Feels Like Doom

  I went to urgent care today to see about an odd rash I’ve had on my arms for more than two weeks now. I first thought it was just stress, but it still hasn’t gone away. It’s one of those itchy rashes too, but I don’t think it’s from a bug bite. It started at the end of class one day when I was really anxious, which is when I noticed I was scratching my arms terribly, with the skin starting to break. So I went and got a percription to hopefully help.

Clinicals start on friday for me and four others from my class. I know what nursing unit I’ll be on and the name of the woman training me, but the rest feels so up in the air. I’m terrified. I told my therapist last week that this coming friday feels like doom to me; like I am at the top of a cliff, and once friday comes around I’m going to just be pushed off, expected to fly without wings.  I’ve been losing sleep, and no doubt Thursday night my eyes will stay wide open all night from this anxiety.

I haven’t been doing much of anything as far as my art projects go. There’s a drawing waiting for paint but I haven’t been feeling committed enough to get that done. I just want the month of May to be over with–to fly by like April seemed to. Because then, it’ll be after I’ve gotten my certificate and I won’t be as stressed out as I have been about it. Ten days of clinicals to suffer through and I’m done. And hey, I’m open to the possibility that I may even like what I’ll be doing, but that’s not my main goal. I don’t honestly care if I like it anymore, I have to get through this. When you begin to taste the end of something, the thought becomes all consuming.

At the end of friday I’ll have a lot more to talk about.

Intended

    I can’t believe I’ve actually made it this far into the course. Clinicals begin in two weeks. I managed to create a resume out of nothing, one that from two people around me (family) say sounds good. Hopefully they’re not lying, but hey, they know I’m at the end of caring for the ‘constructive criticism’ anyone bothers to lend. If it works great, if not, I have options to lose myself within. I’m remembering how just a year ago I was in the mindset of not planning for any future. Telling myself I’m not going to be around to worry about this or that. I still don’t have a five or ten year plan. I don’t see myself around five (three, two…) years from now, but having this attitude about the future and about planning things in general is all that allows me to handle it. I try my best with what I have, and having it in mind that tomorrow may not even come calms me down. Maybe it’s unhealthy, but it’s another way I’ve learned to cope with my depression. One way that doesn’t leave me further on the edge with a blade to my wrists wondering how far I can go this time.

Intended

 

In disappearance, the

Unblessed rest, is thrown 

In chunks, my soul is

      Eaten by this illness

 

For the silent real

Of a blind goodbye,

For the tranquil resonance

      Of a heard end sigh…..

 

Severe glimpse, I’ve

Dreamt, my intended sin,

Of patience spent, a wrist 

      For the blade to rend

 

 

Here’s to another week of who knows what kind of stress.

 

 

Stressing out, so well

    I am waiting until the rain stops to take a photo of a finished drawing I have ready. I’ve been stressed with having to remember so much in class and drawing is really all I have the energy to do when I get home. Writing is almost imposible…there’s still internal conflict there about whether I should stay and finish up this course, but I already know I am going to–so why is it still something I’m thinking? Having this certificate to put on my resume is the only goal, along with possibly getting a job, but the amount of pressure I feel sitting there in class is at times just breath taking. I’ve tried to balance out the feelings running through me with looking for other possible options if this training doesn’t work out for me. We got back our personality scores today and as usual I came out as the IN( or S)TJ type with extreme introversion. No surprise–I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs test a few times already over the years, and I’ve come to see the results as screaming that I am nothing but a cold loner, which is fine to me personally but hell when other people look at it and respond the way they do. Screw it though, nothing’s going to change and I don’t really want it to. I’ve had to bend and mask my real nature for everyone else’s comfort for too damn long.

I have recorded my other song, but I’ve come to hate the arrangement and lyrics, so when I get some time or maybe in between waiting for class to start in the morning, I’ll sit down and work on the words. Our clinicals begin May 1st so I’ll try to get more things finished before then, when I’ll really be stressing out….lol.

This poem below has been left alone for at least two months while I’ve thought through whether it was finished. But I’m as satisfied as I’m going to be with it, with everything except the title. It all sounds a little weird, but a scene I was watching on TV kind of triggered a mood in me that inspired it a little. The basic idea at the end is about knowing the little bit of control we do have can be all that’s needed to push us along for another day.

A Chosen Consequence

 

It is happening again

My stolid restraints break

Betrayal heatedly circulates

I bow, punished and sick

 

A dense hum sounds low

My heart beat begins to slow

As if it knows which

Thoughts have taken hold

 

Willful shades of fear

Now stir, of honesty

And something sure, says

This blade I reach for, it’s

 

Unfolded, despair is deepening

And spreads a restless need, for

The better pain, a desperate risk

I close my eyes and I breathe in

 

A given whisper- cry, my veins

This rising high I must sustain

For, if nothing else, to hush up life

To entertain this urge to die

 

Sips of blood taint’s savored glow

The moment sunsets, and I grin

Into the shadows, satisfied- how

 I could end at any time…

Got through another week…

    This week felt too long. Not one night of enough sleep and a bad week all around. In class we took a transcription test I completely butchered. When the instructor was going over all of my mistakes as she turned the pages of my test, I stood there discreetly scratching my wrist to keep myself distracted from crying. It worked. I didn’t shed a tear but I did unexpectedly draw a little blood where I was scratching. I don’t know why I’m so hard on myself when it comes to my ability to do these assignments. I seem to be more of a perfectionist than I ever thought. But hey, the scratching is all I’ve done, and I think it’s all I’ll resort to (hopefully) if the same distraction is needed.

My brother only got 30 days in a county jail. Serves him right if you ask me. He seriously takes for granted how lucky he is, and it’s bugging me to even mention him now so I’ll stop.

I’ll be writing this weekend and finishing another weird painting I started last week. It’s been a while it seems since I posted a poem, so the first one below is one I’ve been a little picky about. It doesn’t really have a direct meaning but it relates a lot to how I’vebeen feeling overall the last couple of weeks. How it’s hard to survive when you don’t have a reason to; the emptier every passing day leaves you. The second poem below it is another one I wrote a long time ago and edited several times. It’s like a second version to the one I titled “His Closer Look”, about that incident I had in therapy. This was my second attempt at trying to explain the whole thing.

Quandary

 

Unanswered; I trust my broken lens

In solace as I descend

Let us switch places so you feel this grin

The chances and abundant hope I pretend

 

We can’t look one another in the eye

When one of us is resigned to die

When one is destroying their own strength

For the meaning they cannot find

 

A moment, removed in how I breathe

There is something unforgivable just

Behind this door, you’d never dare to see…

The saddest noise your ears could never reach.

 

My final glance back at the fall from a climb

The bloody wounds are real this time

As the empty vessel shatters, of courage grown

For diseased, the longer I remained whole

—

The Second Session

 

When he spoke

I was listed and told

I was just too impulsive and

Never learned to cope

 

I was dead in sharp silence

Quiet moments all too quiet

Already so unhinged,

His help felt like punishment

 

He asked what hardships I endure

And what releases I’ve reached for

He asked what pain; what blood and scar

To inflict one and go too far

 

And he saw the map I drew

The breaks for peace, of old and new

I tried to reason, tried to lie

And passionately justify

 

But no excuse was good enough

No stopping his intrusion

Great struggle remained in my eye

Of secret hurt, of sacrifice

 

He’s not right, I’ll not feel shame

Or reconstruct some fear of pain

In wasted time and stricken air

I left, in anger and waned of care