Hangry

I felt anger towards the man who asked me for a handout, then scolded me for hesitating to give him my last dollar.

He said, ‘I’m homeless and hungry’

I used to be homeless and hungry too, but I never did how you do

I was too busy surviving to ask other people to be responsible for my life

I ate food scraps out of the trash and sold my body for cash

I lived without a home and walked the streets alone

I didn’t tell him- I kept quiet, as I always do

I am angry though

Carnival

Welcome to the carnival

I offer all manner of novelties to delight you

Are your thoughts as wild as a flying trapeze?

I’ve got pills to set your mind at ease

Does your heart feel like it has been trampled by an elephant?

You don’t need to use booze to get bent

I’ll flood your blood with chemical love and adjust the dose to fit like a glove

I’ve perfected my performance to be your ideal physician despite my perpetual exhaustion, hanger and burn out

Ignoring my own pain as I eliminate yours

Neither one of us is listening to the sacred wisdom of our bodies

I suffer long and hard so that you don’t have to feel a thing

In my side-show alley you’ll see that if you want more than an endless stream of candy refills, if you want me to be your shaman instead of your drug dealer, at any time you can feel your feelings instead of suppress them

Take a plunge from the high dive on the wild horse of your unmedicated body

Hear your healing lion’s roar

Let your self-expression soar

Allow yourself to fall into the safety net of the universe

Trust that you belong, that you are a star just as you are

Juggle fire and meet yourself with humor when gravity makes its presence known

Allow yourself to be shot from the cannon of self-doubt, trusting that you will be ok

If healing is a series of flaming hoops

The transformative way out is through

Show yourself what you can do

Dance to uplifting music every day

Cultivate strength and flexibility in body and brain

Remind yourself it is normal to feel insane

In this seemingly crazy world, only you can take the reins

Be the ringleader of your life

It ain’t me, babe

Though I have the hard-won power to prescribe the goodies you crave

To be in control of ourselves we must give up control of everything else

Welcome to the big time

The show can’t go on without you

I applaud you

My eyes are open to witness your marvels and miracles

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

Please don’t judge me for being a sex worker in order to make ends meet

You taught me how to dissociate from my body, how to put other’s wants ahead of my needs

You were my first violator and my first pimp

Remember molesting me at night throughout my childhood and adolescence?

You opened the floodgates for countless rapes

Remember forcing me to do things I didn’t want to do my whole life?

Pimping me out to abusive children who you ‘felt sorry for’ because they did’t have any friends

The reason why they didn’t have any friends is because they weren’t good friends. Like you, they were trapped in abuse

Oscillating between abuser and abused

Remember commanding me yet never asking or listening?

I told you I was depressed, you told me I was not

The middle school guidance counselor called you to pick me up from school because I was suicidal-

All you did was yell at me

You found out I was a sex worker by violating my privacy

You yelled at me to respect myself

Yet you never respected me and actively taught me to disrespect myself

How can you expect me to fly when all you ever did was drag me down and break my wings

You raised me in poverty

Gave me no financial resources, no guidance

I was hungry, I had textbooks to buy and rent to pay

You want to take credit for my success

I became who I am in spite of you, not because of you

Though I see the crucial role you played

At the end of the day all I can say is namaste

Workaholic

I went into medicine partly due to heartbreak

The exhaustive training of medical school and residency was a welcome albeit ineffective distraction from my sorrow and loneliness

24-hour shifts are a convenient justification for not keeping in touch with loved ones

Even though the real excuse is my social anxiety and sense of inadequacy

Living within hospital walls, I suspect that I am not the only physician who became a medical doctor to try to forget unrequited love, to escape the world of human relationships

My older colleagues work far more than they need to to make ends meet, far more than any reasonable person would work in a week

Who needs friends or feelings when you have patients and science?

Our skin grows pale under fluorescent lights

Our vision becomes shortsighted as the screens stare unblinkingly

Our hearts forget how to feel carefree

Our muscles atrophy as our brains hypertrophy

Our minds become boxed in with facts, our mental filing cabinets overflow

I am a recovering workaholic working alongside workaholics who do not appear to be in recovery

Perhaps they suspect the same of me

Heads down in the trenches, none of us can know another’s heart

We can only know our own heart, if we listen

We carefully administer medications, surgeries and therapies

We measure progress in numerical metrics of lab values, calculated scores and vital signs

We arrive early and stay late

We work day and night without a break

We always have too much on our plates

We deprive ourselves of sleep, fresh air and food

We know why we have irritable moods

Practicing medicine is an unhealthy, imbalanced lifestyle and we know it

We can only ever heal ourselves

I’m ready to show it

I am finally healing my broken heart

I found that I had to begin at the start

Childhood wounds tangle and bloom

Trauma begets trauma until we change our thoughts, words and actions

Breaking old patterns even as we hold traction

I am love itself, I am the source of what I sought

My cup overflows, it was not all for naught