By Lance Merrick | Featured Contributor
Author’s Note: This poem is a mindfulness exercise that I use to help calm anxiety.
***
Feeling the room surround me
Testing each of my senses
Tasting sweet peppermint candy
Touching my feet to the ground
Seeing blue skies out my window
Hearing passing cars,
the bathroom fan,
My deep breathes and
the crunch of peppermint candy.
It takes about an hour to come around.
I’m calming myself down.
By Brandon Koebernik | Featured Contributor
Welcome back, demon,
I’ve been expecting you.
Now, what is your reason,
For the things I’m going through?
You should hold no power here,
Yet you manage to find a way.
I wish you’d just disappear,
But you reside in my brain.
Continue reading “Welcome Back, Demon [a poem on mental illness]”
By Laura Paris | Featured Contributor
I’ve always hated Audi cars, people dressed in brown, chipped glasses and plates, and the noise of keys and messy beds. I hate dirt and smells, I cannot stand mess. I feel agitated if I am in a messy room. I get angry if I am subjected to unpleasant smells.
Up until last year I thought these were just my random personal likes and dislikes, you know, like how we prefer a certain color or food. I thought they were simple dislikes. Only last year, during a series of hypnotherapy sessions, did it become clear to me the fact that these objects were triggers for my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This was previously undiagnosed. During a regression session, while I was in a deep relaxation state, I recalled one episode that functioned as a catalyst that sped up my PTSD identification and realization.
By John Gregory Evans | Featured Contributor
Life can be quite demanding.
One may find themselves trying to overcome childhood sexual abuse and jump from the frying pan into the fire by volunteering with the USMC during the Vietnam War from 1971 to 1972; subsequently, sexually molested by a mid-level NCO while serving active duty through Combat Training. As well, with combat related scenarios one may also be injured upon a field training exercise after three consecutive explosive blasts are detonated, hurling an M-60 spent cartridge to its potential target, a young seventeen – year-old male’s cervical spine, thus, inducing a permanent nerve damage that could potentially one day paralyze him from the neck down, including the larynx. Hence, my patriotic chore that led a confused, dazed, and mystified young man to serious suicidal attempts and further ideation. This continued for many years.
Will there ever be relief?
Will the suffering end?
The answer to this is yes. Give yourself time.
Continue reading “Suicide: A Personal Journey from Trauma to Triumph”
By John Gregory Evans | Featured Author
There remains
a deadened,
freezing,
almost an anesthetizing
sense of dread
upon my fingertips and hands,
reaching deep into my leg’s nerves,
shattered spinal cord,
peeled away
as one peels an orange.
Walking,
now a challenge,
con-fusion of the fusion,
cervical cord,
Ruptured and bruised,
arrogance of the humanity factor.
Pain
within the eyes
like lightning fingers
to the crown
of God.
