My way of dealing with bad memories is somewhat similar to Paul D-and even Sethe- in Beloved. I lock them away, try my very best to pretend they don't effect me. Much like Paul D found though, it's hard to keep them at bay. The more you try to ignore it, the more the smallest things will remind you of said events. I'll be in the middle of class and something someone says reminds me of a time I had a fight with my parents or made of fool of myself while presenting something (this happened quite often actually). I physically convulse, looking much like a squirrel with turrets leading people to ask me if something is wrong or if something scared me. With the intensity of my flinching, you'd sooner expected me to have PTSD from war than a simple embarrassing memory. The feeling of boiling magma in my stomach does little to aid my recovery time from the flinching also. I don't handle...emotion well. From nauseating guilt to flinching embarrassment to fall-on-the-floor-while-singing happiness, I just feel intensely. I have no real coping method to share. My pattern is: try to ignore it, attempt to write a somewhat cathartic poem or story about it, ignore it some more. It's still under revision. The writing thing does helps sometimes however. I wrote a "poem"in creative writing class whilst having a minor panic attach over graduation and growing up, and I feel a lot better about it now (so much better in fact that I cannot wait for school to END).
In attempt to make this post seem more legitiment, I'll post the aforementioned poem on here.
(If you judge me I might very well cry. Do you want me to look upon this blog as a flinch-worthy memory? I'm bearing my soul here people, and Lord knows poetry is not my forte. If I have a forte.)
In attempt to make this post seem more legitiment, I'll post the aforementioned poem on here.
(If you judge me I might very well cry. Do you want me to look upon this blog as a flinch-worthy memory? I'm bearing my soul here people, and Lord knows poetry is not my forte. If I have a forte.)
How
do I grow?
Do
I grow up?
Up,
like a tree
with
rings of wisdom
stretching
outwards from inside of me?
(But
so easily burned?)
Do
I grow out?
Out,
with echoes of
do
this pay that go here move there what.are.you.doing.
Hammering
me, like it did others before me
and
will others after?
Perhaps
I’ll just grow old.
As
old as I am competent,
As
old as I am independent,
As
old as I never wish to be.
Maybe
I’ll plant a garden and grow little seeds of lead,
And
deal one sided pencils
to
the world outside these halls of underaged cinder block,
Where
there are no erasers.
(Better
for you than me)
No,
certainly
I
shall not grow at all.
I’ll
stay ungrown,
Undeveloped
Unknown
until
my affair with death becomes so scandalous
that
Hell is in awe and children become stunted
and
the world’s finger begins to rot as it points towards me and
demands
that
somehow, I must grow.
Soon
I'll hear green paper shackles
singing
a lullaby
as
they grow like ivy around my wrists,
Coaxing
us into their cardboard walls
of
cardboard ideas
at
the top of the beanstalk.
What
if I can't climb,
won't
climb?
It's
easier to watch the fables grow.
Up
the fables and up the stalks
will
march blue capped porcelain dolls
stretching
like jack-in-the-boxes as they
grow
and shrink
grow
and shrink
with
faces of shattered mirrors
that
reflect one hundred images of me.
I'll
turn away,
and
leave the toys to march
onward.
I
will laugh at them,
I
will envy them,
And
they will grow.
Up
and out and old.
I
shall never
Decay
Or
break
Or
mature.
How
do I grow?
Perhaps,
I will grow under.
I
can be the roots,
Never
hoping
to
see the sun
never
dreaming
of
anything but going deeper and deeper
