Elisabeth Writing

I don’t know if I can make this poetic, when I just need to let it out. I don’t feel ok. I haven’t felt ok for weeks. Anxiety has been nipping at my heels, little bites of pain, making my whole body shake and tremble with irrational fear. Some days I feel like I’m floating above myself, watching the world go on by, but I can’t connect with the woman I see before me. My spirit is elsewhere, perhaps resting its weary soul in a garden of peonies, snapdragons and poppies. I wonder if I’m dancing there with the shadows, making deals with angels or devils – maybe. Every single night my heart begins to race and I question my mortality: will this be the way I die, with a weak heart bludgeoned by fate and cruel lovers? I believe in love above all else, but in those moments I wonder if death trumps even that. I try not to think about the reaper or the scythe but I can’t help it. I can’t breathe, I can’t go to sleep or I might never wake up. Am I going to slip into some between place and never again see the smile on my lover’s face, never again kiss my dog’s nose, never again laugh with my best friend? The thought is enough to squeeze my chest tighter, the thump thump thump wild, dancing to its own beat that I still can’t hear, even now. Maybe it would be beautiful if I could hear the music.

I don’t feel ok. There is genocide and war in the Middle East, a war in Europe, wounded and dead children, women screaming, men fighting. I want to shriek in fury. I want to shake the skies, to make them tremble at my power. I want to stop the fighting by turning the weapons into flowers in their hands, bombs into dandelion seeds, fires into starlight. I hate this useless and unmagical body. I hate that my spells flicker and fade away into nothing, before they even had a chance. I’d have better luck looking for shooting stars, I guess.

I don’t feel ok. Who is this woman I’ve become? Why is she so mired in a bog of belching fear? Is it intuition I feel, or just disjointed doubts? Are the nerves I feel unfounded or a seer’s truth? Where did the confidence I spent so long growing disappear to? Is it with my spirit in the meadow? Is it hidden within a closet of gowns and skeletons? I worry that I’m too much, that no one could ever stay with me for long, that I am the one they settle for even as they dream of someone else. I ride my emotions like a goddamn hurricane; sometimes I love the ride, and sometimes I spew sea water and northern winds all over the floor. In moments of clarity I love my vitality, creativity, kindness and wildness; I love the sparkle within my irises and the words tangled in my soul, trying to escape my pupils. Now I critique the slightest lines around my eyes, the curves that swell around my hips and stomach, the dark strawberry instead of champagne, the nails bitten to the quick. I pace and wonder if I’m enough. I choke on that word: enough, though I have it inked on my arm as a reminder and a triumph. I make a list of all the horrible things I’ve ever done and recite them, battling with my own self, swords striking making thunder. I wonder who will win.

I don’t feel ok but I am trying. I am trying to come back to myself, I am trying to be the change I want to see, I am trying to be a good friend / lover / daughter / sister / and more – but I can only do so much in this odd grief. I am trying to bring light to this tired place. I am trying to write magick into being. I am trying to love so much and so hard that every single person feels even the slightest touch.

I am trying I am trying I am trying I am trying I am trying I am