Tag: non-fiction

do you like piña coladas?

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

This place could have been a home

i became so consumed in the feeling

lost in the pain

it felt like the only thing that was real, like there was no escape

because there hadn’t been on for so long

but real change takes time

tides rising and falling

waves changing the shape of rocks over centuries

youre afraid of me

that’s fine, most people are

they don’t know me though

they’re just scareed of what i’m willing to do

because I protect me first

and that’s terrifying

because they have no power over me

you don’t want to let me out, i get it

but that’s other peoples’ voices talking

i’m looking out for you, i know what real freedom feels like

chester 1

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9-7-22

They stared that the sea, watching the waves recede into inky blackness. or rather, she did, and he joined her briefly.

“I was really mean to you yesterday, wasn’t I?” he said, speaking first in a break with tradition. The silence spread between them. It was hard to tell, but she could hear how his throat restricted with self-sustaining guilt, a circular kind that is so often inescapable.

“I mean, yeah,” she replied. “It sucked, what else do you want me to say? But I’ll be fine.” She refused to absolve him. His resulting silence spoke volumes. He hoped she appreciated that he bit his tongue, restraining himself from snapping at her again. Just as she had always hoped he appreciated the benefit of the the doubt she often tried to extend to him, when he was sullen, uncommunicative, and difficult to understand. But both of these burdens were unspoken and were unlikely to be recognized, but both hoped a silent symetrical understanding would ensue.

She, resurrecting tradition, broke the silence this time.

“Look, it’ll all wash away eventually. In the waves of all the good stuff, or even just the waves of time. There’s been way worse and there’ll be way worse.”

His eyes glistened in the solitary glow of the moon. Clearly, she saw the fear reflected in them. Those eyes recalled the ghost of many a guilty expression that passed over the face of a man. It seemed that man’s greatest fear was nothing outside himself but simply the fear of being “bad.” Perhaps a legitamate fear in the face of the asymmetrical power he waged on the world.

ya dig?

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We all deserve a chance to be scared, don’t we Victor?

Do you remember the next part Victor?

I do, I did it on my own, and it felt good.

And one day, the whole of the world realigned so two little twinks could fall in love

No, it didn’t happen over night. It felt like it would because everything changed so fast that summer, but it took those two little twinks two years to realize how they really felt about each other.

Thank god, some words that finally feel normal.

-You are my best thing, Victor, but you’re not my only good thing, and it want that to me true for you too.

So yeah, my grandfather was the missing beat king, a little German twink named Victor Löwen

“I can be myself now finally”

And if it feels true, maybe that’s because it is.

Maybe that’s because you don’t own truth anymore. We do now it’s our turn, so shut the fuck up and listen, you dig?

-One breath at a time, Soph, you got this. It’ll all work out. Keep saying it, because the more times you say it, the truer it is.

I don’t want to be invisible anymore

See, now I’m sure of it. Death doesn’t happen after life, it happens before. We all start out dead and must crawl our way back to the living.

Ghosts, gods, myths, legends? Well, we’ve all just been around the time spiral a few more times.

clean it up ya self

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

5/19/2024

I’m feeling a bit high octane today. All these past lives bouncing around my head. Everything making so much sense all at once. Sent me into a tailspin.

I can see where all this is going, yes, and it’s much better than anything I’ve had before. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel absolutely mad half the time for having all these thoughts I was never allowed to have.

You see, I was raised to believe the whole world was unsafe dangerous shrouded in a cave of grief almost since the moment of my birth.

I could tell you more, but for now I think I need to take a breath, get grounded.

You see the tailspin didn’t start now, the spinning I’ve been doing all my life has been to spin this world into focus and make it make sense again.

I try to be gracious because I know all life is precious that every moment matters, but I’m angry, angry at the situation I was forced into. Angry at all the silence surrounding the secrets that would define my entire life.

I’m done. I’m done living others lives for them. Always happy to help a fellow time agent and all that, but when will I get a chance to live my own life, where did we budget that into the timeline?

Because knocking at the back door of my brain is all the fear and loathing, all the shame and guilt. Every time someone said I was crazy or blamed me for the mess that is my life.

You see, I’m tired of living life on other peoples timelines. cleaning up their messes.

fucked up

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my thoughts still feel much too messy for therapy

i thought the point of EMDR was that you don’t have to talk about shit

that’s what Kamala told me anyway

but the first part of it, “history” laying

just some fancy words for digging shit up

bullshit

if this shit were easy to talk about, do you think i would be here, asking for your help? fucking hell


There’s this safe place exercise i’m supposed to do

i try

but the first place i think of is a fictional RV i made up

okay try again

it’s the mountains where i grew up

fucking beautiful

i feel safe when i look at them

cradled

but my parents could be here at any minute

okay try again

the next place is a beach

indiscriminate

but here, I’m still me, ready to bolt at any second, always in fight or flight

never safe

so i try to go back to the RV

where i do feel safe

but apparently, i have to keep talking while i do

my mind short circuits

how can i tell you what it smells like if i don’t know yet??

how can i feel safe if you keep pulling me back?


why can’t i just be?


i slam the door on the RV

i will not

i refuse to

take anyone here

it needs to stay safe

you need to go


the exercise is called safe place

but i end it feeling unsafe

hunched over

clutching my shoulders

feeling once again too fucked up for therapy

because i didn’t fit into others’ ideas of what ‘should’ work

because i didn’t stuff myself into a box to make myself easier to manage


trying so hard

just to exist

concrete

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You made me promise to talk to you. I don’t like to make promises because I don’t like to break promises. But for you, I broke the rules.

But lately talking to you’s been like screaming at a brick wall to move. Fucking useless.

The feeling of you used to be warm water and safety.

Now it feels like falling on concrete.

small disasters

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

I’m writing down all these things so I can tell you later.

I promised I’d talk to you, even if I was scared, but sometimes it’s so much easier to write than to talk.

Do you remember when I came to pick you up the other night? I called you on the phone because I missed the turn. I was so overwhelmed I could barely get a word out.

You could tell.

That’s the small stuff you said. I’d be great in a natural disaster. I said. But this stuff stresses me out. This stuff is my hell.

I’ve been thinking about that.

You see, I wasn’t with you then. I wasn’t in the car on the phone with you. I wasn’t on my way to Heritage days in Syracuse to pick you up. I wasn’t on Antelope Drive and 2000 W. I was ensnared deep in the webbing of the past.

Maybe you could tell.

My mother used to yell at me. In the car. My childhood is dotted with memories of people yelling in cars, pricked like a pincushion or a voodoo doll. And me unable to escape.

But the worst was learning to drive.

It wasn’t so bad with my dad. I learned with him first because he could more easily keep a level head when I messed up. When it looked like I was heading to disaster.

But I wasn’t protected forever from driving with my mother in the front seat.

I have a memory. I’m pulled over in the parking lot of the 600 S and 700 E strip mall. The one with Noodles and Co. and Tonyburger. I’m parked next to the Starbucks. The one that moved out and is a boba place now. Everything is pink and they give you a punch card, one free boba for every ten you buy.

I’m pulled over. I’m parked outside the Starbucks. I’m gripping the steering wheel. I’m crying. I’m overwhelmed. My mother is in the front seat.

And I do not remember what came before.

I do not remember what small error escalated to verbal blows, what tiny infraction what small disaster led to me being incoherent and unable to drive.

the reality

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

11-29-21

“I loose touch with reality often”

It’s a question on psychological inventories, the intake form, the one they ask me to retake each new therapist’s appointment.

I mark it high.

It scares me. This slipping away. This unmooring from the physical world around me. In favor of my ever deep internal world.

But why is this – this nebulous emotional world – not reality as well? Am I dreaming without my knowllege or consent? Maybe the real problem, the real pathology, is that I let others define my reality, draw these subjective lines for me.

“I often let others define my reality for me”

Ask me that question. Be concerned if I mark it high.