Pang

 A pang of jealousy

Noted

 Subdued

Deep breath

Deep breath

Another one

A memory of a time 

Vulnerable and exposed

Sharing my needs

listened to but 

Not getting them met

Disappointment

My view of future not yours

My need for steadiness

Not yours

So ashamed

What I shared with you on the couch

Somehow subdued

Self soothed

Feeling strong for overcoming

But then

I see it

The couch we sat on

When I shared with you

When I opened myself 

To speak my truth

And you let me fall through

The cracks

You didn’t laugh but

You didn’t reach back

And it hurts

And you’re here

You love me but

The couch reminds me

So now even though we were laughing

Having fun

I can’t breathe

I can’t speak

The pang becomes a living memory

I realize I have ptsd 

It wasn’t from one time

It was from a life of loss

That started when I lost my mom

Who would think a mom could leave

When things get hard?

And my whole life

That pain repressed

My father

A time bomb

So I digress

I cannot speak of the losses I lived

Because of his pain from when he was a kid

I carried it since I was 6

Another moment when

I was vulnerable and

He fell through the cracks on me

Landed so hard

I couldn’t breathe

Just 6 years old

Resolved to save him from the world

Resolved to protect him from cold and pain

Becoming my dads parent that day

And to the couch I return again

Reliving the moment 

Of exposure

So naked

Saying what I want

And flashing back to

Growing up

Never being able to ask for what I want

Because that would hurt my dad

And I would feel so much shame

If he couldn’t provide

So I hid

And so I hide

And when I don’t

It feels like im burning alive

But not my body

Just my mind

A site of branding, searing pain

Memory down a broken chain

A channel that isn’t open to explore

I used to meditate and

Learn about my logical fallacies

About the decisions I needed to make from clarity

But the brain I have now can’t think this way

It burns to go down that path

So I dissociate 

And turn away

To numb and dumb

Disturbing so I don’t bother

And when it comes back it seers me 

Brain bleed but not hemorrhaging

It’s a traumatic injury I can actually see

Set off by a couch

Or disappointment

How everything to me is connected

I can’t separate 

This from that

Every trauma conjoins the lot

A mash of mishaps

Not a good way to sort through 

What’s happening now?

You ask

I can’t tell

If the lion chasing me 

Or is this an imagined hell

Set off by the slightest sight

A couch reminding me of a hard night

When I showed my needs

Revealed my plight

Disappointment isn’t something I learned to handle because

I pushed it down

I feel like a child when it rears it’s head

Hide your face

Hide and seek

But can I come out now?

Growing your inner child 

Is exhausting