Real talk. Non Fiction.

On a serious note.

I typically try to find humor in even my worst experiences because somehow that makes it easier to digest. But, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lasting affect or a serious situation just because I made light of it. Matter of fact, I never discuss this or talk about it openly. I do talk, but that’s only when asked or I feel the need to say something in order to help someone else. I don’t like classifying myself as a “survivor” or any other title. I’m not special by any means that made me “Survive”. In a sense, I don’t think I did survive. But let me get to the root of this.

I’m the… (I really hate saying this) survivor of mental and emotional abuse or more commonly known as NPD. I didn’t know I was suffering from abuse when I was subjected to it. I only knew I thought I was in hell, dying or going crazy. It took 15 years of solid therapy, twice a week. I still have my struggles, but ultimately I have overcome a great deal of it. My husband of roughly 4 years, has been the biggest thing in my life to finally heal that wound. He gave me the stability, strength and courage I needed. By doing that, he allowed me to have a safe place to live, free of fear.

The part I never expected was where I began to re-emerge into the girl I had once been. I did not know that I had tucked her away to protect her from the most heinous stuff, but I had. Therapy could never have done what he did. His love for me, alone, was the driving force to healing. However, because of that it allows me a bit more ability to talk about it. I don’t ever want it (abuse) to be the only thing that defines me.

For some, their tragedies become how they help others, and its an amazing thing, because those people are saints in every way. I certainly wouldn’t want to take away or deminish their journeys, but for me, I choose to just be me.

No ropes, chains or signs. No titles or signifying marks, just me. I want to be the person outwardly that I should have always been, without abuse scrawled across me like graffiti. It’s always difficult to remember, especially when I discuss it detail even though I have overcome it. Some things you just don’t forget and it’s hard to not cry about it. It doesn’t hurt the way it did. Instead of pain or fear, it makes me feel such sadness for the time I lost. It makes me have a great sadness for that young girl I was and the one who suffered for most of my adult life. It saddens me, and I cry for my daughters who had a very broken mommy as they grew up. It saddens me because I can not change it no matter how hard I try.

What I can do, is move forward without looking backwards. I can be this person I am destined to be and a whole mom to my adult daughters. And although it’s not the same as when they were young, this is what we get now. We can make it through just about anything because we made it through hell and back. That part, I know is true.

I was fortunate to not have been the victim of domestic violence. I was not hit, beaten or physically tortured and I won’t say I think that’s better because I honestly don’t know that suffering, but there were times I wished my abuser had hit me instead of the psychological warfare I was hit with every minute of the day for 10 plus years. It’s hard to fathom when it’s happening to you what’s going on, because it’s so foreign.

I didn’t grow up in an abusive home, I didn’t know anyone who had been abused this way, which made it difficult to recognize. It’s not like anyone knew what it was until it was way too late and by then I was out of the relationship. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done.

I still have PTSD. I don’t think it ever goes away fully. I have chronic anxiety and I take medication that has helped with that for some years now. Had I not found this particular medication, I don’t think I would be capable of functioning. The anxiety had gotten so bad I could barely leave my home for a few years. I missed school functions, movies, birthdays and outtings with friends because the anxiety had crippled me completely.

Trust me when I say, I hated myself for the invalid I had become. I had often viewed other people like I had become as weak, pathetic and lazy. I knew that wasn’t the truth and I couldn’t make the anxiety stop if I had wanted to because God knows I tried. I had horrible panic attacks that made me think I was suffocating to bouts of fatigue so bad I could barely get up to dress myself.

In the worst part of my abuse, I developed an eating disorder so badly that I have permanent liver damage, including damage to my digestive track, colon and bowels. Anorexia was a severe, and near dead problem for me that lasted a course of 15 to 18 years. To this day, ( I’m a healthy weight now), I still struggle with forms of body dismorphia. I am however, the most happy and comfortable I’ve ever been in my entire life. Peace is nice, when you’ve never had it. Happiness and joy is too.

I remember vividly, a few years ago before I married my current husband, praying to God that I before I died I just wanted to know what it happiness felt like. I didn’t know and the thought of not knowing what actual joy felt like inside me, made me devastated to no end.

Thankfully, I have been given that gift again, and, I can remember that feeling from when I was a very young girl. It’s truly something. It’s life changing when you are filled with joy and happiness that isn’t manufactured but real. There are few words for it and none that describe it best, because a feeling isn’t always tangible, but this feeling is the one that healed. This feeling inside me now is the one that truly set me apart from who I was, and I am.

Emotional abuse is more than just abuse of the mind, it’s an attack on your spirt, your soul and everything you’re made of. It tears you apart, layer by layer until it devours you whole. It changes you in a way that you won’t even recognize your own self when you take a good long look at that face staring back at you in the mirror. It’s the worst punishment, a human being can inflict on another that doesn’t cause death or blood to flow. And it’s 190 % real. It’s not lip service and when someone complains about things in a relationship with any person, friend, spouse, parent, listen. They may actually need you to see, what they themselves can not.

I have known women who have suffered as I have and were by far less fortunate. If they didn’t wreck their lives in an irreversible way, they ended it. It’s warfare of the worst kind.

I decided to share this much because I think it’s important to atleast say out loud, these things happened, they are very real and they can be life altering.

People who have NPD, narcissistic personality disorder and BPD, borderline personality disorder are abusers through mental illness. They need professional help. If you know someone who may fall into those categories, look them up, especially covert and overt narcissism, seek help for them. Check on the people closest to them. Most likely they will be in denial, but don’t give up. I would have been grateful to have been pulled from that sooner than later.

Thank you for reading ❤️

As the world falls down

The universe set something in motion that couldn’t be stopped anymore than time can stand still. Among the constellations, past the moon were two stars racing from opposite directions through the blackness of the heavens. They sped towards each other like a comet chasing angels. It was inevitable, nothing could stop their fate.

Sparks lit the night, illuminating the heavens as they collided into one another with such force, even the earth felt the vibration of their wake.

Only a fraction of a second before, there were two stars that have now become one, swallowing one another.

Twisted into each other, they shown brighter than they ever had before. They danced in the night, casting their bright light upon lovers below as they held each other. They clung together with absolute, believing nothing could separate them.

Your eyes say so such to me. No body knows who I am. No body knows, I’ve got intentions of Gold, with my plans. I’m lost in my head, my thoughts are out of sight. Where did you go? Did you lose sight? Did you let go? I never wanted this to happen. I never wanted us to die.

If you let go, I will most certainly fall. Is that where you want me, far from home? Do you want me so far behind I couldn’t come back if I tried?

Just say it. My heart aches and I some how wonder if this is what it feels like for a light to burn out. Does it hurt when the light fades away or can you take that too. Just say it.

I can’t breathe, and my mind aches like I am sleeping. If you can’t hear me clearly, then, I thought you loved me dearly.

Your grip weakens and I feel myself begin to slip. It’s cold in the underneath and I am trying to cling to you, I am trying to climb back to you and you push me down. I feel the world begin to fall beneath me and the light begins to leave me, I tumble towards earth as I burn out in the glow of moonlight.

Crashing to the ground, I lay still without you. And it’s in that moment, when a star dies, she let’s out her light like breath.

I have been punished and cast aside. What if tomorrow never comes. You could have let me down easy, but instead, you let go.

You’re so far away as the world falls down.

Thanks for reading. ♥️

Spent tea leaves

Definition: Spent tea leaves – those leaves (or hypothetical leaves) used and without flavor.

I’ve had many flavorful cups of tea in my lifetime. Some so full of flavor I could savor them till the last drop. I have equally had teas that merely lacked depth or flavor of any kind regardless of how long it was steeped.

More often than not, those lacking are the same ones that leave a bitter or just dissatisfied disappointment behind to only become those irritatingly stuck leaves that must be scrubbed from the fragile porcelain of my tea cup. Then again, they have equally been known to leave a pesky stain that not even the greatest of solvents can devour.

Such a pity, that is. And then, disappointment reoccurs all over again. The truth is, most of the time I have been blessed by finely tuned senses that allow me to discern when a particular brew won’t be as splendid as it sounds, but then again there is always that one that slips by and surprises me with nothing more than bland palate.

I can’t say I expect anyone other to have the same feelings about that one vile tea in question or be any less loyal to whatever ingredients have been forged together that’s “supposed” to be amazingly brilliant. However, being true to myself and incapable of faking it even for the Queen herself, I must admit it’s shit.

Let me clarify further, I may not fully understand all the ins and outs in tea mixology, but, I ‘am capable of understanding the basics. With that being said, it really doesn’t matter how strong the base leaf is, if it’s mingled with lesser quality leaves, spices and or flowers, it’s still going to be shit. In fact, those lesser quality leaves have the unique ability to completely taint and destroy the stronger leaf used as the base note.

Further more, the conclusion is starkly clear and my analogy is such, It only takes but a tiny drop of mud to obliterate, destroy and utterly ruin untouched, fresh water.

Now, if we break this down further we must take a look at the maker of thus said shit tea. It might be understandable if perhaps the maker were a random stranger by which you, yourself know nothing about, however if you should be so fortunate to actually know this particular maker of shit, then I’d say it changes everything. Don’t you?

First, and that is going on that we “know” the maker, is to examine their intentions as well as their interests. Meaning, what is it that lies just beneath the very surface of thus said person. I must beg to ask, what emotions are they hiding in the deepest facets of their mind and are they aware they have whole heartedly mislead the drinker, which of course in this scenario, myself.

I’d imagine, and that’s if I choose to guess, this person isn’t fully aware of their ill fortune. Which, I can only presume has to do with some kind of emotional attachment to the leaves in question. It is, with out doubt that those with attachments shall indeed defend those poor quality ingredients. However, before you begin to think poorly of the mixologist, you must understand they aren’t necessarily defending the blandness of its taste nor the lack of depth and flavor but more so the mixologists choices for choosing such shit to begin with.

For the most difficult part of this discussion, we may devilishly dig into the actual reasoning behind the mixologists desire to continue steeping such garbage. Well, that one is really quite simple my friends. Guilt. Pure, and not to be confused as lacking in any way, guilt.

Surprised? I know, it’s a challenge to think that something of such a lower vibration could affect someone so ruthlessly, but, as we all know, it’s quite common. Guilt, is the hidden seed hiding among the leaves as nothing more than loyalty, but it’s still guilt no matter how many times this brew is steeped and served. It will remain as it is, unfulfilling, bland and with rapid tendency to grow rather cold, most quickly.

The mixologist isn’t unaware either, that’s what makes it so divinely complicated because they do know all of the above. The thing is, they are willing to die on that hill than to accept, openly, they have created and sold a truly crappy cup of tea. And, to go a bit further with that, they have chosen to instead toss such blastedly grotesque and unpalatable concoction by holding tighter to it still.

I must add, and although, perhaps I should not, I will go on to say, the biggest mistake made by the mixologist and to plainly put it, unfathomable to allow such a tea without any true substance to permanently stain the finest bone China in the cupboard.

If I keep to the complicated and narrow path about the mixologist in question here, then quite simply, there isn’t much more to be said. But, as you would know the ways of “this” particular witch, then surely you already understand the story doesn’t end with the mixologist. No no, that would be most boring wouldn’t it?

Indeed, it would.

Try as it might, can you imagine the betrayal of the quest sipping this wretched tea? I can. It’s not pleasant. In fact, it’s most unpleasurable. It does not matter if the mixologist has upsold his/her mixings nor does it matter what the mixologist actually thinks about the brew itself on a whole. What matters most, and is of utmost importance here, in this moment, is the sheer ability for the sipper to see with their (my) own eyes the nasty stain beginning to form around the rim of their (my) favorite, and least to add, finest tea cup. If that weren’t enough then surely my smile has begun to fade when upon smelling this particular mix of spices and leaves I detect something sour. I have to admit, I expected so much more when the tea finally touched my lips. I had already imagined the idea of it swirling across my tongue and how the chords would perhaps be sour followed by notes of sweet spice but to my own shock and amazement, I tasted nothing more than the weakest hints of spent tea leaves, used and reused to the point of being useless. There is not and shall never be enough cream nor the brownest sugar or the sweetest honey that could hide that factor alone.

If that were a nightmare in the sense of taste then surely one might understand the horror when I, in fact, managed to swallow down this weakened shit without regurgitatimg on to the fine Persian rug at my feet, saw what that wretched tea had done to my beautiful little tea cup.

No longer that creamy shade of porcelain, but now stained with an ugly greenish brack stain was a hideous crack down the side, all the way to the stem. Try as I might, I carefully attempted to clean the delicate pores of the cup, now forever stained in hopes of repairing the crack when something more egregious and sinister happened in the blink of an eye, the cup merely vanished before my very eyes.

Unbelieving, I searched the pool of soapy water, first calmly, and then frantically for my precious cup. You see, it was more than special to me and not just something in which I might sample teas with or relish in its fine craftsmanship inside a protected hutch. This cup, this very special and priceless cup had been gifted by my the only love I have ever had. It was beyond precious, it held value that was irreplaceable and although I am aware an object should not hold such merit, it nevertheless was a pearl of great price, to me.

Hands empty and bare, In that moment, I realized that very bland and useless tea of no value had just consumed something quite valuable and even with that swimming in it’s bland belly, I doubt it was full. Rage, anger and unfathomable, inhuman thoughts raced in my head in a dizzying blur. Clarity regained control and then what came, and not to my surprise but the most foul curses for such a heinous act. I wanted revenge and nothing more, still do. But, if you are wondering, how might one take revenge upon the great nothingness?

It’s an enigma, you see?

That leaves me, really, with only one further look down this morbid rabbit hole and that is to the mixer himself. At first, upon viewing more closely, I thought my feelings were mirrored back. That, is of course the travesty in this situation of rotten tea and vaporized cups when I realized what I had failed to see all along.

What is tangible, and real, is not always valued as priceless. Sometimes, the priceless entity is merely the idea of something being tangible, although, simply is not. It’s that very idea, that one can value so highly, so important and precious that they have mistakenly put all their loyalty into, hoping it will return one day as something whole. But, an idea is just that, an idea. Even more disheartening is watching that person set aside what they held whole to put a protective value on an empty dream.

My beloved has si ce replaced my precious tea cup and I do love it very much, but it will never be the first. That, which, was taken from me. It matters not that the mixer tries desperately, and fails miserably to hide his secrets from me. It only matters that it still hurts my heart over and over just as it was the day I first sampled his brew and tried very much to love it, although I could not, to only have that which I loved taken from me simply because, I was the one, holding out my cup.

The moral of this story is at best, a cup with a hole in the bottom, will never be filled and a spent tea will never regain its flavor.

Thank you for reading ♥️

Poetry of static

Ticking clock, running water, someone talking from another room , TV belting out babble of news, yet I hear none of it.

Instead, I hear the maddening thoughts in my head spiraling into static. They distract me from the outside world, stirring my insides like a jar of sleeping butterflies shook by the dirty hands of a toddler.

I am here, atleast my body is, yet my mind is far from here in place called Not. There isn’t much there except the growing weeds of discontent, heartache and anxiousness. There are trees of growing fear that reach high into the depths of the endless sky and a river of right or wrong that flows as swift as it does after the spring thaw.

Where do I go and from what place is there words to fill the spaces and quiet the blaring static that sounds so loudly that I want to run. I could try to run, I could attempt to fill my ears with noise, but it only stops the sickness in my belly for a brief moment.

Everything around me familiar, suddenly feels foreign and strange. My footing seems to be that of a drunken chicken as I muddle through the thick muck.

I try to find a steady place to rest but just when the world seems to still, it all falls down.

There is no reprieve for what it seems is fate, yet I am unsure of it either way. I try to open my mouth and make my voice heard, but nothing comes out except for a million moths, silencing my mind and heart.

I am silent because I have been silenced by the unending turmoil that comes with the victory of sound, and so I sit in my head. I sit among the static as if it were a juice filled wine, drunken on the distorting affects and helplessly, hopeless.

Broken tea cups and loose leaf pekoe

Staring into the deeply etched porcelain crack of a dainty little tea cup, I carefully follow the zig zagging line to the invasive chip perched just so perfectly on its edge.

I ponder if I might still drink from the cup, and I could, just so as I don’t forget the break and cut my mouth in the worst formidable way.

I examined the little tea cup, it was one of my favorites, and I loved it so with its warming colors. Once there had even been a void in the cupboard, but this little cup had filled the void in just the way that the emptiness before, wasn’t so painfully obvious.

It’s true, this one little cup wasn’t a part of a set, nor did it have the same likeness as all the others, but nevertheless, I believed it was stronger than it was. I even thought it would last for a very long time, if not possibly forever.

I realize now, I misjudged this little cup. I mistook it for fine China, whereas it was merely cheap porcelain, and, although it’s monetary value doesn’t change the fact that I loved it so, it simply is the product of its making.

I could most certainly glue the little fragmented piece of cup into the chipped break of the porcelain, but the break would always be there, reminding me that it wasn’t quite the cup I thought it to be.

I could equally push the little cup to the back of the cabinet, but what would that do for me, I have to wonder. I ask myself if it would only keep the space or would it find its way back to the front, being that it has none of the same elements as its cabinet mates?

I suppose stranger things are fiction and I have never doubted the power of the little train that could, but it must first want to be as the others before it can ever try to be. I think if it is without cause or desire then the little cup is nothing more than wasted space and although it fills a physical void, it can not change that the void still exists rather it sits in its space or not.

Perhaps greif is the best way to fill an empty space than to replace it with something of an imposter, faking it’s way into my mind, daring me to think it was just as grand as the Prince Albert’s it resides next to. Perhaps, I should have accepted the empty space, and then, maybe.. Just maybe, it would bring the one that had been stolen back to it’s place.

However, it is also fair to understand that the stolen cup, long gone now, shall never return as it was just as the chipped cup will never be as it was either.

I don’t think I have the heart to toss the little cup just yet, it is true that I love it, but I don’t think I’ll mend it either. Instead, I will wait.

If it so chooses to wish hard upon a star, then it might find out what wish was granted to a little wooden boy who wished to be real. Perhaps the little cup will wish for the same thing, but I know that it mostly will think a star is too far to wish on.

It is with great sadness as I return the little cup to its place on the shelf, but even with that sadness I will give it the chance to prove its worth, because even broken things can be fixed with desirable worth if they want to be.

Thank you for reading ♥️