Suicidal in Solitude: How To Be Alone

 

(by Nayyirah Waheed)

TW: mental health, grey-suicidality, and mentions of trauma-specific memories...etc.

    6 days after the Full Moon in Virgo I left the city for a break, desperate for rest and a peace of mind I prepare to return after 6 nights for the New Moon in Pisces. Feeling suicidal in solitude I tried escaping, but no where to run from my own mind I thought a change of scenery would save me; I tried dreaming but fell restless with the moon still changing... I tried crying my loneliness away as I confront my lack of loveliness - how to be alone when my head and my heart tire and tear each other apart.

"even if you are a small forest surviving off of moon alone,

your light is extraordinary." - reminder by Nayyirah Waheed

    Fishes swimming in circular conjunctions as I search for balance in the dark, the yin and yangs of memories I remember and feel at the intersections of trauma, growth, and grief... I remember wanting and planning to die at 18 and how it is community work that helped stop me. Ever since, I've been feeling grey-suicidal while often having anxiety/panic attacks or depressive episodes about visualizing death of loved ones and myself. My mind has always had a good imagination as the moon influences my creatives, but when it comes to the deaths of both myself and those I care for - I find myself more and more dissociating from life as death becomes dreams... Thus I ask how to be alone when I dissociate from my own breath ?

"tonight, under the moon:

choose you." - Nayyirah Waheed

    No matter how lonely and no matter the loss, I choose myself. I still wonder of love and if anyone would love a sad girl searching for softness like this, but I realize that I must be the world's teacher and peer to keep loving by example, despite such grief. How to be alone is exploring what beauty comes when embracing solitude. Thus no matter the breath, we are full - unlearning how to be alone through refilling ourselves... If only I could feel satisfied of worth by being instead of becoming while reminding myself to embody love. In life I've learned to grieve but through love I'm ready to heal. I still cry myself to sleep dancing with sunsets' dying rays of gold, and I still stay up with the moon whispering in stardust... Maybe the peace of being alone is the pace of becoming - slowing down a breath for a break thus becoming alone in growth and grace. I don't know how to be alone in solitude because I have allowed shame to consume space, and I come to practice embracing solitude as forgiving myself in full humanity. I need to forgive myself for hurting even in ways I thought I had healed, I must forgive myself for the ways that my body, soul, and mind feel... Thus how to be alone while suicidal in solitude, is to become softer.

    6 days/nights for a break from the city, with lessons of flighting from crisis is me becoming crisis itself after the family home triggers my fights within. So under the moon I meditate - in hopes for higher vibrations of emotional stability and maturity. Thus living grief and loving solitude we ask how to be alone, even when we are free to take another breath, despite it all. 

Love & Grief: How To Be Single

 

(by Nayyirah Waheed)

    Passing the Full Moon in Virgo I loved in freedom. Drowning in tears I bathed in my own blood for rebirth, like daughters of the moon I grieve in love as I give birth to myself once more. Belly-button bleeding with femininity transcending a mother and newborn in one - holding a breath and waiting to cry. I give thanks to honour the grandmother moon, as "love is moontime teaching" (Billy-Ray Belcourt).

"I'm trying to remember you and

let you go at the same time."

- the mourn by Nayyirah Waheed

    How does one grieve over love ? Especially in such isolations during the pandemic... I was supposed to let go last Spring but since quarantine and city lockdowns I found myself holding on, still reaching out and texting back, afraid of loneliness when it already feels like my depression is killing me slowly. Throughout 2020, we went through another year of what it seems of us versus the world, which is a clear red flag of co-independence that I've trying to change in connection from romance to friendship. Yet sometimes, what's meant to end will change its course accordingly, unbothered by my own logical timeline of closure attempts... Let's not pretend that softness survives in concrete wastelands like these, as its not the substance of my love changed but the softness of my love disappointed. I become angry but so helpless to witness a loved one being chased by anti-Black violence and capitalism to the point of no peace - in spirals of social paranoia/distrust/isolation and mental/emotional restlessness. It's extra difficult when I believe in, work with, and have survived through anti-capitalist ideals of community grassroots and mutual-aid practices/politics/poetics... I ask again and again of how to breathe softer so we don't break yet the truth is, some can not afford to breathe deep, or to rest without stress and plan without panic. So how does one love through grief ? How does one really let go when becoming so good at understanding/empathizing ? How does one still believe in the healing of love ?

Him: "sometimes I feel like being a Black man in Canada,

you gotta be a superhero you know ? you have to dodge all the bullets, 

even the invisible ones, and those are the worst ones too 

- they get into your head and makes you think its you.,,"

    Loving has taught me so much, maybe too much that it feels heavy in the heart but I have to believe that its worth the grief to love better, even at times when I forget how to dream with tears flooding my bedsheets. I try to ease my heartache by looking to the Black/Indigenous/trans women/femmes that have came and loved before, as grieving/loving masculinity and healing/rehabilitating colonial-patriarchal violences have been such transcendent teachings of us femmes surviving/navigating relations... Thus I must not give up on love, and I shall prepare and work harder to love ever softer. I need to un/relearn more, and to contribute this energy back into my community efforts. As I've learnt that my love is not a haven for the hurt but can be such raw materials to build and cultivate safer spaces. Perhaps the most honourable and humbling lesson of love is to know its shifting power of being everything and nothing at the same times... When I say I love him but his stomach growls back in answer. When I can't love or pray someone out of police custody, when I can't convince him to stop working and sleep more, when I can't love him out of debts or the demons in his head... How does one keep loving without crying myself out of breath ?

Him: "one day you're gonna find someone soft and relaxed,

not pressured like an animal towards their goals..."

    Sometimes we don't even know of our own softness/magic. As I remembered one night he asked why I say that I'm searching for softness when it's already in me, I come to understand bell hook's notions of "soul-murder" being similar to the violent disconnections from our softness within. I hope he can slow down and listen to the softer voices - a sound I wish to continue amplify so we no longer come to conversations with ourselves in desperation of worth or validation. I wish him a break to breathe without rushing air or swallowing regrets... I hope him well, and over the Full Moon first I hold him in memories of gratitude. He is my first love and by far one of the greatest lessons of my life, one that will continue in my life in different ways/forms. He has taught me to be loved and I only wish that I have shared my softness enough and well. I love him, and I know that I will always love him til the ends of space/time as he has embodied a safe space for me also. He doesn't know how special and capable of love he is with the possibilities/seeds of love and change already in him just waiting for him to water/grow... We have loved, and that’s the most beautiful thing a human can ever do. It breaks my heart and shatters my heart at times when I won’t be able to save him from systematic violence, when I don’t know how to help other than easing stresses by some contributions here and there, and I just hope that someday he can really dream and imagine beyond survival... I believe that we can return in the future with deeper loving relations but for our growing pains now I'm thankful for being so loved and held softly through. Thank you my love, for holding space for my moon even if I'm filled with sadness and when I feel less than full.

    Thus how to be single is learning to breathe when heartbreak. Perhaps soul shattering but beautiful in ways we fall, deep, then finally back to ourselves. As empty and lonely I feel, I am hopeful as I have been loved and I will continue to love, fuller... How to be single is a lesson in-between love poems; How to love and grief is to embrace myself fully once again holding the moon.