Burning

I am anxious and overwhelmed by everything right now which is making me highly irritable and easily annoyed.
I feel like I can’t handle being pushed even another inch. How much of this is memory activated and how much is my true current state of being?
My insides hurt and I think I did it to myself. Again. Alcohol and stress and lack of rest.
This part of me reemerges that is badly burned. A bird with sparce feathers, curled into herself shivering in shame as she is laid bare, too impaired to seek shelter. Dependent on those around her to protect her. A task they have all failed at. They turn to me for something.
Love.
Friendship.
Excitement.
Distraction.
Affirmation.
Comfort.
I give.
One more feather.

I am burned and no one can see it. Or at least those that I am desperately clinging to. Begging for them to STOP.
Stop the onslaught.
Keep it back.
Keep me safe.
Help me to breath.
Oh God. I can’t breath.

This drink gives it to me.
Grows false wings and brings the wind back into them.
Back into my lungs. While streaking my insides with poison that I happily welcome. Dissociating from my body because it hurts too much. So I make it hurt more in my desperate attempts to prevail against this never ending shit storm of other people’s problems that seem to be just too much bigger than mine for them to see me.
I have always seen them though.
That’s the hurtful part.
So now I close my eyes and I drink.

If I could have accessed this part of me. If I could have found these words and given truth where I offered lies then maybe, just maybe I could have kept my feathers. Maybe I never would have flown away. Maybe I could have stayed. Weathered the storm. Found shelter in myself in a home free of poison. In a space calm and peaceful. Maybe if I had slowed down enough to listen to myself. Maybe if someone had asked and truly listened. Maybe I simply didn’t talk loud enough. Maybe I used the wrong words. Maybe I also told them lies.  Maybe I’m still lying to myself. Maybe they were there, listening, telling me things I didn’t want to hear. Maybe I’m the one that stopped listening.

Can you hear it? The birds?
My mother said that today while talking with my daughter who was having a hard time slowing down and listening. As soon as my child fell silent I too heard the bird. It was sweet and chipper and had a lot to say. The moment was brief but in the space it created within it lay my deepest longing.

Peace.

I sacrificed so much of mine for so many years in the name of…
Love.
Friendship.
Excitement.
Distraction.
Escape.
A desperate need to dissociate. To disconnect from a reality that felt too heavy to bear.
It came at a cost though.
It cost me everything.

If you get quiet enough. If you look closely. You can still see that burnt little bird. She’s tucked up inside my chest. Hiding.
She gets agitated and overwhelmed sometimes when she starts to smell smoke. Flooded with fear and a sudden, desperate need to escape her cage. Wrecking havoc on my insides. Convincing me that something is seriously wrong.
I tell her there is nothing to worry about. That I have it handled. It’s only a small brush fire, easy to put out. But I think I might be lying to us both. I think the field is far more scorched than I care to acknowledge. My insides desperately trying to open my eyes and see not just the flames that surround us but also the scars they are leaving in its wake.

I can’t get out of this loop. I can’t stop the onslaught. I can’t do it right and I can’t seem to stop myself from trying to do it right.
I am a good person.
I allowed myself to be pushed too far for too long.
Now I push back and the reistence that is met makes me want to cry and crumble.
I just want it to stop.
I just want to find my way out.
To greener pastures that have not been burned by my lack of boundaries and co-dependence. By beliefs that other’s needs needed to be met first in order for them to meet mine. That friends don’t ever cross boundaries. That men hold the antidote to my loneliness. That dissociating would give me the peace I so desperately longed for.

I stand in the graveyard of my past and I shiver. Seeing scattered everywhere little birds on fire. Some completely oblivious to the fact that they are burning. Some crying out for help. Some in need of being buried. And some with headstones.