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.

Past-Life-Line

I know why those who love me continuously tell me to change, to be more upbeat and happy, but I wonder if they know that circumstances in one's life tend to introduce them to comfortably, uncomfortable sensations. Sensations that in their own right, stain the past, present and in some cases the future, too. It's like Shakespeare said, "To thine own self be true." I am true to all that is Neda. I can’t apologize for the presence of incomplete human emotions in others. I am for the tenth time in my short life, willing to be open while I seek the stability raped of me by others; others whom I don't know whether to love or hate and whom I love and hate. I find it one of life's greatest conundrums; a lot of people just wrap a Band-Aid around a cut and move forth, others are told not to cry about it and, if you will, man up, but I, I just keep cutting. When I bleed, that's when I feel. Pouring peroxide on a wound, for me, is an excruciatingly, uninviting sensation though it lasts but a meager instant. It's the dismembering and remembering of my father's spirit. It's remembering the past, documenting its wraithlike wind, rewriting it, revitalizing it and allowing it to tap into its own memory, while the scent of cigarettes cinched into my grandmother's silk nightgown remains on the tip of my nose which no longer reserves that place nestled into her deep clavicles while I sleep. It's a sense of comfort tied to the struggle of trying to duplicate these things, knowing that the past is the only feat that's impossible for anyone to ever conquer. I keep asking myself if there is a way to make others understand how necessary the magnificent, albeit at times unimpressive, minutes of my past are obligatory to my survival, and now I see that there may never be a way and frankly, I no longer care to question if one is even necessary.

I am this life.
I am here to shout it from the rooftops.
The past is the only lifeline that some of us have.
I want to secure my thoughts a valid presence, here at this moment in this particular life; attachments to the past MAKE US WHO WE ARE.
I don’t need to feel this intense desire that something needs to be removed, discounted, or let go of in order for me to move forth.
It was something not even the most privileged people will ever be given the chance to experience. It taught me sorrow and without sorrow, I would have never realized how badly I wanted peace. It taught me peace and without peace, I would have never become the empathetic, kind person I am.
I am independent.
I am my father’s daughter.
I am Margrit Khankhanian’s granddaughter.
I am worthy of happiness.
I am deeply in love with feeling anything.

I live, breathe and dream the past; and that, that is the kind of excruciating sensation I am faithful to no matter how many times it hits; every morning, day or night, when I realize it is time to wake up, live or sleep.

Zola Jesus - Skin

This is going to be quite possibly the hardest assignment I have ever had to accomplish. I know that I will relive all the tears I had shed in order to write these poems in the first place, and I know that I will shed many more in order to immortalize my past within my thesis. I pray that afterwards, I will find myself in the most calming of places. I will walk away a learned poet, with skin tougher than it has ever been, hopelessly devoted to my adolescence; having found it a home within bound pages in which it will always stay loud, carefree and young.

The Truth Hurts

I wonder if it'll ever stop; this decade-old blue funk I've been in crisscrossed by the most minute inklings of my own, personal pacificity. I am hopeful and more productive than I have been in a long time and still my subconscious willingly opens its arms, welcoming the tricks that this world plays upon the strings of my heart without any remorse.
I've been told to keep my true life quiet, but I can't; this is me. I speak about it all, everything that you find negative within me in hopes that someday, someone can find the courage to do it too. I have been told to make change happen instead of sulking. I want the life I know I deserve, and I'm here to tell you that I will never stray away from exposing what I deem necessary. I am not a victim but I am very sad and I refuse to be ashamed because I am. This is me and it always has been. I am no longer the one who waits for change to happen, and I will never again let you tell me that the reason things remain the same is because of any wrongdoing on my part. I am deeply trying, here, and at this very moment, there is nothing, nothing, NOTHING left for you to say.

Can I Ever Get It Back?

I used to write short stories while everything exciting was happening to those around me. If I cared to join them then the excitement in my life would have never seen a chance. I believe that I had something that couldn't be touched. Something that kept me speaking; tangled in cherished discourse with characters I had never met in real life, even though if this took the shape of my real life, I would never have one qualm with it. Birthing the climatic situations of their lives came easy; it's fortifying any present execution of them that has become trying.
Writing began when I was a happy sixth grader; when the excitement of being in junior high and then high school prompted daydreaming in class about the crush I had that present hour, which then allowed my characters to share a kiss or act out that teenage relationship that I wouldn’t see until the tenth grade and then mourn its loss for what seemed like forever after. Writing began when I was impressionable, morphed into something necessary to survive when I no longer was and died when I realized there was nothing left to fight for.
Every year when I clean out my past stored in plastic bins upon plastic bins, I come across that black pee chee folder torn at its fold, filled with 150 stories I spent writing either in Mr. Kidder's American Government or at home on Wednesday nights watching Party of Five, while my parents hollered in excitement at the NBA playoffs emanating through that little Toshiba television set that will live long with an unsavory reputation, yet with a twinge of something that will always make me smile in service of it.
All I heard then was the sound of happiness. I only wish pleasant stimulation could hit me the way it did then, now.

It's Been 365 Days

You have brought me the most insatiable appetite for love. You are the man I've always dreamt of and written about. You make me want nothing more than to write the best fairytale ending that any story has ever seen. It’s been 365 Days. No other man has ever crossed this threshold and I thank you for loving me longer than they ever thought possible. Thank you for believing in my worthiness. Thank you for allowing me to be myself, and thank you for being the man that I miss even when you're sitting right beside me. You fuel the fire that resides deep within my longing to taste childhood again. You calm me down, gently, each time I realize I can’t. You make me want to pursue my pipe dreams and to be better at everything and to everyone that I have ever let down. You build me up with the cognizance that my writing is of respectable substance all the while trusting that I am incapable of ever having let anyone down. I am at fault more than I led on. I admit this here, without retraction. I am one stubborn woman. I have major anxiety and dislike when you try to fix it. I react in ways a reserved lady never should. I am an angry little bitch. I have a major crush on you. I am thankful for all that had happened before I came around, even though I know it hurt. I fear things like the future, but I embrace all the uncertainty that comes with this strange love. This is one rollercoaster I’d wait hours to ride without a Fastpass. Here’s to waiting as many years possible together. Happy anniversary to you, my 6ft-something pollywog. ♥

First Boyfriend

September 5, 2000 11:53am

"If you’re going to cheat on your boyfriend make sure you break up with him first, you ugly bitch!"

As I turned to see my friends walk back to class without a care — I came to realize, as I rubbed the streaks of mascara off my face, that my life would never be the same.

I remember lying under the covers when
our premature, first autumn began to fall; an October
night, pale as my lips were cold — abandoned by

blood's refusal to play warmth into November. This
hand evicted out from your glove; my father’s panic
found reprieve. Those childhood dreams of falling
down had come back; hitting the ground - safety
net occupied.

*
November 11, 2000 9:14pm

“I never meant to hurt you. Kissing him meant nothing. You’re the one I want.”

Your flesh at Seventeen— I wanted to relish every inch.
I remember rainy days where we’d seek refuge under your
umbrella, standing on the senior quad in all its emptiness, our
tongues submissive to lunch hour’s destiny. My skin pervasive
in resting eau de cologne, your neck stained in the hue of
habitual love letters — prime accessories in marking
clothed, sexual territory.

*

November 11, 2001 5:13pm

“This isn’t going anywhere. All we do is fight and plus, you’ve yet to let me fuck you.”

I remember your house. Careful in her home, I gained back
your mother’s trust after breaking your virginal heart. I remember
the night I slept over: running away with lies left on my home’s
answering machine, twirling spaghetti, sipping raspberry wine,
listening to wind chimes in blind rapture with the dry Santa Anas.

You undressed my inexperienced teenage frame.
Fearful as your finger let itself slide, I remembered the stained-glass butterfly missing its wing.

*
July 20, 2003 4:37pm

“I’ll call you back.”
“No you won’t.”
“I can’t take your shit anymore. I can’t talk right now with you harping at me. I’ll call you back.”

I was tested on young love. The welcome to cheat—wrapped in those
muscular arms, long through frayed edges of his cotton t-shirt— consented.
I can say I suffered along with you though you’d swiftly overturn my parole,
calling it a bluff, sentencing my capacity to assault fledgling emotions to further
rehabilitation.

*
October 11, 2011 6:37pm

I have always been worth waiting for.


I’ve been waiting 8 years, 3 months and 21 days as if old
photos and once pleasant Valentine grams are so inclined to ask.
Those childhood dreams of falling down have come back; hitting
forgiving ground – safety net easy, vacant only to be occupied by
last boyfriend’s love.

The phone number you never dialed is no longer in amenable service
to the moments we spent — they were nothing more than fairytales you
told to keep me captive.

Trading Secrets

My secrets hang splintered by wooden
clothespins on a line to dry—the cold shade
of nightfall coalesces with the degree of their sorrows.

My secrets scream for a change, each metaphor
exhausted—lying under its own linen waiting for
first light’s epiphany.

My secrets struggle to keep quiet—as the unchanged muse
fills pages in pensive cursive destroyed in a battle against
my hand’s weight—slash marks violate emotional
stains hours after manipulating their own silence.
Pull out these leather-bound sheets; no grief for this spineless
journal is in order.

My secrets wish they were worth keeping—arms down, this pen
resigns; unemployed by vices of real storytelling. Under rug swept,
a poet’s hands washed—the desire to repeat lathered with lye,
celibate in mingling with timid prose.

My secrets want to trade themselves in with yours—
walking out clothed in a free, written exposé, versed
in words past language, intimate in imagery’s arms
never felt before and lying as the dotted “I” in lines of
thought bent on one knee proclaiming this woman’s love
to her art—

Erase my manifesto and donate its nostalgia to the
shelters of prior, plaintive want.
An open Poet can only be read one way—
There’s no use crying over spilled secrets; tie the leather
strings tight, the skeleton within me is all that’s left.

James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream

When things get a little out of control, I look to the words and rhythm of songs that kept memories of my past afloat. With this, something fresh, all the confusion innundated in the muted tributary of my body releases itself a little more each time I listen.

For Anne

Most days I cannot remember the portion of happiness
exhaled by these lungs. The life in which you had nothing
against, where laying on its grass cut worse than razor
blades, suicide ’s restive aid.

You wrote in madness, a language as mercurial as that spoken by
an artist dictating pain to canvas, elucidating which red hue to fill
in hearts with, never questioning why a heart’s temper swings.

Infinite times, I have placed my contrived crux into a shoebox filled
with the same toxin that caused its abstraction; photographs shoot
stories as they are told, whose deaths will find comfortable deferment
time after time.

You possessed passing in the legacy you left bound. Two
days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital is
all it took you. All prayers fall short in revitalizing Poet from
your remains, as I step over the edge into the same darkly afflicted
end point.

Suicides deceive the human form; birth betrays the trust of those who
commit the crime concluding the lives they have lived, survived
as long as possible. Still-born births are presented privilege, immunized
against the fight for normalcy in a world where depression is inherent and
gangrene develops in the mind, invulnerable to antiseptic cleansing.

Death’s a sad bone, yes, but living pauses in the pale undoing of any
sores: new, old, or resting somewhere in between. Voluntary erasure
offers balance to cold; the creation of words stamp out numb from
tender living, offering balance to the beautifully frightened ones—
dying to take the next steps towards the perfect suicide: independence
from the echoes of anxiety printed in the obituary of a Poet’s
leftover metaphors.

Inside Out

I am a line from loud to soft. –John Frusciante

Early mornings before I wake, my head spins
wondering who I’ve been feigning it for.
These effortless strides have turned
tedious and still—
I pace down a lineage of pain
where all hesitation of spreading remains refused.

I am a fool—honest in a daze, waiting
to meet my match.
I am loud; mindful burning down the highway of
fragmented memoirs. Loud like my father, sitting
static—prospect prone to accident.

I wonder who creates these nightmares I’ve been
starring in—a heightened sense of being, still
a poet with nothing tangible against the backdrop
of every image clear enough to show for it.

I am a fool—angry in a daze
annulled by personal neglect. As frightened as
they are brave, I tread behind peers.
Damaged glass beneath me laughs—I walk
slow with attachments; overanalyzed creativity
hidden in shards pricks my bare feet. I am
anemic, not only in blood but in words that lack
confidence.

I am soft; saltwater taffy pales in comparison. Soft like
my mother resting spellbound by her own myth; denial
kept secret by strength.

I am a miniature needlepoint suffocated,
stimulated, pulled and spooled by former
mourning. Let me be a softer line divorced from
brash living; a grand tapestry silenced, an exhalation
blue in waiting.

INADEQUACY

Mother’s stretched out on her divorce settlement win, the seashell fashioned couch
father had carried across the threshold of their new home, crying over Susan Lucci’s
forthcoming severance. Carpel tunnel has confined mother to living vicariously through televised dramatizations of reality, twice removed.

What if she was Erica Kane and I, her lesbian daughter?
Would she approve of secondhand inhalations through us?

She watches in awe as the cast-iron certainty in television’s
representation pales in comparison to her truth, her lies, her
qualms. Reality’s starring lady, distant by no state of removal as it
poisons television’s conjured ideals, agonized a C- section
dependent on the path I was to embark upon.
My delivery summoned her reliance
in tranquility not in humanity and its sequence of making
mistakes and confronting self-doubt.

She harps, “How about beauty school? It’s easier than mastering Poetry.”
She harps, “I am not saying you can’t. I am just saying it’s easier.”
I bawl, “Reason always has its reason. I know exactly what you are saying.”

Identifying yourself in the world separate from the womb comes with liabilities.
The best ones are those found in the process; her projected inadequacy confused for
your disbelief in self.

Inherited Stubbornness

THE MAN IMPORTED FROM ISRAEL:
One thing my daughter is going to have to learn—
Apologies must be lent on her tongue’s behalf. I
do not want to be loved nor slighted by her. I threatened
to kill her and have no misgivings nor regretful expressions
to grant.

THE CHILD CONCEIVED THROUGH HIS WAYWARD GLANCES AT ONE OF IRAN’S MYSTERIOUS BEAUTIES:
I am determined that you shall not entrance the potency of rhyme, the fragile birth of my skill. I am armed with lyrical fury and unwavering in decree of the right
granted to my twenty-seventh year as a woman let alone your daughter. Standing hovered over your open casket, I have unapologetically doused your feared flame through chronicles of what you ineffectively forgot with wrought iron hands aiding retaliation by means of a double homicide on one; unnecessary suffocation ending the solicitation of my days spent in search.
Images of you held up at face value have bailed out every illicit irritant held
captive by the calm of this woman.
I have killed you in my fears.
I have killed supplementary labor of you in my verses.
I have washed the residue of love
lacking from my skin.
My hands are reborn, short
in the genetic rule of your fists.

Space

HERE:
sits a young woman trying to master an education in
Poetry through art created fighting masculine requirements
inattentive by the now disincentive; the subject deficient in dispersing
muse-worthy thoughts. Questioning why the minutes pass in juxtaposition
closer than the moments spent sitting in vain trying desperately
to find the word POET next to the impotent and perpetual
enjambment of figurative language that plays tug of war with
her mind against her mouth.

ELSEWHERE:
stagnant in his property, depreciated yet south of the boulevard,
he lays in habitual movement of corked energy sucked into
Spanish novellas to which not one word is understood, but makes
his cock’s counterpart happy; this bitch’s happiness is key, not mine.
His Israeli jet dares never to attack, viciously, Guatemala and her vagina.
His Israeli jet dared never to attack, viciously, this poet’s Iranian
mother, his cock’s first counterpart, neither.

HERE:
so, what gives?