Sam Alexandra Rose

Author: writersamr

  • Sometimes it’s okay

    Sometimes it’s okay
    to write a poem and then
    throw it away.

    You don’t need to keep what kills you.

  • Reblog from Tumblr re triggers

    clooovers:

    youneedacat:

    angrybabybirdofprey:

    okay can we just one last thing

    spreading the idea that one is only triggered when having a full blown, system-shut-down panic attack is damaging and delegitimizing to people who have physiologically and emotionally different reactions to…

    Great validating post on triggers. Speaking of which, I’ve been doing really well lately. I’ve been really happy with myself. I haven’t thought about cancer or Lynch Syndrome much for maybe a month now, and when I have, I’ve been able to let thoughts drift into my head, then let them go and move onto something else. And it’s been something I’ve instigated, like looking on the LS Facebook page, and then been able to stop thinking about easily. Until Sunday, when I answered the phone to a cancer charity who have been calling me every day for the past two weeks.

    I had been avoiding answering the phone partly because I was worried about the conversation being a trigger. I finally answered it and the guy on the line asked me why I had previously agreed to donate to the charity, to which I replied “personal experience”. I was then pressed further – “someone close to you?” “Myself…” “What kind of cancer did you have?” I probably should have just said mind your own business or something, but I just went along with the conversation. Then the guy started talking about his cousin who’d had cancer, and had suffered with a low immune system due to the treatment, and did I have that problem too? I didn’t think so. Apparently it was really difficult because nobody could visit his cousin if they had even the sniffles. That does sound difficult and though I sympathise, I don’t actually remember asking. I’ve had the charity (maybe not the same charity, thinking about it) call me before and they’ve always been really nice, but never as personal as that, with their questions or their own unsolicited anecdotes. It was all very strange and a little triggering, and also turned out to be totally unnecessary because they wanted me to donate regularly, which I do anyway.

    So. I think that’s the reason I’ve been finding it a little difficult to catch my breath a few times over the last couple of days. Breathlessness caused by stress, I think. I’m just going to have to try really hard to kerb my thoughts and not slip back down that hill. It’s only a setback if I let it be a setback, right?

  • sympathy for sciatica

    Isn’t it interesting how we can talk to and sympathise with each other about bruises, broken arms, accidents and so on, but we can’t do the same with things we really need to talk about, like life-threatening diseases? I stepped on a plug last week and spent the following days walking around like a drunk hunchback in slow motion. It hurt. A lot. But I didn’t really mind at all. So that’s where this has come from.

    I don’t want
    sympathy for sciatica
    because I know what it is
    and it’s not much to me 

    and what’s all the fuss over a foot?
    A bruise, a cut, it’s nothing much –
    soon it’ll be nothing to me 

    I don’t need tuts and shaking heads
    for being unable to drag my leg out of bed 

    Anything I can see is no real issue to me –
    a twinge is no big deal
    and pain is okay to feel
    if I know its rhyme and reason 

    But fear is the worst pain
    Fear is the sharpest stab in my side,
    the most familiar ache 

    I would welcome a broken arm instead
    A fracture is just that – a fraction of a problem 

    So I don’t want sympathy for sciatica
    I don’t need support because of my limp
    or anything solved by sitting down

    because none of that will drive me underground

  • Together

    We haven’t even left for work yet
    but already I’m thinking about
    coming back home to you.

  • neck

    what if we were never in a tunnel
    and the light was just a lie we were told
    to make us keep walking?

    what if that burst of morning
    was something they were holding
    just out of our reach?

    what if they watched as you ran
    on that treadmill, as you
    racked your brain for a lost memory
    when you fought their grasp
    when you held your head

    when you were just trying
    to remember
    the softness of a neck

  • Your bare ring finger

    Your bare ring finger
    is the most provocative thing
    I have ever seen, matched only by
    the nape of your neck.

  • the way the crow flies

    I am tortured by the things I said I would do.
    The list of things is mounting up,
    things I said I could do that I just can’t,
    things I wanted to do but was apprehensive of.
    Where has my resolve gone?
    Why no sense of urgency?
    Which way does the crow fly now?
    It zig-zags, taking any diversion it can.

  • the amount in which I miss you

    the amount in which I miss you
    is matched only by how ridiculous
    it is that I miss you
    and the certainty I hold that
    it doesn’t bother you

  • how does the weatherman feel?

    how does it feel
    to be so very afraid
    that every dark cloud
    will summon a monsoon? 

    how does the weatherman feel
    when he sees the hurricane coming
    but can do nothing about it? 

    how does it feel to know
    that every leaden sky
    could bring news just as heavy? 

    how will it feel when the
    first raindrop rolls down the
    side of your face like perspiration? 

    how will it feel to suddenly be
    in the eye of the storm?

    I wish I didn’t know.

  • how to be me

    be terminally honest
    different to the point of a fault
    while also
    indifferent, somehow

    be genetically and wholly unabashed
    be careless and
    care less
    and want
    and be so, so impatient
    and impulsive –
    tell yourself it’s
    a good combination

    love yourself
    try
    even when you don’t
    give yourself a reason to

    be shameless
    know fear as a terrifying tool
    open up like a lotus flower
    or a bulging trash can
    better out than in

    talk to yourself
    repeat things to yourself
    get some good responses
    appreciate yourself

    don’t change

    be unabashed