I suppose heartbreak came to me. But it didn't look like that.

No, not at all.

It looked like the promise of sandy blonde hair and smiling eyes. Late nights in parks and all the small things you can't describe how precious they are. Holding someone's hand, making them laugh until there are tears in their eyes. Running late to an appointment because you didn't want to leave them just yet. Hour long calls and inside jokes you never quite forget.

Heartbreak came to me like that. Wrapped up with a ribbon and a card, yet I didn't read the small print.

If I looked closer, it would probably have said something about keeping it away from irresponsible people or else it will be a hazard, maybe that it will break upon falling.

But I fell. And I broke.

Heartbreak doesn't come up to you holding a sign saying heartbreak. Heartbreak comes to you under the pretence of love.

The 1st Amendment is the right to spew.

Everywhere, constantly spilling over into the air, fighting for space in the soundscape, whittling away lives with a constant stream of borrowed thought, there's vomit.

I don't think it's bad or anything. It's important to cough up something every now and again, proving sentience through demonstration of rationality, debate of a problem, finding a solution to a dispute, making something beautiful.

It's just messy.

The right to speech fills everyday with slogans, signals, billboards, boasts, quiet condemnations, generous gestures, and vitriolic tirades all hacked up for some reason or another. It's the right to open your skull and let everything out, pour it into the world and watch what happens.

It demands you must.

Make a lie of yourself, say what you want, pick your moment; regurgitate your favorite things until no one can see you under your chosen words.

Better yet? Display yourself. Flay yourself. Make a filet of your mind and serve it up for us. If you don't how will you ever know if you're really alone?

There's no choice. It's baked in. You're doing it, one way or another. There are laws for it, complicated restrictions, elaborate justification for why one way is good and another is bad. The bottom line is that the 1st is a clumsy way of spelling out a right to assert that we exist, a clumsy way to justify the frantic need to simply be heard. The 1st is two fingers down a throat.

The 1st Amendment is the right to vomit, puking up pieces of a person so others can see.

She treated alcohol with trepidation. To her, it was as slipperly as a snake as you tried to pin down what marked the transition from constructive and destructive. She would sit at the edges of a party cradling a solo cup filled with ginger ale and convincing herself that a drink was never worth the risk.

She'd grown up sucking wine bottle corks as a child, given to her by cultured parents so she could become accustomed to the fine wines of their lifestyle. She prefered red to white, finding the purple stains on the speckled cork more appetizing that the subtle white. She had her first taste of champagne aged 9.

Her family had slowly deteriorated due to alcoholism as she watched her father fall further and further off the wagon. She spent darkened nights tucked into closets hoping she wouldn't be found. curled up with Lord of The Rings. Her mother started sleeping in a different room. The drinking began at the time of a hobbit's second breakfast: after she had left for school but before anyone began making lunch. On weekends, she stayed up until dawn to ensure that she would be sleeping when he had his first drink. It was easier not to be watching.

She didn't drink in high school or into university; abstinence became her middle name. The word no was her familiar in her witchy ways of remaining on the outskirts of gatherings without ever getting sucked in. She sipped her ginger ale in anxious celibacy. She was always too afraid of tempation.

Some time ago, I contemplated suicide for two weeks straight. I imagined slitting my wrists, slicing my throat open, stabbing myself right in the heart, hanging myself in my closet, electrocuting myself in the bathtub, throwing myself in front of a car - I even Googled a bunch of other ways I could kill myself.

I was still in college, alone in a sea of strangers. All of them seemed to be partying on the ship while I was barely managing to hang onto the life boat. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to hang on anymore.

I thought that I was doomed. I had depression. I had social anxiety. I didn’t have any work experience. I barely had any friends. How could I even dream of having a future in a world where being social was a requirement?

So I pondered all of the ways I could just end it all. After all of the weeks of isolation and numbness, I welcomed the rush that came with contemplating suicide. At the most, I tied a scarf around my neck in order to get a sense of what it felt like to choke.

I didn’t do anything more than that, but I did ponder over what would happen if I followed through on killing myself. I thought of how my parents would have to pay for my funeral. I thought of how they would have to bury me. I thought of how devastated they would be. They would blame themselves. They would ask themselves what they did wrong, what they could’ve done to prevent this. They would think, ‘I failed her’. By ending my life, I would ruin theirs. I didn’t want to do that to them. I didn’t want to do that to my best friend or my little brother, either. Since I didn’t have much of a will to live for myself, they became my reasons for living. They were the reasons why I continued to hold on. They were the ones who were there to support me, to love me, to believe in me when I didn’t have the slightest bit of belief in myself.

It wasn’t until recently that I was able to start liking and believing in myself. I managed to break through all of the selfhatred, isolation, and hopelessness I’ve felt for the majority of my life, thanks to all of the love, care, and help that I’ve received from my family (best friend, included - she’s like a sister to me) as well as my therapist. It took a long time to get to where I am now, and I couldn’t have possibly made it here without them. Sure, I still have my fair share of problems and obstacles to overcome, but I want to live. There are still so many more memories I want to make with them. There are still so many things I want to do. I don’t want to give up on any of that. It’s just the beginning of the rest of my life and I want to do what I can to grow. At my own pace. One step at a time.

An aspiring writer said to himself on the topic of Freedom: I am apt to think I was born Free, cause otherwise, perhaps my folks would just return me? Alas, having no receipt of the transaction they had nothing to take back (to Customer Service). There being just this little but growing, burden of responsibility; stuck as if. Did they freely choose it..? Parenthood? I have my doubt. (Mother always shook her locks: ”...If it were up to me...!” exasperatedly.)

Odd that we are so pushed around, and yet still have a mouthful of “I want—.” As if we didn’t already have Life coming at us like a sock in the jaw! but, Freedom makes for good social ideology, if not policy.  Right? I like to think I can say whatever, and do whatnot; and now if you ask me what it is that I really, really want, despite this free-for-all of thought, like most people, I’m like.. uh-duh-uh... not that I don’t take Freedom very seriously!! I just don’t take it very far....

I have the right to my opinion, and don’t voice it much, if at all. I don’t stand up for my neighbors, though we’re free to assemble a life for ourselves, so says the First Amendment! and I do believe I am free to believe what I believe though what I believe is only what occurs to me somewhere in the back of my mind, cause if I didn’t imagine it or get wind of it somehow, how can believe in it (or not), since cognitively it does not exist? That is my religion, if you will: I know what I don’t know and profess it fearfully in the serrated confessional of my soul...

Freedom, I suspect I do not really know... I’ve no idea... what compels me to write.

#ProseChallenge #WeekLXXXII #Freedom

I can understand all the arguments against abortion, and I can understand why folks are pretty verbal about it.

But let me ask these question.

1. If a woman was a victim of rape and later found out she was pregnant with her rapist's child and wanted to have an abortion to spare herself any of the trauma that this pregnancy may bring, wouldn't you be a little more supportive of the victim in this case? Wouldn't forcing her to keep the baby serve as a way of supporting the rapist?

2. If you are against abortion, then would you be in favor of supporting comprehensive sex education, access to birth control, emergency contraception, and socialized medicine — the very things we know that decrease the number of abortions? If not, wouldn’t you be contradicting yourself by supporting the problem rather than fixing it?

3. Is it really any of your business what a woman does for her body? Would you like me to ask you what you do and then tell you can't do that?

Think about it, and be a little more considerate of others.

#prolife #prochoice #thinkaboutit

Thoughts and prayers

Warning signs missed

Parents had no idea

Survirors speak out

Facebook activism

Repeat

I shed my skin

the petals

fall

ever

so

gliding

across

the

sliver

savior

glistening

glimmering

guilt

sticky red paste

drops

across

this pure page

creating poetry

Life Is Love Lied To

It was when the day had grown tired of seeing us

When the last line of sun sliced through the horizon

Casting a violet glow amongst the town

Similar to the light peeping from under my bedroom door

Where you stood still-before knocking on it, in hesitation

Would I accept you?

I did something I promised myself I wouldn’t

The urge to resist was not in my favor that Friday evening

Mother, you wanted me to tell you what I thought “love” was

I am ready now

It was drawn from out of me-like a molasses-thick splinter salve

The taste of Camel menthol cigarettes subdued me into telling

To when we were young and filled with pine ashes of ignorance

I miss the country so

But rent is cheaper in the city

I recall the smell of cinnamon leaves bake under the heat of those rhythmic neon flames-sweet and spicy

While observing the transcendental energy of the evergreens sway-how smooth and seductive they seemed to be

The creatures from the night looked on with voyeuristic eyes

As we drank from our cans of cheap Natural Ice-it was always dad’s go to

And then in this memory I can hear the thunder from the drums roll and rumble rise up from under the black steel doors leading down to your lair

Entranced by its masculine mystery-the heaviness of the bass bounced off every delicate part of me

This was the sound of fun, escapism, being in love and lost in a trance of victory-it had lured us into its castle of raw possibility-

So, our instincts pushed us along to the indoors of your confines

Jagged sticks of wax in an assortment of wicked colors flickered, dripped, and formed puddles at our feet

While heaps of laundry humped inside its shadowy machine

I can in this memory still feel the bite from whiskey that was on your breath-the one you took from Mark’s trunk

It was intoxicating to breathe in your rebellion

Resume.

I can see the dilation of your pupils when you watched me undress

And counted each golden speck that shimmered in your topaz eyes-there were SIX

Thank you for noticing

There was a curtain hiding your photo enlarger and high school paintings

There were purple and green lights spiraling around the basement poles

Decorating, illuminating

Our spirits into crosses

I wanted him to know how good it felt to be glazed with certainty, love kilned in veins

We were like a helix of flesh, morphing into one heart-soldered together by the union of our will

A Vanilla Fudge vinyl spun in circles under the tonearm

Haunting, crackling and smoked fruit melodies shrieked; moaned in defeat, descending with a deep

Sigh

As I lied there heaving by his side, soaked in pearls of sweat

And then, before anything else

Before the wheels could go around and around

Before I could stress about breaking my probation

We puffed out the white fog of dreams on his torn and tattered couch

Where all the paranoia’s flurried to the kingdom of banishment

I was far away from the soul eaters I associated with when I was with him

Safe inside his circle of salt

I remembered savoring the stew of mold and mildew from the splotchy pink insulation above our heads; relishing the stagnant smell of forgotten things

The last kiss of the evening, before the rising sun, ended with laughter that lasted for minutes (which were hours), at nothing, but everything

Mother, you asked me to tell you-and so I told

Time stood before us, but now it rests behind us

He was gold to me then, but now I am sold in

To the marriage of rusty rings

The menthol cigarette I had at my lips died of death

Peppermint leaves blowing away in the cool eastern winds

While the town quietly nodded off to sleep

My phone fell from my lap as I stood up and looked around for the stars-the ones he teased me about for thinking they were small enough to catch

And said to myself: I wish I would of never met him.

I like to know but I don’t like to learn

A washed up woman was a stupid girl

Dropped out of school at the tender age of 12

Threw all my dreams into a wishing well from hell

I like to know but I can’t listen

Microwave your books for quick tuition

There is so little time and so many people to impress

Why should I waste my time on how to dress

I’ve got pseudo-intelligence to sell

Piggy backing on all of your success

Is it the only way-the easiest

Mom and dad bought me pills for breakfast

The doctors fed me drugs with a minors consent

Mom and dad brought me a mattress

To sleep in the hexagon of their madness

Mom and dad caught me naked

Sleeping with any man who could take it-they never knew a heart was capable of faking it

I like to know but I don’t like to learn

Gone are the school days, welcome on the dog days

I am now an old maid preying for a big break

Dropped out of school at the tender age of 12

Threw all my dreams into a wishing well from hell.