcome it.

My only hope is that my mind and body will embrace each other when the dire need for us; for me; for Neda to overcome life yet again hangs heavy in the balance. 

My Despair Has Begun to Exhaust Itself, But My Voice Has Not and Never Will

I thought she was beautiful and raw when I first heard her voice and watched "Criminal" on Mtv, but I couldn't articulate why her music meant what it meant to me at such a young age. Now when I think of beautiful and raw, I recall the way cutting released endorphins though my skin remained broken and exposed to the world's impurities.

Now I see and understand how similar we were and are, and I couldn't feel more blessed to have been fortunate enough to exist because my emotions and the power of music allowed me to BE MYSELF.

I am not a victim nor have I ever been; I have just been outspoken and real without any fear nor regret about exposing the things, whether my perception of their magnitiude is grand whereas others believe minute, that have manifested in my short life when society and high school cliques, today and ten years ago, would rather I keep them to myself. 

My sorrow is my sorrow. Your sorrow is your sorrow.

There is no degree of pity that my ability to be open has ever warranted, and there is no degree of my pain that has been worth anyone's discounting.  

The human condition is sometimes held captive, and on the other hand let loose, by its own vulnerability to all types of discontent and happiness. What the human condition deserves most is immunity from any rating system that serves to quantify emotions as anything but just. 

"Everybody sees me as this sullen and insecure little thing. Those are just the sides of me that I feel it's necessary to show because no one else seems to be showing them." --Fiona Apple

Without it, Life is Wasted Time

At six, Steve Winwood introduced me to the power of crying when I was deeply touched. At 22, I could no longer listen without allowing him to repeatedly break my elementary heart with that divine sound; without remembering how hard I tried to talk some sense into my father and without reliving in my mind, the irregular rhythm my pulse took while hearing him tell my stepsister how much he loved her while I stood beside them yearning for him to voice the same towards me. At 28, I began letting go; the wishes to cradle the poignant past with all the fibers left of my being, transient; finally fleeting. And now, James Vincent McMorrow revitalizes the power that crying holds upon you when you are profoundly saddened by the involuntary forfeiture of things once capable of love during the good-natured, infantile hours of your life. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to resist and fight back, I guess certain things will always stop you dead in your tracks; you’ll always be looking for that same higher love you still haven’t found. I accept and now know that the past is a place worthy of visiting not permanently living, but the child in us all never dies and deserves to exist somewhere beside us: either clinging on to us while we go through the motions, or waiting in the wings to offer us comfort when the promises that we are after remain broken as we continue facing our uncertainties while standing out there independently in all of our yearning, and wondering if there must be someone who’s feeling for us.