I wrote this in a mood of deep exhaustion, sorrow and burnout. People do tend to unload on me as a massage therapist and an “empath” – but I fucking hate that word so I don’t use it. And perhaps I’m not that, but just traumatized and shattered. Maybe we’ll never know. So this is a sad one, a dark one, and writing it helped me breathe a little bit easier.
I asked for your pain. You were huddled on the sand as the sun sank below the horizon, dyeing the sky, and our skin, with lavender love, pink naïveté, blue sorrow, yellow melancholy. Your eyes were like broken sea shells, an erosion of time and betrayal. I sank onto the beach, though the tiny fossils of what once was made me wince. I opened my arms to you. I shattered rose quartz and plucked peony petals, I held you so tightly, and I cried for the both of us. I could feel myself withering, becoming decrepit, as your wounds healed – and mine split open, a torrent of ink and poppies. I wondered how many more times I could patch myself up, stuff my hollows with black tourmaline and amethyst, sew them with ivy thread and painful thorns that pricked my fingers every time. But I asked for this. I asked for your pain.
I don’t know how not to feel. I don’t know how to shut it off. I don’t know how not to shoulder the aches and the maladies and the troubles. I always wanted to be a faerie-godmother love-goddess. I happily grabbed my selenite wand, empty jars, sage, cloves, bay leaves, fuschia thread, parchment paper and white candles. I asked for love, for healing, for strength. I wanted to make the world smile again. I wanted to make you smile. I asked for your pain.
I’m chain smoking cigarettes in my bedroom while thunder rattles the windows. The lightning makes me flinch in remembrance, sparking whips of light against the naked flesh of the stars. My lipstick stains the filters, blood red and dangerous, and my eyeliner is streaked across my face. I curl into myself and whimper. These emotions are crushing me. I can’t breathe. I feel the world on my shoulders, Atlas-like, but I can’t hold this weight. I’m sinking, I’m breaking, I’m roaring for help in the midst of this tumultuous storm. No one hears. I wonder if I even want them to. Little miss martyr, sacrificing yourself for others just to feel alive, to feel like you’re worthy of jewels and dawns. Yea, I asked for your pain.
Perhaps I’m a masochist.
Perhaps I am not a faerie girl love goddess.
Perhaps I am only a broken empath, trying to heal you, when I should be healing myself.
But please… give me your pain.
Elisabeth Writing 