Author: helen

helen

The Shards of Broken Glass

Somewhere along the lines, it must feel comforting to someone when a bell rings inside the depths of the soul. Tonight, there is a deep, longing sadness that was fueled from loneliness. I can’t explain this feeling, but it feels low, like a heaviness inside myself, deep into my middle core. I keep myself busy throughout the day, but it is at night that the things I run from haunts me. I know this. I fight it, but I know this. The lonely night encases me in its cold, dark arms, like a comforting but unwanted blanket.

How did I get here, where the lonely place has become the norm? What happened that made me deserving of this? The salt of my tears become too familiar, too close. They color the stains that were left from tears from yesterday, and suddenly layers and layers of them exist where creased smile lines used to lay. How did I get here? Please, how did I get here?

I tiptoe through the daylight, hoping the light would catch me, hold me to safety, pin me to the ground where it is safe in vulnerability and openness, where my authenticity is interpreted as genuine. But light chases me, and I am still a shadow of the darkness. It is what is left.

I know I’m caving inside. The hollow space that has grown over the years have become bigger, and I’m not entirely sure where these vestiges of ashes came from. I wonder how I did not notice them before — how did they creep into my home, into my safe place, into my heart that I thought I knew so well? How did it become one ash at a time, until the ashes became baggage?

The night is heavy tonight. I am too tired of lifting.

The Cold Blanket

I am afraid I am getting used to this cold blanket. When I am alone, it is easier to notice its chills on my skin, gluing itself to the bareness that I can’t cover up no matter how hard I try. It is easier to remember its presence on my body, laying heavy, as if trying to take root in my soul and claim its residence there for life. It is harder to shake off, to shed it like a snake’s skin, while I ooze out into the wild sun again, light and free and wispy… the way things used to be.

When I am alone, this blanket is my friend and my enemy. It has been on me for so long, growing heavier and heavier, like lead on steel. It grinds against me, leaving marks that become scars on my humanity. The marks that stay over the passing years. It hurts, oh my god, what the fresh hell is that it hurts so badly? Aren’t blankets supposed to be warm, cozy, fuzzy?

When I am alone, this blanket feels like the burden that it is meant to be. It is familiar, that is true. This familiar burden that came along every so often, and reminds me that it is still there, just sometimes tucked away in the closet and forgotten. But there are always fresh reasons to wear this cold, damp blanket again.

It’s old, and raggedy. Yet, it feels familiar and heavier with each step. It is a childhood friend… the friend you thought you shed when you left home. It is the friend you were ashamed of… the one that called you names behind your back and the one that reminded you of your weaknesses. The one that doesn’t let bygones be bygones. The one that doesn’t let go of you. The one that nags and nudges. And yet, the familiarity of this blanket on you feels so familiar, it is too hard to shake off.

When I am not alone, this cold blanket because a little lighter to the touch, though still heavy. I keep distracted with tasks, and logistics, and lunches and work. Sometimes, if someone is looking closely enough, they can see that I’m wrapped in this cold, damp blanket while trying to smile, or converse, or drink my hot chocolate. Someone would ask me, “Hey, why do you have that on?” Most of the time, I frantically search for the brave face I know how to put on, the mask that makes everyone else feel comforted that they don’t have to comfort me.

“Oh, this old thing? It’s okay. It’s not that big of a deal. I’ll take it off soon.”

This blanket is heavy today. Bricks. I am carrying around a blanket made of bricks. Steel. Iron. Lead. It’s poisonous to me, but I can’t let it go. I don’t know how. It is hard. This blanket.

This grief. This blanket is grief.

Remind Me

The color of love stays clear and pure, the way you can see the color of glass, and the color of water. The color of love runs through, and true, rising up with smoke and lingering with the ashes. The color of love isn’t red, or blue, or pink. The color of love is evanescent.

The taste of love isn’t blood, or iron. The taste of love is clear and dear, dancing around your tongue, like when you thirst for water on a hot summer’s day, even as your skin runs with beads of sweat. You thirst, and crave, as if starving wasn’t good enough. The taste of love runs through lovers’ lips, shared among kisses, lingering with perfume and cologne. Lingering with lust and love. Lingering with the touch of love. The taste of love coils around you like a snake, until you beg for more, out of breath, because more is never enough.

The feel of love fits like a well woven glove, warm and fuzzy like a bear’s hug. So rough and tender at the same time, holding true yet vulnerable and delicate. The feel of love mingles with the freshness of spring air and the winter’s chill, when pecks are too quick and hip-to-hip isn’t close enough. The feel of love whines for more, when you can get so close to the other that you become lost into their skin. You feel what he feels. He feels what you feel. Intertwined into a potion of pooled services for each other.

Remind me what all those things were like, dear love. Remind me when my senses were overwhelmed and overpowered. Remind me of the hot breaths of pants. When life was hard around the edges and we were soft to the touch. Remind me what it felt like when you couldn’t get enough, and it was okay. Remind me what it was like when I was enough, and you wanted more. Remind me what it was like when we were one, woven together by two. Fingers lingered on skin so taut, little hairs and goosebumps defined our existence. When the universe was dancing on our fingertips and the world was conquered through our eyes.

Remind me of the breath of love. Remind me.

SFD Take 1

Let’s see how this goes.

My Shitty First Draft captured in a forgotten blog.

Let’s see how this goes.

I stretch, and twist, and turn and whirl. Bubbly throat and knotted stomach. The sprinkles of light inside me that grow and grow and grow, strung along with connected tears. My “ugly” cry is something that has been hidden and forbidden. Cast and trashed. Doesn’t mark my true character. It is the rage that lives inside, the scars that never die, the wound that doesn’t heal.

Let’s see how this goes.

Sometimes it doesn’t work when you try so hard to live, to adult, to be good. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the only thing that really feels good and vindicates your troubled mind is maybe throwing a rock in the window of the house that you built. Sometimes, giving up seems enticing because you’re exhausted from “fighting the good fight.”

So we’ll see how this goes.

Because it’s hard. All of it is hard. Whole-hearted living bears down on the soul because it’s hard on you. It’s hard on the softest parts of you. It leaves you tender when you fall. Your face gets muddled up and scratched with wounds that don’t seem to heal. When you dare greatly, sometimes it doesn’t always work. You get laughed at, scolded, and flashes of anger dance in front of you, in the form of someone you love. Someone you trust. And it isn’t fair. None of it is fair. But they say life isn’t supposed to be fair. Just unpredictable and wild.

So we’ll see how this goes.

Which of all this do I deserve? Do I deserve to love, to be loved, to do good, to be good? Do I deserve to be okay with the me I see in the mirror, or the me he sees through the glass of his eyes? What could be handled if I let it all hang out, let it all show and let it all shine, and rot, in front of people? What could be handled? Would I still be worthy? Would I still have people? Would I still have my tribe? What would it all look like?

So we’ll see how this goes.

By the end of the day, I am exhausted. I am exhausted of holding it all up, keeping my head high, carefully straining and carefully cocking my head, in a thoughtful, compassionate, loving manner. I’m exhausted and I want to sleep the pain away. Sleep the doubt away. Sleep the uncertainty away. Sleep the pseudo-confidence away. The edge of despair meets the cusp of hope. Somewhere, the two intertwine and mix and become beautiful, inseparable, and foreboding.

So I guess we’ll see how this goes.

Dear You Out There

There is something happening in the middle of my rib cage. It drums and drums to the rhythm of a mystic beat that sometimes doesn’t sound familiar to me. This liveliness scares me sometimes, and I am left vulnerable but powerful to the entity that shows itself. I reach out to you. I reach out hard, and long, and fast. And I reach out because dear you, please don’t hurt me. Dear you, when you hold this connection like a tentative little baby bird, ever so slightly vibrating in your hands. Its fragile heart beating so fast, so afraid, yet so lovely and vibrant.

Because dear you, the one who holds me at a distance, with walls impenetrable and large, looming and dark. If I were a bird, would you let me fly, still tethered to your beating heart so that there will always be a safe haven when I am to return? If I were a river, would you be the ocean that holds me accountable to the streams that drift apart from you? Will you still be a part of me? If I were a corpse, would you be the last breath I took before I bid farewell? Dear you, the slight and delicate beat that drums to the rhythm of my every need.

Because dear you, hold it true, hold it well, hold it fast and strong. I am not as threatening or as huge as my frail arms do pretend. I am delicate, and practically lifeless. Because dear you, please don’t hurt me. I belong to you.

A Broken Heart

It tastes like a thousand broken shards dipped in scalding hot honey. It is meant to sneak into your unsuspecting mouth by its sweet honey smell, only to stab and jab at your insides when you take a bite. The shards rip the inside of your cheeks, leaving them raw, bleeding, and awed by shocked horror.

And yet there is no relief from the would-be sweetness of honey. Because the temperature doesn’t send relief by cooling off, it stays scalding in your mouth while the spoonful cuts your tongue. It coils your words and minces your thoughts. Instead of sweet words you meant to say, the taste is so bitter that your words become poison and defensive. It leaves you feeling betrayed and defeated. You want to spit it out. No no, take it all back. It was a dirty trick. Disgusting in nature and no one asked for this. But the taste lingers and kills. You can’t do anything but swallow the bitter, rotten mouthful. And it goes down your throat like hot lava, making its way through your body, cutting and destroying everything in its path.

The mouthful spreads into your veins, takes over your blood stream. It cuts, it cuts, it cuts. There is no relief.

From the outside, you may even be able to fake the pain inside. You lick your lips and swallow the blood, smiling through sad, disappointed eyes. No I’m fine. I’m okay. How are you?

Once it’s in, that bitter honey slides through smoothly inside you. It invades every part of you. It takes away what was good about you. It strips you naked and then ridicules you. It laughs and sneers at you. Until there is nothing left. Until even the best armour you’ve built can’t hide the bleeding pores as you sweat out all the goodness and keep all the ugly.

The pain overwhelms you and you wish for nothing but sweet sweet sleep. Sometimes you can forget when you’re asleep. But you wake up everyday again, and in the morning you look around, and you see he bloody sweat.

You put your armour on. And you go on.

The Journey of the 30s

Life is marked by steady symbolic poles built with memories. The memories of the first 10 years of my life are sprinkled with some of the hardest and most tender experiences yet known to me. They consist of those bike ride evenings with my younger brother and sister before I became “too cool” to hang out with them — adolescence hitting me like it smacked my predecessors before me.

My childhood also marked the times when I visited our neighbors across the street, building our relationship slowly with twinkles of trust and light. They saw me walk to the bus stop for elementary school every morning, and they saw me leave the house we grew up in forever as I made my way to my first day in university. They have since passed.. before I had the opportunity to invite them to my wedding just a couple short years later.

The early years also staged some of the hardest times of my life, when our home life wasn’t always good, and the roughness left bruises and tears still stained in the muscle memory of my heart today. Into my teens, the next decade up, I marched into more uncertainty as my brainwork began to shift from “child” to “not yet adult,” marking my very first crush/love, and more confusion when it came to autonomy and independence.

Adolescence wasn’t fun. It had its fun moments, but I wouldn’t give anything to have to redo that part of my life.

My 20s’ was what I now dub as “the stage of desperation.” There is a term I once read, that read something like this: “If you meet an asshole in the morning, s/he is the asshole. If you keep meeting assholes all day, you are the asshole.” The 20s for me is this entire phrase. After breaking friends as quickly as I made them, I went through female friendships like waterfalls. They were my cascade friends. They came quickly, we connected quickly, and then I also very quickly gave them my life story, how needy I am, how much I want a best friend, and how THEY can help, and how much I love love love them. And shortly after that, they disengaged. Too much, too fast, too soon. My 20s marked the time in my life when my emotions were like a roller coaster – I loved too hard, I loved too fast, I loved too soon, I gave too much, I required too much, I asked too little, and I lost too much, too soon, too big. Up and down and all around. I flood lighted people with my personal business, and they left out of overwhelming confusion and disconnection. I blamed the world, and often myself, that I am too much to handle, and they are not enough for me. I was a constant victim.

I am glad to be out of 20s. Trust should not be a floodgate. Trust should be earned through twinkles of light, quiet actions of love, and the slow, steady connection of friendships that get built through years of mutual experiences… sometimes quiet, always steady, mostly good. Trust is when you know what your friend is having for lunch and their favorite coffee. Trust wasn’t when I spent two hours during a first or third coffee lunch date with a new friend telling them my life story and how hurt I was when my mother yelled at me over the kitchen table when I was nine years old.

I am turning 35 this year. I still lose friends, but not as often as I once did. I am managing to keep the small group of friends who I have learned to build and earn trust with… giving small pieces of myself over time, receiving small pieces of them over time in return.

When I turned 30, I thought to myself, “Well, that was 3 decades so far of crazy life experiences… many of which I care not to ever repeat again. Now time for the next half of my life. I know stuff now. I know stuff, so this should be easy. I’ve done my time, I’m good to go. 30s and on is what will be the ultimate time of my life.”

The 30s should be easy. I hear from so many of my older women friends how it was the 40s that they really truly became themselves. I thought, “Psshh… why wait another decade when I can do it now? The 30s will be the time when I become truly myself!” I am a mother of 2 girls. The 30s so far has not been what I had promised it to be. The 30s marks the decade I truly come into my own skin. The wild ride of learning, stripping away the old, covering in with the new.. The first 5 years of the 30s have been spent in confusion, denial, and anger. I have learned to show empathy and compassion to those around me. I have learned to love the ones who did me wrong. But now is when I really finally get that in order to love someone else deeply, I have to first learn to love myself just as deep.

The 30s marks a time when I shed the dependence of my self worth by looking into the mirror of another. I no longer want to be tethered to a safety net of “someone” else. I want to fly free and be okay with the wings I have been born with — that I will land on my own. Sometimes my landing will be rough. Sometimes it will leave me bruised. Sometimes it will be smooth and effortless. But at least, when I land, it is my own skill, and not because someone had a string to my wings, helping me along.

Here’s to flying.

A Pause

There is a pause inside my type of living lately. A small pause, that catches my breath and holds me still. Still to the silence of the night, yet makes me afraid of the dark. A little more than I usually am. I am afraid of the vulnerability of my heart. It captures and opens, and the pause rests within my soul and makes me wonder what I’m doing here.

Here in this space that seems so gray, without certainty but hopefully with lots of forgiveness and room to move. My legs wave through the bitter measure of discomfort, and all the unknown that I would somehow need to sift through. Each step I take makes it a little less hard, but also at the same time makes it more pronounced that my story isn’t complete yet. I wonder what is on the next page.

I feel like I am the constant semicolon. I don’t know how to finish this sentence, but I know something needs to happen. It isn’t an end, nor is it a beginning. It is something that needs to continue in a different way; a brave way. Whatever the next page is, it requires bravery, it requires blind faith, it requires careful measure and counting, it requires a leap of intense and vulnerable love. I am learning. I am opening up and flowering, but some days it is easier to close up and unlearn.

This pause is painful. This pause is necessary.

Be Kind to Myself

Madness and love and kindness and ravaging, beautifully aching horror of it all. Sometimes life is just like this. With my fingers clenched around the steering wheel, often with tears rolling down my face, it is with this realization that I find myself thinking how incredibly unfair, yet oddly noble, life can be. The ache of not fully knowing, and the knowledge that perhaps somehow this is okay, can only be described as confusing and beautiful.

In the moments when I am at my worst, shame and terror cross the deepest, most inconsolable parts of my being. I am not good. I am not well. I am forsaken and should be forgotten. And then as if that isn’t enough, here comes the meta-shame. I should not feel this way. I am not good for feeling not good. I should be more compassionate, and kind to myself.

Did you know that research has found that in order to teach your children the act of compassion and empathy, in order to make it a habit for them in their daily living, you must be kind and compassionate to yourself? Did you know that if they see you be kind to yourself, they are more likely to be kind to the world? This baffles me. All this time I have had it wrong. And yet this makes so much sense. Why didn’t I see it sooner? Why wasn’t this incredibly transparent way of thinking and being apparent to me before now? Why did it need to “click” now, after I’ve got two children and one feels like she is as old as time itself? Why didn’t this click for me sooner, while I was trying to live to be perfect all the time? Sometimes cruelty takes not the form of living in shame, but the form of the realization that you did so for no apparent good reason at all. All those years shaming and blaspheming myself to the bitter core of the darkest, deepest places inside me. Were they all for naught?

That to teach my girls to be kind to each other, to be kind to the world, to be kind to themselves, I must start with myself? Why couldn’t it be easier? I can be kind to so many people. I can be good to so many people. I can take care of so many. I can do so much. I can always do more. But to give reason to be all those things to myself — well, that is just too much. Self love often comes with the price of guilt and a collective sigh of arrogance. The path towards humility I thought was the path opposite of self love. In actuality, all this time, it is simply the same path to the same place after all.

I must be kind. To myself.

The Mother of all Guilt is the Mother Guilt

A couple of years before our firstborn entered this world and changed our lives forever, I had a compelling dream. I dreamt of a little girl who needed rescuing. I don’t recall the setting of the dream, but I recall the feeling. I was chasing after this little girl in a dress, with dark hair in her eyes, and I whisked her away from danger. She clung closely to my shoulders and snuggled into my neck. She didn’t call me mommy or anything, really. But I remember the ferocity of the determination I felt to save her, to keep her safe, to let the world’s pain slip off her shoulders like water off silken paper.

Years later, after our Lily was born, it was only then that I realized I dreamt this beautiful little baby girl up. She was the girl in my dreams. I am not a religious person, but I am spiritual and I’d like to believe that I am at least somewhat in tuned with the universe. Somehow, I always knew I was going to be a mom to a girl. At least one girl. Now I am blessed with two.

I understood from afar the complexities of being a parent. A mother. A woman parent. I understood that the responsibility is grand beyond all other measures of life. More so than being a good daughter, it is weighed heavily on women to be good mothers. I unreasonably and naively thought that this would be easy to do. I know what kind of mother I’ve always wanted, and the kind I was given sometimes felt like I was given the short end of the stick. I knew then that I would work harder, try better, at being more than what I was given.

No one could have prepared me for the mind craze that comes with motherhood. In all actuality, motherhood means living with guilt, fear, pain, and a tremendous amount of incredible and unequivocal love that feels like your chest will rip open right in front of you. It doesn’t feel real some days. It feels miraculous and frightening. Most days, I run through my life doing my absolute best but never quite my absolute perfect. By the end of the day, I sleep exhausted and mind numb with feelings of guilt and shortcomings. I am not perfect, I will never be perfect, and I cannot rid the guilt I feel because of this.

It is easy to tell a parent to “do their best” and be okay with it. There is nothing more to give outside of your “best.” There are many days I wish I can be more than I am. There are still many days I know I cannot be more than I am. The mind already knows the impossible task I set myself to, yet the heart and the soul refuse to give up. Because really, at the end of the day, at the end of eternity, these girls chose me to be their mother. They chose me. And I can’t help but feel that they’ve made a terrible choice in the matter. They could have chosen someone much more patient, much more worthy, much kinder and more intelligent. They could have chosen someone with so much more to give, yet they chose me. And on my worst days, when I grow impatient and my temper just falls short of beautiful, I wonder if the damage I am doing to their esteem means they will one day regret ever choosing me at all.

For a mother of daughters, there is much to do. There is much to teach simultaneously. To teach confidence and humility. To teach patience and strength. To instill in them the ever-flowing capacity for kindness and the silent yet firm hand of character. To give them grace and will power. To role model strength and power in the midst of fear and weakness. To be okay with fear and weakness while striving for strength and power. It is a task not made for the weak of heart or the tender of character.

Raising daughters is a delicate task. We belong to a sisterhood of love and competition. Sometimes our cruelest friends are the ones we love the most. Sometimes our biggest teachers are the ones we call enemies. More often than not, we learn best from our vulnerable moments and we grow from the tenderness of our love and the strength of our tears. We fall into the hands of those who make us rage and we take comfort on the shoulders of those who let us cry. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, in the beauty of the light of day and the glory of night, I should know how to teach all these things as a mother. But I don’t even know how to gracefully walk it as a woman half the time.

I hope that somehow, I am teaching them grace in my shortcomings. I hope that somehow, when I am at my worst, I am teaching imperfections and acceptance. I hope that somehow, when I am giving examples of what not to be, I also show them that I am vulnerable when I am at my worst, and they get all of me. They get all of me. Even when I don’t want them to, they still get all of me. My relationship with them is something beautiful and terrifying. The motherhood of the story of my life is the most beautiful because it is the most vulnerable.

I hope that in my own imperfect way, I am protecting them and keeping them safe.