i wish i had a longer fuse
or understood how to deal with the concept of
actual siblings
or something
to make me less
full of stress
when kip’s family comes to visit
stress
October 12, 2025
another night
of waking up at 1/2/3/4 in the morning
to stress
to discomfort
to the panic at the state of the world
and the state of my mind
and this would all be fine
if i could just
fall back
to sleep
like i so recently used to
but apparently i’m back to
high school
college
teenage
early 20’s hj
where i struggle to fall asleep
and i struggle to stay asleep
and every moment i wish i was asleep
i panic about not getting enough sleep
and everything
always feels
so much
worse
in the nighttime
i considered waking kip up
to talk with them
hold them
have them hold me
to see
if having someone right there with me
would be any help at all
and i think, if i had panicked myself any harder
any more
any longer
i might have
but somehow
i finally
fell back
to sleep
how did i survive damn near a decade
like this???
[i was miserable the whole time
that’s how]
[i don’t want to be that miserable
again]
August 7, 2025
contemplating civil unrest
and violence
and propaganda
and slippery slopes
and all the things that my mind is stuck on
daily
alongside the silly things
i have anxiety about
as well
if only my brain could give an indication of
what it actually is anxious about
because, if it’s the very real dangers
that are closer than people would like to admit
[though i will be fair here and give credence to the
systems in place to stop a war from happening, but
the state-sponsored violence is scary enough
already]
then maybe i have a mind that is
realistic
and preparing me
for potential trauma,
but
if it’s just freaked out about the menial
mundane
teeny tiny things
[and i’d actually do ok
in even more “unprecedented times”]
then maybe a medical intervention
to my anxiety is what is needed
at this time
but no, my distress
and obsession
bounce back and forth between
what are very real, but probably far away, fears
and overreacting to daily issues
most folks seem to deal with
mindlessly
i don’t want to lose my ability to be prepared for any eventuality
but, damn, this preparedness is killing me…
July 12, 2025
the pounding hearts
of palpitations
of stressors
or wondering if we’ll get back into our country of origin
ok
or
if we even want to
June 9, 2025
i’ve hit a roadblock
in my own lungs
and i can only theorize
about stress and anxiety showing itself in my body
before it gets to my conscious mind —
that’s the reason i can only take full breaths
in very specific instances
and never using the full capacity
of what my lungs should be
and i’m getting enough oxygen
[probably]
it’s just a little more than a little unsettling
to know i have more space for air
and to simply
not
be able to get it
May 28, 2025
frustrations
and stress
and an almost good day yesterday
which should have lent itself to
an almost good sleep last night
but instead, it was some of the worst sleep i’ve had
in a month or two or three
[or more]
i suppose i shouldn’t discount
the amount that stress
impacts my own nighttime
half-waking ponderings…
April 20, 2025
i do still want to do so many things
and it freaks me out
and stresses me
to no end
to know i literally cannot do
everything
everything
every thing
in the universe
April 5, 2025
writing
trying to outpace
the time it takes
to run down my laptop battery
and
the arrival of our breakfast day
a little adrenaline
to start
today
January 14, 2025
so
i woke up at 4:45
and played the game of
“what will put me back to sleep”
because my brain was too awake with
anxiety
so i learned some french
and sign language
and cuddled my kip and my puppy
and stared at a crossword puzzle
and the internet
and even tried
just breathing
but
by 5:35
i was still in my too-awake-era
and kip wanted to get up anyway
so we both placed some clothes on our bodies
and i bundled up with the dog on a walk
and fed both animals
and sat down to write
and now it’s just past 6:30 am
and it feels strange to stare at the outside
pitch black
and think about how i’ve been awake already
for almost two hours
but i suppose that’s what happens
when stress brain just won’t
turn
off
October 31, 2024
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
kipventures 