A Poet's Bleeding Heart🖤📜🪶

I have found throughout the course of my life, more often than not, people throw phrases around without actually taking any significant amount of time to really comprehend what they are literally saying.

Particularly when faced with the uncomfortable position of trying to comfort someone.

It is a common enough exchange for me, to the point it's almost montotonously predictable.  

*I let my wall slip ever so slightly and let someone in and tell them one or two of my demons*

"Look how it made you so much stronger!" 

"You are tough, it hurts, you'll make it through this."

"You've handled worse, you can do this!"

"What can I get you? How can I help?" 

God. I can't even explain how deep every single one of these well intended knives cuts. Every single one. 

It's as if they hope the surface level gesture should be sufficient enough.. it's honestly such an insult at first take. I know most people don't bother to really consider, but some people think far too deeply for these to be anything less than fatal blows when you're already facedown in the dirt. 

I never asked to be strong. I deserved the chance to experience being weak. I deserved to know who I could have been had I not spent every spare scrap of energy holding up a load heavy enough to flatten most people.

What's worse is that sometimes it genuinely feels like I wouldn't know how to be weak if my life depended on it.

I can't allow myself to break. If I'm broken, how am I going to help anyone else? If I'm not the one helping people, how do I know the person helping is actually going to do their very best?

You can't know.

You won't know until it's over.

Until it's done.

Until it's too late. 

You won't know until it can't be changed.

Unacceptable. 

For me, anyway. 

When you spent every single moment of your waking and dreaming hours in survival mode, you get good at, well, surviving.

You get good at observing. 

You get good at reading people.

You get good at lingering just out of reach of danger.  

You get good at control. 

It's all in the name of self-presevervation.  

For me, it runs hotter than almost any other primal instinct.. almost. 

Existence is the single most exhausting pursuit I have ever had the displeasure of being forced to endure.

I know I can handle the storm. I could get swept up into the cyclone and whipped back and forth, flung and battered and likely with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. I'd collapse to the ground and what else would I be left to do? 

Lay there and whimper and wish that when I finally snap it starts neck first?

No. 

I'd take wet, choking, gargling breaths and get the fuck back up. What is the other option? To give up and die?

I have tried that - several times. 

You can see how that worked out. 

People love to offer something to you, but instead of offering from a catalog they know they will be able to actually follow through with, they leave it wide open. 

"If you need  anything..." 

As if you genuinely want to give me "anything"

What I want is a redo. 

I want you to find me a time machine or a time turner and take me back to before I knew what it felt like to starve for love.

Before I knew how the thick gritty clumps of mud tasted before I swallowed them whole just to feel the weight of something sitting in my belly. 

Take me back to before the Universe decided to unleash her unholy tirade of terror upon me. 

You want to give me something? Give me someone elses life. Give me the void. 

Give me a dose of what it feels like to draw breath and not feel it tremble beneath the weight of a million bricks on your shoulders.

You get good at pretending. 

You get good at posturing.

You get good at denial.

You get good at deflecting.

You get good at using shields.

You get good at hiding.

You get good at holding yourself up and then threatening to bite anyone who tries to help you.  

You get good at convincing yourself needing support is weak. 

You convince yourself showing and admitting to weakness makes you weak. 

It does not. 

It makes you brave. 

Needing support? That's human. 

Admitting you need support? That's strength. 

Accepting support?

That is power. 

It is not weak to brace against the base of a mighty tree. It is a strength to allow yourself the gift of rest and relief. Knowing you can bend close to the point if breaking, without actually breaking, doesn't mean you should do it. Certainly not constantly. 

It is okay to allow someone else to hold even a small corner. To allow someone to step into your fire and not flinch when the flares lick their knuckles. 

Sometimes, having such a grounding and solid presence at your back is all you really needed to push yourself back up. 

The tree may have offered stability, but you are the one who willed your knees to straighten and your eyes to narrow.

You are the one who stood back up. 

It doesn't matter how heavily you braced against the wood.. the momentum was you.

That is strength.

Earned and well won. 

For now, I think I'll sit a spell beneath that mighty mohagny tree and rest my head against the bark. I think I will learn to allow myself to be weak... only a little. 

I have learned I am allowed to rest. 

So, I think I will choose to lean into someone else's strength to recharge my own. 

And I wonder if after I use that steady presence to get me back in motion, if I'll feel much stronger for it?