0459

1.
Some days I am farther along. And by that I mean: showers, yay, and perhaps breakfast. Standing barefoot in the kitchen making coffee before walking slowly back to my desk, careful not to spill. Then it’s off to writing, or whatever it is I can do in order to make enough to live by.

2.
Some days I spill the coffee and I collapse to the floor in tears, wondering if I’ll ever be okay. And normal.

3.
Some days it’s suddenly seven in the evening, and I’ve forgotten to have a bath, and fuck where have the hours gone and why do my shoulders hurt from being hunched over and shit pain shoots up from my elbow to my wrist. I munch absent-mindedly on a stale cookie and realise only too late that it’s my breakfast, lunch, and dinner altogether.

4.
Some days I tell myself I’m really going to take out the garbage this time, and I do. I even take my meds.

5.
You tell me over and over: I fucking love you. I hug the words to my chest like a talisman. Then I pick myself up, and all the other selves still lying on the cold floor in all the other days. I let the echo of your words travel to the darkest corners of myself. I say to no one in particular: I’m going to make it. Because I have to. Because I want to.

(t. de los reyes, read a little poetry)
(source)

Google “Am I dying?” You’re pretty sure you’re dying. But if you were dying, wouldn’t other people notice?

Take all the medications prescribed, even when they make everything much, much worse. Call the doctor, call the doctor, call the doctor. Leave a message, leave a message, leave a message.

Be good. Be so good. Deep inside you believe that if you are good, maybe this pain and humiliation will somehow lift, pull away from you and simply disappear as easily as it came.

When you’re finally called back after two weeks of chasing the doctor, be jovial and grateful and fast, he’s got a lot of people to call back. When you tell him the medications are no good, he gives you permission to quit but has nothing else for you. “Let’s hope you get pregnant soon, you might go into remission then.”

You know you wrote Infertility in your list of issues in that careful blue pen. You wrote it over and over and over again. But okay, let’s hope. It’s all you’ve got.

(natalie dougall)
(source)

My kind of rebirth tasted like blood.

(anna de noailles)
(norman r. shapiro)
(source)