Dysregulated and Owning it.

The truth of healing and a series of poems about it

I find myself increasingly dysregulated these days. My heart rate is endlessly jacked and nothing feels right. The activated state of existence is reminiscent of my years living with debilitating OCD. It’s as if I am caught oscillating between states of hypervigilance and bottomless sorrow. Violent waves of each come and go and even with regular exercise, attempts at structure, and completion of task after task, I can’t find my footing.

This, of course, is healing. The mess – the feeling – the being perpetually ‘in it’ – is a body and mind in the midst of recovery. Of course, the shit show of it – the breakdowns and the yelling – don’t feel like the beautified and Instagramable presentations of healing that we all have been brainwashed into believing. We are so often told that healing is this beautiful thing but the truth is that healing is the most painful mother duckery-filled hell hole on earth. What comes after it is what’s beautiful. Of course, people don’t show up in the mess. They show up after – when the pain and growth can be remembered as beautiful too. But let me tell you from the trenches of chaos: this is not pretty BUT where I am going sure as hell will be.

The chapter I originally planned to share this week was unexpectedly quite difficult to write so instead of sharing something that I am not yet proud of, I offer a grouping of lines I wrote that soothed the weather of my mind this week. I will follow up with the next chapter next Friday instead.

With love and without further ado.

Kindly,

Kate

---

---

and for the first time

in all time

I understood

I was what I had been looking for 

I’m tired

of my mind

its ideas

and the pace with which it speaks them

I think I crave quiet

not like before though

not quiet like death

quiet like peace

when are you having yours?

If only I dared respond

never.

I don’t know why it hurts

so much

always

I guess I just live

forever

with this heaviness of heart

and I will forgive them

one day soon

but I will not forgive them for them

I will forgive them

for me

that’s just it

I’m not trying to make a point.

I’m not seeking attention.

I’m simply

living

I’m simply

existing in the truth that mental illness is normal

purely

plainly 

normal 

indeed.

there is a tired to it

a reckoning too

and it never stops

that’s the part everyone seems to forget

it never stops

it never ever stops

and until that’s okay –

 I can’t be either.

your wild 

and your brokenness

they

are what make you beautiful.

---

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