Tag: mental disorder

Seraphic Daydreams

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Seraphic Daydreams by Valerie Parente

Hope has always been so much bigger than the pain and the recovery,
Seraphic daydreams have always been the predominant part of me,
An ideal reality I blew into the air, as natural as the wind,
but I worried about the intrusive thoughts that persist,
and the truth is, you can think all you want,
but it’s belief in the heart…
that is the real charge.
I do not fear my demonic OCD fixations anymore,
because I know they don’t represent my angelic core.

– Valerie Parente (5-10-2021)

Third Poetry & Prose Collection

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Do you want to own a hard copy of my latest poetry?
My third poetry and prose collection is currently in the works and includes fan favorites such as:

Not Bionic
These Laurels Were Never Meant To Rest
The Spider Princess
Material Girl
Seascape
Like Fine China
Poetry: Sight and Sound
Fishnets
Pamper Yourself
Celestial Being

…and over 150 more pieces!

Make sure to Follow this blog, valerieparente.com, to stay up to date for the new book release!

Make Sense of It

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Make Sense of It by Valerie Parente

I saw my teacher speaking,
I saw the words on the paper,
but I couldn’t make sense of it.
I knew it wasn’t a foreign language,
but it damn near felt like it.

I tried and I tried,
I read the same pages as everyone else,
but when it came to discussing the chapter,
I missed everything they talked about.
Peers scoffing that I didn’t understand what I read,
teachers scolding, thinking I didn’t read at all,
peers moving on to honors without me,
teachers announcing that I was lazy.

This isn’t a pity party,
this is processing a processing issue,
that went on for so long undiagnosed,
and I just want to understand,
why it was so hard to make sense of it.

Now it all makes sense,
why I struggled in the way that I did.
Starving my brain certainly didn’t help,
but it felt like a just punishment for being the “dumb friend”.
Developing obsessions certainly didn’t help,
but it felt damn good to understand something inside out.

They said this was about intelligence,
they said I was just stupid,
but I didn’t feel stupid,
I felt like I was trying to make sense of sound with sight,
like I was reading a language foreign to mine,
like I was going through the motions blind,
like I was faking it all the Goddamn time.

Well I’m a writer now,
I make art your class can talk about,
I excel at university with essays,
I write books, I write articles,
and guess what? I get paid.

This isn’t a bragging session,
this is finding comfort in that it was never about intellect,
and I just want to understand,
why full grown adults who were supposed to help,
couldn’t make sense of it.

– Valerie Parente (4-12-2021)

The Owl Mind

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The Owl Mind by Valerie Parente

Nocturnal under the moonlight,
with visions of horror,
so many fears when it becomes night,
like a bad dream in color.

Intrusive images play in rotations,
amplified by the dark,
wide-eyed in your fixations,
as you perform your thoughts.

Something about the evening,
the howls elongate and stretch,
so foreboding like a demon,
so much worse when the sun sets.

Vigilant on treetops like a tower,
is it paranoia or being wise?
Everything is scarier after hours,
and yes, that includes my mind.

The owl mind is exhausting,
the owl mind you can’t trust,
but there is no other option,
dark will always follow dusk.

– Valerie Parente (3-31-2021)

Awareness Vs. Exploitation

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I think there’s a very important difference between writing from a point of mental health awareness and mental health exploitation. Mental health awareness is about going to a dark space and shining a light on it, exploitation just drags you into the dark abyss, offering no solace. I’ve made a vow since my diagnosis to make sure my art does the former.

– Valerie Parente (3-9-2021)

Not Bionic

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Not Bionic by Valerie Parente

You can be recovered
and still not feel okay
maybe for minutes
maybe for days
the key is accepting
that you operate
on the very mechanisms
that make you brave.
You are not bionic
you are not unfazed.
You are a child
of the moon’s display
and that will always mean
that sadness comes in waves
but so does happiness
it arrives all the same.
It is this temperament
that helps you create
it is your reactions
that leave room for grace.
When you have a memory
and it’s by mistake
you are allowed to feel
any type of way
because you are not bionic
you are not man-made
you are something natural
deep in outer space
you are endless and real
in mankind’s masquerade.

– Valerie Parente (3-4-2021)

Moonlight

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Moonlight by Valerie Parente

I used to be haunted,
at the mercy of the night,
but now the night lives in me,
so I manipulate the moonlight.

I used to see ghosts,
trapped in space and time,
but now I see this reality,
without the irrational fright.

I know I obsess in phases,
and that gave me the insight,
that fixations are not fixed,
they’re just a state of mind.

Like water that flows,
as the moon controls the tide,
moods always come and go,
that’s just a part of life.

I am more than my mental state,
I am a body with moonlight inside,
call it energy, call it a soul,
call it proof of a spiritual kind.

– Valerie Parente (2-28-2021)

Invincible

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Invincible by Valerie Parente

The glory of being open about mental health
is that nobody can weaponize it against you.
Anything you say, I’ve already said myself
and nothing is more invincible than living your truth.

– Valerie Parente (2-3-2021)

There Is A Reason

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There Is A Reason by Valerie Parente

Contrary to popular belief
I did not choose this pain,
it chose me.

I did not choose to fixate,
my mind was already made.
I did not choose to restrict,
it was in my genetics.

I did not throw my life away on that fateful day in ninth grade,
it was meant to happen to teach me about compassion when you rise from the ashes.
I was predisposed to every mental hoax so that my soul could know true spiritual growth.

– Valerie Parente (2-1-2021)

Spellbound (Analysis)

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Spellbound Analysis

A major project I have been working on in 2020 and 2021 is a fantasy series (to be completed). The poem Spellbound is not part of this series, but it is inspired by the same artistic process I’ve been using to write my dark little fairy tale. This process consists of me translating my mental struggles into fantastical terms and motifs. I was thinking to myself about the obsessive nature of falling in love or falling into fascination with a person, place, or thing as someone with OCD. It is an experience more negative and toxic than it is positive and enjoyable. And it’s something I get called “crazy” for a lot, so I wanted to write a poem in my own little self-aware way as a hypothetical rebuttal to anybody that weaponizes my OCD against me. With that in mind I started to refer to the that mind-altering moment when I fall into fixation with something as a “spark”. This spark, something that many people feel with “love at first sight”, is always exciting at its inception. In the mirrored fantasy version of my psyche the spark is, quite literally, “magic”. That spark has proven since I was a teenager to always end badly though, and that’s why Spellbound describes the origin of this spell as a blessing from a witch that has gone awry. “[She] struck my heart, but must have missed […] because I feel it in my brain.” This whole concept of feeling love in the brain instead of the heart is, well, at the heart of my experience with obsessive compulsive disorder. It’s a trick. It’s a gift gone wrong. It’s not the magical feeling that one feels in heart, it’s obsession, and that is the difference between OCD and real authentic love. One is felt in the brain, and one is felt in the heart. The one felt in the brain is a toxic version of the latter. And I’m no fool to how that spell has manipulated the way I handle social situations in the past.

Spellbound carries on to describe three stage of obsession in rhymes. First the excitement, second the longing, and last the devastation. This is pretty self-explanatory of how OCD feels in any brain that feels the initial “spark”. Then the poem finishes off in a closing stanza about the repetitive nature of the OCD cycle. OCD fixations happen in the following order: Obsession, Compulsion, a feeling of Relief, and then starts over with a new Obsession. This model for the mental disorder was directly referenced when writing the last stanza. The reason I even thought to write this poem was mainly due to the sentiment expressed in the last line, “It never works out and I get worse. A brand new spell with the same hurt.” This is where my frustration comes in, because I do truly feel like falling in love for most people is like a spell, but its a magical experience that is innately positive. I don’t feel that way as someone with OCD. This positive experience that seems so great for everyone else always goes wrong for me because of the way my brain malfunctions in an obsessive compulsive manner. I thought about this recently because I started to feel a new spark, and it was fantastic, but I shut it down as quick as possible. I just don’t have the energy or will to be spellbound again. Not now, at least. Someday I’ll figure out how to be spellbound in my heart instead of my brain, but that day is not today. I’ll stick to exploring psychological phenomena with a rhythmic fantasy backdrop for now.

You can read my poem, Spellbound, here.

– Valerie Parente (1-29-2021)