Angels of the get through

This year has been the hardest of your whole life.

So hard you cannot see a future, most days.
The pain is bigger than anything else.
Takes up the whole horizon, no matter where you are.
You feel unsafe you feel unsaved.
Your past so present you can feel your baby teeth.
Sitting on the couch, you swear your feet don't reach the floor.
You keep remembering the first time you saw a bird's nest.
Held together by an old shoe lace and scraps of a plastic bag
You knew the home of a person could be built like that
A lot of things you'd rather throw away
You keep worrying you're taking up too much space.
I wish you'd let yourself be the milky way
Remember when I told you I was gonna become a full time poet
And you paid my rent for three years?
Best Friend,
Angel of the get through.
All living is storm chasing.
Every good heart has lost its roof.
Let all the walls collapse at your feet,
Scream timber when they ask you how you are.
Fine is the suckiest word. It is the opposite of HERE
Here is the only place left on the map
Here is where you learn laughter can go extinct
And come back
I am already building the museum
For every treasure you unearth in the rock bottom
Holy vulnerable cliff
God mason, heart heavier than all the bricks
Say this is what the pain made of you
An open open open road
An avalanche of feel it all
Don't ever let anyone tell you, you are too much
Or it has been too long
Whatever keeps the stutterer from stuttering when he sings a song
You are made of that thing
That unbreakable note
That photography of you at five years old,
The year you ran away from school,
Because you wanted to go home.
You are almost there.
You are the same compass you have always been
You are the same friend who never left my side
During my worst year
You caught every tantrum I threw
With your bare hands
Chucked it back at the blood moon
Said its okay, everyone's survival looks a little bit like death
I wrote a poem called "say yes" while I was cursing you
For not letting me go.
Best friend, this is what we do.
We gather each other up.
We say, the cup is half
Yours and half mine.
We say alone is the last place you will ever be.
We say tonight lets stay inside reading pema chodron
While everyone else is out on the town
Pema will say "only to the extent we
Expose ourselves over and over to annihilation
Can that which is indestructible in us be found"
You'll say Pema is so wise.
And I'll say yes she is, and we are too.

Angels of the get through. We are too.

Take everything I think I know, every answer is a grave

Now the questions are the rain I walk through to find my way to God

And my only God is faith that there is comfort here

And who is hurting might hurt less than they did before

What else are these coins and all these wells for?

If not to wish the grief asleep in the lap of someone else's grief

Til grief comes not knowing if it will come again

Andrea Gibson

Forest fires are both necessary and dangerous.

I have this swirling of emotions in the pit of my stomach.
It rises up through my lungs to my throat and out my eyes.
I used to think if I let enough of the tears fall it would eventually put out the flames.

I was always wrong though.

Because I thought I was a forest fire.
Encouraging regrowth.
Removing the weak.
Allowing more sunlight.

...All while being contained.

Forest fires are synonymous with disaster.
And although at times I can be an absolute mess of a disaster
I cannot be contained, controlled, or conned.

I realized this when I tasted that my tears were made from salt water.
I realized this as I rode through my waves of grief and thrill within moments of each other.
The undertow brings me to my depths where I can hold my breath for just long enough.
It's the storm in me.

What do you call a storm who didn’t know she had permission to rage?
Do you call her lost or do you call her home?

Remember that I want to be loved as deep as the ocean, but remember that I am like the ocean.

I can slip through your fingers, but manage to hold up an army of ships.

Kiss me, hold me, love me, but tell me if you're not up for it.

I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.

-Warsan Shire.

I'm never giving up but I'm always letting go.

I know this is pivotal.

I know this is temporary.

I know all this pain transmutes into transformation.

I know this transformation is bringing forth the next level of Marley that is so necessary.

So many people need and love me. So few know how much pain I am in.

I feel selfish to admit this pain because I feel like I'm supposed to be stronger than this and that I should be moving through this grief faster.

I'm committed to doing this the right way. To really clear it all out and not just find a bandaid or a distraction to fill the void.

I'm not stuffing the mess under the bed. I'm looking at every piece of the clutter, examining it for what it is.

Some days it feels like major surgery.

Every day it feels like I break myself open to dig out the rot with my own hands.

I'm never giving up but I'm always letting go.

I have books upon books upon books. They tell me who I am and what I'm doing and prescribe a solution.

I suppose I shouldn't expect a magic pill.

Anything worth having does not come easy.

This transformation is going to be huge.

And damn it, I'm going to earn it.

Just because you’re vulnerable doesn’t mean you are healed

Last time I sat in my therapist's office I poured my heart out and asked
"so... am I okay?"

He confirmed “yes, you’re in a period of self discovery. This isn’t grief”

I sat in my therapist’s office today.

Poured my heart out.

Before I could ask, he said:
“This one is grief.”

It felt like a diagnosis.

One I felt all the symptoms of but was in denial.

There’s this thing about vulnerability I hadn’t encountered yet.

My career grows as I evolve.

Relationships open up when I lay it all out on the table.

I adapted to this.

But life doesn’t always reward vulnerability.

We know there is strength in exposing our biggest flaws.
We also know there is opportunity for rejection and hurt.

I always faced that head on, for the thrill, for the growth...

It feels good until it doesn’t.

It’s when the expectation of opportunity becomes an attachment to outcome that vulnerability turns into a double edged sword.

You can appear to have all the cards on the table and unconsciously forget about the ace of spades hiding in your back pocket.

You can do all the therapy, read all the books, have all the personal development courses out there... and you still get knocked down by the proverbial punching bag that swings back after you thought you fired your last hit.

Just because you’re vulnerable doesn’t mean you are healed.

What do I do, doc? Give it to me straight.

Integration.

A fancy word for sit down, be humble, and feel out your $@!&.

But you can’t tell a brick wall those things. They're like me, they just stand there and don’t listen.

Until...

Until it comes knocking at your door with a sledgehammer and you just have no choice but to witness the entire roadmap that brought you to your knees today.

I don't know where its bringing me but despite the pain I am eager for it.
Everyone can walk farther on their kneecaps than they can on their feet.

Replaying conversations running round in my mind.

I'm so happy you're here

"And here" - he would say, pointing to the left side of my chest.

It's the same place I would later point to when the therapist asked "where does it hurt?"

Thank you to the one who let her get away