random thoughts while feeling feelings

i started this blog around six months ago - during summer. over these months i've talked quite a bit about my experiences & struggles with mental illness. the struggles always seem to multiply during the winter months. i live in the midwest & winters are often quite harsh, if not at the very least perpetually grey.

it always calms me to put these thoughts, fears, feelings into words. i wrote most days, maybe a small poem or maybe a journal entry or even an occasional rant. here are a few things i've written during the grey days.

random thoughts
part I.

here's the thing. 

when we're born we're barely solid matter. we ooze into this life, fragments of another, blind and blank and already exhausted from being. 

we come out screaming. 

this is no coincidence. 

safety doesn't exist. we're never not raw, we're never not just a composite of many corpses that left traces of a complex being, physically or otherwise, so that we can exist in the inexplicable manner that we find ourselves in at this very second. 

no man is an island. 

suffering starts at day one. this is unique to no one. this is the pendulum of life, a precise weight necessary to keep swinging, on and on with no end in sight. 

pain & joy sway in a well-timed dance. they twirl around the room leaving you dizzy & disoriented. which one is leading? can one exist without the other? 

maybe we can learn the dance. we breathe in and we lunge and curl and stretch and with the perfect movement we can catch it. we can catch the swirling sparkle that battles the darkness. we can learn the language of joy. maybe. 

here's the thing. 

as living, breathing souls, we're all connected. and what ties us together is suffering. this starts at birth. 

we come out screaming. 

this is no coincidence. 

part II.

"when winter wraps itself too tightly around / a dream from which i will wake"

i feel like i'm crawling in an endless dark. i'm on black gravel and my bleeding palms pull me forward into the neon night. the air is heavy, there is nothing before me so i could curl up in the cracked earth, or i could skid my skin across these crude rocks and i'm not sure i will survive and i'm not sure i want to. 

part III.

(yes, it hurts. and yes, it will heal. like hard earth thaws, the hollow parts of you will soften and fill and overflow life. just hold on for tomorrow. take my hand)

(from Smoke Signals)

xo,

Ashley

Listening to:

Freelance Whales - Broken Horse