Welcome Back
I haven’t been home to myself in a while. Life became too real, too heavy, too scary for a minute there. I’ve been avoiding. Distracting myself from my own mind and the turbulence inside of myself. I have no words and that says a lot. The expressions lately have been bewilderingly silent, staring at time just pass me by. Praying, hoping and wishing that I could be in some place, some time outside of this one. My questions never stop, don’t get me wrong. I have more questions now than when I began this. Why’s and how’s and mostly WHY ME!? Who knows, and who cares from what I’ve come to find out. Everyone enamored by their own navels, struck by their own battles. Do we ever remember each other? Do I even remember myself?
Something inside of me always echoes out into the vastness of my soul: Return. To what? I figured I’d come back here. Scream into the void. Maybe the void will scream back. Welcome back, S.
Carolina.
Dear Carolina,
I will give you my all, as I have always done. Open your arms to me. Embrace me how I’ve always longed to be held. My soul is tired, my body exhausted from all of the war. See me. See my heart. I promise I will be better, I will give everything within me. Let me be me, let me build me. I’ll make my way there, scared and all, and I won’t look back. I’m ready to dive in over my head, to be the unfamiliar yet again. I just ask for tenderness, for spring, for the storm to end.
I will see you soon.
S.
Space
I write today from the spiraling promenade of the Guggenheim in New York, whilst roaming the Alex Katz collection, and blasting Phillip Glass in my headphones. Today I am small, and everything around me seems immense. I am walking around in a world touched by others. Strokes of paint from the observations of another, sitting at the tufted pit stop benches composed by careful thoughts of Frank Lloyd Wright, when he imagined this building far before I ever stepped foot in here. This was all intentional and it is inevitably noticeable. The magnitude of the human experience lies in which cannot be put into words. Such is living, such is loving. It’s the unseen, It’s the awakening of the intangible that can never go dormant again. It is experiencing connection with those that we might never even get a chance to meet face to face.
I am loved
There are people that have loved me silently and from afar. When I couldn’t even love myself. Love has a plan to fill us up and inundate us to overflow. There comes a time for release. Where God allows us to be filled up again, for hope, for joy, for peace. For so long I thought I was alone, yet they stood with me in their own posts. Where they dreamt dreams for me that I hadn’t yet dreamt for myself and they saw me beyond my pain. Today I sit with the four of them before me, they’re each filled with love in the midst of their dreams and I am fulfilled.
On Y Va
Why is it easier to love people than it is to love yourself in the same way? Why is it easier to encourage others to keep going? I suppose the entirety of your misery is worth something these days. You see all these people around you just having deep inner suffering and you just see yourself in them, and now it’s easier to call it out because you overcame it. At times I feel like a fraud though, like I am still who I used to be, but I don't feel like that girl anymore. I think I’ve grown, and again, maybe I just don’t give myself the credit for the growth. Jesus, help me see myself higher and in a new light. Open my heavenly eyes to see myself how you see me. I feel different, I just don’t see myself differently yet. There’s just so much peace in being on my own and living my life. Granted, I haven’t figured out how to develop my rhythm yet, but I am proud of myself. I am starting to see my capabilities and my strength for fighting for a better life. I just want all of that to reflect on my exterior. On y va.
August 17, 2022
I would look at myself and not know who I was. Id stare deep into my own eyes looking for a spark, anything recognizable. She was just a house of flesh accumulated with pain and sorrow. The grief was unbearable. The understanding that I couldn’t be loved, no matter how hard I tried. Born with an inheritance of deep and rooted grief. I would look at myself and see no way out. Some days hurt so bad my chest would go numb, like holding a weight out with your arm cantilevered until you can’t feel anything anymore. The good news is I don’t know her anymore. When I tell this story it’s like I’m telling someone else’s story. When I close my eyes to recall the episodes, I simply watch and no longer partake. She made it out. She’s alive. I cried out one day to God so intensely, begged him to take it away. I said I would do anything, give up everything and anything if he would just make it go away. It never came back after that day. The ache. The numbness. The sting. He took it all away.
I could die at any moment…
And no one will have known of the world that’s inside of me. None of this makes any sense. But it’s so beautiful. I’m honored to have lived. To have seen. To have loved. Most days I have to pretend I am just normal. That I’m not overflowing with emotion. But the truth is I am a pool of so much love. Not particularly romantic. But a love that sees you. That wants to know you. That wants to touch the furring of your brows to let you know it’s okay to breathe. To release. I see you. I love you.
Up Until Now
I live the life I’ve always dreamt of. An apartment in the city, in a walkable neighborhood, with a job that is more than secure. I pay my own way to live. I have books stacked around my apartment, my little gallery corner with my plants to keep me company. I make tea before bed every night, and I blast music as soon as I wake up. I lay in bed at night and I realize that my dreams never made it beyond this point. I spent so many years of my life just surviving that my only dream was to get to a place where I would be able to come up for air. Have my space, and my things, buy the groceries I liked, rewatch my favorite reruns in peace. But what now? Where do I go from here? I only saw up until now. I can’t seem to detach enough from the “whats next” mentality that haunts everyone. I want to stay present, to remember this apartment, to remember how I am today because frankly I like her a lot. You wouldn’t imagine the years it’s taken to be able to enjoy my own company. I look back and I realize how much things had to be hard, it’s not really ever a punishment, but an undoing. If you’ve ever seen a ball of yarn get tangled you’ll understand where my mind is at. Life is like that. A ball of tangled yarn, just waiting to be neatly wrapped up, to then be later knit up into something beautiful, something useful, something purposeful. For as long as I could remember I felt so tangled, so confused and lost. Not to say it’s any different today, but today I have some clarity on the value of life. On why it’s worth fighting to be here against all odds and especially against yourself. This season I’ve been learning to just wrap up all of me into a neat little ball of yarn. This is the part where I learn to take my mess and wrap it up, where I allow things to be placed where they belong. The past in the past. The old me with the old me. And the future me yet to be met. The mess can’t go on with me to what’s next, even if I don’t know where I’m off to. All I know is that I need to wrap it all up for the knitting to begin.
You got the first slice
I’m a lot of things. One thing I’m not though, is vulnerable. Never did I ever sign up to be on the vulnerability club, always disregarded the invitations and sometimes would even play it off like I was just so people would get off my back. It’s not that I didn’t want to be, but the past never yielded the best results when I previously attempted the act of vulnerability. Life shut me down, it made me have to be something I wasn’t in order to be accepted. And that meant I needed to hide my emotions. Be the cool girl. Calm, collected, indifferent. It was good practice to learn detachment but I’m tired of it. So many falls and I think I’ve officially cracked. There’s a new cake, and you got the first slice. I gave it all, and I was fully there and I loved it. After baking so many versions of myself, I think I’m finally starting to get the recipe right. I’m actually sensitive, a deep feeler and thinker, life is beautiful in every imaginable way and I’m in love with it. The coffee stains on my mug make me enamored, the same ballad of my favorite French song still gets me to tear up and I’m so sick of having to play along with peoples lack of passion for life. Let there be cake, let it be sweet, let it be all the mess of me baked and frosted too.
A Rant About Time
I can take 14 breaths in one minute. That’s 840 in one hour. And 20,160 in one day. I suppose we think about life too much only through the concept of time. We think we have 60 seconds in each minute. 3,600 seconds in one hour. 86,400 seconds in one day. What if it wasn’t about time? But about the amount of life that is in each moment? 14 breaths is the equivalent to 60 seconds. Which gives us a less than half of a ratio of life within each minute than we think we actually have. We think we have 100% of that time, however if thought of in breaths, we truly only have 8.4% of life in that moment. We think that life is dictated by how much time we have, how much time we invest, or save. But what if none of that matters? What if time is just a distraction? Perhaps we can start asking whether or not we are present in that moment, breathing into whatever it is that we are doing. If we’re careful enough to pour ourselves into that which we touch, and see, feel, etc. Are we really alive? Or are we just hoarding time? People have a hard time being present in the moment because they become too concerned with what is coming ahead, or what haunts them from the past. I’m thinking the secret hack to this life is to forget about time. To only see life in front of you. Beyond the 14 breaths you’re about to take in the next minute, what is the current breath telling you? Listen to the rhythm of what the moment is playing for you. All I have is this, this breath, in this moment, with these thoughts. I am alive, I breath, I think, I feel. Nothing else truly matters. This experience of breathing is the start of the unlocking, if we forget this fragility we might miss the entire point of it all. Fleeting and delicate life. Forget time and space, we are beyond that. The universe inside of us isn’t even a tangible one, it isn’t one that time or space can touch. We don’t even know how to touch it.
The End of Myself
I almost gave up yesterday. It’s hard to admit to the thoughts that come through my mind sometimes. It’s shameful to think that I can get to such a dark place in my mind. Sometimes it’s just too easy to get lost in the loneliness, to have exhausted the entire contact list and not have anyone to answer you, or at least anyone that will answer without bringing you even lower. I noticed people have a hard time listening. If it doesn’t serve them in any way it is a waste of their time to sit there and listen to someone else’s problem. That’s why I write this, because I choose to listen to myself. I needed to stop searching outside of myself for the things I needed to survive, it isn’t the easiest path, it’s deadly quiet on this side, but at least I know that I am doing this because I want to make sure I stay alive. Is that a little dramatic to say? Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s dramatic to you who has never dealt with a mental illness your entire life. Who doesn’t understand that circumstances have been so painful and detrimental to someone’s mind that it doesn’t work like yours does. Maybe I am a little angry today. A little fed up with always being the one who is understanding, who is always trying to compromise and not burden anyone with what I go through. Yesterday the storm in my mind was greater than it has been in a long time, triggered by words that were intended to bring me down. And I can’t pretend that it didn’t, I can’t lie to myself and say I wasn’t defeated again. The wounds I thought had scarred over tore open and bled all night last night and all day today. I was ashamed to be where I used to be yet again. To have let so many traumatizing words get into my mind again, yesterday I lost. I came to the end of myself again. But I try not to forget that at the end of myself He is always there. He is the only way I’ve learned to stay alive. My mind is only at peace when I sit with Him. He listens even when I don’t have words. My breath is enough for Him to comprehend my pain. I tried not to hide today, I tried not to pretend like I was okay. But I was silent and didn’t have the words to come to Him, so I just sat with my posture towards Him. He hasn’t given up on me yet, which means He won’t give up today even though I almost did. I just can’t help but wonder what is it that brings me back here? Am I missing something? Is there something my mind cannot comprehend, therefore the lesson needs to keep going? What is it about the mind that it lives in cycles? I wish I had answers. Until then I will sit with Him in silence. It is the only place my mind is at ease. He will rebuild me again, He will continue to align my brokenness until wholeness is my name. If the breaking means I am one step closer to being who He made me to be, then I gladly will take this. The end of myself is always the beginning of Him.
Things I Want
A well lit apartment
Specifically I want good natural lighting
The western sunset glow blazing in
Maybe some East light
I want to dance
Ballroom on Friday’s until I’m a regular
I want a white beach cruiser with brown leather seats
And a basket
I want to have good credit
Like 720+ good
I want to stretch every day
And do yoga
And run
Like Forrest
I want to hike on Sundays
Then go back home and make Sunday breakfast
I want thinner arms
And a petit back
A slim back
I want to drink half my body weight in water
And not even force myself to do it
I want to hang out with my mom
Not like how it’s always been
But I want to be her friend
I want us to meet for dinner
And laugh
I want my grandma to be active
And happy again
I want to bake her recipes with her
I want to have my own recipe book
Like tia Deicy
I want to buy a house
Probably for my mom and Denize and grandma
Then one day eventually for me
I want a garden
Vegetables fruits and flowers
I want a basket to pick the harvest
I want a red off the shoulder dress to wear while I pick everything
I want a lemon tree
And a guava tree
And basil
And spinach
I want to eat pasta on an Italian hillside during sunset
I want to speak Italian
Fluently
I want to walk those streets and feel exactly what I know I’m going to feel
I want sun hats
And a sandals
And a big wicker tote for the groceries
I want soft skin
Moisturized like I’m butter
I want clear skin
I want good perfume
Like a collection of perfume
So I won’t be scared to run out
I want picnics
I want to read all my books
I want to be happy with my job
I want to have dinner parties
I want to go to the theater
And watch the orchestra
And go to the ballet
Regularly
I want to feel less weight on my shoulders
And I want better knees
But I’m happy to have both working knees
So I can go hiking
I want to write
Mostly things like this
But I love to write
I want to live
I want to live
I want to live
I want to live
I want to live
I want to live
I want to live
I. Want. To. Live.
It Exists
“Depression doesn’t exist.”
“If you believe in God then depression shouldn’t be a part of your life.”
“Depression is all in your head.”
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” Psalm 42:11
Growing up, I was told that being depressed was not allowed. That it didn’t actually exist. So since it didn’t exist, and it wasn’t allowed, yet I felt it every single day from sun up to sun down, the only way to make it go away was to pretend that it wasn’t there. Not to myself, but to everyone else around me. So I became many things, everything but depressed. Actor, Jim Carrey once said, “depression is your body saying: “fuck you, I don’t want to be this character anymore. I don’t want to be holding up this avatar that you’ve created, in a world that’s too much for me.” And that’s exactly what I had done. I was the smart one, the funny one, the overachiever, the giver, the perfectionist, the fixer… and the list goes on. I became the puppet people pleaser. Whoever was around, I would read the room, and adjust accordingly. Until I had to lay alone at night and ponder this physical ache that lived inside my chest. An ache so sharp that it caused knots in my throat like I was being choked, and tears would just stream down my face as I tried to control my breathing so no one would hear me. This happened every night until I was about 26.
I began to dig for a grasp at reality, and I did it how I knew best: research. Being the A student that I was, I needed to look at multiple sources. Published journals, books, movies, documentaries, TedTalks, and because I am a believer, the Bible. I needed to know if I had made the whole thing up in my head, that this concocted dissatisfaction had any trace anywhere else in this world. Even now, as I write this I sit and question myself, was it all real? And like most things I conclude to in my findings, God is at the end, middle, and beginning of everything. Not that He intended for me to be depressed, or ordained my life’s destiny to be anything of the sort. But as my dearest King David writes repeatedly throughout the Psalms, to YET praise Him, to YET look to Him, to YET hope in Him…depression like any other ailment or illness of the mind is a state of being without God.
All of this lead me to so many other questions. What does it mean to be without God? Does God intend there to be so much pain? Why does He allow it? We see traces of King David being depressed, when he speaks to his soul, “why are you so downcast?” This was a daily prayer to myself when I was so unsure of everything. I needed answers. And then I realized David gives the solution right after he asks the question. “Put your hope in the Lord…” Hope by definition doesn’t mean to just long for the better but it means to put your trust into someone or something. God designed us to live in relationship, with him, with ourselves and with the people around us. Depression is the monster that isolates and weighs you down to be alone. Depression exists just as much as the next thing, and it can take over your life if you accept it, just like any other thing. But the remedy to all of this, and this is from my own experience of being in it for 20+ years, the only way out is to reconnect to our source of life that is being in relationship with God, through Jesus.
I will give more on this later, but this post is to validate that it is real. It’s not just in your head, it’s something that you will have to fight for the rest of your life if you keep relying on only yourself. But if you surrender and you look to Him and put your trust in Him, there is a way out. Surrender the person that you’re trying to play off as being, the character you’ve played for so many years. Healing from depression is surrendering from everything people have tried to make you become that you’re not, it’s allowing God to come in and heal you from everything that’s hurt you. It’s allowing yourself to get on the road to return home, and home is where you are who you are, in relationship with who created you in order to be in healthy relationships with yourself and the people around you. Allow yourself to come back home.
Does it need to make sense?
It’s 2:02 AM on a Wednesday. You know when you have so much to say, but the words aren’t enough? There is no equivalent word to describe this immensurable feeling of longing. Yet I can’t move (not literally, calmate). It’s this feeling of having to do more, to create more, or even to just sit under the sun and force myself to feel every square centimeter of the warmth being one with the surface area of my skin. Do you realize that everything we touch takes a piece of us? Your prints, your energy, your voice just evaporating into the air and becoming one with the oxygen. How then do we become so disconnected? How do we continue to live without fascination? I am absolutely dumbfounded at living these days. Almost like I have just landed from an ulterior planet and am learning how to be a person. Which seems so absolutely ridiculous because I am at the ripe age of twenty-seven, and I should know how to be a person at this age. At least, half a person. This makes me realize though how I spent so many years dormant. How pain and concern were the main tenants in my body. How living meant nothing to me, but felt more like a death sentencing. Because of this though, of that time where I was “sleeping,” today I know the difference. Something clicked. After years of chasing the solutions, the success, the soul sucking version of the being that was not me, funny enough the only solution to this was to heal. To sit in the middle of the empty room that currently is my life and let it flow out of me. And a lot of that flow lives in these words, in these posts that mean nothing to anyone but everything to me. Whether or not anyone has ever heard me, whether or not anyone will ever read this and understand me, this is me giving space to be. To be means to occur, to take place. I am taking my place, and no it doesn’t need to make any sense right now.
Who Am I
I’d say I’m a lover. I can’t remember a single time in me that I’ve raged over something or someone. Even in the most painful situations I’ve always been able to see the light in it, therefore remaining and responding in love. Especially when people have said the most horrendous things about me while looking in my eyes. Even then I never raged. It’s like I would hear more of the pain in their voice on how they were hurting rather than taking any of their words as a dagger to me. I look for love in everything, to me love is beautiful. Beyond aesthetic and the gilded. Beautiful as in it has substance, there’s heart, there’s thought and intention. Beautiful as in “I made this,” or as in the details of a butterfly’s wings, or when someone shares something they only wrote for themselves late at night and you get to hear what a heart sounds like beyond just the beating. That’s beautiful, that’s love. I’d say I’m a dreamer, I have vision. I’ve always seen beyond my situation and lived like I was already living my dreams, until one day I woke up and I truly was living all my dreams. I have faith. In people, in good intention but in most of all Jesus. I believe in Him. Because I’ve been able to get to know him personally. Sit and exchange my rags for his robe. To see the world through the Creator’s lens. I believe he loves me. And you. And he is love. So I suppose I’ve been searching for him all this time. But now I know that he’s in everything that’s beautiful. He likes to put drops of him sprinkled out into the world. But mostly he likes to overflow himself within us. It’s his favorite place to be out of all of it. I know he made me for this reason, to bear witness to him all around, and to let his love overflow in me to love people. I guess that makes me a vessel. So there it is, Sharon is a vessel for love and beauty. A witness to what life looks like when you carry that kind of heart.
O Som da Cuíca
Hoje acordei com o coração incendiado. Um fogo que aquece mas ao mesmo tempo está me consumindo. Doce porém amargo. Uma saudade de passar horas falando com Deus. Eu conheço a voz dEle, eu sei como é sua presença quando nós dois sentamos pra bater um papo juntos. Entretanto, minha condição humana não consegue aceitar essa plenitude. Parece até que me desvio porque sei que não mereço coisas boas, e se algo tiver que ser bom na minha vida, eu mesmo terei que fazer que seja. E hoje ao ouvir o batuque do samba e o assovio da cuíca, enquanto tomava aquele banho, com B maiúsculo, eu ainda consigo imaginar que Deus me ama além das minhas falhas. Como um Deus que fez a cuíca, os simples prazeres de um macarrãozinho delicioso que almoçei hoje, poderá ter o coração rancoroso como os nossos? Pois Ele não tem. Não tem como ser o criador de tantas coisas boas, belas e tão cheias de amor, e ter o coração amargo. É como quem faz o jiló. Minha tia Deicy falava, quem faz o jiló e ele fica amargo, também tem o coração amargo. Mas quem faz o jiló e ele fica doce, pode acreditar que seu coração tambem é doce. E com toda falha minha, com todo pecado que há em mim, de uma coisa eu sei, e é que o jiló que vem de Deus sempre é doce e sempre será.
I have to write
There’s an entire universe inside of me. I have so many thoughts and so many dreams. I admire so much. Music, art, film, but most of all I admire people. Every time I look at someone, and watch them speak and how their hands move with every expression, the little pop their upper lip does on the right side when they say a certain word. I want to hear every story. There’s just so much inside of people. So much beauty, so much knowledge, so much life. What is this life? I want to touch it. I want to grasp at it, feel it on the tips of my fingers. I’m afraid I will miss it. The point of it all, or miss the opportunity of making the most of it. I stay up sometimes, like I’m keeping watch over a city, and if I blink she’ll pass me by and it’ll be all over. I don’t know how to make the most of this, I don’t know how to absorb everything that I can, while still leaving traces of me behind. There are days that I feel like a madwoman in this studio, in my own mind, just trying to make sense of it all. I can’t miss it. Whatever it is. What are you? I have to write, because I feel like that’s when you will talk back to me. I have to tell you that I want you. I need to create, to get out and see the trees, this burning urge to slather paint on a canvas like its going to release the air in my lungs. I have to hear every song to make sure that they each light something up inside of me, like each one is little twinkle light in the string of lights in my body and if I miss one then the rest of the lights wont turn on. They all need to light up. That’s why I have to write.
Midnight Thoughts
July 1, 2018
12:36AM
I feel so sick to my stomach
Sick of being surrounded but alone
Sick of smiling when I want to be crying
I’m shaking trying to suppress
My body aches of the dis-ease of my soul
I can never shut it off
Over and over and over it comes back
This weight of everything I am and everything I’m not
Just handle it
Be patient
We need you to understand
I’m dramatic
Neurotic
Selfish
The self proclaimed victim
But no sees that I’m dying inside
This weight crushes every inch of my being
I pray to God above to carry it with me
I fear He doesn’t hear me
What if it’s all to break me down to build me up
He lets them do what they want because I’m not supposed to be this way anyway
But I can’t do it anymore
I am their burden
Their cried out neurotic burden
I am sick to my stomach to think they only come to leave
I would rather be my own burden
Sit in silence in my numbness
Do not awake me
Do not ignite me
Leave me be to spare us all