if i had a garden

i wouldn't give you the flowers

i'd give you the seeds

so you could have a garden too

I tried to stop him. I tried to escape. I tried, but no one thinks I did.

His hands were on me, drifting, sliding, groping, dragging claws against my tender white skin. I was begging him to stop. He growled with delight as his eyes devoured my skirming shaking body held down by his hands.

I screamed as he pressed his body onto mine, I screamed for help; but no one came. He put his hand over my mouth and nose and told me to shut up; and I did, I passed out from the lack of oxygen.

All I remember was the pain.

He teared me to shreds, leaving me a bloody naked mess, destroyed and alone.

And they asked me why I didn't stop him if I didn't want him? They assumed me a whore.

Maybe I was a whore; but they never understood what he was—he was a monster.

"Why do women cry?" he questioned with false brovado in his voice.

"Why does anyone cry? Everyone has their reasons, but I don't know her or what you guys were talking about so I cannot offer my opinion." I suggested.

"Women cry when they are cheating or hiding something," he was very sure of himself with this statement.

I scoffed, not at all surprised by his response, because, he always thought that I was the same way whenever I cried. I was always, "guilty" or "hiding something" or both. When I had a miscarriage, I killed the baby; when I was raped, I was asking for it. When he chased me through his apartment and slammed the door with the thunder of his fist near my face, I provoked him.

It was in this moment, this phone call when he was talking about another woman, that I truly realized what he is: a monster.

I do not know how or why he ended up this way, but I know what a monster looks like. He's handsome, charming and makes you feel like the only one in the room, but that's just the beginning. Slowly but surely his insecurites come through; in the way he asks who you are talking to or where you are at all hours of the day. In the way he calls in the middle of the night, to make sure that you are home and not out "doing something stupid." In the way he makes you feel so small and insignificant and the way he plays the victim.

That is the worst part. How is everything my fault? How do I need to change this much? why can't I talk to my family, my friends? And why does no one love me but him?

Everyone has their flaws, and everyone makes mistakes, and I have certainly had my share. I am not perfect and I have been a monster myself. I have lied, cheated, and had outbursts because I was unaware of all that was happening. And then I met him, and I changed all of that. I was a new woman. I found my power within; like a surge of adrenaline, fighting against my inner monsters and this outer one.

When you finally find your strength and your worth, you will no longer be pushed around. And guess what? It does not matter that he thinks that you are the monster, because, the true monsters, skulk in the daylight, preying on the weak. But you, are not weak. He is. He is weak. And you, you are strong.

Real monsters, do not realize they're monsters, and they certainly don't realize who they are messing with.

What is a monster?

It's movies where claws strike from under the bed. When children fear the night. When the doors close, and it's empty and dark and alone.

Does that mean the monster is the night?

No. For the night bears the moon, and the stars, and the silence. Which can be deafening but is also beautiful. The night is what marks the end of the day, it is a rest. A time to recharge.

So, what is a monster? If it is not the night, is it the day? When people walk with narcissicm, and cruelty. The world spins even as children are slain, and rapists walk free.

A monster is emotion. Envy, wrath; it is in every step.

Try not in vain to be the monster, to become the hero who slays the monster.

And yet, in each of us is both.

But the problem is, that makes them human, and that is the monster that is all too real.

*In my perception and reality*

A monster is someone or something that has no regard for life. A monster is not necessarily ugly or deformed or even imaginary, nor does it have to be seperate from one's self.

If there were a member of my species that I would deem a "monster", it would be someone who is psychopathic by nature (or nuture?) and has no concern for the well being of those around them, the population in general, someone who just seeks to destroy.

If I was going to look in myself and my own character defects I can say I have been a monster in my life towards others, Earth, and myself. If I were to name something that isn't necessarily "alive" but destroys all that we know and love - I would call the government a monster, Monsanto a monster, stress and fear a monster. Lies are monsters that destroy even the person who tells them, and those that the deciet touches. Drugs are monsters. The pharmeceutical companies are monsters. Religion is a monster. Anything that does not empower others, but seeks to control them through any means necessary - is a monster.

The biggest monster I face today is fear. Fear has done some terrible things to me and my body, my family and my community, therefore changing the world just a little more fearful a doubt at a time. Fear keeps people stuck, frozen. Fear seeks to destroy not only those who feel it but those around them. Fear is how the entire media circuit works today, and it's so obvious that this "system" wants to seek and cripple us from doing what we came here to do.

A monster has taken ahold of humanity causing them to waste their lives at meaningless jobs and professions where they are miserable and die a little more each day. A monster is something that needs slayed instead of accepted. A monster is constantly whispering in our heads telling us to do things for our ego instead of the betterment of mankind.

More simply put - you can find a monster everywhere these days - disguised as something that is supposedly good and healthy and meant for order or you can turn on your tv and see how much it loves monsters and how much it wants us to focus on the bad and ugly instead the good and beautiful - but monsters can be oh-so beautiful too.

Pain is not a beautiful thing.

It is sobbing at two in the morning when all you want to do is sleep and hoping that no one can hear you.

It is choking on all the words that you cannot speak aloud.

Pain is ugly, and pain is deadly, but pain is raging to be shown.

Yet no one wants to see pain in its true form, for people crave beautiful things.

So instead pain is turned into art. Paint on canvas; ink across pages.

Others covet the talent needed to make these beautiful things, but not the pain necessary to create them.

So the pained continue to make beautiful things, hoping no one will see what they have really become.

A mess.

A monster.

Dear you,

You’re caving again. And you wish the emptiness inside you wasn’t so comforting at times, because now every time you find a reason to look forward to life, that voice inside you says something is wrong. You feel like the more sadder you get, the more you forget what happiness feels like and the more alien the feeling becomes when it arrives.

You’re tired of fighting for clarity between what’s present and what’s yet to come as if the two are just an illusion you keep forcing yourself to believe until your emptiness gives up and moves away. But, you don’t realise that emptiness has room for everyone. It’s you who chooses to stay and you’re chasing after the feeling like it’s all you’ve ever felt. I’m sorry I’m not there to comfort you and tell you, “You don’t have to hide away. It’s okay to feel that way but it’s not okay to want to keep feeling that way.”

So, I hope this letter does that for you.

I don't know if you know this

but I followed some of you

Those of you with pain

with anger

with depression

with a desire to die

I open my news feed every day

with a little tight lump in my throat

I love to read your stories

I love to be inspired

I love to see you posting today

Not given up

Not dead

My heart feels relief when you write

The pain is getting out

The emotions are being expressed

You have your one weapon left

and you are swinging away with all your might

I can't fix you

I don't want to

You're not broken

You just got a little turned around

Please keep posting

Please keep swinging

PLEASE

DON'T

DIE

I care that you're alive

A complete stranger

I know

But when the voices come too loud

When the pain comes too fast

When the weight is too much to bear

Please put down the knife

Please set down the gun

Please throw away the pills

I care

And I will be looking for your posts in the morning

It’s a sick joke to call it an emotion, but disconnection is my least favorite feeling. Detachment, distance, and disinterest from the goings-on of the world.

My mentor teacher, a couple years older than my parents, had me over for a couple beers one afternoon. He, like me, is a Catholic who lost faith. A cluster of finches hopped about the yard, searching for food while we sat on his patio. “Look at them,” he said. “No thoughts at all, just following instinct like they’re part of huge computer program.” For a few moments, his worldview slipped into his larynx and came out in casual conversation, and it was cold. I knew the man just a little bit better, and I loved him all the more for it.

For my own part, I delight in birds. Most of the time. But when I feel disconnected, they are merely the irrelevant automatons my friend saw, and people are little more. They go through motions I cannot understand for all their predictability, and that I cannot influence. They hold no wonder. My attempts to help them, or teach them, or love them are meaningless because we all belong to the same void. This is the feeling of disconnection: nihilistic ennui.

Kafka wrote, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside of us.” I’ve found that’s only half right for me. A book can warm the currents and make them flow rapidly, but when my sea is truly frozen, books do not break it apart. They take too much interpretation and require me to draw on emotion I do not then feel. Movies and music work best for me, preferably ones I feel strong attachment to and know well, because I’ll be on autopilot for the first while. Vertigo, American Beauty, Ikiru. The Smashing Pumpkins album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness works well, perhaps because it’s so overtly emotional in its swings from melancholy to nostalgia, anger, love, joy. I don’t feel like putting it on, but I do anyway because I’ve learned it helps. The swelling strings and choruses of “Tonight, Tonight” might start to work on me. By the time I get to the verses of “Muzzle” I’m usually feeling more myself again. The opening lines are anxious: “I fear that I am ordinary, just like everyone.” By the second verse, the attitude has shifted: “My life has been extraordinary, blessed and cursed and won.” That’s a better feeling.

Disconnection returns periodically. I recognize it, now, and before an evening’s over I can usually show it the door.