{"id":16,"date":"2005-02-14T17:55:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-14T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washwords.wordpress.com\/2005\/02\/14\/valentines-day\/"},"modified":"2008-08-04T12:05:19","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T16:05:19","slug":"valentines-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/2005\/valentines-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Valentines’ Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the windows of the car, the slush and rain reflects gray back to me, to the world and back again. I have behaved so poorly. Outrageously, even my therapist agrees. “Why are feelings so important?” she asks me. What else is, I wonder.<\/span><\/p>\n

I try to stamp down, shut out the pervasive green sea-monster that rises and grows inside me. I try to see it for what it is, a monster, a demon, an addiction – like heroin, she says, that I must resist, that I must quit cold turkey. But something about it is soft and soothing, Muppet-like and reminiscent of girlhood rainy days warmed by books and cozy lights.<\/p>\n

So maybe I shouldn’t think of it as a green monster, this omnipotent jealosy, this seething rage. I picture thunderstorms, hurricane me as a colleague once called me after a short rage-filled elevator ride with me. I picture demons, heroin, murderers, poison, venom, steely jagged hurts.<\/p>\n

I don’t do it to punish myself. That’s not where the weakness lies. I do it in the hopes of jolting, shaking myself into submission with the horror that these are things my heart contains.<\/p>\n

I do it so I can stop. Stop lashing out at the ones I love. Stop judging, presuming the worse, filling with hate and with fear. Stop sabotaging, willfully breaking and twisting the most important and precious of bonds. I do it to stop hurting, hating, spinning, twisting, aching. I do it to stop, to turn off the engines, shut off the motor, curtail spinning wheels, retract all moving parts back into their shell.<\/p>\n

I picture the horrors of my heart over and over, in more fantastic and terrifying ways all just to stop moving, clear a path, and try to find the still, calm, deeper me. I do it because I am curious — behind all this swirling, spinning fury, what will I find? I’m afraid to say it outloud but I’m hopeful there’s a stiller stronger loving me in there, a girl I’m sure I once knew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the windows of the car, the slush and rain reflects gray back to me, to the world and back again. I have behaved so poorly. Outrageously, even my therapist agrees. “Why are feelings so important?” she asks me. What else is, I wonder. I try to stamp down, shut out the pervasive green sea-monster […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[50,25,1246,35,46],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-love","tag-mental-health","tag-poetry","tag-single","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}