Tag Archives: hurt

There Is Not Always Gain With Pain

I have been in physical pain for two weeks now. I pulled a hip muscle while out jogging. I attempted to leap a stair and failed horribly. This pain is ebbing and flowing. My kidney was questionable, but after some examinations, I find my immune system is deeply fighting this injury and pain.

I am frustrated. One way I work to keep my mental health intact is to clear my head through exercise. This pain has forced me to take medication I don’t really want in my body. It’s forced my body to a halt. It has been exacerbated by moments I had no choice but to use my hip muscle, like walking through the airport to send my granddaughter back home. Like walking in general.

Aside from already dealing with anxiety from the airport lines, one line at the ticket counter, the other at the security check, my granddaughter and I were allowed a pass around the body scanner, and when I told the Caucasian security guard that my brown skinned son was with me and my safe person, he ignored me, making my son stay in line anyway to go through the scan machine. I did not like how that made me feel. My son has a way of laughing off people’s stupidity. I admire that ability.

Today, I am stuck with my legs propped up beneath me to raise them up and try to relieve my back pain. I have cold compresses beneath my back.

Pain pushes me into depression and frustration. It puts my life on halt. It arrives unexpectedly. Usually, I move through physical pain head first. I have dealt with it since childhood. In some ways it just becomes a part of my living. Yet, because of the longevity of this hip muscle strain, being on week three now, I feel utterly exhausted.

Forgiveness Is For the Egomaniac

Forgiveness.  Sometimes I get tired of hearing this word.  What does it mean to me?  It feels moot; an unnecessary element in the totality of my growth journey.

I’ve learned a great deal about myself through this journey of therapy.  This host who carries these parts of me, she is intelligent and free spirited, kind and giving, thoughtful and strong willed.

These past few years have been a procession of betrayals, subsequent disenchantment rightfully created, and a slow withdrawal into an even tighter state of mistrust.  Yet, this is not the way I thought I was supposed to live.

I watch my cats closely.  I learn a lot from them.  One element of a cat’s personality is the way they are with people.  Rarely does a cat let someone close right away.  It takes time.  They watch.  They wait, observing.  My lack of waiting or accepting the signs that things with certain people were not right, have cost me relationships and a lot of hurt.

Yet still, I work through the process of these hurts and how does forgiveness play a role in it.  I don’t feel forgiving towards certain individuals.  I feel disappointment.  I feel anger.  I feel betrayed and used.

In what way would forgiveness change those emotions and what does that mean?  It feels plastic to me; passive aggressive, a sweep of the hand over the heart and the soft cliche of “I forgive you so that I can heal.”

That’s not how I feel.  To say that would be a line of bullshit.  I don’t forgive anyone who doesn’t have the humble ability to own their behavior.  I don’t expect forgiveness if someone feels I don’t own mine.  I say fuck off, get out of my life, and accept it if someone feels the same about me.

Forgiveness feels overrated and fake most of the time.  It feels like a way to smooth over or make excuses for shitty behavior and give someone a chance to wear the forgiveness crown.

No, I don’t forgive you.  That doesn’t make me bitter.  I’m just keeping it my kind of real in a “please, with sugar on top, fuck off” kind of way.

In the end, life continues on, and I wish no human any harm.  Forgiveness doesn’t hold miracles or healing for me.  I heal because I choose to.  I go forward because I move my feet.

Forgiveness feels as if it is for the ones who enjoy the idea of hanging as a victim on a cross, a personal self built pedestal, so they can announce to the world “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Forgiveness is for the ego-maniac.

Solitary Repsite

There are those for whom
The night opens up her arms
Embracing sadness
In the singing wind charms

For me she is closing

Closing the spaces
I once shared
Closing the trust
I once spared

She speaks of oneness
Now I know there is
No such concept
Where once I believed
I was emphatically deceived

I am not one
With the envy of the black
I am not in sync
With the attacks
Or the aftermath

I am a retracted rose bud
Surrounded by iron gates
Once open for entrance
Now closed to escape

I refuse to claim
The same energy of the envy
The discord and sick minds
I am no longer blind

I cannot be bitten
Lest I allow myself be smitten
And so I raise the bridge
Over the moat of my soul

There will be no more arrivals
To weaken my survival
No smiles to entice
Just to sink into my skin
A blood lust for my spirit
I fight against in this life

The watchers wait in silence
In the hopes I will give in
But the ending has arrived and
They’ll never be allowed back in

Mistakes have brought me here
Back inside the cave
Where all the secret memories
Are buried; a mass grave

There is no love more daring
No armor built so strong
To pull me into deception
Just to break my tender arms

War has made me stalwart
As I touch each wound and scar
Weeping in the solitude
Beneath this moon and stars

I know from whence I’ve traveled
And soon I will return
To be quietly unraveled
As their soulless wicked burns

Ashes into ashes
And dust into dust
I close my heart to block
The pulling of their lust

Back into the fluid
Of the amniotic sack
My death becomes my birth
As I trace my footsteps back

Back into invisible
Back into the light
Back into the safety
Of this solitary respite

v.k poetry

Blood Shame

What does my face
Look like when I cry?
Un-pretty, swollen
Blood red eyes.

I am five again,
And he is bigger
Than a mountain.
I am vulnerably
In blood shame.

I am a little girl
Naive and helpless,
But I am not her
Not anymore,
So how do I
Let her go?

She is just a baby
With innocent eyes
That cry too much.
I have to let her fly
So I can be alive,

But my heart breaks
Like I’m giving
My child away as I
Am here holding her hands
Over this cliff.

I tell her,
“Just close your eyes,
Baby girl,
And make a wish
Before I drop you
To your death,
Because I can’t
Keep carrying this
If I am to live.”

How to understand;
To explain it,
How the containment
Keeps me chained;
How she screams;
How I don’t
Want to kill her again;

How I’m afraid she’ll wander,
Lost and haunted;
How I hold on tight
Believing I can make
Everything turn out alright.

Here in this silent
Haunted desert
My spirit cries out in thirst
Dehydrated from the hurt.

Fingers feel poised on triggers
All pointed at me,
And I’m laughing through tears
Taunting, “Shoot already!”

If you can find
A clear place on a target
Riddled with wounds
I’ll be home soon
Inside my own domain
Where their hands
Can never reach me again;

Where I sleep under blankets
Made of color gradients
And sour doesn’t exist;
Where there’s no loneliness
Only music, dancing and bliss.

After I get done with this
Blood shame
After I let go,
Reclaim.

But right now
As I hide
I’m just five,
Barely alive and
Smeared in pain
As the ghosts
Call my name.

v.k poetry
©venniekocsis.com

Holding Wishes

What is it like
To be granted a wish
When your first kiss
Was laced with bitterness,
Taken from a tender lamb,
A brutal sheering;
As if wool doesn’t scratch
And skin doesn’t bleed?

What is it like
To live a lie,
A life robotic, stoic,
Steps broken,
Words unspoken,
Fake smiles to the others
While never touching another
In a hug or
Underneath the covers?

What is it like to keep secrets
Buried so deep within you
That wine cannot give them words
Blood cannot release their ache,
So you ignore the pain,
Behavioral matter churning
While energies are burning
Into ashes
As your life passes?

I can only tell you
What it’s like to see
Things I wish I didn’t
Inside lives
Inside psyches
Where illusions become truth
And in the end
All that’s ever left
Is you
Alone in the dark matter
Watching the roaches scatter.

So instead I will
Tell you about a soul
Dancing in the twilight
To avoid seeing your midnight
Because it makes her eyes cry.

I’ll sing you a song,
Orchestrated by sadness,
Conducted by madness,
Numbed by satiation,
And I’ll call it
“Dysfunction Station”.

I’ll tell you what it’s like
To be without shame,
To own the bitter reality
Without the crutches of blame,
To say this is me
So accept and believe
Or leave and excuse
For there’s no win or lose
When you’re the one
Who gets to choose.

But here when I stand in the sunrise
And I find myself gazing there
Until its brilliant red sets
I know
I see
I feel
The real
Meaning of happiness,

And it’s not coated in sweetness.
No.
It’s filled with acceptance
And letting go.
It sees self in the mirror
And smiles back
In the midst of sadness
And repeated set backs.

There’s a bliss
Inside of the awareness
When one realizes the opposite
Of feeling nothing
Is feeling it all,
And so,
I fall
Fall
Fall
Into the dismal call
Where hearts weep.

It is a solitary sea,
This vision where I am
Left holding these fading wishes
Never granted.

v.k poetry
©venniekocsis.com