Just be

 My mind is like a cavern with many rooms. Most of them are full of old junk, old memories, painful and stinging  The walls of each room are made of stone and plaster. Wood posts keep the thatched ceiling from falling in. Sitting in the dark listening to the quietness. It wraps me like a warm blanket and muffles out the world. I hear the dripping faucet and my heart beats in time with it. Learning to just be. Learning to shut out the world for a few minutes. Learning to just listen.
Learning to love yourself is like water dripping from a faucet. One drip at a time. One day at a time. One week at a time. One month at a time.
I have been sitting in this dark room for too long. I have started to get antsy and restless. I feel an itch and I need to scratch it. I have started picking at the edges of the wall paper to occupy my hands. I have torn off bits of myself a piece at a time. I am just trying to discover what is underneath. I am trying to learn what my purpose is. Trying to figure out what my worth is. We all go through this. We all hurt and want to staunch the pain. I don't want to just treat the pain I want to know the reason. I want to scream at the walls and force them to give me an answer. I want to peel off the wallpaper and see what holds up these walls? These walls inside my head. I want to break them down and touch the beams. I want to expose the dark secrets and recesses that keep me sick. I want to seek them out and make them pay. I want to learn to be still. I want to learn to be patient. I need to learn to just be.
 I have learned to accept many things. I have learned to love myself. I have learned to accept my mental illness. I have learned to always stand up and be counted. I am a fighter. I have yet to figure out how to stop remodeling in my brain. I always feel the need to take out the old supports and build new ones. Maybe that is healthy. Maybe that is what keeps me gong. Maybe tearing down the dark rooms in my mind heal me. I have no idea. I just know that right now I am in the mood to break something and savor the sound of it crashing to the floor. My rage notwithstanding, today I am going to build something pretty inside my head and tear down something ugly. I am going to tear down a room that is full of bad memories and pain and set them free. Stacked up like broken old suitcases thrown in there half-hazardly and forgotten or locked away so I could force myself to forget. I need to do some spring cleaning. I need to empty these rooms and clean them. I need to just be.

Frozen

Growing up is hard. People growing up with mental illness makes it even more complicated. Self worth issues are always there lurking in the shadows. We are constantly convinced that we are somehow unworthy of love. While other children are playing with paper dolls and plastic army soldiers we are busy building walls with wooden play blocks. Walls to protect us from the projected thoughts of others. Walls that keep out the hurt. As we grow into adults the wooden blocks are replaced by stone ones. Wooden blocks can be broken and tumble down. Stone is much harder to break. Each time our walls have been breached, we inspect it and build it stronger. No one is allowed in. To allow them in is to folly. We will be judged. We will be hurt. We will suffer. We have gotten so good at crafting walls around ourselves that we have made the simple walls of our childhood into indestructible fortresses. There is not a catapult or cannon that can breach these walls.We have even placed ugly gargoyles at the posts just to ward you off. We could be construction workers and architects and do no better. These walls are unbreakable and fortified. They are solid. We live our lives in seclusion. There are people around us but we have barricaded ourselves away in our hearts. We tend not to share our deepest darkest feelings or thoughts. We are the dirty, bearded, disheveled hermits of our own soul.  We are afraid.
And yet, we so dearly want to be free. We so desperately want to feel. We want to be surrounded by others and truly fit in. We yearn to be accepted. To step out of the shadows. To breathe the fresh air and feel whole. To interact with others outside the walls we have constructed.  I feel that feeling the pain of letting others in has to be better than not feeling anything at all. I have torn down my own walls for fear of my own insanity. I felt like I was going stark raving mad by my own seclusion. I can't live like that anymore. I am tired of being shut away like I am guilty of something so horrible, so wretched that I should be locked away in the highest tower. Resigned to have paper airplanes and glass baubles as my only company. My only form of entertainment. Locked in my own hell. Frozen because stone is so cold to the touch. Passing my time watching my own frozen breath fall from my lips.Trapped in the winters of my mind. Alone.
I want to run bare footed through the wheat fields glistening in the sun. I want to feel the warmth and drink it down.Savor the taste of something other than the cold. Swallow the warm water and let it sooth my parched lips. I want to be anything other than numb.  I want to be angry. I want to be happy and silly. To  laugh so deep it hurts my stomach. I want to swim in the waters and dry off in the sand. I want to work my fingers to the bone. I want to be lazy and gluttonous on all that life can offer. I want to taste. I want to touch. I want to make friends. I want to live a real life, because life is not made of paper and glass.