Heart Burn

I don’t know what to think anymore

My mind has come unhinged.

Everything is so confusing right now

My heart is burned. Crispy and singed.

I’m crumbling into pieces of dust

Don’t even recognize this face.

You’ve tainted everything about me

Memories glued tightly in place.

Somehow I kept you for this long

Yet you were never even mine.

Just a plaything to be toyed with

Like a fish hooked on your line.

Incapable of loving anything selflessly

Seeking pleasure in obsessions.

I tried to help, tried to heal you

You’re one of life’s cruelest lessons.

Might as well be a stupid kid’s yo-yo

Spinning up and down, up and down.

Broken promises paved by selfish greed

Pushing me under, watching me drown.

Life solely revolves around your desires

Anything to feed your ego’s high.

Selling out everybody along the way

Charming us with sugar-coated lies.

Drugs, alcohol, gambling, exercise, and pills

Sex, shopping, fighting, and vaping.

No limits to the madness, anything is game

It should all be yours for the taking.

How much longer like this can you go

Because, baby, I’m all tapped out

There’s not a flicker of fight left within

My faith replaced with doubt.

Tantrum all you want, screaming and accusing

I took the blame far too long for you.

The anger fueling these obsessions won’t subside

I’m left damaged, abandoned, without a clue.

Your self-destruction is killing me

Bruised and defeated, I lay here weeping

How can someone be this way

Oblivious of their unresolved wounds seeping?

Constraints Of Happiness- SSS July

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 13 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Your “Secret Subject” is:

If money and time were no object, what would you do and why?

It was submitted by: https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/  

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I’ve been going around and around in my head for two weeks now, trying to figure this one out. And I can’t. I can’t wrap my head around this one and come up with anything as specific as traveling the world, buying a private island escape, or meeting someone from the past like other people would.

You see, time and money are the two things that I hate most about this life. The two things that threaten the well-being of my marriage and my family. For someone like my husband, I could go as far as saying that they are the root of all evil because they are the two things that simultaneously haunt and drive him in life. He can never get his hands on enough of either one.

And I can’t blame him for that, either.

Living right at the border of the National Poverty Level for a family of six isn’t easy for us. Considering that my husband works over seventy hours a week to makes ends meet for us because I’m unable to work at this point in time, it’s not hard to understand why we covet time and money so damn much on a daily basis. We never see enough of one another, we don’t get to share the experience of raising our children together, and we are constantly struggling to keep our finances from drowning us on dry land. Our children don’t have the opportunities to explore their talents and interests because money is the golden ticket they lack, and the only thing required to participate. They’ve never stepped foot in a mall. Or really any major name brand retail store for that matter, beyond the scope of Dollar General or Wal-mart that is. And, even then, a store like Wal-mart is a rare blue moon treat for them.

It just doesn’t seem right that someone who busts his ass for twelve hours a day, six, sometimes even seven, days a week in a grueling steel production machinery shop (making the base for which parts that are critical for building everything from washing machines to hardware tools to automobiles) doesn’t bring home enough money, even with 30 hours of OT on each paycheck. Or has to even put that much time and energy into his job for the measly pay that keeps the bacon on our table. No one should have to sacrifice THAT much only to provide by society’s standards, a meager life. Not a good one. Not a comfortable one. And most certainly not a happy one. I believe Eminem’s infamous “Lose Yourself” song sums up the struggle we face pretty well.

Lonely roads, God only knows, he’s grown farther from home, he’s no father
He goes home and barely knows his own daughter…                                                                …All the pain inside amplified by the
Fact that I can’t get by with my nine to
Five and I can’t provide the right type of
Life for my family ’cause man, these God damn food stamps don’t buy diapers
And its no movie, there’s no Mekhi Phifer
This is my life and these times are so hard

So, if time and money were no longer part of the equation, I think it’s safe to say that all I would want is to just live happily, peacefully with my family in our own version of dystopia. I would give my family the experiences and opportunities life hasn’t afforded us the ability to have thus far. We would take trips together. Explore our community together. Eat dinner every night as a family unit at a kitchen table big enough for everyone to sit at- something most people take for granted these days. There would be sports practices, art classes, dance lessons, and martial arts training. Everyone would be able to embrace their own unique sense of style as their clothing options would no longer be limited to whatever is available in their sizes at the local secondhand thrift shops. We would be free to focus on our relationships and create the unity we lack as it stands right now. Our family could be the family we all dream of having right now.

And with that dream come true, my husband could finally find some relief and breathe deeply without the weight of providing for his family sitting heavily on his shoulders. Because he deserves to enjoy the family he made just as much as I do. He deserves to see his kids grow, learn, play, and love. He deserves to have a life that isn’t ruled by a paycheck which will be gone before the bills can all be paid in full. Time and money are the two things that bring him the most pain and strife in this world and it breaks my heart to see a great man suffer under their constraints.

---

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado                        http://www.BakingInATornado.com

Cognitive Script                     https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/

The Blogging 911                   http://theblogging911.com/blog

The Lieber Family Blog                     http://thelieberfamily.com

The Bergham Chronicles                  http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Simply Shannon                             http://shannonbutler.org

Southern Belle Charm                    http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope                 http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

The Angrivated Mom                    http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com/

Not That Sarah Michelle                 http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com

Bookworm in the Kitchen                  http://www.bookwormkitchen.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom           http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Climaxed                                           http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com

Faltering Unity

My faith in your love has faded with the sun, while you keep asking me why

But this isn’t the first time you have heard, this irrefutably heartbroken cry

Around and around in circles we go, treading water that only gets deeper

Casting doubt upon lies you have hidden, under the shadows of a sacred steeple

All the while you keep on rejecting what is true- as if you were actually blind

But losers can only weep in anger, over what us keepers do so honestly find

Nothing has ever been enough, to appease your angry, wild, deviant soul

Hold you steady in place, without absconding from this marital vow parole

A double life of masquerading convenience, motivated by selfish greed

Uncontrollable impulses fueled by unrequited rage, dictating only for your need

The more I try to hold your wounds together, the closer to drowning we come

I fear this wayward obstinance is the death, by you to which I will soon succumb

Helpless I am but you are not, for it is not my burden weighing us down

I’ve done my duty responsibly, upholding the heavy head that dons his crown

My bones are weary, my mind has gone dark, and my battle-worn heart is bleeding

As you wonder there on your throne, “why?”, while deaf ears fail to hear my pleading

Partnerships don’t work this way, you see, a team always functions in mutual unity

This wasn’t what we promised to be, when professing our love with judicial decree

 

 

 

Keeping Communication Lines Open With Tiffin Talk

 

photo courtesy of pixabay.com

 

When it comes to raising children, there is one thing that parents find themselves struggling with most throughout the years. In part because children are constantly developing and changing as they go through the different phases of growing up, but also because parents have a hard time understanding and relating to their children at each level along the way. I’m talking about communication, people.

Throughout the first year of life, parents dedicate a lot of time and energy to encouraging their babies to be vocal. We covet their first incoherent sounds as if the angelic sounding babbles and coos are the Holy Grail of speech- in all of its splendor and glory. Diligently, we strive to turn them into coherent speech, coaxing our little ones to repeat after us as we recite silly little nursery rhymes in a higher octave than usual. When they do, we rejoice and celebrate their accomplishments, in the same manner, we would if they had just won the Nobel Peace Prize or a Golden Globe award.

Then parents spend the next 17 years shushing them, ignoring them, or punishing them for speaking too loudly, out of turn, or with carelessness. We show irritation when their stories go on and on and on without a concrete point. We get annoyed by the endless questions to which we have no good answers. Life becomes chaotic and we no longer take the time to give their voices our full attention. It is a complete contradiction to that first year of life when we hung on every sound our child made with excitement and anticipation.

By the time they head off to school, parents have sent so many mixed signals regarding communication, despite the reassurances that they can tell us anything, at any time, children begin to censor themselves. The lines of communication between parent and child begin to breakdown. Besides… why would kids want to talk to their parents about stuff now that they have friends/classmates who genuinely want to listen to all they have to say?

We can ask them about their day, what they learned, who they played with, and what special activities they participated in until we’re blue in the face, but they have no desire to sit down and spill the beans like they did when they were 3 and never stopped talking. Instead, we get the “Fine.”, “Okay.”, “I don’t know.”, “Why do you want to know?”, and shoulder shrugging grunts in response before they saunter to their rooms to turn on their various techy devices and ask for a snack. It’s easier to pull their teeth out then it is to get them to open up and talk freely about anything that isn’t of special interest to them.

 

photo courtesy of pixabay.com

 

Enter Tiffin Talk.

This simple, easy to use, and age-appropriate program gets kids talking to us again. And not about this Youtube video or that new video game or whatever other technology-induced madness they’re wrapped up in these days- which we’re sick of hearing about and part of the reason they believe we lost interest in what they have to say. Tiffin Talk gets our kids to talk about THEM – their personal thoughts and beliefs about various topics which divulge who they are as an individual and their place in this world while they revel in some one on one time with their parents. From this program, both parent and child will be able to better understand one another and relate to each other’s experiences, bringing everyone closer together while re-opening the withering lines of communication.

Sounds impossible, I know. But it works. I tried it with my own brood of hoodlums and was greatly surprised when it was successful in doing just what it says it will do. (post to come soon highlighting our personal experience using Tiffin Talk.)

So what and how does this program work exactly, you ask? It is simply a boxed set of what looks like your average, everyday Thank You cards that are divided into themes and separated by the number of weeks you’ve used the program. For example, our first month of cards were all about “Memories” and they were split into week 1, week 2, week 3, etc, and each week had cards labeled for Monday-Friday, giving you the weekend off.

 

a sample of what the Tiffin Talk program boxes and question cards look like

 

There are specific sets for every school-age group from kindergarten-high school so the questions are well-suited for each developmental stage. The older the child, the deeper the topics delve and more thought-provoking the questions are, challenging your child to use their brain without them realizing it. Just one card a day with one big question or a few smaller ones to answer that engages kids in a way our typical parental-need-to-know based questions do not- easy peasy. The best part is, no one will balk over sacrificing the five minutes it takes up. In fact, it may lead y’all to continue talking for even longer because your child WANTS to… and it’s not about the mindless technology hoopla that is pointless to us all!

Either way, those 5 minutes will be more productive and valuably spent by ‘turning the tech off and turning the talk on,’ than any other 5-minute window in which you have your child’s full attention. Guaranteed.

So, as a parent, if you really want to preserve the lines of communication with your child before it’s too late, Tiffin Talk is the way to go. Or the way to begin. Whichever doesn’t matter. The fact is, this is the most ingenious program for parent-child relationships that I have ever stumbled upon. The only one to make me eat my skepticism and want to tell the world about how awesomely wonderful it truly is. What are you waiting for now? Go over to their site now and see it for yourself! Tiffin Talk really does gets kids to turn the tech off and the talk on- with purpose and meaning!

 

photo courtesy of pixabay.com

 

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Beginning Motherhood

The first time our eyes met,

My breath held tight,

I wore my heart on my sleeve,

As time took flight.

The evenings ahead were rough,

Daybreak gave no reprieve,

Yet it all felt so magical,

I’d stare at you in utter disbelief.

A creation of my very own,

Innocence ready to mold,

Nothing could’ve ever prepared me,

A fairytale yet untold.

Sleeplessness fueled with pride,

Filling me to the brim,

Squawking cries reverberating,

Soothed by my gentle hymn.

Sour milk breath smelling so sweet,

Nuzzling closer skin to skin,

Wonderment over this tiny miracle

Effervescence illuminating within.

With your arrival, though, time did gain wings,

Passing swiftly with a blink,

Ups and downs, milestones good and bad,

It goes too quick with our lives moving in sync.

Blogger and Blog: Karen of Baking In A Tornado

Name of Poem: Motherhood

Link: http://www.bakinginatornado.com/201…

Blogger and Blog: Lydia of Cluttered Genius

Name of Poem: Mother’s Wish

Link: http://www.clutteredgenius.com/may-poetry-mothers-wish/

Blogger and Blog: Dawn of Spatulas on Parade

Name of Poem: Motherhood Yo Yo

Link: http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/…

Blogger and Blog: Sarah of Not That Sarah Michelle

Name of Poem: Mother’s Day Poem: I Love You Mom

Link: http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com/…

A Borderline Kind Of Love

I love you, I hate you,

Please don’t leave me, but could you just go away?

Hold me tight without touching me,

Reach into my soul and heed this clutter in chaotic disarray.

My brain refuses to believe,

My heart is perpetually blinded by denial.

Emotions fight against reason,

Conflictions between the two forever standing trial.

I want you, I need you,

You’re not good enough, but the very best I ever had.

Ask me what’s wrong, shut up already,

Everything is good, I promise, it’s only me that is bad.

I’m up and I’m down,

Barely room to breath as I bounce around in-between.

Everything is so brutally intense,

This borderline is but a nightmare, not a dream.

Why is it this way, why can’t I change?

How are you here still, my crazy hasn’t sent you packing?

You’re the one, my one and only,

Despite the dysfunctional feelings, the connections I’m lacking.

I love you, I hate you,

I’ll never abandon you, but I’ll beg you to do it to me.

Beautifully broken, divinely defective,

In the end, though you feel like home- warm, safe, and free.

Images from Pixabay.com

 

Crumbling Foundations At The Crossroads Of Life

Never have I felt more lost and confused about life before. Everything around me is falling apart and spinning out of control. I’m struggling to breath as the world as I know it crashes down on me like the Twin Towers did on 9/11. Some might say I’m having a midlife crisis of some sort, but I’m barely halfway through my thirties and this isn’t about figuring out who I am rather than how this all went so terribly wrong.

My marriage is faltering, my children have lost their sense of family unity, my mental health is deteriorating, and the foundation for which a happy, comfortable life is built upon has crumbled. Everywhere I look there is nothing but failure and disarray and everywhere I turn, I hit another brick wall square in the face. My soul is battered and bruised and my heart is bleeding on the sleeve I have always worn it with pride. I don’t trust my judgement and my confidence is waning. All I can do is cry, wishing some magical fairy godmother would appear out of thin air and fix it all with a wave of her wand. I’m so tired of fighting.

Having a Borderline Personality diagnosis compounds this mess until it becomes a category 5 hurricane. My emotions are skyrocketing off the charts as they bounce between black and white, never pausing to heed the gray in between. Love and hate, love and hate, love and hate- there is no middle ground to hold steady to anymore. My mind is held hostage with racing thoughts which want to overanalyze everything. Breaking down, filling in the blanks, concluding the worst case scenarios, and piecing the structure back together again over and over until I finally fall asleep at night just to wake up and start it all again. Nothing makes sense and I cannot fathom a reason to justify why anything is the way that it is right now. There’s no good answers to quench my thirst for enlightenment so I can find the path to lead me out of this hell.

I just want it all to stop. I just want my life to be happy and content. I want the security I used to have knowing that I would be all right in the end. But it’s seemingly impossible right now.

What is one to do in a time like this? When the roots they’ve laid down deep are suddenly ripped from the earth and everything you’ve latched onto for support and nourishment is gone? How do gather so many fragments of the universe that keep you whole and force them to stay where they belong? Never have I felt so disconnected and isolated before. Never have I felt so insecure about what the future holds. Everything I’ve ever known, everything I’ve ever wanted out of life, is hanging by a thinning thread over the darkest abyss I’ve encountered thus far. I cannot bear the thought of what would happen if I lost my grip.

Maybe had my foundation been more solid and less hollow to begin with, I wouldn’t be in this place at this moment. But shoulda, coulda, woulda’s don’t do anything but waste more of the strength and energy I’m already severely lacking. I need a plan of action. One that doesn’t catapult me face first into steel-enforced concrete barriers that keep me trapped where I am. I need a way to save my life from complete and utter destruction. I need a break from this test of my fortitude and the impact my mental illness has over everything I have ever loved unconditionally without reservation.

I know that everything happens for a reason and very few things last forever. That it’s not my choice how life plays out, though everything I do affects the outcome. If only I had some clarity. Or a crystal ball to show me this isn’t the beginning of the end, as I fear it is, and I’ll wake up one day to feel the sun shining brightly upon my face once more. Miracles don’t really happen to people like me, however. My fate is cursed, after all. Cursed to live with the misery of abandonment, instability, and betrayal; the basic recipe needed to elicit my mental illness in the first place.

Maybe my black and white emotions have simply hijacked this crossroads I’m at and acted as a catalyst to make the state of my affairs worse than need be. But I don’t think so. I think they are just the end result of the pieces of my life shattering as they came down on me on their own. Either way, I’m left to commiserate all alone in this void while trusting the universe to navigate me back to where I belong. I just really hope it doesn’t kill me in the process.

 

 

Divinely Consecrated Windows

It has always been easy for me to look into the windows of other people’s souls,

See the truths they all hide behind, underneath superficial layers of primped and sculpted flesh.  

The real, the raw, the crux of their essence, and all of which that drives them to be,

My gaze bores past their selected reflections, my senses heighten as our eyes rapidly enmesh.

 

A gifted curse, a cursed blessing; a hellish burden and divine consecration in one,

This empathic sight ostracizes me, like a lonely wallflower slinking into a mooncast shadow.

Detecting fakes with ease just as the Queen can an ugly faux fur, it is hard to play me the fool,

Their performance is so transparent, yet I am amused to witness these egos basking in the afterglow.

 

A bedtime story recited by heart, reading as though the words were printed on their skin,

Secrets of shame, tears laden with guilt, wounds still bloody and bruised, and wickedly burning desires.

People never are as they appear to be, just carefully condensed versions influenced by societal powers,

Trimmed and pruned to fit within the times, Patriarchy sets ablaze to these internalized wildfires.

 

Connections are brutal to forge, cast away by the discomforts of these unintentionally prying eyes,

Sanctioned by my soul to live this hell, punished for knowing more than they know about themselves.

Try as I might, I cannot flip a switch, turn off this hindsight of vision devouring galvanized fortress walls

A magic mirror reflecting their covert traits cloaked in smoke, best left untapped, rotting away on dusty shelves.

But then you came along, shattering my steely solitude and testing my conjurable craft,

An aberration never encountered before, whose black eyes held mum with unexpected immunity.

Shaken to my jaded core in wonderment, a reprieve from such an isolating mental plague,

Blinded by joy to my own fragile vulnerabilities, relishing the deviancy- carelessly unaware of my lacking impunity.

 

Without foresight to envision what was there lurking, without a soul to whisper your secrets,

I had no way to know, no way to prepare, missing the red flags warning of the danger you imposed.

Caught in the tornado of your game instantly, swirling whirlwinds concealing a love untrue,

Never withstanding a chance, you’re the epitome of everything in life I ever stood up for and opposed.

 

The isolation I had felt no longer existed to me, the dejectional ache welcomed after knowing you,

Cursed as it may be, intuition had protected me from falling victim like prey to self-serving ulterior motives.

Unable to read you, I must shamefully admit that I’ve been forsaken by my own hand,

Letting you in was my biggest mistake, regretfully seeking to quiet those steadily streaming of emotives.

 

A lesson learned, I suppose, to run from those with windowless souls, for they are not in hiding,

There is no mask, no pretending to fit in, no fakeness about the evil seeping from somewhere inside.

You were never my saving grace, never meant to rescue me from the hell of my own creation,

This burden of divine consecration was fated to be my armor, with purpose as strong as the changing tide.