My Heart Thaws

September 28, 2016Leave a comment

My Heart Thaws by Valerie Parente

“You know that mysterious feeling when you smell a certain scent and that scent elicits specific memories?”

“Yes…”

“I’m feeling overwhelmed by a sort of time warp… a time warp beseeched by what I can best describe as an ethereal scent. I’m not talking an autumn aroma that invokes nostalgic memories or a specific stench that reminds you of traumatic experiences. I’m not talking a succession of frames streaming like fluid through your memory banks or distinguishable snippets flickering like consecutive flashbacks rolling through a film reel. I’m not talking mechanical reminiscing as a product of some psychological disposition or resurfacing scars brought forth from intensive therapy. I’m not even talking about a scent that hones your mind! I’m talking about the most inexplicable, indescribable, kind of scent that hones your heart… this otherworldly kind of scent that leaves your present perceptions disconnectedly attending to the world but shifts your reactions into intensely reliving the past! I’m talking nine years ago! I’m talking feelings of innocent attraction and distinct anger and vivid hopes and crazy dreams that were all alive and kicking nine Goddamn years ago! Feelings right before the mental breakdowns that broke my mentality and froze my heart! Nine fucking years of letting the cruel and cold mental disorders numb out the feelings in my heart that hurt so bad! And I forgot how much it stung nine years ago before my reality became a shadow tagging behind a haze of obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders. But today that haze is clearing! Today the sun is warm and I can feel it shining down and thawing my heart! And my recovering heart is warping back to a time when crushing made me high and love was totally blind! When somebody made a choice that hurt and something better could have worked! And all this heart ache violently tugging at my core is making me realize that maybe, just maybe, I blessedly became mentally ill! I numbed out my feelings as a means of survival, because to become mentally ill was to stunt my emotional development! To stunt the instrument of my emotions was to freeze time on my heart! To put my heart on hold! And maybe icing out the world behind a distorted icy lens was my way of preserving my heart right before it had the chance to break in half! But I am feeling, and I am alive, and I am okay, and I am better than ever. I am feeling it all now.”

doll-heart

– Valerie Parente (9-28-16)

Order In Disorder

August 26, 2016August 18, 2018Leave a comment

Order In Disorder by Valerie Parente

There is an order in this disorder.
A recyclable cycle that can best be described as a pattern of the mind.
A pattern of thinking perfectly warped thoughts and a pattern of reacting to those thoughts by invoking protection against the twisted perfection.
The disillusions playing in rotations are the thoughts with the connotations systematically assigned to strike different panic chimes.

In this sick masterpiece, these thoughts became obsessions egregious as transgressions only to be diffused by a reactive set of rules. These reactions became compulsions strategically malfunctioned.
And yes, these rituals provide relief, but it is that very sense of success which legitimizes illegitimate stress.

mental with material brings emotional

– Valerie Parente (8-26-16)

Conscience of Nonsense

June 14, 2016June 14, 2016Leave a comment

Conscience of Nonsense by Valerie Parente

I have a conscience full of nonsense
and sensory receptors that can’t censor the pressure.
It’s this feeling on my hands that I can’t understand
like an invisible film leaving marks on my skin.
Carefully constructed obstructions created to function
against the notion of change that threatens my name.
I cannot resist all these consistencies
that are based on a promise of personal solace.
Yes I know my views are deeply skewed
but I refuse to be blind to the insights that are mine.
Still I question the spawn of my obsessions
Nature versus nurture? Is it inborn or is it learned?
Even if I knew the cause it couldn’t erase the scars.
So I turn a biochemical disposition into my ambition
and manipulate the disease that manipulates me
through a phraseology that captures all of me
branding my self before everyone else
by arranging language to my advantage
and defining my mind with words so sublime.
The infusion of nonsense with a written form of conscience.
While my heart aches from the pain I embrace
nonetheless, I am blessed to find beauty in darkness.

Beauty In Pain

– Valerie Parente (6-14-16)

The Gargoyle Mindset

May 22, 2016December 19, 2020Leave a comment

The Gargoyle Mindset by Valerie Parente

Behold the gargoyle mindset
This is an anxiety complex
The result of an artistic process
By a paranoid architect.
A sculpture so grotesque
Created to act as a fortress
A creature against all the darkness
Featured along a flying buttress.
The gargoyle awaits upon his tier
But its purpose has begun to veer
Going from complacent to cavalier
A defense mechanism with a spear.

In the gargoyle mindset
Anxiety is placed with fret
On the outside it sits
For all to witness.
Once designed to protect
Became its own threat
A public display of stress
Notorious in all its ugliness.
Sometimes our minds equate safety with fear
And we get caught up in this superstitious idea
That to scare off the scary coming near
We have to create a scarier peer.

“A Gargoyle Named Anxiety” by Valerie Parente

– Valerie Parente (5-22-16)

Grandiosity of the Sick

April 13, 2016June 14, 2016Leave a comment

Grandiosity of the Sick by Valerie Parente

When retention of information is censored through sanity
then attention from the psychologically challenged must rely on vanity.
It is a self-centered way to overcompensate
for what we lack in our mental state.
I call it Grandiosity of the Sick.
The glorified martyr heuristic.
Where those of us who struggle hone our inner pain
through an art quite prone to become vain.
Thinking the anguish we feel is profound.
As if to be miserable puts us on higher ground.
Saying those who reject our thought process
don’t understand because we’re too complex.
Creating beauty from our moping
is a dangerous form of coping.
Because perceiving mental malfunctioning as our best,
can lead to believing we’re only useful in our distress.
But to call this warped mindset a stigma is not entirely fair,
because what could be more admirable than finding comfort in how we’re impaired?