The Tales of Virago-- A Beautiful Mess

     When you become a failure at death by suicide- too often it gets worse before it's better.      It is not a matter of seconds. minutes. weeks. It is the subtle shift in something so great that putting words to it would be comparable to a cross country road trip on one tank of gas. I cannot tell you when Virago escaped, nor can I remember much about the monster who did appear- but that is where I rely on stories. On writing. On a culmination of words carefully woven together through carefully kept notebooks saved for the moments of insanity wherein I can later recall the haunting events. It is pacing yourself through treatment, and finding patient people to work with you when you close off because the monster is a terror in your closet. It is the essence of doling out the subconscious thoughts in a manner when they are ready to be dealt with because after enough trauma- you either dissociate or you quit functioning.     Me...

         I go to a college where they advertise services for the counseling center, but by the second day of classes all the slots are filled for the semester.   If you are lucky there may be an emergency slot available on a one time basis, or perhaps, partway through the semester someone may drop out, but what about the in-betweens? You are not suicidal and you do not need a crisis worker, but your mental health and well-being have hit the wall. The panic attacks are piling up, the assignments are daunting, and while your professor may understand, you will never know because the thought of speaking to them is enough to paralyze your innermost being.          I go to a college where they tell us they value our well-being, but they also want to cut positions in the counseling center, and the mental health services are already few and far between. We have a women’s center, but goodness if I know any...

     Time has a way of escaping beneath our fingers. As we create our list of "to-do's," and attempt to lead lives that lean into perfectionist tendencies, it is so often we I fall short only to disappoint ourselves myself, and eventually it catches up. It comes in waves that lap gently, and then in continual agression until you are I am overtaken in a typhoon so great you I can no longer stand by yourself myself. You thought you were calling on others, but you realize you have sort of become so busy that you lost sight of the things most important... or maybe that's just me.     It has been a few months since I took time to write for myself. That time to be intentional, and shell out thoughts. The moments where I can be authentic and honest for me without a mask. It has become disguised under writing assignments for which the pre-requisites were spelled out. This "me-time" I plan each day always has a funny little way of getting pushed off for u...

     Some points in our lives are only meant to be temporary resting places.  To the people we love but we must love from a distance,      I  know that you do not understand or grasp onto the concept at this time, and I am sorry because I know you are feeling pain. Waves that have an immense ferocity about them, and are at present consuming your life in a state of total encompassing darkness. My heart aches for you because I too am not without sorrow, and grief. The emotions that we feel as we mourn someone who we lose that is so precious to us, but the worst thing is that we know the person, or the people are still indeed alive and perhaps well and thriving.      I cannot make you see that in thi s time it is something that is for the better, as it is something that I am still running through the scope of my own understanding. However, there comes a point where people simply cannot be a part of each others lives...

      The warmth of the springtime sunshine, and clarity of crisp blue skies encompasses me in peace throughout my most trying of days. As i survey the land, the first signs of new life in my college town become more prevalent each day. As i traveled home this past weekend, the trees began to show me their masterpieces in hues of freshly laden greens, as the daffodils, and lilac bushes came to full life before my very eyes. It brings me joy watching creation rise to life in the time of Christ's resurrection.      The last year has been full of its trials and tribulations -   but those are not who i am. i have been spending a great deal of time trying to find the words that begin to convey the thoughts beneath the surface now because they are so thick. Beginning to untangle the emotions, the thoughts, the joy, the pain, the growth... giving it words, and setting it free- these are the difficult moments.      There have ...

          I've thought about it- but I realize that I would probably be better off saving my energy for something else. I would be a fraud were I to deny that the emotions are there. Those emotions, the thoughts-  they still wage a war to relinquish control upon my life. They have become so interwoven, they must be gradually peeled back, as if they were intrusive claws being drawn away from a tree in the darkest of storms. The scars that remain are undeniable, and the sound of war is most simply described as deafening.      You kind of miss these thoughts, or perhaps these people. It's a twisted, sickening, convoluted game that others may never understand, unless they have been in your shoes- but for those who have been here- I need not go any further. For those who have not- it is the kind of mourning wherein we do not miss the pain of our tormentors or the war's we waged for our sanity. We miss the comfort of never being alon...

     I have grown weary of fighting, and have decided that I will no longer do so. I am not destined to be fighting- let alone fighting myself, and neither are you. As the semester has continued along, I have noticed the self denigration growing in not only myself, but those around me. The academic building that I live in has become consumed under a veil of perfectionism, high expectations, anxiety, and shortfalls that leave students numbing their pain through abusive coping mechanisms. We are not called to live this life. The best news, is that we do not have to. I understand the tragedy of when the darkness lingers through your night, and becomes the equivalency of a living hell; where the world turning against you. I realize that those toxic thoughts are merely lies, and they are temporary . I have caught myself in a web of "could'ves" and "should'ves," but instead of making the time to do these things, I have been sitting in a circle caught beneath ...

     Today I was asked to come face to face with the things I have been dishonest about. The things I carry in my pocket. The things I protect. The things I bury. The things I have justified, or believed for so long as just practice- and tried to rationalize as okay when all along they have done nothing, but rob me of my freedom, and design. Leave me void of the life I have been called to live, and envelop me in a veil of darkness that oftentimes keeps me awake until 3am questioning my own decisions.     But still- I swear that I am right  Ed is right.      On my list I rejoiced because things I struggled with, and addictions I justified and hid have been chains that have been broken even in the last six months since I performed this exercise. But then, I looked long and hard at this little orange sheet of paper that stood before my eyes. At the words that stood before what was only my two eyes, or so I thought for all of a spli...

    Precarious. She sat precariously teetering on the line of O.K., numb, and desperate for quite some time, but did not realize what the tipping point would be until she had pushed it beyond the boundary. It happened so quickly, and looking behind her, she wonders where the time has escaped to.      She opens herself. Surveying the contents, as if they were a disheveled drawer that contained all the contents for which she had been looking for. They were there all along, but she could not seem to find them, nor could she begin to grasp them or remember how to even use them. Fog: A paralyzed state of mind, and sense of perception. Feeling detached from oneself, in a distorted sense of view.       It is in these moments, she casts her gaze within herself and draws upon obsolete emotion, that objects her to dark matter that only propels her further away. Or worse yet, she reaches within herself, and looks at the outer veil to ...