home invasion.

a one-ton armoire slides across my pelvic floor, crashing into soft tissue.  i do not hear the thud but i feel it.

my mental illness must involve more parts than one. perhaps 4 or 400. i am told we each contain multitudes.

lately i work more with the positive and negative associations we ascribe to emotional states:

          guilt is bad, joy is good.

          gratitude is good, panic is bad.

my involvement with psychiatry—with preachers of pathology and the medical model  challenges my core. i believe in inherent brilliance, the kind that we all share. i believe in our shared capacity to access higher knowing, through means such as insight or compassion.

but certain states i experience are chaotic and frightening.

like a hijacking.

 

my internal furniture starts slamming around, seemingly pushed by ghosts.

the last time this pain visited me, i writhed around on my bathroom floor in grave discomfort

asking ‘it’ aloud what it wants, what it needs, where it comes from and why it is here.

*

in these moments:

i grow appendages of different lengths.

confusion sprouts up from the crown of my head like a thick weed, a skull divided.

angst becomes my right arm, growing fast and long until it is clear across the room, knocking photo frames and ceramics off shelves in sweeping motion. i close my eyes and hide.

despair leaks into my legs, sets itself on fire.

the vessel entraps me.

 

never have i floated above myself to witness this sort of home invasion.

i was born with these intruders, nurturing them because they are the company i keep. sometimes i wonder if they will leave on their own, though i do not inquire.

 

for now, i offer them tea and stale shortbread cookies.

they eat quietly.