I'm running out of space

I'm drowning.  I'm suffocating.  I'm running out of space.

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Now whenever I send the words out into the universe there is someone I know, someone who knows me, who reads them and interprets them.  Sometimes things just need to be let out and let breathe.

Like me.  I'm in a cramped room, though I am surrounded by the things I love they're burying me.  That room is burying me alive.  So is my job.  I need to get out. And breathe.

We'll need to see your ID please, ma'am

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I'm disgusted by the proposed law in Arizona that would require women to "prove" their gender with ID when using a restroom. 

 If the bill passes with his amendment, police could stop any woman trying to use a women's restroom. She'd have to show proof that she's a woman, and if she doesn't have ID or the gender on her ID doesn't match her gender identity because she's trans – 6 months jail and a $2,500 fine.

When asked why the bill targeted trans people he explained that it's because he thinks "they're weird."

Well, bucko, WE'RE ALL FUCKING WEIRD. 
I'm a woman.  I have no problem with a trans-woman using the same bathroom as me. She's fighting a hard enough battle already without fighting a battle about where to pee.  GIVE HER A BREAK.
(I don't want to even wonder why there is a double standard for trans-men.  I don't.  I don't want to give Arizona any ideas.)

Arizona, and this isn't the first time, makes me ashamed of my country.  It really does.  I could rant or day.

Just please, if you care about this issue, go to this site and sign the petition.  Do what you can to stop the erosion of civil liberties.  And if you don't care about this issue, just please think about what civil liberties they can take from us next. 

When the worst happens

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I often think to myself that worse things could happen.  When I feel sorry for myself, I comfort myself by saying, "you have all your limbs!" or something similar ("at least both your eyes point in the same direction!").

Sometimes the worst things happen.  So far, the worst things have only happen to me a few times.  This has not happened to me yet.  And I will say, I doubt, NO, I know, I would not be so brave, or so graceful, if it did.
I have learned that I will do just about anything to live just a little bit longer.  And I hate myself for that.  Though perhaps the next time one of the worst things happens to me I will be brave, and graceful, and perhaps I am turning into a person I would like to be.

No matter what happens to us, no matter how many worst things happen (until the final one), there is always hope, however cruel and unlikely, and beautiful.

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seasonal heartbreak

So, yes, there is such thing as an actual broken heart, and although I do not see wikipedia as a reliable source (I don't), it's a jumping off point for research.  I also know you can die of a broken heart.

But my question was this: could a trauma, even a relatively small one, haunt you, a year or so later?  Could a heartbreak follow you and sadden you from the year before at the same time of year, even if you had largely gotten over the event (or thought you had)?

The anniversary of sadness.

Other heartbreaks.

I occasionally worry about my heart.  The Dr. said with that the cause of my PTSD, it was like it had flicked a switch on my adrenaline that could not be turned off again.  So that I was ready for fight or flight all the time.  I find this most disturbing when I am going to sleep.  There I am, sometimes alone, sometimes in the arms of my loved one, and my heart begins to race.  My mind and my heart gallop away and I have no control over them.  Internal Tourettes, perhaps.

I often think on this quote:
"The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.'  People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole?  The Platonic union of souls?  I think otherwise.  I think you're whole before you begin.  And the love fractures you.  You're whole and then you're cracked open."
Philip Roth, The Dying Animal

I'm not sure that I agree with it, but I think on it, particularly when putting together this entry on heartbreak.  I'm posting this, but I'm still thinking on it...

Drowning.

Stevie Smith - Not Waving But Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

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Wretched Woman!

I've been thinking about this letter since I read it.

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Jermain Wesley Loguen (Jarm Logue) fled his enslavement, regrettably leaving behind his mother and siblings.  His former owner's wife wrote him to tell him that they were encountering hard times and to ask him to pay her for his freedom as he was a thief who stole himself.  Not only this, but telling him that circumstances had led her to sell his siblings away.

His reply is what I have been thinking on these last few days.  For those of us who struggle to find the right words when confronted with a bully and/or a horrible situation, Rev. Loguen wrote with grace and authority, saying exactly what one wishes he would have.

Words

Words

from "The Face of the Horse" by Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky
"Then we should hear words.
Words as large as apples. Thick
as honey or buttermilk.
Words which penetrate like flame
And, once within the soul, like fire in some hut,
Illuminate its wretched trappings.
Words which do not die
And which we celebrate in song."

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, p. 238.
"She has always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent on emotions like sticks in water."

A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous

p. 189 "Poor words, you do not suffice."

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

p. 231  "The words of her husband in praise of her meant nothing. But I am a man whose life in many ways, even as an explorer, has been governed by words. By rumors and legends. Charted things. Shards written down. The tact of words. In the desert to repeat something would be to fling more water into the earth. Here nuance took you a hundred miles."

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