About Me

I haven't worked out if I'm a poet yet. Mostly, I've always hated poetry. Mostly, because I can't connect to it.Probably, because trauma has prevented me from connecting to my inner world. 
I'm autistic and ADHD with an eruption of complex-PTSD that blew off trauma’s lid at the age of 48 and now I can't get the frickin’ lid back on again. 
It's left me with a bunch of very raw emotions that have been preserved in the exact form they were in when they first got stuffed into the box… starting at the age of 2. Some of the memories don't even have words to describe them. 
And this is where the poetry comes in. 
Somehow, it feels less painful to pull out the raw emotion and put if on the table in front of me, where I can try out a bunch of words to see which ones evoke the biggest “whoosh”. 
It makes me feel connected to the pages and to myself. Like I am finally putting words to a faceless silent memory and giving the distressed inner child a voice to be finally heard. 
Pointless poetry and meaningless mumblings are still awful. 
My poetry is written to capture the big emotions that I feel. People tell me that my poems made them cry. Well at least I am not crying alone any more. 
Maybe I am even finding a way to describe what I feel now. With words that other people recognize as synonymous with profoundly devastating and debilitating pain. 
Maybe it's just a different kind of box. Maybe this is how the lid goes back on.Perhaps, I just needed to untangle the mess, iron out the pages and carefully fold so it can be filed away in long term storage. 
Perhaps.