Waterfall

My therapist keeps telling me to trust my fam, but I feel like certain recurring events make me want to keep backing away. How much farther away can I go? I want to send my love to them, but a voice in my head keeps telling me something isn't right.

I want to love my loved ones, but do I even love myself? I do enough to be able to present videos in public... behind the shadows... hiding my heart only for me to see... unless you look deeply within. And even then, my heart is covered with tar. Do you want to help me clean it off or will I just continue to wither away...

The waterfall continues... 

Bye Bye Base

My childhood house is not a home;
It is the shelter above my head and nothing else.

What is home?
Home is a dwelling place with benefits
Like when you’re playing tag as a child and holding onto the pole at the park deemed as “base”

Base is the only place you’re supposed to fully be safe and immune to harm in the game

Now imagine “base” being removed from tag.
You would be running around endlessly struggling to find freedom until either the round ended or you got a game over…

My home life has never been a positive experience.
The atmosphere is clouded with the spirit of Debbie Downer with a  side of infinite stress and my parents fighting all the time.
I feel like I’m tiptoeing on lit coals with criticism in the background disguised as love being force fed into my mouth.

I’m on a mission to find my voice;
Every time I speak a barrier seems to deflect my purpose and overtake my belonging…

Visions in my head sound off to search for direction but have led me to hell and back

Nowhere feels safe anymore;
What is privacy anyway?

My room and car are subject to search even behind locked doors;
The negative energy overtakes the entire space…

Every waking moment feels like a fight against the shadow monsters with your secret weapon being disabled.
Sadly, it seems like the only way to win the battle is to teach myself to fly and flee to find the escape rope to my freedom…

What would you do if your home was the enemy?

The Lone Shining Light

I want to be happy, I promise!
Though I have never felt more alone in my entire life… until right now.

It is the holiday season right now and all I want to do is work or do something productive.
Part of me feels like I have nothing to celebrate,
While the rest of me doesn’t have a safe place to go to celebrate.
Might as well throw a dinner and trip to the arcade party, party of 1.

Tis the time to be with other people.
During the time I need it most,
You find out how selfish humankind really is.

I don’t mean to be salty,
But my tears taste that way…

Joy seems to be somewhere yonder,
Even though survey says you’re not supposed to seek it out.

I feel so full of energy
With the pain buried down below.

In order to fully shine, you need to fill your own cup.

One of my tables at work a few days ago asked me how I was doing.
I said I was fine with a smile and they immediately called my bullshit.
I replied by saying I was fine in the present moment, which was true, and gracefully walked away like all the people in my life seem to be doing right now.

My pain translated itself into illness, which causes people to disappear with haste.

If the ultimate goal is to spread light, how can you do so when the light is dim?
Illuminate the black, of course.

What if you are the black?

If creatively sorting my thoughts and drawing it onto a notepad is the only way to get people to listen, so be it.

I will continue spreading as much light as I can in this crazy life I am grateful for having.

Learning to be alone is a skill.

One of these days, I will figure out how to touch the stars,
But someone else has the key.
In that case, I’ll go to the moon instead!

Lonely Habits

It is fuck o'clock in the morning and a manic mood has struck...
I need someone to talk to.

I scroll through long lists of names on my messenger apps and contacts leading to an empty abyss.
I want to text everyone but don't want to put them to the test of whether or not they can handle imperfection...

So I bottle it up into my magic lamp already past the tipping point and the genie is probably yay close to busting out of the lamp to yell at me to come back down to earth...

I turn on my crying music tune out the sound of my nose waterfalling onto my face...

I send several text walls as a cry to the sky for solace...

Feeling like I'm on a cloud I float back down to the prickly grass while trying to avoid the ultimate collapse...

The genie pops out of the lamp and yells at me anyway to snap out of it and turn the other way to those who have their back to you...

Snap out of it! Snap out of it! You don't need to hide anymore!

Someone responds and offers a hand. Real people exist.

I am not alone!

Long Lived the Magic Vape Pen

I want to wake up and taste the rainbow
But today, the rainbow tastes like grey...

10am...
When I get out of bed, the clutter next to me shines into my near sighted vision as I roll to my left and immediately reach for my magic vape pen.
10 hits later I'm ready to begin my adventures...
I meander down the stairs of my childhood home wondering what the hell I'm still doing here and create some tastiness.

12pm... 
My indecisive mind that never stops churning takes me to my laptop sitting in my bed to attempt to do some work.
10 more hits of the magic vape pen later I'm ready for bed...

3pm...
I wonder why the fuck I'm still in bed and realize my endless to do list is incomplete and I scramble to do shit...
10 more hits of the magic vape pen later I grab my phone and start texting people the same cycle on repeat to wonder how some of these people haven't used an escape rope...
1 more hit of the magic vape pen later I've realized half my pen is gone in a day and text my friend that I need to put the pen down...

4pm...
I still have to do the everything and frantically jump in the shower...

5:30pm...
3 hits of the magic vape pen later I should probably put the pen down so I don't require more slumber and run to the gas station for some awakeness...
I end up meeting some friends at Dave and Busters and go to the bathroom to "change" and secretly take 5 more hits of my magic vape pen before playing multiple games of dance dance revolution...
My friend who works at the arcade wonders if I'm ok and tells me I look like I'm out of it.
I tell him what's up and he finally convinces me to stop craving magic and start craving natural beauty...

11pm...
My legs are jello and I can't move... I waited until no one would notice me to go back to where I shouldn't be going, but need my own escape rope.
It's buried somewhere... Likely right in front of me...
But in the meantime, long lived the magic vape pen...
If I stop investing in magic and start investing in nature, the wind will carry me to where the treasure is buried and I'll live happily ever after... Sort of...

For now, at least I know the rainbow tastes like candy and I don't need magic to survive!

Now, time to go the fuck to sleep!

Story of Growing Up as an Identical Twin and Overcoming Adversity

Story time:

*Note this comes from a standpoint of someone who's met few other sets of twins, was never close with any of them, and they were all fraternal, including my estranged first cousins. I am also in my 20s!

I do not like comparing myself to others, especially my sister, but I've been thinking a bunch lately. I've always wondered how family dynamics worked and in a family with multiple siblings, constitutes a "perfect child" vs a "problem child". Starting with being born and not being able to control who's older or younger, sometimes, your sibling can be a few years older or younger than you. Imagine being born the same day, or even the same hour as someone. From birth, I guess I was always supposed to be the one who got kicked around. My parents said I was getting pushed around inside my mom's stomach. To my not so disbelief, my sister was born a minute before me, making me "the younger sibling" by technicality. I didn't see a minute as meaning anything and saw us on the same playing field. A minute to her meant everything. She stole my toys, was always selfish, and tried to boss me around, and still tries to boss me around to this day. We were both picked on a little in high school, but my being picked on started even before preschool when a boy named Joseph would pull my hair tie and stick it inside the plastic holes in the slide. Her being picked on was brief and mine lasted until the end of college, while I was even bullied by her. I ended up having a worse relationship with my parents, being looked at as the "problem child"; whenever my sister would get picked on by people, it would trickle onto me, and then trickle onto a pen and paper. Unsurprisingly, I've been diagnosed with depression.

I've noticed in a lot of sets of twins, one has a medical problem at birth and the other is healthy. I was obviously the one with the medical problem, but said medical problem is gone thankfully. I was the "expense" because I had medical problems. I felt like I was treated different, and probably was I'm sure. My sister also seemed to have a smoother ride in college. Our grades were generally always the same, we scored similarly on standardized tests and moved up the same in karate as a child. But I ended up being the one who's laptop broke. I was the one who lost several credits, failed 2 classes and had to go to summer school in order to graduate on time, who took longer to get a job and internship, who had the roommate and apartment problems, the mental health problems, the gaining weight, treated poorly by men, etc. The more problems I had in college, the more and more I was the problem child. The more and more I was picked on and treated poorly, the more and more I began realizing I was different and had different heart beat (literally). I had to keep pushing through adversity. Before I finished school, I had a 4 hour conversation with a 37 year old (at the time) marine veteran who explained to me the benefits of being different and how to handle being the problem child. Shortly after that and coming into contact with Belegarth (my nerd group of awesomeness), I began accepting how even though my parents tried to steer me away from being different, being myself will overall make me happy and advance down my chosen and destined path. My sister would conform to my parents and I would still do my own thing (while still trying to follow the rules as much as possible). I did not realize being different would promote ridicule, but as soon as I broke free, I continued to be different and myself. I would end up reading articles with the end result basically saying how the ones who distinguish themselves from others are the ones who were different. I am very lucky to have found the enlightened path at the end of the tunnel of all the crap I put up with from birth to the end of college and then some. Twins, identical or fraternal, are NOT the same people. Who you become is based on your environment. And one measly minute doesn't matter in the end. Hardships only make you stronger.