Heart-of-poetry - Hello Friends :) - Tumblr Blog

I started reading self help books when I was about twelve years old. I spent all of my free time reading, researching, making lists. I could have titled my lists in many different ways: “Ways to Be a Better Person,” “Things I Need to Work on,” “How to Make Myself Better.” They all meant the same thing. They mean the same thing I mean now when I cry over my reflection in the mirror and journal about all of the mistakes I’ve made in this life. I’ve always wanted to fix myself. I’ve always wanted to be more than I am.

I am more my father’s child than my mother’s daughter. I wish I could say the opposite, but it would not be true. I am clenched fists with nails digging into my skin. I am marked with scars inflicted by my own hands. I am shaking with anger. I have sharp teeth and I bite. If you tried to get close to me, I would run. I am my father’s child. I have his nose and his eyes and his anger that is too big for my heart to hold.

The current trend where people post a picture of their current self and a picture of their younger self with the lyrics “I’m so sorry that they pick you last” is bringing up a lot for me. It’s so grueling to look back and think “I could have saved you. Who I am now could have saved who I was then. None of this had to happen.” But of course, it’s a never ending loop. Who I am now only exists because of who I was then, so I could not have saved who I was then without going through everything it took to get to who I am now. Anyway, I thought-spiraled into going through all of my old messages, going as far back as to middle school. It is so heartbreaking to see how truly cruel people were to me. I was so lonely and all I wanted was for people to love me. I tried so hard to get their love. My messages were lengthy, bubbly and cheery. I cared about people, I asked them questions and tried to get to know them, to let them know that I was interested in their lives and who they were. At the time, I had to believe that they were my friends. That they loved me. I needed to believe it. But looking back, I can see how much those things were not true. They would respond with short, rude, cold, uninterested messages. They would never contact me without being contacted first. It almost even appears that they were manipulating my kindness, profiting off of how desperate for love I was. They seemed to be making fun of me, silently laughing at my attempts to receive their love and care. I just feel so bad for my younger self. I feel bad about the world. It makes me deeply sad that such a pure girl who was just trying to be kind and connect with others was met by people who were careless with her heart and abusive of her compassion. I wish I could’ve been there. I wish I could’ve offered her a heart that matched her own.

also if you are feeling like I was last year, I am sorry. I hope you fight and I hope you stay, because there are better things coming for you. It’s cliche and it sounds like crap when you are feeling so sad it aches in your body, and I can’t promise it will get better right away, but it will get better at some point, and it’s worth sticking around for. I love you guys and I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

I keep having this moment and it feels so light and airy and special. It feels like a sigh of relief, like that moment when you lay down in bed after a long day and feel your muscles exhale. Last year, on my way home for Christmas, I was begging my parents to get me help because I felt so suicidal and burdened with depression. This year, after a suicide attempt and long recovery, I finally feel happy. I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but at some point, lightness slipped back into my mind and made its home there. I can’t help but be brought to tears at the beauty of it all. I’m still here. I’m still here. Against my will. I fought hard to leave and some part of me saved me. Something in me kept me alive and brought me to this moment. To this joy. To this peace. I am grateful for that now, though there was a point in my life where I wouldn’t have been. It is truly a miracle that I survived and I feel that in every molecule of my body.

I keep having this moment and it feels so light and airy and special. It feels like a sigh of relief, like that moment when you lay down in bed after a long day and feel your muscles exhale. Last year, on my way home for Christmas, I was begging my parents to get me help because I felt so suicidal and burdened with depression. This year, after a suicide attempt and long recovery, I finally feel happy. I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but at some point, lightness slipped back into my mind and made its home there. I can’t help but be brought to tears at the beauty of it all. I’m still here. I’m still here. Against my will. I fought hard to leave and some part of me saved me. Something in me kept me alive and brought me to this moment. To this joy. To this peace. I am grateful for that now, though there was a point in my life where I wouldn’t have been. It is truly a miracle that I survived and I feel that in every molecule of my body.

Saw this and had to share. I feel the same way. Queer friendships are as close to divinity and holiness as I have ever gotten and will ever get. What a gift it is to have that community

I could cry. I love my coach so much. I cherish her presence in my life. She is likely unaware of the ways in which she elevates my life, but she really means so much to me. I have never before felt like someone truly believed in me or saw me as being a strong, capable person. She believes those things about me. She makes me believe them too. It is so special to have a person like that in my life. Someone who holds me to a high standard, who gives me the space and guidance I need to rise to those higher levels. Someone who speaks to me warmly and looks me in the eye when she talks to me. Someone who humanizes me, who removes me from being an outsider and brings me in toward a family. I truly feel such a magnetic, deep love for her. I am so grateful for the fact that she’s been gifted to me, placed in my life. It’s moments like this where I think that maybe someone is watching out for me, maybe angels are real. Love is carrying me through, connections are guiding me toward a deeper joy.

I am seventeen and spending Thanksgiving all alone. I am the loneliest girl in the world.

thanksgiving 2006 by Ocean Vuong

Not to mention…my mother took it upon herself to inform my dad, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, and pretty much everyone she could think of about my sexuality. I was not ready. I was so terrified and I told my sister I was gay as a start. I was not ready to come out to everyone in my life or to exist as a gay woman yet. It should have been my choice. It should have been on my timeline. I am very very angry at them. My sister was a child so I can understand it more, but my mother? She was a grown adult. And she thought that she should tell everyone my own deeply personal information without so much as asking me if it was okay. I felt so out of control that day. I never had so much anxiety in my life. My whole body felt shaky and it felt like I was having a heart attack. It just…shouldn’t have happened that way.

Reminiscing on my “coming out.” I was so scared. So small, so shaky. So, so scared for so long. It had been over a year of sexuality related anxiety and OCD taking over my life. It almost drove me to take my life. I didn’t want to be who I knew I was that much. Finally…one day, I got the courage to tell someone. I told my sister. I really said it, I said the words “I’m gay” out loud. I did it. It felt like a relief. I was still terrified and shaky, but I was glad to have another person to hold this with me. And then…that same night my sister outed me to my entire family. She didn’t mean to hurt me. I found out that she had been cutting herself, so I told my mom for her safety. In an effort to take my moms attention off of her cutting, she outed me. In front of her friends and my mothers friends. It hurt me so much because this meant that she viewed being gay as something so bad and horrible that it could top her harming herself. I remember getting that text from my mom, feeling my heart drop out of my chest, feeling my throat tighten up. “____ is saying that you’re a lesbian. Is that true?” my mom texted me. She sounded so accusatory, like she was hoping my sister was lying. When they returned to the house, they looked at me differently. They acted nervous and unsure around me. Like I was some caged animal that could break out at any moment. I will never forget that night. It took me so long and it took so much courage for me to tell my sister, and I needed her support because I didn’t have it in me to give it to myself. But she didn’t give me that. She took my chance to come out on my own terms away from me. And she made it more dangerous for me. My family already treated me differently than my other siblings, but this pushed them over the edge. It was just another thing to other me, to separate me from others. I really understand the pain she was in and the reasoning behind her doing it, but I can’t forgive that. She took something from me that can’t ever be given back.

Reminiscing on my “coming out.” I was so scared. So small, so shaky. So, so scared for so long. It had been over a year of sexuality related anxiety and OCD taking over my life. It almost drove me to take my life. I didn’t want to be who I knew I was that much. Finally…one day, I got the courage to tell someone. I told my sister. I really said it, I said the words “I’m gay” out loud. I did it. It felt like a relief. I was still terrified and shaky, but I was glad to have another person to hold this with me. And then…that same night my sister outed me to my entire family. She didn’t mean to hurt me. I found out that she had been cutting herself, so I told my mom for her safety. In an effort to take my moms attention off of her cutting, she outed me. In front of her friends and my mothers friends. It hurt me so much because this meant that she viewed being gay as something so bad and horrible that it could top her harming herself. I remember getting that text from my mom, feeling my heart drop out of my chest, feeling my throat tighten up. “____ is saying that you’re a lesbian. Is that true?” my mom texted me. She sounded so accusatory, like she was hoping my sister was lying. When they returned to the house, they looked at me differently. They acted nervous and unsure around me. Like I was some caged animal that could break out at any moment. I will never forget that night. It took me so long and it took so much courage for me to tell my sister, and I needed her support because I didn’t have it in me to give it to myself. But she didn’t give me that. She took my chance to come out on my own terms away from me. And she made it more dangerous for me. My family already treated me differently than my other siblings, but this pushed them over the edge. It was just another thing to other me, to separate me from others. I really understand the pain she was in and the reasoning behind her doing it, but I can’t forgive that. She took something from me that can’t ever be given back.

Is it just me or is anyone else absolutely terrified of any and all forms of intimacy???? like when I had my first kiss, I wasn’t excited or giddy, I was literally shaking with anxiety. Idk why. Like I was so worried that I wouldn’t know how to kiss or that the kiss would be bad and it would be the one thing to send this person off.

Oh. I see…this is an abandonment issues thing. Of course. It’s always the abandonment issues

Sometimes it hits me right in the face just how lonely I am. I am so lonely. Do you know how it feels? To exist in a world where you know that nobody knows you closely, not even a little bit? To know that if you died today, nobody would know what your favorite movie was or what your favorite song was or how you like your tea? Do you really know how it feels? To watch your friends spend their weekends together, laughing and going out, while you sit in your room rotting away? To eat dinner alone every lonesome night while you hear the echoes of your family in the dining room? I am isolated, so othered. It is not just that I am lonely. I no longer feel like a person, I feel as though I do not exist. Each day it feels as though I am being erased. I am the only one who can preserve me. I am the only one who can remember my favorite movie and my favorite song and how I like my tea. If I forget those details, they are gone. I exist only within the realm of myself. If I am removed from the equation, I do not exist. Do you understand? Do you really, truly get it?

I woke up the next morning. My pupils opened up toward the glow of the sun and I had lived to see another day. Just the night before, I had said my goodbyes. I had shed my last tear. I had made peace with my time in the world. But…my blood was still warm when I opened my eyes.

“You have been given another chance to live!” My sister wept. The words echoed in the back of my mind.

“But I don’t want to live.” I whispered. She never heard what I said.

just thinking ab how we had just spent hours together, laughing and talking. I painted her nails, she held me in her arms and brushed her fingers through my hair. She stayed at my house so long, it was nearly midnight on a school night. She kept ignoring her mothers calls just to spend more time with me. As we walked down the stairs when she absolutely had to leave, she said “walk me out?” She just wanted to have one more moment with me, and one more, and one more. Always one more.

Love is so endlessly beautiful. Love is pushing back sleep just to spend another moment in your lovers arm. Love is walking your lover to their car so you get one last good look at their face.

people making comments where ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ are used as insults or to make fun of someone and then following it with “not that there’s anything wrong with that” is the equivalent of a white person making racist comments and then justifying it with “I have a black friend.”

if you truly support the queer community, don’t perpetuate hateful beliefs by encouraging an environment where being queer is used to ridicule and ostracize others. even if you meant it as a harmless joke, there are people in the room who see your behavior as enablement for them to be hateful and homophobic and to write it off as a “joke.”

bad behavior is bad behavior. doing something in a playful manner does not erase the consequences of your actions.

One day—a beautiful day—as the fiery sun shone down on the grimy earth, we sat hand in hand under the willow tree.

Above us, it’s arms danced and swayed in the wind. It whispered things in our ears, gently and tenderly. I didn’t hear what it said, but you did.

On this day, you looked into my eyes and you told me that you wished we could be as free as the willow and it’s gorgeous leaves. You said that we couldn’t because I was looking at the ground and it’s dirt and the roots, but you were looking at the vast sky and the dancing of the willow tree and things much bigger then I can fit in my heart.

I don’t know what I know about myself except that I know only what I know.

just can’t express how deeply, how passionately I want…to be good. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I never want to do anything that makes someone feel worthless or invisible or ugly or gross or uncomfortable. I can’t stand it that it’s impossible. It hurts so much to know I have made people feel like this and I will again in the future, knowingly and unknowingly. I want to be good. I want to be light. I want to make people feel loved and beautiful and worth it. I feel like it’s not enough. What I am…is not enough. I need to do more. I need to be more. I need to be better.

As much as straight ally’s can exist and be so accepting and loving and full of love and joy, there is no match for the queer community. Even when I exist within my friend groups of straight girls who know I am gay and accept me and treat me normally, I still feel like I am missing a piece of myself. I cannot embody my true ‘queerness’ around them. But, like magic, when I am in queer spaces, I feel sooo me. I feel empowered and I feel authentic and I feel like I can be anyone I want to be at any moment. Just…there is something so special and unifying about the universal elements of queerness. The way that the queer community is just brave people who take on the world in a way that most people don’t and allow themselves to fully explore every aspect of themselves. There is a certain joy, a deeper love, in that. One that straight people will never understand or access. I am very, very grateful for that community and that bond. Despite the suffering and pain that has come along with it, I would not want to live without being queer. My life is so much fuller and lovelier because of it.

being a creative, for me, is more than just an eccentric, pretentious thing I call myself. Creation is my survival. A lot of the suffering and pain that has filled my life I do not have the capacity to face. However, through art, I can face it in a gentle way. Art forces it’s creator to be ripped from survival mode and forced into the present. It forces awareness. When I am creating, I have to be attentive to my emotions and my bodies reactions to things. I have to become more present in my body, more aware of the way I experience the world as an individual person. If I did not create art—and I genuinely and wholeheartedly mean this—I would not be a person, I would not be alive. Artistry and the consumption of art has fulfilled me my whole life. It is a beautiful, more full way of living life and I am endlessly grateful to have felt the ferocious, unmoving calling to be an artist. I don’t know who I would be without it, but I know I would be a lot less than who I am with it.

It’s so hard to see any hope in my relationship with my parents. Each time I speak to them, no matter how much I try to deny it, it is so evident that I am seeking their approval. I want them to be proud of me. I want them to see me. I casually bring up how my competition season is going well, or a good grade I got on a test, or a nice moment with a friend. It somehow always seems that they are either not listening/don’t care, they turn it into an insult, or they refuse to see me in the light of someone caring and intelligent. My sisters are always better than me, worth more than me. My sister mentions her good grade, my mom tells her that she told everyone at work and my dad congratulates her. Then I tell them about my good grade, saying I’m smart too, and they laugh at me and don’t respond with any ounce of congratulations or pride. I feel invisible. They reduce me to something less than I am. They make me feel small. They will never see me. I have such depth, intelligence, and emotional capacity as a person…but they will never choose to see me in a way that isn’t negative.

I hid for so long. In the corners of rooms, under the bed, behind a mask, beneath darkness. I was just there wanting. Wanting to be found. Wanting you to find me. It’s been a few years now. I’m a bit older and my hair is longer. There are new creases around my eyes. I don’t hide in the corners anymore. I had to do it myself. I had to pull myself from the darkness. I wish you could’ve found me. I wish someone could have helped me out.

I’m sorry for calling.

You know the sounds of the house late at night make me sick.

The creaking floorboards, the swoosh of the doors, the desolate silence, the all-consuming darkness.

Alone, alone, alone…I thought of you.

You didn’t answer the call.

I tell myself it’s okay. It’s okay.

I mother myself and you never answer.

Alone, alone, alone…

I used to loathe our friendship and the way you’d stand so high over me. I never thought I’d miss it, but I do. I miss it so much. I miss when we’d sit in those white beach chairs down by the lake, staring at our reflections and feeling the sun against our skin. I miss your touch. The way you’d hug me like I meant something. I miss how we would eat dinner and then go on walks around your neighborhood. Walking the loop, laughing, remembering old times. I miss our little talks. I miss you.

I wanted to say a lot of things. I’m sorry. I love you. I want you. I hate you. I need you. I want you to go away. I need you near me. None of it mattered. I would never say any of it. It was all another way to say “I miss you.” But it was all just words lost in time, never to be heard except within the walls of my mind. I’ll stare at your back all day and try not to think of these things that I’ll never say.