Sometimes, I write in poetry (and sing and paint) because not having to make sense is the only thing that makes any sense to me.
Dearest Doodle Soupsters,
The artwork above is called, “oh enigmatic universe, help me find my way to freedom” - it’s from my new Whispers Among The Trees collection.
Look closely and you’ll find phrases such as:
help me find my way
I just want to be free
I am a landscape
I just want to know who I am help me understand
Ever since I was a kid, it’s always been clear that I’m “different.” But despite some of the positive outcomes of being different, somehow it still felt like such a negative thing. Feels, still.
“You’re so smart … if only you could take school more seriously.”
Then, once I tried to do that, well … “You’re so smart … if only you could stop having panic attacks and freezing up on tests.”
At one point … “You do so well on tests and understanding the material but you’re always staring into space, standing up in class … your desk is a mess. Be more organized! Look like you’re paying attention! Follow directions!”
It always seemed like what made me special just got in the way, my way and everybody else’s.
This week, my therapist talked about my brain so positively. She said my brain is hyperconnected, highly sensitive, empathetic in being able to construct in my mind not just how I’d feel in a situation but how another would feel in that situation, giftedness. And she talked about how this means that a complex task may come really easily to someone like me but then a simple task can be really hard. It was the opposite of what I’ve been told so often — essentially that I just needed to figure out to use my brain like everybody else’s and I’d be golden.
It’s like trying to swim against the current. Why not swim with my natural current?
I’ve felt so guilty for who I am naturally. I thought it was my fault. Yet, she validated that the combination of my sensitivity, empathy, giftedness, and complex PTSD can be really beautiful and it’s also very challenging especially in environments where neurodiversity and trauma is ignored/misunderstood/etc.
What she said to me … my view of myself shifted … it’s hard to explain right now …
I’ve felt so invalid for struggling with tasks that are supposed to be easier … I thought I didn’t make sense. So many people have told me I don’t make sense.
But looking at the beautiful outcomes of how my brain works side by side with the challenges — it just makes so much sense. I make sense even if a lot of people haven’t understood me.
oh enigmatic universe, help me find my way to freedom
among towering trees, i am home
how do i find a sense of home inside of me?
how do i stop believing that i’m just messed up?
how do i make peace with who i am and what i’ve been through?
how do i love myself for who i am naturally?
when do i stop believing i have to force myself to “paint inside the lines” in order to be valid? what are those lines anyway? isn’t it all made up? By us? Isn’t it all found and reinvented and changed and found again? Somewhere in the chaos? Somewhere in the mystical pandemonium that is this enigmatic universe?
I see signs. I feel omens. Some orb, round and aglow, floating rock in the black speckled unimaginably ginormous above, oh i just feel everything. Everything and nothing and it is everything. And I curse myself for feeling this everything because i feel so alone in feeling this beautiful, strange, magnificent everything and maybe that is why i am an artist because i just want so badly for you to see this, to feel this too?
What is that everything? Is it love? Is it something beyond anything I can even use human language for? I create my own language … at least I try to do this, at least I try ?
take me for who i am, will you?
and i scream this to myself because i have tired of asking anybody else and because i still believe the lies stuffed down my throat … i felt like i couldn't breathe, no wonder. No wonder, right?
oh oh please wonder
please wonder
please wander in your wonderings and turn this grief into something beautiful, yes
but also let the grief be what it is
so confusing, i know, and yet this is what is
let yourself be you
i’ll love you as you are
I WANT TO BE THERE ALREADY!
Where is there? What is there?
Who knows? idon’tijustfeelimpatientfor what ?? i dont know??
maybe I just want to be free already, is that it?
Sometimes, I write in poetry (and sing and paint) because not having to make sense is the only thing that makes any sense to me.
Finding my way to freedom,
Nicole Sylvia Javorsky
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