Tell me how to come undone

What if I created a new routine for myself? What if I gave myself permission to be? What if I forced myself a little bit in the beginning, the beginning of the day, so that I could set myself up for peace the rest of the time? What am I afraid of? What pushes me to procrastinate? What am I afraid of? Why do I tell myself that I can’t do it? Is it because I have the belief that I can do it and that I can address it later?

I’m tired.

I’m really tired.

I constantly feel like my brain is enflamed and the idea of having to do one. more. thing. is exhausting. It feels like everything inside of me is tangled and I’m just trying to make space. I’m trying to make space so that I can even try to be creative. I’m trying to take in everything I’m seeing, hearing. Trying to escape myself by just being present for a few minutes. By just noting how green and beautiful today is. This present moment the ivy is crawling up the trees. Coating the palm trees with their foliage. Thick and curling like my hips, like my hair. Or the way the hills roil and tumble into themselves like dirty, dusty waves. And the trees and brush surf along. Or how the dust clings to my skin, brown and unbending, honey colored and soft, tea-stained and wild. I’m just trying to sit in this skin that I’ve been living in. Skin that feels so uncomfortable. Skin that is heavy. Thick and calloused. I am callous.

Skin that has stretched to hold in my anxiety. Which is a swollen animal twisting and turning in my skin. I am a snake that cannot molt.

Is this what meditation is? Is this how I relearn how to write? By just pouring it out? I feel like a janky pianist. I feel like I am a blocked drain. Am I doing this right? How long will I need to sit here watching far off planes go by? Will I need to keep typing until the arthritis swells in my hands and the words begin to pour out?

And what about sadness? Let’s talk a little bit about the sadness that clings to my chest from the inside. Like I’ve been painted by tar. Like my viscera is tar stuck. Sticky with the guilt and the pain and the fear. The fear. The fear. The fear. The fear is a river that has carried me. The things that we lost float some where far ahead. Untouchable and fading and free.

And what about the things we cannot take back? Some songs come on and I want to scream until my throat becomes hoarse. Until Things crack and bleed because maybe that will bring things back? Maybe if I sing and stretch and dance and scream and cry. This year keeps taking. I just need a routine. I need a little bit of space. I need space to come back to myself. I feel so thin. Like I am a whisper and my creativity and mental capacity are living on two opposite ends of the hushed sound. Where am I? I think this often and want to cry.

I want to cry.

I want to be creative. I need to spend more time reading and writing. I need to continue to be fluid. I need to sit outside more. I need to listen to music. I need to return to myself and keep remelting myself here. Outside. On paper. I have to stop being an escape artist. I have to stop mindless. I am leaking and need to re- establish the structure of who I am as a person, what I like, what I need, what I love in order to begin refilling myself with the things that matter.

So who am I?

I am creative. I am fluid. I am wild.

I want to be loved. I want to be liked. I need to feel special. I wish I were simple, but maybe I am.

I am a creative without a home.

I am diverse without a world to fit into.

I am the same story over and over again.

I feel the pain and privilege of my ancestry but I do not know the stories because my heritage has left me like ki.

Hooded eyelids,

Deep wells,

Brows knit

Crocheted into ... the seams of whatever reality this is.

I feel the tragedies (so deeply) carried in my genes.