Marriage

Behind the curtain of marriage I treasure the single men I know, each one a potential gem who would surely treat me better than my husband does.

I imagine how they would listen to me as we engage in stimulating conversations over a meal they provided, how respectful and grateful they would act, how passionate as lovers, how giving and attentive.

I fantasize about men who balance their check books and clean up after themselves, men who are calm and communicate maturely, who do the damn dishes, who save money or at least spend it on their family, who let go of past hurts, evolve and hold space for me to do the same.

I try to make myself at home within the sound-proof confines of my marriage, though the walls threaten to close in and crush me; both execution device and tomb.

Within the secret tortures of my marriage, my husband and I fight fervently leading up to the moment that we arrive out our friends’ houses, quickly plastering smiles on our faces as we ring the doorbell.

My veins are scalded by resentment for all the ways my husband takes miles without giving an inch.

I scan the horizon for a silver lining, a way to improve my situation: so far marriage counseling, life coaching and me doing the work on myself have all fallen short.

Yet deep below the cracks in our relationship, I sense a fertile humus.

We share more than our sordid history together; we make a home and a family.

We are united in our love for our baby, though we often disagree bitterly on how to raise her.

We share a commitment to our life together and a vision of our future, though we put different amounts of effort and resources towards both: in our relationship, I do all the earning and handle all the responsibilities for our household.

He drags down my energy and my finances, invoking a slow and destitute death.

Perhaps I’m not in a position to judge him: maybe he is the better one and I am the bitter one.

For now, I remain hidden behind the curtain of marriage, bound to my husband and yet alone.

Off My Chest

I need to get you off my chest

I’ve never felt relaxed in my life because you raised me in the war zone of your wrath

Bombs of panic explode in my mind all day every day

Choking me with your smoke and mirrors even though you are far away

My ears ring with your shouting

You were the biggest little tyrant

Not even two years my senior

Yet always more needy

Mandating, yet begging

I didn’t realize the power I had over you, and still do

You were the one dependent on me for affirmation, not the other way around

I didn’t have a choice then, but I do now-

To live a life without your storms brewing on my horizon

I’ve never slept well in my life because I thought you were going to murder me in my sleep throughout our childhood and adolescence

I used lie in bed wearing a cross around my neck with a note attached to it asking you to think before acting, waiting for dawn to break, dreading another day with you, feeling trapped and hopeless with no end in sight

I never felt protected, respected, seen or heard by our parents

In moments of desperation, I wish you had killed me

Instead you continue to torture me passive aggressively, and I am passive passive aggressive

Silenced, as if buried alive

I toss and turn, tormented between insomnia and nightmares

I’m trying to think before I act

I am upset that I’m even thinking about you now

I am upset about how you get upset ‘at’ me: you throw your rage at me and have me clean up the mess, time and time again, left to calm your ass down as if your reactions were justifiable or somehow my fault

It was never my fault

I am not responsible for how you feel

Leave me alone you evil bitch

I want to scream at you with the force of 35 years of repressed anger and tears

At the same time, I am trying to let go of the hot coal which burns my palm

I am trying to let the rippling waters of my pond be still

I am trying to not be irritated, for only then will you no longer be irritating

I am trying to take responsibility for my thoughts and feelings

I am tired of trying so damn hard

I am ready for ease

I am ready for peace

I am ready to breathe

Please, get off my chest

I don’t need to ask- I am responsible for how I feel

I’m not sure what to do next

I’ll probably meditate and self-medicate with raw emo poetry

Like the note pinned to my cross-necklace, you will probably never read this

But maybe those who matter will

Those who feel they are suffering alone

May find healing in this onion peel

And breathe just one breath more freely

For this I humbly pray

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

Sex, Money, Dishes

Tell me you’ve never fought with your partner about sex, money, or dishes.

Sex

I used to fight endlessly about sex, mainly because I didn’t want to have it but my partners did, so we’d fight and fuck, then I’d cry and be blinded by images of destroying my body or their body just to stop the rape and the torture of not feeling safe in my skin. Amazingly, we all survived and now I have a loving partner with whom I have gold-medal sex; you have to experience it to believe it, it’s like I’m cashing in on some sex fund which I invested in long ago. Happily I don’t fight about sex anymore- I’ve got a man I’m attracted to inside and out, and he loves me the way I want to be loved.

Money

I used to exchange sex for money. It seemed like there was always too much sex and not enough money in those transactions, or transgressions. Even those back-alley deals were more straight forward than my relationships in which sex was exchanged for the illusion of not being alone, for food, housing or ‘safety’, though I learned that the cost to my physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing which false relationships exacted was not worth the dinners, drinks, gifts of lingerie, attention or the roof over my head. You might get raped if you travel alone, but if you travel with a man you are guaranteed to get raped. Live within your means because fine dining won’t taste good if you are eating with a strange man, believe me I know. If you have to learn on your own I understand, however if my years of pain can help prevent a moment of your suffering, it will have been worth it.

Dishes

Rare is the man who finishes the dishes. Common are the men who stack the dishes artfully in the sink until there is barely room to turn on the faucet. I have noticed this pattern during my co-habitations with men. I’ve done too many dishes. It especially irks me when men drown sponges in the rinsed yet still not washed dish pile, unperturbed as the sponge decomposes into a musty mess. Men seem deaf to the silent cries of the forgotten dish sponge. Day after day, I rescue the sponge, wringing it out and restoring it to its rightful place safe on dry land, in sight. My man shows his love for me not only through our award-winning sex, but also through money (ie, responsibility for personal  finances to contribute to our future together) and dishes: ladies and gentlemen, my man did the dishes tonight, thus allowing me time to write the words you read. If a man loves you he will want to learn your love language, which you must teach him with patience, positive reinforcement, and more patience.

I grew up doing the dishes, in poverty, and sexually molested by family and friends. My sister would beat me when she got in trouble for not doing the dishes with me after we were told to do them, but the alternative would have been getting beaten by my parents for not doing the dishes, so I was going to get beat no matter what I did. I wished that someone would do the fucking dishes with me. A girl can get lonely amidst the dissolving suds.

Anxiety

Anxiety, my oldest companion, always by my side

Anxiety

Ball of wirey grey string inside me

Buzzing like an agitated hornet’s nest, threatened and angry

Tangling, strangling, suffocating

Drowning me under dark metal walls rising

Closing in under the pressure of the shadow mountains of never enough

This shifting, terrifying scenery is my home

My neurobiological foundation was not built on safety or security

My mind was melded in the hellfire of anxiety

Flames of self-doubt licking at my heels

Constantly threatening to burn me to the bone

Venomous teeth bared,

My serpent of self-doubt is poised

Ready to strike

That’s how I get through the night

Jaw clenched tight, insomnia punctuated by nightmares

In a lucid dream I fly

In my many travels, I learn a thing or two

I understand now

That my anxiety is my servant,

Trying to protect me

From the many and varied perceived threats

Of my childhood and my adulthood

I breathe in deep

Let my tea steep

Beyond the dragoness serpent, the ring of fire, the charred walls, the mountains holding the howling winds of loneliness,

I see beyond all these horrors

With each breath

A bit of sunshine blue shines through

That bright and buoyant sight

That glimpse of the outside, of a new approach to life

Is all I need

To find peace

To hold hope

To savor the long years of hard suffering, mucking through mud

only to realize that my heart is a lotus blossom of healing

I am kneeling in humble gratitude

With each breath,

My serpent uncoils and I see her beauty

My flames simmer down

The earth beneath me settles and breathes with me

My walls fall, overcome by vines

Even my massive mountains of worry breathe,

Lush with Spring

Thank you for your service, anxiety

You can take a break from protecting me

This moment does not have to be a struggle

In an instant, ease breaks through

I breathe and bow to you, anxiety

Unrequited Love

We all have unrequited love-
I’m not talking about that teenage heartache
That echoes off the canyon walls of self-doubt and loneliness
Though I am also talking about that
We get fooled by our human form
mistake it for our true form
Our minds get caught up in the he’s, she’s, we’s and ze’s
But the long lost love I’m talking about is with ourselves,
Specifically our highest self;
Which is the universal spirit of love that unites us all
Call it what you will,
A rose by any other name…

So stop fumbling in the mud,
Lift your gaze –
Give thanks to the shadows which allow you
To recognize the light
That is always shining
If we stop mucking around long enough to glimpse it

Our task is to lift our head out of the sand
And reunite with the love
That is abundant enough
To overflow billions of broken hearts
And then some

The cracks in your heart can be healed
By this molten love gold
Making your heart shine more brilliantly
Than it ever could before it was broken

Like those broken Japanese plates and bowls…
‘Kintsugi’ means ‘golden joinery’. Kintsukuroi means ‘golden repair’.

May you find your golden repair out there, or within, anywhere, everywhere
Healing by any modality is healing
Healing our heartbreak by recognizing our inseparableness with eternal love is our life’s mission;
it is how we finally requite our love

Poetry

Poetry won’t stop leaking out of me
My hands get a tingle
My mind sings a jingle
I search for paper on which to scratch
Anything within reach
Backs of receipts, napkins, old scraps
All other activity falls to the wayside
Until I see the poem before my eyes

I write about the unspoken suffering of my life
Of being brutally silenced
Since infancy I was trained not to cry when I wanted to cry
My feelings were an inconvenience to those by my side
I came to understand that my needs were not important enough to be expressed, and if I made the mistake of even showing how I felt through my face or my body, such truth was beaten out of me by those closest to me
Far worse than the violence was the mental abuse
and even worse than the mental abuse was the neglect
Sometimes I felt invisible and other times I felt like I wasn’t invisible enough
I wished that I could fly away
The shouting was so loud, where could I hide?
I locked my door but they always burst inside
No boundaries
I cried in secret silence everyday
I learned that I existed to be what others wanted me to be
I delivered what was required
Though inside me raged a fire
The primordial desire
To be free
I’d give anything to live just for me

When I became grown, I left home
But my well-trained brain followed me wherever I roamed
Autonomy is foreign to me
I met many lovers but they always chose me
Because I pleased them easily
I never returned the favor
Of serving up the criticism they so abundantly showered upon me

Joyfully, I recently discovered that the suffering of my life has a name;                                                            Narcissistic Abuse
There are healthier ways to love, ladies and gentlemen
I want more harmony and less harm done to me
I am trying to create a life that I want to live,
One where I give from my heart instead of feeling like a marionette jerked around by the malicious hands of fear

I want to tell others how I feel and what I am thinking
Speak from my heart
Release my throat chakra
Weave a tapestry with the golden thread of my truth
Relentlessly I work at this nearly impossible task
Like a seed below the soil, the only place I have to grow is toward the sun
But healing my mind feels like building a castle on quicksand
My efforts collapse, fall and fail every day

I must remember to give myself compassion, the way I try to give my abusers compassion
I have succeeded before in speaking my mind
With every break-up, no matter how clumsy my wording or how long it took me to work up the courage
I want to tell my exes that when I hurt them by finally breaking up with them, it was because I was trying to reclaim my life and honor both of us
God, have I suffered at the hands of men
When they hurt me, it was because they were trying to get a rise out of me, or hurt me out of spite
I want to tell them: Get a life, you jerks

May they stop terrorizing me and find inner peace swiftly

I feel awful about the things I’ve done that I didn’t want to do
Especially the things I’ve done with men
The sex was violent, violating, painful and humiliating
If only I could forget it, but even my body remembers
I think I will always see men as perpetrators, even though not all of them are
An overwhelming amount of the ones I’ve known are
I struggle to shake them off me when they’re ready to rape me yet they’re nowhere to be found when I’m ready to abort our unplanned pregnancies
That excruciating physical and emotional pain is just for me

The bloody landscape of no man’s land

I understand that as an adult survivor of child abuse, I attract abusers
I’m developing a repellant
By noticing patterns and breaking them
Prevent problems before they start
The best defense is a good offense

I still worry
Worry that my heart will always feel broken
Worry that the countless times I was raped will catch up with me in the form of STDs or infertility
I worry that I will always live in fear
I worry that I will always worry
I worry that I will feel sad and mad all my life
I worry that I will continue to suffer though I shouldn’t worry about that because suffering is guaranteed and worrying will do no good
Life is pain
That’s the rule of the game
I can still win the game of life even though I was born with disadvantages, for my advantages are greater still
I have hope and heart
I’m writing a happy ending to my story
I am writing with a golden pen of glory
I am writing unstoppable poetry
Until victory, always

Thank you.

Ask Why

Ask why
And eventually you may find
That the universe
Holds mirrors up to itself
Is it lonely, vain, or just curious?
Regardless, a seemingly complex image is actually very simple
Once you realize it is all one, rather than countless separate points

When I ask why
It reveals much about my life
Like ‘Why don’t I remember a lot of my childhood?’
‘That’s your first clue!’ my father replied with stern intensity when I first pondered the question out loud
Leaving the mystery to be solved by me
To figure out what happened to me when I was very small
Why must I go it alone? Such a long, hard road                                                                     Paved with spiritual gem stones

Asking why
Revealed that the motivating factors                                                                                              Behind my human interactions
Were either fear or love
Perhaps that is why the universe seems divided
By so much space

Upon closer inspection
Fear and Love
Are one and the same
Although to see that
May melt your eyes into the sun

I find that it is worth it                                                                                                                             To ask why                                                                                                                                   Though the answer is blinding                                                                                                  From asking why                                                                                                                                   I see clearly for the first time

Love and Ice Cream

Love and ice cream
Are my slippery slopes,
My legal dope
I use them in plain sight
To abuse my body day and night

Too many years
I’ve caught myself in the cycle
Of getting high every time I start to withdraw;
I let into my life another bowl,
another boo, even worse than the one before
The novelty wore off long ago
And I’ve seen the pattern;
I know where it is gonna go
It always ends in regret

Today I was hot and thirsty
For that cool creamy sweet treat
With chocolate chunks for me to eat
It was on sale and high in quality
So I loaded up my shopping cart,
imagining the pleasure awaiting me

Then I remembered
How bad I always feel afterward
How out of control, how unwise
I’ve given in to temptation too many times
And paid too heavy a price

So I put the four pints back on the shelf
Let them go home with somebody else
Victory was mine at last
At least for today

Then I got home and considered writing to an ex
An ex who is still sort of a friend                                                                                                             I love them dearly
But slow down, it’s a dangerous bend
They treated me unhealthily
Why would I expect anything different this time?

Feeding my addiction
Would bring me a quick, cheap high
Although I desire them so
Like ice cream on a hot summer’s day
If I over-indulged, the disappointment in myself
Would be here to stay

I’m only human
I have to eat and to love
But knowing how easily
I fall hard where others only stumble
It is worth it for me to mindfully look where I’m walking on the rocky road
So that I can stand tall when it rumbles