Explore Your Soul
don’t thank me
i might’ve stepped on you
had you strayed
don’t try to change me
i’ll take from you
if your lie is true
and when i’m done
your lungs will empty
and your heart will pound
you’ll call for me
but i won’t be found
by Daphne Shadows
i didn’t run dry
you bled me out
like a carcass
left me propped up
no toe tag to speak of
lights on
‘open for business’ sign lit up
and lying
it’s empty
bound and covered
scrawled with lovely
bold lettering
embossed even
pages numbered
it’s empty
Daphne Shadows
i muddled through the black waters, pants sticking to my legs and trying to drag me deeper, deeper into the depths of what i couldn’t see.
true north shone brightly in front of me, coaxing me farther into the shallow night.
their lights nicked me here and there. i dove behind patches of nature i couldn’t name, my breath drowning out the pounding of my heart as i tried to quiet myself into the stillness of the amazon.
they’d invited me here
given me stories of love
but that’s all they were. stories to cover their chains. chains and blood and misery. i sliced through them with paper cuts and tears, fleeing into the middle of what they would not see.
choices, choices.
they’d made theirs.
it moved, the sky, and i realized i was going the wrong way.
or perhaps. true north never was very true.
could they lie so perfectly?
i drove a stake into my heart to hush it. not now. i needed to think. needed to breathe.
their voices came closer, closer, words almost but not.
would they stop at the gate? the gate, the gate they’d paraded in front of us all, mocking our chained gait, waving their red flags to hide the truth. behind crowds and chants, mindless distraction and chemistry.
we didn’t listen.
we chose too.
at the gate now, their rattling grating on my nerves. so close their words made sense, scraping down my spine and making my teeth ache.
i would not go back. inside me, they spoke, we will not go back.
i nodded in agreement, branches scratching my face and arms.
moving in nanoseconds and held breaths, i peeked around the black bark of the tree. everything painted black in the absence of the moon, they appeared as foreign things, standing with too long limbs, too large heads, rounder than seemed right.
at the gate.
they moved like they had no joints, too limber, too broken. eyes shining like an animal’s as the lights they carried caught them in the face. hissing and guttural anger issued through the clearing.
backs to me now.
they left.
left me to my choice.
i sighed into the tree at my back, tension rolling off my skin like springs falling out, leaving me lifeless and warm.
but there was no escaping what lived inside me now.
And I sit there on the floor
Legs not crossed like a lady
But crossed like I’m four again
Sitting at school on the carpet
Waiting for the teacher to explain.
Okay, I’m ready.
For you to let down your wisdom
Breathe the secret into my ear
Pull back the curtain
Ignite the barren emptiness
Of not knowing
Only
I sit there, on the floor
Waiting
Rubbernecking like nobody’s business
Wholeheartedly believing
Now I’ll understand
Now it’ll all make sense
I’ll get it
Understand
I’ll know what this life is all about
What I’ve been missing
I’ve lived into my how-to manual
People will come rushing through the terminals
Hard earned years of enlightenment
They’ll bustle in their hurried fever
Of needing to get on with their lives
Because they have so much to live
What, with all that understanding
Due to age…
Only
I sit there, on the floor
Realizing the room is empty
It’s a stage with polished floors
And vaulted ceilings
Rows and rows of chairs
The nice cushy ones you might’ve fought your grandpa for
When you were four years old
I look around and see
The lights are off
I’m the only one on the stage
The crowd is empty
Those nice soft seats, void of any life
Any know-how to impart
That’s the first lesson I really learned
About everyone else,
Outside of my skin.
It didn’t knock off any innocence
I wasn’t shiny or brand new by then
That got rubbed off before I could speak
But I’d kept some silly hope that when you said
“When you’re older you’ll understand”
…that you spoke the truth.
You did not.
The truth is
No one knows.
I found this out, sitting cross-legged
Like a child
Vibrating with enthusiasm
And excitement
Ready to warm my hands
At the fire of everyone’s experience
With the heat of age
That’d crept into my body
That everyone told me, made me
Better, somehow
Like numbers of lived life
Ups your worth in some cosmic game
And so you earn more lives
And redeemable information to trade
For a bunch of useless tasks, you performed…because….
Still sitting on an empty floor
Holding a ticket that leads nowhere.
By Daphne Shadows
Photo is property of Daphne Shadows
Cut the crap.
The drama.
Get over yourself.
Get over all the dramas of your life and the dramas of your relationships.
I love that the support group I go to helps me to see that I am held responsible for myself and no one else.
I can be here to support but I am not here to fix people or their situations. Enabling them will help them stay ill. Keeping them from feeling the consequences of their actions, inactions, and/or words will help them stay ill. Lying so that I appear to be who they want me to be will help them stay ill.
Not doing that.
Doesn’t matter what kind of illness it is either. There are so many addictions. So many ways for us to hurt ourselves and others.
I am responsible for me.
You are responsible for you.
My words, my actions, my issues, my pain – my responsibility to deal with.
But that’s not what I want to get into today.
Today, I want to challenge the saying, “grow up”.
I was going to add it to my thought process. My support group reminds me, tough love, grow up.
But that’s not quite right.
Tough love at times yes.
Grow up?
“Growing up” isn’t exactly getting good at life. It isn’t exactly enjoying life. It isn’t exactly living life.
At all.
Perhaps what we really need is youth. A youthful mindset.
(Not childishness. Don’t think child. Think youthful. Really, there’s a difference.)
Youth focuses on self-care and self-love and relationship with God (or whatever your Higher Power is), and then thinks of others.
Youth breathes.
Simply is.
Youth says “no” and doesn’t feel ashamed for meeting their NEEDS before someone else’s WANTS. (Don’t forget, unless you’re the parent to a child, other peoples’ needs are their responsibility to meet. You don’t disregard your needs to help someone else meet their needs because they’re good at manipulating you, or a thousand other scenarios.)
If we are to become youthful, we will know and believe we matter and so do all others; humans, animals, and nature alike.
Just breathe.
Enjoy our lives more.
Seek out what we are passionate about more.
Change our perspectives. If we make a mistake – we are NOT horrible, a loser, the scum of the earth, etc. – instead, when we make a mistake, why not think of it as an experiment?
Youthfulness realizes life is a gift.
Youthfulness accepts that life is going to hurt.
Youthfulness both knows and believes we have to create our own magic to feel our lives are magical.
The dark is danger
But the bright lights lie to us
And down we all fall
by Daphne Shadows
Right now? Staying with here, now, this moment?
This dizzying wave of noise blasting through a protective layer of music in peaks and bossy valleys – life isn’t really all that glamorous.
There is nothing fancy about who I am or what or where I come from.
Am I complicated? Oh so very much. Quite so. I am layer after layer of pain masqueraded behind plastic lips and lying eyes. And don’t tell me that eyes give people away. Sure, they can. But eyes can lie.
And what happens when you get lost in the lies of those pretty eyes.
You burn.
You get dragged in, inch by inch until all you have left is a memory of your soul. Perhaps an ember or two.
-Nov. 22 2015
