{when I am writing I feel}
DICTIONARY DEFINTION
a·nal·o·gy
- a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
- a correspondence or partial similarity.
- a thing which is comparable to something else in significant respects.
I was told
online
by a stranger
I was told something
that stuck.
I was told that an analogy I made was "laughable." Which I am assuming the commenter was attempting to verbalize that they felt the my comparison was unrelated or some sort of heterogeneous milkshake that was not digesting appropriately. It. bothered me.
When I verbally articulate my feelings, I do so with extreme emotionality and impact. I also strive for honesty. The purpose of drawing a comparison through an analogy is to explain a complex topic in a way that is similar and more familiar. Going to the dentist is a far more common experience than being institutionalized for four years when they were a teenager. I drew a comparison between the two.
When I was sixteen, my parents read my diaries. I had written explicitly about my sex life (I had gone to third base as of that point), that I had smoked weed that summer and snuck out of the house. I wrote about the first time I got drunk and tried to document even the times that I consumed alcohol at a school dance; how I described it was flagrant and full of teenage emotions. My parents read my Instant messages where I talked about wanting to consume mushrooms. And without having a conversation, warning me that any of this was ever an option in the future -- nor, did they confront me about what they had read -- instead; they institutionalized me. Hired transporters to awaken me and fly me to a wilderness program where I was held for eleven weeks.
I transferred to a residential program and stayed there for seven weeks until the facility shut down. I went back to wilderness until they could find another residential placement for me. I spent six weeks in the woods before transferring to my forth placement in six months. I would stay there for eighteen months before going to a step-down program at a group home in Idaho. I would attend senior year there, graduate a public high school and even go to prom. I would not go back to Delaware.
I got married, the last day that I was institutionalized was my wedding day. We moved in together and it was wonderful. And I was traumatized in ways I could not understand, or express. It felt like a silence, a wordlessness that clenched deep in my soul. I no longer could write in my private diaries, the memoir that I desperately wanted to write would not flow out onto paper. I was now an adult inside a capitalistic society where I felt invisibly wounded inside my mind from the care that I received. I could not verbalize it, it just sat with me. And I hide it the best I could.
The strict religious upbringing that my parents raised me inside of began a cycle of events internally inside my body. My parents words felt like spells, words that stuck to my body and carved out my identity. And this deep inborn knowledge of who I AM; an equality of all, unity, oneness -- allowed me to reprogram the body that I was given. It feels like a rebirth. It felt like a death of an old self. Was I living to celebrate life
or was life a live-action funeral procession for the to-be dead body? I used to say "good morning" before I began saying, "grand rising." I am no longer in mourning. I feel alive. And why? I began writing again, I began telling the truth about my inner being, I began expressing myself in ways that made ME feel good. There was no promise of cure, or fear of failure when I honed in on the process -- I did not want to live to die. I wanted to see death as natural and apart of life.
Rather than escapable through a promise of belief.
That's delusional. I faced my mortality in order to face my life. How I was going to live was in complete love for my ten year old child. She was a wrecking ball of energy, let me tell you. And that's who I had to begin to learn to please; not my father. Not my mother. Not my sister or my brother. Not my friends -- who needed me to be something else than what I really was deep inside.
I am me.
I compared a dentist pulling out a child's baby teeth because the parents wanted this as a consequence for not brushing their teeth.
"But her adult teeth will grow back"
"She's got to learn, somehow"
"This will teach her cause and effect"
"What's the big deal? She doesn't take care of them anyways?"
"If the doctor said this was okay, how could it be bad?"
Sometimes I feel I do not know how to explain it. It still sits inside my soul waiting on me to decode all of that emotional baggage, that is now my gold. It's what I learned on here. My pain, and the way that I express my emotions can be turned into gold. I really want artists to understand the value of their pain, and to not be afraid to express however they feel they best can.
I write.
I write good and I write bad.
I write analogies that make sense,
And some that needs more clarity
so I write to see.
@laurabell/getting-out-of-the-bathtub
I once wrote, "I'd have to sacrifice my greatest joy in order to prevent my greatest sorrow." And in that moment, I realized my greatest misery -- I was no longer writing. That, I was born to do. There are some things in natural medicine that are greater than diet, food, exercise and doing. I had to learn how to be, I had to learn how to express. I had to relearn how to dance like no one was watching. I had to learn how to become that inner child's parent. I had to reparent myself.
And to do that, I had to validate the emotions that I had felt.
The big ones.
The small ones.
I had to write.
I had to express.
Because my life was depending on that.
Death?
I do that with every exhale, every time I shed skin -- I have turned to dust, already. I have made peace with my departure by living each moment like it was my last.
Really doing what I want to do, and realizing that it is good.
That I AM good.
That deep down humanity is good.
That deep down earth will evolve.
Its the will to do good,
that I choose to believe in.
{understood}
So, I am not sure if that analogy fully fits. Is it laughable? Is it comparable? Is it outlandish? Is it too much? Because, I know no analogy will ever fully fit. No amount of words can express this type of pain, and I am just a person -- writing.
because it's what makes me feel good.
because it's the truth.
And god dammit, doesn't truth feel like a slap in the face and a breath of fresh air -- all at the same time?
Life's not so bad in the eye of the hurricane.
That's just another one of my laughable analogies.
I get my dark humor from my parents, go figure.