I have had so many hard conversations in my life. Conversations where I confessed, conversations where I demanded, conversations where I chided and begged and pleaded and cajoled and cried.
I have had so many hard conversations.
There was the conversation where I was told I could die. There was the conversation where I told the exact same thing. To my mother. To my friends. To my lovers. To strangers. Again, and again.
There was the conversation where I told him I loved him. No matter as to whom “he” was. That quivering, shaking moment right before the slight intake of breath, then the desperately frightening murmur. “I love you.”
The silences in that conversation have always been the best and the most painful.
I have had so many hard conversations.
There was the conversation about her miscarriage, and hers, and hers. The conversation about his mistake. The conversation of confusion, of denial, of the world cracking about me and my soul bleeding out into the fractures.
I keep trying to have that conversation again.
I so desperately want it to go differently.
I have so many, many hard conversations.
There are the conversations I have not had yet. The conversation about the weariness I’ve newly heard in his voice. The conversation about that affair, and my lifelong anger with its inexplicable forgiveness. The conversation where I say that I am afraid, and put up one more wall. The conversation I will have more with myself, than with anyone else.
There are the conversations I have daily, the interminable cajoling of my tear ducts not to cry, of my heart not to break, of my legs to keep moving forward and of my hands not to rend me in the thousand ways they could have me end.
I chatter ceaselessly inside my brain, so much daily convincing must I do.
It’s not an easy conversation to have, after a while.
I get tired of having these hard conversations.
There have so many of them in my life.
Tags: chatter, confession, conversation, depression, dialogue, difficult, family, friends, hard conversation, honest, mental health, mental illness, poem, poetical prose, recovery, speak, speak out, speak up, suicide, talking
Quill Aquiver 
Poem: At The Market
5 Julsource
At The Market
Today while at the market I heard
a most skeptical remarking word
about the tattoo behind my ear –
“Do you know it’s there, my dear?”
The asker proved an elderly man
and I so young at twenty-three
could only smile and reply
“yes,” most delightful and politely.
“You were drunk that night?”
the old man asked, and I just laughed if off.
“No, I planned this pawprint,” I smiled,
But still the man, he scoffed.
“You volunteered?” he said incredulously
so I smiled and laughed again.
“Yes, it’s a memory,” I explained.
“Identity in my skin.”
Perhaps I am just an upstart
Or perhaps he is just rude,
But my appearance is not his call.
In the end, he’s just some dude.
Tags: appearance, choice, commentary, criticism, decision, elderly man, feminism, feminist, identity, independent, liberation, mansplain, market, old man, physical, poem, poetry, satirical, tattoo, Victorian