Suffocating.

Reaching for the air in a sea of raging water. Like wind-torn, sheets smacking against my face. White caps into waves into a drowning pound of Poseidon’s Trident. I know that air is what I need. I know that what I feel is legit. I know that I am doing the best I can, but this dark mass beneath my chin, upholding and at times consuming my body, scares me. At times the water is calm and I am floating above it, relaxed, balanced. The fear of being swallowed whole lingers even in as another wave passes. It is times like these my questions of life's purpose are fueled. I can’t help but ponder in the midst of animosity, negative and condescending tones of other people in the room that what I am doing is wrong and that what happens when they figure out I don’t belong here.

I want to eat my emotions as I leave the stuffy room of passive-aggressive peoples, more as I get to the comfort of my own mind where I no longer have to present. I no longer have to nod nor do I have to sit there with the faces of contrite staring back at me. Without looking at me or caring, their eyes may as well be right next to mine for how I feel. The scoffs and tones in voice are loud screams, I envy a blow horn. The awkward laughs and the feelings expressed not as honest as they are trying to mimic. The posturing and the shifting in seat, all a reminder of the horrid conditions.

Thinking we can do something provides just as much failure as thinking one can do nothing at all. This is my thought after a meeting. As I rest in my desk chair, eat my almonds a little too speedy, and as I try to rationalize my thoughts through words. If only I can put what I am feeling down, it gets it out of my head. However, I do not want to write. I am too weak to do the one thing that benefits me in my own mental health. The thing I know others can relate to and the one thing that I can reread when I am calm just to see how emotional I was. However, I do not need to be told I am feeling, instead, I need to be told when I am not. I feel all the time. I feel good, I feel bad, I feel the anguish of others. Yet, most importantly, right now, I feel defeated.

What can I do with these words but save them for a sunny day when I want to touch the dark waters of disdain. Not now, there is no time for reflection, mindless state of "better times." Now is a time of production. When I have that perfect storm raging inside my head with its raw pain. Others must know their worst times are valid too. I need to produce right now, for later, when I am rational and motivated, energized by the sun’s rays that I can do something with this. Right now however, I have to feel, understand, use what God has given me to make things more right in the world. As of right this minute things are not better, nor are they supposed to be. I want to eat to cover up, but then I will feel worse, feel guilty, feel like a failure, for then my emotions got the best of me. No longer would they be felt like the pains of a bullet hole there to remind me of danger. I need this feeling, it is my fuel, but nobody likes to get burned.

Take your fuel, make it useful, make it productive. Write out the raw, talk about the feelings to someone you trust. These times of pain, identified, managed, and overall coped with, necessary to make the other times more and greater. I want to make those time better for others and that is my prayer, if that means this, then so be it, they can see it now, turned for good, for this is mental health, this is negativity, this is anguish.

Castle:Broken, my book, Sold HERE. 

Talk to someone if you feel like taking your own life. Little do you know how useful your pain can be for someone else, and how expressing that pain can remind others they are not alone.