"It's getting hard to breathe
Darkness in my head frightens me
I don't need this anymore
I've tied myself down to the floor
I need you to sing!
Sing for me my love
Sing the right from wrong
Here inside my mind
Truth is hard to find..."
-Sing For Me, Tarja

T

The letter T is my upper left arm again. It really is a mess there. From the top, sections one and two are both endless circles (told you there was a lot of those). Section three is backwards love or love going the wrong direction or misplaced love. Section four is a bad spiral going nowhere.

A

A is again skin, this time my upper right arm. From left to right, section one means nothing. Section two is twisting and turning but ultimately going nowhere. It also kind of looks like a vagina, but I'm going to leave that part alone. Section three is fragments of a whole. Section four is a jagged endless circles. There are a lot of endless circles, just to warn you.

K

So for a while at work I've been doodling with the letters of my name. Partway through I decided to make them mean something, something about me. First is K. The letter's design is a representation of skin (all the letters are). This particular one is my upper left arm. The first and second segments mean nothing. The third one stands for endless circles, which is what my life feels like. The third is an illusion of height or depth. Both are true in their own way.

It is just when I think I've locked all the shattered pieces of my heart away that another pops up to stab fresh pain into my soul. A look here, a word there, a small gesture of love that I used to be able to give...or receive. In the end it isn't the big things that hurt the most. It's all the little things, the ways I never knew they had touched my life until they no longer do.
And I don't know where to take my life from here. Up until I met him I didn't really have much of a purpose in my life. I wanted to graduate college and then...I had no plans, no goals, no nothing. And then I met him and suddenly my life had meaning! As I try to cut all the little bits of him out of my heart and lock them away, I wonder what I will be left with. I remember the person I was before I met him, before his love changed me in so many ways. That person is both too far away to reach and too close for comfort. One word defines her, a word familiar to this blog...darkness. And I don't want that again. And so I am reaching out for anchors, for stability, for familiarity, and I find myself reaching to the past far too often. Because those things existed in the past...but the person for whom they existed no longer exists. And I fear, and desire, and fear, that one of those things my searching hand will grasp once more is the blade. Because I remember who I was with a blade in my hand. The blood fed my mask, but yet, who I was inside was broken, and though I am by no means whole, I know that taking up a blade would only build an illusion of strength, and send me back into that darkness farther than before.
I have reached out for old friends, though I know that they were not the best friends for me, as I was not a good friend for them. Can a new relationship be built that is true friendship, that builds us both up? Time will tell. I have reached out for old counsel, though I knew it would be less than useless for me now. Still, sometimes an ear to listen is all that is truly needed. I am reaching forward, too, but in this my lovers' words have more than hit their mark. Lovers' words and old friends' as well. "In a multitude of counselors there is wisdom," the proverb says, and though it is Scripture that does not mean it is false. When people I deeply respect and love, people to whom I have shown the deepest parts of myself, seem to reach the same conclusions, I cannot help but give their words some weight.
And what have their words taught me? That I take and do not give. That I am broken. That I do not really know how to love. That loving me causes them much pain and no joy. That I am selfish. And their actions have taught me that I am unlovable, that I am fit only to be cast aside. I am the damsel in distress the white knight could not rescue and left behind in search of less broken maidens.
And so I'm reaching forward, but I realize I am nothing, I have nothing to give to anyone, friend or lover, that I might find. I would give my heart, but...I know now that that is not remotely enough.

They try to salve their own consciences, they hold out empty hopes. "You can find someone else," they say. "This is a fresh start for you." No. He taught me to trust. He taught me to open my heart. And now they are reminding me why I never trusted, and what it feels like to be betrayed. Now they remind me why I had walls and masks and kept my heart tight shut. Do they think I will calmly go out and give my heart away now? Two years I've spent learning how to trust, and in a few weeks they've wasted it all.
Because I trusted him. I trusted him unreservedly. I gave him the most, the only precious thing I owned...my heart. My love. And perhaps it wasn't much, perhaps it was hardly anything but it was all I had. It was everything I had, everything I am, and I gave it to him. I held nothing back. But it wasn't enough. I am not enough. And now that they've convinced me of this, they expect me to just find someone else? It took me eight years to find someone to open the doors to my heart last time, and that was an entirely different hurt. The one person in all the world that I loved unconditionally, unreservedly, forever...took the heart that I placed into his safekeeping and threw it away. And then he stomped all over it, saying he still loved me, that I would find someone else, that this would be a fresh start for me. A fresh start for what? For me to realize that I can trust nobody? For me to build fresh new walls about my heart? For me to realize that love, like all else, ends? For me to realize that maybe it isn't better "to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all"? Perhaps they are right. Maybe it is a fresh start...just not the one they mean.

So listen to me, now. I've learned a lot the last few weeks. I've learned never to give my heart away. I've learned never to let love in to the innermost parts of my heart ever again, for if they are never warmed by its presence, neither will they be shattered by its departure. I've learned to trust neither love nor kindness. And if love is offered to me, I will never reject it, but it is unlikely that I will ever fully trust it either. This is what you have taught me, my Loves, Lovers, Beloveds...that I am only good enough to love when there is nobody else around. You both loved me once, until you had each other. And while a small, sad smile touches my lips at what a fine matchmaker I am, I realize I should have known better. i should have known that I am enough to love only when there is no one else to compare me to. Now I know. And given what you have taught me...how could I ever love again? I could not trust that I was actually loved, that I would not be cast aside the moment someone better came along. Relationships are not built without trust, and you have stolen that from me.
This is what you have done to me, O my Loves. You have made much of my faults, but tell me...what are my sins compared to yours?

Fettered Freedom

With each tear unshed
And each cry smothered
I place another brick in the wall
Around my heart

I am my own captor
And my own salvation
My walls my own prison
And my own fortification

Deep, Dark, Broken

Deep words, dark words,
Broken words, they drift
Hither and yon through
The corners of my heart

Deep corners, dark corners,
Broken corners, are filled
With the sighs of sorrow
The tears of my heart

Deep tears, dark tears,
Broken tears, they flood
The never-ending void
The silence of my heart

Deep silence, dark silence,
Broken silence, is lost
Amidst the cacophony
The musics of my heart

Deep musics, dark musics,
Broken musics, they sing
An empty, formless song
In memory of my heart

It feels like silence, like the end of all things. Yet there cannot be silence, for while I still breathe there will always be words. And yet again they are silent words, too rarely spoken aloud. They flow from my fingers, not my lips. Does anyone hear my silent words? Do their eyes listen for the anguish written there? I know they see them, but are they listening?
It is silence then, and perhaps then it is the end. It could be a beginning as well...but I dare not hope for that. The things I hope for have a habit of coming true...and disappearing. It is crueler, I think, than never coming true at all. My deepest hope, my dearest dream, my only wish, was to be loved. And so it came to pass that I loved and was loved. But now...the void, having once been filled, feels all the more desolate for being emptied once more.

I am Alive.

Today is an anniversary. It isn't really a happy or exciting anniversary. Although it is, in some ways. It just isn't one that people would ever really want to celebrate with me. It's a personal anniversary, a time when I usually engage in some pretty intense introspection.
You can look at it two different ways, if you like. The first way is the more depressing way, and honestly the way I usually look at it. Three years ago today I tried to kill myself. Every year I look back and wonder and analyze and try to figure out why, and if I really wanted to die, and if I should have done this or that differently. I understand why most people don't want to celebrate this day with me (not that I've ever really asked). "Hi, wanna help me celebrate the day I almost killed myself?" "No, no, not really so much, no."
But there is another way to look at it, and this is the way I am struggling to see it this year. Three years ago today I tried to kill myself...and I didn't die. Three years ago today...I lived. This...this is something to celebrate. I am alive! And given what my life has been, before and after that day, and especially right now, that is something exciting. That is something extraordinary. I am alive. But no one really seems that interested in celebrating this with me, either. In fact, most people seem to think that I should forget about this day altogether.
Speaking of people, there are two people that I always think about a lot on this anniversary. One carries the honor of being one of the few people I have ever hated, though I think I do not hate him anymore. Certainly I cannot hate him on this day. Bradley Menne saved my life by calling the police on me. I can imagine how hard it is to do that; I myself have been in a position of talking to a friend and wondering if they are truly suicidal...and if I should call the police on them, and live with them being saved and hating me if I was right...or hating me for the false alarm if I was wrong. In the end, I've always done nothing. So I can imagine a little of what he went through. The other person is Officer Mike Hoyt of the Watertown Police Department. Officer Hoyt saved my life by sending me to hell...I mean, by sending me to Mendota. I know it wasn't an easy decision for him, either. And I thank them both for doing what they did. I thank them both for my life.
And now, I am going to celebrate being alive. I will celebrate alone, but it will be a celebration nonetheless.

Happy anniversary, Life.