i read sob stories on the internet

wishing i could reach out and help

but i am stuck in my life of privelege

lamenting over things i cannot change

lamenting over people i cannot save

i want to help people,

but i'm trapped in my naive body,

locked in a room of inexperience

i keep trying to give advice

but i really need someone to give me advice

because i don't know who i am

or what i'm doing.

i try to help people,

a misguided therapist

speaking through personal experience

but my experience is limited

and i don't know how to help.

how can i offer advice when i can't follow it?

what right do i have to help people

when i can't even help myself.

if i could be there,

without risk of disease,

i would reach out,

i would hug,

i would protect.

but there's only so much you can do through a screen.

i read sob stories on the internet

i wish i could save people from their own hell

but i am just another username

on another screen

waiting for someone

to reach out to me

the way i want to reach out to them.

school is a prision

a place where i am somehow not good at the things i have always been good at.

red pen is the law

and my tears are the handcuffs.

self hatred in my veins,

so deep it makes the mariana trench look like a kiddie pool.

i’d jump,

i want to jump,

sink down into the ocean and become just another fish in the bunch.

but isn’t that who i am already?

just another fish,

pushed around by the sharks.

and naturally they don’t care,

nobody cares,

nobody sees the way i’m floundering.

You took away my magic,

Which flowed mercilessly through my viens.

Blood red velvet to arcane, undying black,

As you bound me to your chains.

You took the very thing,

From which my escape from your world grew.

Metal lacing the untouched stream,

and there was nothing I could do

You didn’t bottle it up,

Or simply just take it away,

No, you made me watch it disappear,

and forever they shall say,

“It’s sad that she grew up,

For she was never one to lose her soul.

But her tears of fire fall-

Lamenting all that they have stole.”

We live in a world of color,

But you trained me to see black and white

To follow the road too taken,

And to go without a fight.

But this pen and this paper are proof

That your poison shall never win,

For my words are a nimble serpent

and you are blind to the peril you’re in.

So see this fire within me,

Boil deep with a hatred smile.

Take a seat in my ashen heart.

Magic dripping from this exile.

You don’t know all that you have,

Hidden in this repugnant land,

But remember, you took my magic

And darling, I am mad.

**please read the caption :) **

#story #writing #colors #heart #poetry #poems #broken #soul #dreamers

hi. so i'm just going to ramble for a bit. the past year, with covid and other... tumultuous circumstances going on, i started deeply examining my identity and beliefs. (this is just a reflection of myself and my experiences, so i hope this doesn't offend anyone)

a little background: my parents raised me christian, and not just like go to church a few times a year. they were on the worship team, and my sisters and i would get up at 6:00 am every sunday so we could go to all four services that day. my parents and church taught me everything i knew about christianity: that we were all broken and totally depraved, that jesus died for our sins, and if we would accept his eternal gift of salvation, we would receive eternal life. and it made sense. the only things that bothered me was that i wasn't sure if i was saved and i was scared of hell.

last year, i started questioning, mainly due to my parent's response to covid and blm. it bothered me. it wasn't only this, though. there were many factors, including my mental health and lingering questions that no one seemed to be able to answer, and if they could, the answers didn't satisfy me.

so now i'm stuck. i'm not sure what the truth is anymore and i feel so lost. i wish the truth was easy to find, not full of contradictions and confusing passages. i still think god is real but something in me says that he isn't good. i still fear hell but i don't want to accept his "perfect" gift, because i can't reconcile christianity with all my questions.

the other thing i've been struggling with is identity. i was taught that god made adam and eve, and it was perfect. man and woman in perfect, holy harmony. the implications of this are that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, so homosexuality is a sin and it twists god's beautiful creation.

i believed this, but i'm not sure that i do anymore. it is too painful - for myself and the people i care about. because the problem is that i'm a girl who likes girls. and it is impossible for me to reconcile that with the bible. (also, please don't comment that "it was actually pedophilia they were talking about in the new testament". no it wasn't. god is obviously fine with child marriage and making jesus's mother, a fourteen/ thirteen year old girl, pregnant)

sorry for ranting. i just feel so lost and hopeless. when i look at christianity, i feel so alone, and i feel like a part of me is wrong and broken. and maybe it is. maybe i should accept that, but i don't know if i can. it hurts too much. maybe the shame and guilt is god calling out to me, calling me back, or maybe it's years of indoctrination and cruel words being thrown back in my face. i don't know.

Me. That's what's wrong. I'm wrong. I'm wrong because I hate myself. Everyone around me tells me I'm beautiful and worth it,but why don't I believe it? Why do I believe the bullies instead? Why do I believe the fact that I'm ugly,useless,talentless and can't be loved? Is it becaue it's true? I really don't know. But at the moment, I don't like myself. I punish myself, and give myself scars.And I don't know how to stop.

Then there's the matter of having no one. I have no bestfriend, or boyfriend/girlfriend. I just want to have someone to love, and someone who loves me back. To cuddle,kiss,vent to, go out with and have fun with. Yet no one likes me. No one wants me.

I'm worried about making new friendships in my thirties. My best friend and I have been friends since we were thirteen. My right hand gal pal that I met in college has been my friend for sixteen years now. My recent friendships don't feel sturdy. I met a new friend five years ago and my ex didn't like her. I thought she was sweet and a bit sad. I felt bad for her. Turns out he may have been right about a few things. I don't think I know how to do this anymore or maybe I just don't want to do this anymore (sidenote this is also my issue with dating in my thirties.) It was easy when all we had to do was like each other's clothes or the same boys. Now I can't just let strangers into my life. I need to know their intentions. I need to know why they want to be my friend. Is this friendship purposeful? Is this friendship healthy and godly? Will I have to block you? I'm annoyed and it makes me want to shutdown. It's my default defense mechanism. The Bible says if you want friends then be friendly. Maybe the entire problem here is me

The world has changed in my lifetime. It is not the same place I was born and raised.

When I was young, we never said prayers or had a Bible.

Although I could see God's hand in the wonderful things he had created.

When my great grandfather died, he left his Bible to me. I was the oldest Great-grandson. His loss to me was great, but I believed he was with God. That night I place now my Bible on my nightstand. Before going asleep, I asked God if He is real to show me.

That was the night I had a prophetic dream, God is real!

What’s wrong?

The dream leads me to read, study, and search the scripture. His love letter to humanity on how to live, not a list of don’t do that or this.

A couple of things I have found in my search for these last sixty years. Two pages in the Bible do not belong!

The pages marked The Old Testament and the other The New Testament.

This bothers me. The word Christian not used in the Bible until four hundred years after the death of Jesus. And by the way Jesus his Hebrew name is Yeshua, which means Salvation.

What’s wrong?

Yeshua (Jesus) and his disciples were all Jewish. The Disciples and the people of the time had been waiting for the Messiah (Christ) to save them. Even Moses foretold of the Messiah.

What’s wrong?

Yeshua (Jesus) taught what Christianity calls Old Testament. The New Testament not written until 150 years after the deaths of Jesus and his disciples.

What’s wrong?

The believers in the Messiah (Christ) at the time were Messianic Believers and of the sect of The Way.

What’s wrong?

God is the one and only true living God, the Creator of all. He does not make mistakes. God gave Man a magnificent gift that of free will. We have messed up a perfect world. To top it off, we have failed to make a personal relationship with Him.

He does His part, and we must do ours. It is a marriage relationship.

What’s wrong?

We are the problem; we seek what we want... ME, ME Generation doing what they feel is right!

We believe because of facts written out in the Word of God.

If we take the time to study and search out the truth, this enables our faith, which is hoping for what is yet unseen. Follow his instructions on how to live.

Love is a verb in Hebrew, it requires action. The western mindset is that it is a feeling.

What’s wrong?

Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Wrong Question!

I believe this is the right question:

Why does God do good things for bad people?

The problem is our mind, soul, and body. We do what we want, feel and desire and turn from God’s perfect plan. He left instruction!

It's not even about the Xanax anymore.

When I think of the long plane right home to the east coast, I think of snow. The flakes descending down in silent tufts of love. The airplane flight is important: I see from my window as the scenery changes from green to brown to white. I lug around my giant suitcase and don't cry because I'm not leaving, this time.

Sometimes on Prose I'll write something fantastic and my computer will delete it, each word quickly deleted backwards until nothing is left. I watch in horror as the screen reverses everything I've written. I have nightmares that this is symbolic, that I am running towards a void I have no business jumping into so readily, so greedily.

Perhaps I will never go home again during these times, at least for a while. The void is opening and I am being devoured by my poetic injustice to landing in a sacred space.

Xanax reminds me of home, of the long night in the ER. Did you know they refuse to pump stomachs anymore? They simply wait for you to experience hell. I couldn't remember how many I'd swallowed, but I did remember every text he sent about my failings as a girlfriend. I waited and felt nothing. Hosptials have always felt like a second home to me, and this is a very dangerous place to be.

Before I started writing, I loved too hard. I scared men away with my intensity, my clinginess. I heard once, don't let a man reject you twice. I learned this with tears streaked down my cheeks, a work day cut short, sobbing on the train ride home and feeling like I would never be loved. I watched my little sister, so happy on the west coast, get engaged and then married. I felt so disgusted with myself that the psychiatric hospitalization revolving door opened for me once again.

I struggle to write about home. I write poems reflecting my homesickness. I see posts on social media from the east coast, the snow flaking down like ripe cherries to be savored. There is no way to capture this magnifience in writing, and it kills me.

I also heard once, we kill ourselves to live. I might have taken a boatload of Xanax, but home is the snowfall, the mightiness I can't feel on the west coast. I moved here to be in the same time zone as my ex-boyfriend. I stay here to experience something new, but home is where I am flying, where I will land, and where I will settle into a winter that is, now, something I can dream of.

have you ever just though:

"with a mind like mine

there's no way to grow old"?

that when nothing is wrong

yet one doubt might explode

and pull the body down with it?