1/4/21

It's hard to ask for help.

It's even harder to be vulnerable enough to even acknowledge needing it.

I just had a moment where the world paused and all that was left were my thoughts.

And we'll we all know what I think of silence.
The angelic yet devilish state it is.

But more recently my stance on thoughts has changed, and not for the better.

Because thoughts are scary, they hold too much power over me.

When you think,
like truly pause and think,
you can talk yourself in or out
of almost anything,
you can change the basis of your own reality with enough thinking.
And that's terrifying. So terrifying.

So that's where I found myself.
On the brink of thoughts,
Thinking.

Silence closing in,
despite the music coming through my earbuds.
Silence.

And then there were several chains
tugging at me,
each wishing to pull me down their own unknown pathway.

And I'm pulled forward,
closer to the paths,
but down none.

I can here the sounds of each now.
The one farthest to my left is
calmly telling me
I need to reach out,
I need to share,
I need to ask.

The next one is warm like a room of people,
chaotically whispering
ideas about the thing,
what it is,
what it could mean,
asking me to let it think it through.

Then there's the third one,
calling out to me with some
mad eccentricity,
asking me if I want to explore it,
if I want revel in it's madness,
if I want to scream with it.

Then there's the dark one,
obscured sounds caught on the wind,
a faint whimpering,
and it asks nothing of me,
it's just ever present and attracting,
omniscient in it's presence,
knowing of it's unexplainable appeal to me.

Then to my right is the bright path,
high pitched voices talking excited nonsense and laughter ringing out,
promising an escape,
the happiness and fun,
the low-stake meaninglessness of joy.

Each path pulls at its chain in its own way,
but each tries to lure me in.
Pull me close,
until I fall willingly into its embrace,
and follow down it's path,
it's chain of thoughts.

And that's the thing,
each wants me to think.
Some in safe and traveled ways,
others in new and forbidden.

And above all they're all talking,
they're all saying something,
crowding my mind,
filling it's every crevice.

And I take it in,
quietly observing it all,
and at the same time,
I'm yelling at it to quiet down,
digging my feet in,
working stubbornly against the pulling.

And then there's the idea,
I have no idea which path
brought it up to tempt me.
Write this all out, write it.

Whichever path it was,
it won out today,
it won the right to breach the non-existent silence of the moment,
to pull me to my bedroom floor
at 12:21 in the morning
and force me to write.

Which lands us here, full circle.

Finally ready to talk about the aforementioned statement: it's hard to ask for help.
A sentiment as old as stubborn independence.

And that's the thing,
this combination of insecurity,
perceived strength in independence,
this fear of reaching out and sharing it all,
the pure joy and the yearning and the ineffable.

There's so much that makes it hard,
and god, I'm no poet for saying this.

The inability to ask for help,
support,
comfort,
kinship,
answers,
is a struggle as old as futile efforts
to do it alone.

And here I am, feeling childish and weak for succumbing to the most human of problems.

Trying so hard to deny my stubborn illness and my need for the medicinal properties of help.

When ever I admit my need for it,
the paths appear and start shouting,
asking who I am to feel like this
when I've had a good life,
when I've hardly faced hardship,
when I've scarcely faced real pain.

Who am I to need help?
I'm fine.
I have people who love and care about me,
I keep up with my responsibilities,
I feel happy at the end of the day,
and yet here I am:
needing help.

For a few months I've been describing
an emptiness,
yearning,
indescribable emotions,
a ever present sense of urgency
for something unknown,
things I've only recently just recently discovered are connected to
this crux of my character,
this point of stress
I haven't even had the chance to
fully look at.

I undeniably have
something going on,
or am I just some person
who's so self important that
I'm complaining about something
that every fucking person experiences?

And that's the conundrum,
maybe it's part of this crux,
this point of stress,
this flaw in the mechanism,
this weak link,
that's part of me?
Maybe it comes with the territory?

Or maybe one of the paths is louder than I originally thought, stronger than I thought, maybe it's already pulled it's end of the chain, dragged me into it's thoughts, made me think again?

Fucking hell.
I hate this.
I despise this.
I loathe this.
I absolutely detest this feeling,
this experience,
this process,
of being so unsure,
insecure,
uncertain,
of my own being,
my thoughts,
my feelings,
my very reality.

I hate it.
I want it to stop.
I need help.
But it's just so hard to ask for help,
especially when you won't even admit to really, really needing it.

The chains are pulling again,
Eliza Bright