mental illness

October 31, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i want to write about halloween
and spooky times
and how much i love
this time of year

but i’ve been dealing with deep dark fears
of genocide
and our complicity in it
and how that makes political fallout
even more extreme
and i just want a candidate i can believe in
or a system i truly think is working
but instead we’ve got

this

[whatever this is
in terms of an american experiment
that probably shouldn’t have been tried
and we should have just left this land
and its people
alone…]

but i’m here
this is a fact
and there’s an ethnic cleansing happening half a world away
that i can see as i scroll in my own warm bed
another fact
and the choice between two candidates
two sides
of the same coin
still factual
and yet
one would bring about fascism
much
much
much
faster
[he has stated this in his plans all along — facts]

so i’m actually
for real
scared
afraid
for my life and liberty

and no, i’m not overreacting

[my favorite time of year
has been ruined by election anxiety
and i can’t even feel that affronted
because so much worse things are happening
all over
everywhere]

so please

vote

October 19, 2024

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i keep having
a day or two
of respite
from my utter desolate sadness
that makes me think that
maybe
maybe
maybe
it’s over
maybe
maybe
maybe
i got through it
maybe
maybe
maybe
i can actually
do this thing called
life

but then it comes back
and
i’m so damn sad

June 17, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

the sin of being me
is punishable
through inside and outside means

and my brain can only get so far
in forgiveness
when it’s constantly fighting against itself

and my body seems to cling to living
as it falls apart
and resolves towards innumerable lifetimes

and my soul only ever seems to
chill inside/beside
all this angst going on around and around and around

but the dark part of me
[brain?]
[heart?]
[body?]
[other?]
it keeps reminding me
that i am punishable
i should be punished
through some means

hold my beer
i’ll do it
myself

[‘if you want something done right,’
right?]

May 22, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

a big sad
an overwhelming wave
of the depression i know best—-
we should be friends by now;
i see them nearly every day,
but their company is always unwelcome
and puts a stop to any idea i had for my day

the worst part
of my particular depression/sadness/melancholia
is that it makes me feel
like all this writing
(which really does make me feel a little bit better)
isn’t
actually
worth
any
effort
at
all

chugging along
the energy it takes
to simply press a key
with a fingertip
expands
exponentially
and i start feeling
exhausted

the fits and starts and stops and hiccups
the pulsating of a pulse part of me wishes didn’t exist
the tears coming to eyes that somehow still can’t cry
the thousand-yard stare into the nothingness of existence
the loneliness felt even when i know so many feel this
and my best friend is sitting mere feet away from me
the vignette of darkness shading the corners of my vision
of my image for my life now
and this poem is taking too long
and has too many words saying nothing at all

all i want to write
is
depression is hard.

March 27, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i have so much pent up poetry inside me
and not enough concentration
or mental stabilization
or even the words
to get it all
out
in any sort of way that i could even slightly say
might change a few happenings
around here

i need
some
hope

February 20, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i’m pretty great
at
poetry of the mundane
(if i can give myself that credit)
but i’ve been edging towards
a more gruesome poetry
as of late

poetry of the gross daily tasks
the icky parts of being human
the scattered co-morbids of mental illness
the ones with strange satisfactions

and i don’t want to subject readers to such poems
as odes to pimple popping
and detailed descriptions of how my anxiety makes me
pick my skin to bleeding
but
they are part of my human experience
so maybe
they are also a part
of yours
?

January 23, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

they always say
‘follow the dopamine’
‘follow the dopamine’
but what if the desired dopamine
only arrives for a minute at a time–
you get a huge rush
of desire
of want
of an activity you know will
feed your whole soul
but life (or whatever)
gets quickly in the way—
you have to feed the animals
or use the restroom
or simply finish the one task you’re on now
but that tiny fraction of time
that it took to walk to the supplies
to fulfill that rush
of dopamine you followed
was enough to make it all
disappear

maybe i should start listening to
the ‘faults’ of adhd-ers
and use them as a blueprint
or some kind of a script
because this here is–
this cycle of almost-but-not-quite spikes
of dopamine
followed by long valleys of grand depression–
this is unsustainable
and, frankly,
ain’t
it.

January 22, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i wish i understood
my own moods:
where the deep depth of despair
comes from/
what makes it open its great maw
and swallow me whole
just to spit me out
a day or two [or a few] later

is it hormonal?
is it simply having a new experience on the agenda?
how am i happier when i’m about to do a novel activity
but also my anxiety
flies in the face of everything?
why can’t my brain/body/heart connection
calm down enough
to understand
to comprehend
to compassion and savor and
everything in-between?

i can feel myself begin to understand
that not understanding may be an important part
of connecting with my truest self.
but i’m an analytical little kip,
and understanding is how i start
to accept and love parts of myself,
so this seemingly completely randomized set of emotions
and emotional turmoil
just makes me want to comprehend it more/
hold it tighter/
because letting it go
and be
seems
the surest way for it to take over…

(but in what way doesn’t it take over
every
single
time?)

i’m hesitant
i’m breathing
i’m waiting
to understand
or to understand that i don’t need to understand
and i’m trying to prepare myself
for not understanding
but it’s so
damn
scary

-on a precipice-

January 20, 2023

/ HJ / Leave a comment

i feel like
every atom of my body
has been dipped in molasses
and is just trying to do the best it can
in the given circumstances

but that best
is not the best
i’m used to

so i keep pushing
when maybe what i need to do
is rest?

(i sleep all the time.
i don’t do much.
but when was the last time
i rested
without guilt?)

(was it ever???)