Anger

This week's topic is: Anger. Is it good? Is it bad? I also discuss ways to get your anger out so you don't internalize it.

Helplessness

Here's today's video I just put up on the WeRFreEDomFighters collaboration on YouTube. This week we are looking at different emotions and I have a few words of advice about this one: helplessness.

Take it for what you will! <3

As usual, you'll have to click to view on YouTube, as embedding is disabled.

Winds Are Blowing

Winds are blowing; I am here.
I stand, unchanged, in the midst
Of whipping air and blinding cold.
Long walks in a wealth of winds
Has aided me in my quest for strength.
Winds are blowing; I am here.
I stand, unwavering, in the center
Of close currents and closer chill.
Winds are blowing; I am here.

(c) Arielle Lee Becker 2008

Exit.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving like a flash of light

That shone once and was gone.

Safer to go than to stay,

Better to learn than to wait,

I’m going. I’m flying.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving and I’m coming back

A new woman.

Out of my life and into my dreams,

Born once again,

I’m running away.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving like a gust of wind

You feel only for an instant.

I’m ready to jump,

I’m ready to fall,

I’m ready to go.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving and I’m coming back

A new woman.

To care for myself,

To leap into the unexpected,

To grow like a flower in the rain.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving like the moon leaves

In the morning light.

Like rain that falls from full clouds,

My thoughts cascade and flow

Into carved paths time digs into the ground.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving and I’m coming back

A new woman.

Leaves fall and bloom again in spring;

So do our spirits fall, only to again

Be replenished with happiness.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving like the seeds

Leave the swaying trees.

Like a seed, bursting from earth

So I have grown too,

A flower not yet fully blossomed.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving and I’m coming back

A new woman.

Promise is there—

The promise to experience

With a face upturned toward the sun.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving like yesterday

That turns into tomorrow.

Exit—here I go,

I’m leaving and I’m coming back

A new woman.

***

A poem I wrote 2 and half years ago. Hope everyone is doing well.

Help Me Live

I wrote this 4 years ago today. At the time, I thought I was writing to someone--to some unknown source--for help and guidance...but now, in retrospect, I realize I was writing to myself. I was asking for help, pleading with myself. This poem describes how I used to feel each morning when I woke up. I'd feel drained. I'd feel scared. I'd feel alone. I'd feel miserable.

Help me live

To face the day

Look around

And be okay

Help me live

To face the night

Think alone

And be all right

Help me live

To face the me

In the mirror

That I see

Help me live

To face the crowd

Beat the battle

Make them proud

Help me live

To face the day

Look around

And be okay

(c) Arielle Lee Becker 2003

I finally helped myself live...just like I was always asking. It was mostly about self-realization, self-love, and self-expression. It was partly about listening to myself. It was partly about doing what I really wanted--what I really really wanted. It was partly about deciding I was ready for a new life. It was partly about getting rid of the bad in my life and surrounding myself with some more good. And it was a little bit about lots of other things that made me stop, made me think, made me turn my head to see, and made me understand at last.

Arielle

Extra Light.

Extra light in the room, pressure inside me. I think I need to break. Or is it ‘break out’? Hide and seek with my feelings has become a redundant game and I can’t think of new rules anymore. Sometimes sleepy-eyed thoughts find their way into my head like young children that need to be nurtured. Rhythmic chants and piles of dreams fill me with a feeling I find difficult—and difficult to explain. Senses fail, but one. Sight remains to streak my mind with visions needing words and sounds and smells and touch and taste. Tempting trances overtake me; beauty longs to hold my hand. Tricks pretend and dreams unfold—reality escapes me. Where have I gone? A thousand tiny lights shine on me and inside me, and pretty soon I’m floating in a luminous sky. Overcome and overpowered, I stretch and reach and suddenly shoot forth, my fingertips sending me away away away—and further…until I skid to a stop in front of me…and leap inside.

(c) Arielle Lee Becker 2004

Please send me something for Tell Your Tale Tuesday. I've been getting so many nice emails for Tell Your Tale Tuesdays, but none yet for this week's! And tomorrow is Tuesday! Have a great week everyone.

Arielle

Fight the Good Fight

I wrote this about 2 years ago. It's what I call "stream of consciousness" prose poetry. I write a lot of it and it just flows. It seemed a fitting thing to post today and here's why:

I had lunch at a large Mexican restaurant today with co-workers. When I went to the Ladies' Room, I decided to leave a note in one of the bathroom stalls that read, "Beauty is not a state of body. It's a state of mind. Love your body," with webiteback.com's web address at the bottom. I keep a little package of post-it notes in my handbag in case I am ever out somewhere I'd like to leave a positive note for someone else to find. There was a party of 60 (yes, 60) teenagers in the restaurant and as I was leaving the Ladies' Room a whole mob of teenage girls went in. I know one of them (or several of them) found my note and it made me happy. Everyone--eating disordered or not--needs a little positive reinforcement every now and then.

But anyway, here's Fight the Good Fight.

Fight the good fight, know the wrong right, fill the void and see the light. Here I go, again and new, fresh, awake, alive and true. Passing by the life I know and focusing on where to go, for I will follow where I’m needed—paths are taken, prayers are heeded. Brain’s mad switch is flicked off…on…I’m not here but I’m not gone... jittery and full of life, I need to live before I die. I need to find the reasons why and cry and sigh and say I tried. Dipped inside a vat of pain, I know I gain when I remain a seer of the songs of old and preacher of the words I hold. Along the sky I write my voice, in ink of breath…a thought, a choice. And still I’m waiting...day’s sad end has seen me weep but still I bend. My words I send to you and yours, alone I smile as my heart soars. I know it pours. Water? Blood? My soul? My life? It pours, now cut through like a knife. And still I say, away away, fight the good fight, know the wrong right, fill the void and see the light. Flickers of the sky’s dark space—it really makes you know your place—and will erase the pain you felt when all those others cruelly dealt their blows to you and all your soul, just breaking you, and you were whole, but pieces looked about to fall and so we’ll catch them, one and all. The sky knows best, it does not rest, and I protest…never. Fight the good fight, know the wrong right, fill the void and see the light.

(c) Arielle Lee Becker 2005

***

I hope you are all having a good week (and if you're not, I hope it gets better), and don't forget about Tell Your Tale Tuesdays.

Arielle

A Letter To the Past

This is something I wrote when I was 21, after talking with my counselor about a specific year in middle school when I was "shunned" by some girl friends. We discussed how detrimental it was for me and that at age 11, when I was in a crucial stage of development, my eating disorder really began. Perhaps it was only a seed, but that seed learned to grow and I can see that very clearly now as an adult. I had never really allowed myself to be angry and forthright with these girls, so I did so in this letter. Finally, a decade after that year in middle school, I was able to say what I had always felt, and add in some of my adult thoughts as well.

Dear girls,
You are not really "dear" to me. Nor are you labeled mere "girls" in my mind. You are "mean girls" who have been detrimental in my development. Why did you do what you did to me? I think I know the so-called real reason, but it still doesn't make your behavior natural or acceptable. You did it really because you were jealous. Because you didn't understand why I had developed physically before you. Because you didn't like that I got lots of positive attention from teachers and boys because I was "pretty". Because, in your little girl minds, you wanted to break me down. You wanted to "show me". You wanted me to feel pain. You wanted me to be un-popular, un-wanted, un-loved, forgotten, shunned, snubbed, and alone.

You were all nice once. You were my friends. But in the name of something I still find difficult to understand, you backed each other up. Ganged up on me. Ignored me. Mocked me. Wrote hateful notes to me because you were all too ashamed or afraid to tell me hurtful words to my face. Why? One thing that hurts a lot is that I know you fully realized you were being mean--and yet you continued. And the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and soon, a year of my childhood--and a crucial year at that--was gone. Drowned in tears of misery and loneliness.

Ten years have now passed. 11 to 21. And I keep thinking...if only you knew how much what you did to me affected me. If only you knew how "outgoing" changed to "reserved", how "opinionated" became "accommodating", how "present" became "hidden", how "vivacious" became "subdued", how "filled" became "starved". I don't fully blame you. I don't push my issues onto your conscience. But you had something to do with the way I am today. You played a part in molding me. You helped shape me--not by gently caressing me, but by hammering me...banging me down until I was less.

Why?

You made me cry. You made me retreat into myself. You made me a prisoner of suffering. And now suffering is so familiar that I cling to it, use it to cope, use it to keep myself in check.

You manipulated me, girls. You followed, girls, instead of being leaders, instead of standing up for what was right. You tormented, girls. You ripped me apart. You broke me down...then pretended it had never happened. But I did not forget...even though I forgave...so quickly...because I was so hungry for friendship again. Ravenous.

I went home one day--pale, wan, lonely--and I sat down on the toilet seat in the bathroom, brought my knees up to my face, and I bawled. Sobbed. "They told me I'm conceited," I cried to my mother, probably the least nasty thing you girls actually said, but something that hurt the most because I had done nothing. "They're jealous," she said. But I was not comforted...because I was still alone. The reason did not matter.

Why, girls, why? Do you remember the things you wrote to me? I think my mother still has those horrid notes in a box somewhere. She took them from me, upset, and called your mothers to inform them what was going on--what you were doing to me. Your mothers did not approve either...but you did not stop. And I was still alone.

In 6th grade Social Studies, Mr. Moyer set the class to work on an assignment, then he asked me out in the hall. "Are you okay?" he asked me, as I twisted a yellow scrunchie on my wrist. "Is everything all right?" I know I named two names--the two that hurt the most because they'd been my best friends since age 5; "_____ and ______ aren't speaking to me," I said, lightening the situation by choosing those words instead of harsher ones. He told me he was worried about me. He told me to come to him if I needed to. But there was nothing he could do. Furthermore, can a man really even understand what girls can do?

Skinny. Sickly. Sad. Me. Lonely. Listless. Lost. Me.

The germ named Anorexia grew. It might have stayed small, unknown...but it grew. Then. That's when it started. The beginning of it all. It might not have begun...but it did. Why did you do it to me, girls? Why?

Arielle, age 21.

Exit, Breathe.

Exit, breathe. Enter, seethe. My anger grows and still I stay, a willow tree who’ll only sway. But one day…one day… I will jump and they will see that there’ll be made no fool of me. And I will speak and speak and speak and they will know I am not weak, I’m not alone. I’ll crawl no more, I will not crawl, I’ll stand up straight and enter tall like what it is that lies inside, for inside I’m not small. Hyper-empathy, that’s me, the girl who’ll cry at all I see and smile when I sense the joy that everyone is feeling. By healing what I need to and loving what I do, I’m on a mission to destroy the bad and uplift what is true. It might just start with you.

(c) Arielle Lee Becker 2005