Category: words

My therapist regrets to inform me I’m not a terrible person

kldistaffen September 17, 2019 1 Comment
And other things I doubt My therapist has this way about him. Speaking gently when the voices in my head are screaming at me. You feel alone, like you have no one to be 100% honest with. Your support group, your friends, your family have no idea. I tell him: Sylvia Plath once said, 'I talk to God but the sky is empty.' That's how I feel right now, totally alone in this great big universe. I...

the unbearable sadness of being

kldistaffen June 18, 2019 0 Comments
above me, my neighbor sings absent-mindedly while doing the dishes, her soothing voice draws out the tears I've been so eager to cry. this is not a perfect post, nor is it a happy one. this is a pain-channeling post, the kind that your therapist wants you to write. you've blocked out the emotional pain for so long. you've forgotten how to feel. this is the kind of post you write when the...

To the Graduates on the Eve of Graduation

kldistaffen May 10, 2019 0 Comments
Photo by Baim Hanif on Unsplash Dear friends, you made it. And I wish I had words of advice for you, but I don't. Not really; there's a bunch of things I'm still trying to figure out for myself, about myself, about life and adulthood. But this I know: you made it. You made it, with friends by your side, family cheering you on, and laughter in your heart. With tears in your eyes,...

Ripple Effect

kldistaffen February 24, 2019 0 Comments
a very short story She didn’t believe in ghosts. At least not in the say ‘boo’, spirit without a body, walk through walls type way. She believed in flashbacks and nostalgia, that trauma could be passed down through generations. She saw her father’s father’s father every time her parents argued. Thuds and echoes of anger ricocheting off the walls, penetrating the door as she lay on...

I’m having a flashback right now, a trigger warning.

kldistaffen January 31, 2019 0 Comments
The coolness of the bathroom floor, a stark contrast to the sweaty guys surrounding me. We had been like this for fifteen minutes: me, lying on the ground, clothes askew; them, forcing their way into me, on me, around me. 10 hands tracing my body, forcing their way inside. I remember the way it felt: like being stabbed over and over and over again. Of their erections pushing against my back as...

Maybe home is more than just a place

kldistaffen January 29, 2019 0 Comments
Six months ago, I never thought I'd find myself here--in a room with white colored walls and a stippled ceiling, a place to call my own. "There's no place like home." Dorothy once said, as she tapped her ruby slippers Together one by one. "Home is where the heart is," They all say as if a heart can fill a place, take up Residence in a building full of feelings. Maybe home is more than just a...

This is what healing looks like

kldistaffen January 24, 2019 0 Comments
“But in the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.” ― Albert Camus I always thought I'd end up killing myself one day; that's the way I'd go out--swallowing a bottle of pills, driving into a tree, or jumping out a window. So many ways to die; not enough time to execute them all. (See what I did there?) But then healing has this way of sneaking up on you, of...

How to survive a panic attack in three acts

kldistaffen January 19, 2019 0 Comments
Prologue:  On the bulletin board next to my desk is a handwritten checklist from my therapist: is it truthful? Is it necessary? Is it kind? If no, let it go. .  .  . Act 1:  Hold an ice cube in your hand, squeeze it until all you can focus on is the pain shooting up your arm. Nobody found me there, sitting in the workroom, rocking back and forth. I was paralyzed by some unidentifiable fear, a...

I challenged her to write a post in which she doesn’t mention her past (stolen from my old blog)

kldistaffen January 18, 2019 0 Comments
I forgave myself today, kneeling at the altar. You can't move forward if you're angry at the past-- angry at yourself for things that are not your fault, for relapses you could've controlled if you had just. . . just . . . re  a   c  h  e   d   out, for relationships you purposefully sabotaged because you don't feel worth anything. Maybe forgiveness can't change the past, but maybe it...

Letter to a suicide note

kldistaffen January 11, 2019 0 Comments
I found you tonight, tucked away amongst books I haven't read in years but love too much to throw away. I'm getting ready to move, packing books in suitcases and clothes in boxes because I can't stay here forever. I can't stay here forever: trapped in the past--but I can't move forward until I move out, can't live until I leave the place where I tried to die. I found you tonight, and I'm not sure...