Cheers to You!

Hooray! It is with jubilant gratitude and excitement that I deliver the news that Tick Talk has sustained 100 followers! How riveting it is to know triple digit eyes are traversing my words, incorporating my experiences into your day. My endeavors to catalog the macabre malevolence circling my mind and body have nourished my life. Granting a voice to trauma has provided an emotional cleansing which has served as a literal lifeline. The transformation of my body, along with my mind has created pockets of opportunity and reinvigorated a sense of connection. Your presence, feedback and tender validation are treasured. I thank you dearly for every like, comment, re-blog and follow. The community we are creating symbolizes the inclusivity I strive to embody.

In honor of where I’ve been, where I am and where I’m going, I will be sharing the first ever post I penned here. Thank you for coming along with me for my journey.

Yes to All Things Me
https://ticktalksite.wordpress.com/2017/05/04/yes-to-all-things-me-2/

When She Tells You

Among a burgeoning handful of nuggets about chronic illness I wish to impress upon the healthy, perhaps the most pressing is that it is all true. When she tells you she is clawing at the fiber of life; that she is broiling in a noxious stew of calamity; that the mundane details have transformed into haunting beings knocking her down again and again, believe her.

This is not a case for crying wolf. Chronic anything implies that it sustains over time. Please do not doubt that an intolerable cacophony of pain, pain, pain can and does suffocate without pause. When she tells you she’s shattering under the weight of it all, believe her. With your words, with your presence, with your every atom, believe in her imprisonment. Such a validation can only bolster some kind of emancipation.

Solitary Solidarity

Solidarity does not always mean tangible togetherness. Cultural representations of unification often indicate cadres of humans confined to shared spaces. While these illustrations may increase morale and inspire cohesion, they are not accessible to many people. They are not accessible to me.

Therefore, the reality of advocacy and activism is often an individual and lonely practice. Personally speaking, the solidarity I cultivate is often solitary. Planting and cultivating to seeds of change that counter popular opinion can quickly banish one to the fringes, both ideologically and physically. Additionally, many people who become advocates are motivated by personal experience of discrimination and exclusion. Whether unwelcome due to physical limitations, race, class, gender, sex, religious affiliation or any other characteristic, the end result is the same: we may be invisible from the literal front line of demonstrations.

Instead, we march into the back roads of social change from behind screens, through strong voices projecting from phone speakers, by scrawling truths across templates poised to receive us. Lonely as this method for togetherness may often feel, the cohesion it represents and strives to enhance denotes solidarity, nonetheless.

Hand in Paw

Wearing my skeleton on the outside of my skin, I bury my eyes into the golden gloss of his fur. Twin trails slip down, drip, drip, dripping until they pour onto the carpet. My forehead wobbles across the arcs of his insulated body, incubated by steady breaths. Attuned but unafraid, his chocolate orbs glance my way. A resonant yet simple sorrow conflicts his canine form. Blending stray salty tears with the straw tinge on his back, I whisper, tremulously. “Am I going to die?” My emptyness plummets farther as though every minuscule detail of the bedroom is divining my demise. He blinks, velveted ears flicking, but says nothing.

The mechanic cadence of synthetic calories traveling through a tiny black hole in my biceps booms like gunshots against my senses. Arrow-like tips of my bones grind against me. Collapsing beside him, I enclose his paw in my hand and he listens as I fold in on myself. 

One Mother in A Million

I have never understood the saying “Love you to pieces.” The sun has not stretched into the sky once in the past three decades without my mother trying to harness all of its warmth for me. Much to the contrary of love wielding the power to reduce one to pieces, the love I have always known from my mother strives to help make me whole.

As we embark on the next phase of healing, I am honored by the presence of this woman. Though encapsulated in fatigue, determined we remain to not only fully revive my body, but to foster a freedom for me I’ve not yet known. Enthusiastically, she nourishes my present as we prepare to emulsify my future. 

We keep going. We.

Can You Help?

Dear Friends and Fellow Bloggers:

I have never scripted a post of this kind before. I find myself in a precarious situation and am reaching out for support from the incredible blogging community I am honored to be a part of. 

My ongoing challenges with nutrition are becoming more serious every day. I have raised half of the money needed to have a comprehensive gastrointestinal test done. This test has only been around for two years and unlike other evaluations, is comprehensive in analysis and even provides a customized recommended diet. Please help if you can. Time is of the essence. I don’t have much wiggle room when it comes to nutrition as years of malabsorption have caught up with me. Thank you so very much for taking the time to read this and for your support. Please visit the link below to learn more and to make a gift to my healing.
https://www.gofundme.com/pvpq2k

Looking For Love

Alrighty then, Siri! It looks as though I’m going to refer to all you humans for some assistance with supporting me in my efforts to find a wonderful man in 2018! For more information about my Facebook Community dedicated to providing an opportunity for meaningful connection, and other avenues in the name of love, please go here!

Despite a recent flare of health challenges, I’m remaining stalwart in my efforts to connect. If you have any nontraditional suggestions for cultivating a conversation, know of any loving, compassionate men who may be interested in getting to know me OR happen to be such a chap yourself, please let me know!

I am quieting the pessimistic rattling in my head, chastising me about the insubstantial chances of this inquiry. The reality of my reality is that the fact that I’m here, right now, voicing this desire to give and receive compassion, intimacy, wit and whatever ripples of relationship may transpire, is pretty unlikely. I’m still here. I have still within me overflowing joy for even the IDEA of mutual support and understanding.
Thanks everybody! Cheers to love!

This Could Be You

This could be you.

My weary eyes pantomime to the patronizing face hovering above me. She adjusts the various apparatuses tethering me to chirping machinery. So habitual has their residence in my sphere become, they nearly feel normal. Devastatingly, heartbreakingly normal.

The coupling of her iridescent vibrancy with my stubborn pain is exacerbated further by the engorged diamond pointed my way. In a malicious cocktail of anthropomorphism, the stone seems to mock me. It captures my symbolic despair, plunging me harshly into the confines of my loneliness.

This could be you.

The whirlwind of my wobbly mind wonders about the man who placed the silver around her delicately perfect finger. Is he generous, frugal or endearingly idiosyncratic? Would he believe me to be beautiful? In a parallel universe painted by strokes of privilege, could it have been instead my own finger upon which he had promised forever?

This could be you.

Upon her nourished cheeks she sports a saccharine smile. So intoxicatingly inauthentic do the corners of her patronage crumble, that I want to inform her that there is nothing to smile about around here. I want to toss the silky edges of her predictively pastel reality into a noxious puddle, submerging them indignantly until the robust rose hue drains like the crimson from my flesh. 

This could be you. 

Mixed media by Jordan Landerman

Exit Strategy

The inarguable rules of being do little to staunch my need to exit this body. Though someday the dissenting cells clouding my harmony will dissolve completely, I find no peace. Much to the contrary of cessation, I am desperately seeking vitality. And I am growing tired in my quest to live. 

Death, I imagine, could be easy. Dying within the folds of youth is incessantly arduous. Silhouetted by modesty, I curse the unusual dimensions of virginity I possess. I condemn the equally uncommon trials of frivolous promiscuity.

Dehumanized for the sake of survival, tepid toes on the floor with organs screaming their unyielding melody of wrong, I want more. I want life, at long last.