healing: hi

17 comments on healing: hi

buy a tea for ra

There’s a peace here, on this blank page. This blank blog page. Especially when I don’t have anything I need to say. Especially when I’m just writing to say hi.

Hi.

How have you been?

What beautiful things have you seen lately?

I miss you.

I miss this whole blog, really. I’ve been wishing for a way where I’d have time to come back to it daily again. I’ve been wishing to be here, and I think the universe heard me because my hip is busted again and I can’t really be anywhere else.

Walking is hard, but then, sitting is hard too– but sitting is safer. And, once again, this blog is the safest place for me and I love it for that.

I’m participating in National Poetry Month, writing a poem for each day, but I’m allowing myself the practice of keeping them to myself if I want. Yesterday, I wrote to a prompt “Write a poem about your body”.

I wrote a poem about my digital body. How I know a blog can’t be carpeted but if I close my eyes, I can be sitting here no matter where I am, and the carpeting leaves an imprint on my knees.

Is that odd? I really don’t know. Many of you on the other side of this screen are writers. Is your blog a place you go?

Do you breathe better in front of a blank page?

Do you know, when my hip hurts, I wake up thinking I’m in prison again? That’s weird enough in and of itself, the brain is a funny place, but what’s stranger still to me is that — I wake up terrified.

In the year and a half I spent in prison, I don’t remember ever once waking up terrified. But now, I know I think I am in prison again, because the fear is pinching my toes, crawling up my spine like an army of ants, tangling in my hair like cobwebs. It’s familiar, and the name of it is fear, and I only just now recognize it.

Sometimes I get comments here that make me wonder if I should be over it, and I think that may be part of the reason I don’t get back here as much as I should. That’s a bad reason, and I have named it now, and I will do better.

Or, I will do the same, but it will be for different more valid reasons.

Or less valid reasons that I haven’t called out, yet.

How is your call lately?

Is it reaching people? Does it bring you what you need?

Today, I was supposed to write a poem about my body and I couldn’t because my physical body torments me. It isn’t healthy to sustain that kind of relationship, I know. I need to mend the bond to mend the body, I know. I know but I can’t.

I hurt, and I hate complaining about it because maybe this is part of the process. I used to have so much faith in everything, but then Dave…

Well.

The important thing is, I am trying. I am healing.

Right now, I am actually trying very, very hard.

And I’m so embarrassed that I’m not all better. It makes me cry and that makes me more embarrassed and also… I always misspell embarrassed.

What words do you misspell?

Today I posted on my social media about some necklaces I made. They’re the dinosaur heart, made of stainless steel.

In my direct messages, I started receiving notes about what it is to be dinosaur-hearted. All the many many different ways we have all risen to the occasions that are sometimes shaped like monsters and mountains and impossible doorways.

But we get by, don’t we?

We are the way through.

We bloom.

We’re these odd little butterflies that cocoon without a safety net. We liquefy to our basic building blocks, and stand up and build again, and then even though we look so very different– we find each other somehow.

And I’ve been crying since because I cry a lot now, but these are happy tears. I needed a place to sit and cry, so here I am.

Cross-legged on the carpeting of Rarasaur blog. I’ve always imagined it to be teal, which would be atrocious, but that’s where my brain takes me.

What color do you see? When you close your eyes?

How have you been?

Hi.

17 responses to “healing: hi”

  1. Vicky Burke Avatar
    Vicky Burke

    Oh Ra, now I’m crying, sad and happy tears. That has churned up so much inside me. Where to start?
    I don’t think I have the right to think that anybody’s normal is odd or even that anybody’s odd is odd but I am at least surprised that you never woke up terrified in prison. Even I was terrified for you in prison. Maybe it is only now that you can be terrified because you are safe.
    Because you are safe and everyone’s loving arms, and dinosaur hearts and butterfly wings are there so that you can be safe.
    And oh I do so get it about feeling that you should be over it, and no you shouldn’t and nobody should make you feel you should.
    Sometimes when I tell people about my husband being dead they go all surprised and say “Oh I thought it was recent”
    as if 13 years was enough time for it not to hurt, so I feel guilty that I should be over it.
    But I’ll never be over it, however much I keep going I will always be marked by it, always in fear of that empty falling despair moment when someone pulled the rug from under my feet and I fell hard. For ever.
    But you are right we do build up and use those blocks that will never build the same again but just a different same.
    Normally I see red when I close my eyes, dark blood-red with the metal taste, today I see green, dinosaur green, huge dinosaur-hearted green and it makes me happy.

    Liked by 4 people

  2. ksbeth Avatar

    I’m glad that you are on your road to healing, even if it is fraught with many bumps and potholes and u-turns. the color I see is apple green.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. poetryofaschizophrenic Avatar
    poetryofaschizophrenic

    Thanks for the good read. I tend to feel more refreshed after making a post. I hope you feel better soon! I see purple in my mind.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Merbear74 Avatar
    Merbear74

    Lime green. ❤️

    Liked by 1 person

  5. yogaleigh Avatar

    For what you’ve been through you’re doing so well– trauma takes as long as it takes to get through. I still always “see” you coming through on the other side, so I keep holding that space and I will for however long it takes.
    I don’t think anybody realizes till something goes wrong with a hip how much our hips affect so many things. When mine was at its worst years ago, by evening I had to lie on my other side on the couch so no weight at all was on it; I wince when you talk about the pain of both walking and sitting. Hope it heals soon.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. Lizzi Avatar

    Something’s given you a case of the ‘should’s!! Hope you recover from it soon 😘😘😘

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Alison and Don Avatar

    You wear lipstick just fine Ra. And you will heal when you heal, and *nobody* has the right to tell you how long it should take, so just don’t listen to that nonsense. I agree with Vicky Burke that perhaps you wake up terrified now because now there is space for it where there never was while you were in prison. It’s hard to re bond with your body when it’s trying to express all the fear and pain of your time in prison but were unable to feel there so it comes out in the body because it has nowhere else to go. Cry. It no doubt is a lot, but while you rest your hip it may be the most healing thing you can do. Tears wash away the pain. I still cry. Sometimes you may wonder if the tears will ever end, but they will, or at least the way you suffer them will change. They will become your friend because there is always just a little bit more peace on the other side of them. Much love to you you Dino-hearted warrior.
    Alison xox

    Liked by 3 people

  8. djmatticus Avatar

    Hi!
    The blank page scares me. It’s too clean… And I can only see the thousand ways I might mess it up.
    My call has been shrinking. That is expected though as I don’t go visit as many blogs as I used to. I still get what I need though, an outlet for my words.
    The kingdom is definitely a lot of purple, a very regal color, of course.
    I’m sorry to hear that your hip is failing you again. Our bodies are such fascinating and odd things. I often get stuck in the question, “what would have become of me in a different era?” Before glasses were invented how would I have survived? I’ve been so blind for so long…. Things were different then, though. Smaller, closet communities… Perhaps? Perhaps that’s just a romanticized way of looking at the past.

    Liked by 2 people

  9. Revis Edgewater Avatar

    Healed? Broken? No matter what words you, or anyone else, use to describe you, my dinosaur friend, you’re you. That’s all we need to know, because you are who we love.

    Like

  10. Shannon Thomas Avatar
    Shannon Thomas

    You are wonderful, beautiful, such a lovely soul. And you are 100% allowed to feel terrified, embarrassed , happy, sad, overwhelmed, anxious, etc. I know we have never met, but every time I read your words, I feel like we have, and I just want to give you a hug. Our blogs may be a virtual space, but there is always a chair open to listen, just be, or converse. ❤

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Ka Malana - Fiestaestrellas.com Avatar

    Always take as much time as you need 💗

    Liked by 1 person

  12. A Humble Shadow Avatar

    From an absent blogger to date; Hi

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Sahara Avatar

    That’s a beautiful necklace and your hair is working. How did you mess up your hip? I’m sorry to hear it; I shattered my pelvis 21 years ago and have struggled with it ever since. I haven’t been able to sit cross-legged in YEARS, and I miss it desperately. I don’t think you will ever get over it. Over any of it. Like my hip. Or like a tree that’s been struck by a dinosaur. 🙂 Eventually the wood grows around the wound. Blank spaces make me anxious.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Juan Avatar

    Thank you for small reminders that bring about great things. You are my inspiration!!! https://juanitacooper.wordpress.com/2019/04/09/rarasaur-awakened/

    Liked by 1 person

  15. suzie81speaks Avatar

    I hate blank pages – I get a sense of foreboding about what I need to write and whether it will be good enough. I’m sorry you’re dealing with physical and mental pain. I don’t think there should be a point where you should be ‘over it’ – its all a process of time. You’ve been through a lot…

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Daphne Shadows Avatar
    Daphne Shadows

    I swear you’re not human. You are a dinosaur of vital importance. You are the only person who speaks words I think. Who is brave enough to share what I wish I didn’t even feel. And inspire me to learn how to fix it. The only woman who brings me validation and joy in the same blog post. I need you to know how genuinely life saving you are.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. DiAnne Ebejer Avatar

    Did you remember to put a necklace back for me? It had slipped my mind too! Di ❤

    Like

Leave a reply to Vicky Burke Cancel reply