Familiar (dis)Comfort

More often than not, I enjoy my own company
I watch smoke and steam rise
I stop and smell roses
I listen to live music
I feel the cool breeze or rain on my skin
I laugh voraciously at the promise of good food

I have learned and practiced

Talking kindly to myself

I have been comfortable eating alone for as long as I can remember

But then again..

There are those times

Those dark

all-encompassing times

When I lose perspective

Where problems seem to swallow me whole

and

I hate myself

or rather, I hate the idea of myself

The pathetic, lonely, sad, pointless distorted version of me.

The “broken,” hopeless me.

The light times

The times when I love myself

or rather, love the idea of myself

Are generally preferable of course

Yet.. the dark times are so familiar

that I find a sense of bricked comfort

in the routine of it,

The tears, the heartache, the self-hatred

The familiar rutted pattern

Arising and arriving less frequently, and less intensely than before

Productive progress and self-improvement at its finest

but they still come. Will they ever not come?

Written by Rose A. Fitzgerald during a Therapeutic Poetry Workshop courtesy of SocietyX with Lisa Ann Markuson regarding privacy and production.