My Mess, My Medicine, My Message
…
The overwhelm hits me and my stomach punches back.
A battle commences inside me.
I over committed again, said yes to too many new things when all the old things were still waiting patiently to be finished, a perpetual snowballing habit of my fiery Aries heart.
My computer glares up at me, taunting me with its things.
My phone pings notifications I don’t want to see, don’t care about, don’t need.
My child hangs around the back of my neck,
Choking me,
mauling me,
throwing toys in my lap and guilt at my heart.
I want to cry- no,
punch a wall- no,
throw my computer- no, no, no, I need that.
Things are spiraling…
Burying me…
Suffocating me…
Thirty minutes ago, I was a visionary on a mission.
Now, I am a flailing mess of overpriced intentions and undervalued results.
I might drown in this flash-flood depression.
STOP.
There is hope.
BREATHE.
There is medicine.
Turn off the voices,
They mean nothing.
I close my computer, turn on mind-numbing music and dip my wet brush into thick, glossy, black paint.
As it drags against the tooth of the canvas, I swallow the moment like a pill, praying it will work.
The tormenters keep pressing their greedy hands on my heart, smearing it with their lies.
“Get the f*** out of me!”
I soundlessly reverberate over and over throughout the twisted grey matter of my brain.
And
they
do.
But they linger
in the air,
waiting to be invited back in.
I pucker my lips
and blow.
Hot breath corners them on the canvas.
My hands know what to do.
The brush captures them, strokes over them-
paint like tar-
trapping them forever behind creative expression.
They are no longer mine to carry.
I sway to the music now, released.
I cry, I let myself feel deep into my limbs.
I say that it’s ok,
I remind myself of my own sacred truth-
Art is the result of prismatic emotion surrendered and sacrificed onto unmarked alters.
And I know I will be ok again,
but not yet.
I will stay a while.
I will linger in the limbo between worlds, the high my medicine gifts me with.
I look around, my walls are running out of room.
Canvases everywhere… color clad cages.
I guess I have been surviving for longer than I thought.
The proof adorns everything I own.
I never knew I was an addict, constantly self-medicating to survive my self-imposed sickness.
And I cry again, understanding that all the best parts of me came from the worst. That my message was birthed from my mess. The medicine that saves me is my gift to the world.
…
I pray you find your own medicine, but in the meantime, I hope mine fills the void.
We are each powerful beyond measure, with everything inside of us to hurt or heal ourselves. I am choosing everyday to keep healing- join me friend. Let’s turn our pain into art and our shared victories into streetlights for the world.
All my love,
Nicole