Extracting Medicine from a Skeleton Soul

Part One - Ground Zero Grief

This is going to be pretty intense, just a heads up.

For context:

a few months ago I recorded this, asking people on social platforms if they had topic recommendations for me to cover on Substack, as I was just starting to apply myself here:

A topic request came through today, and I’m going to answer it.

I won’t disclose who it was, but this was the comment:

“I have given up on love, life, and fill-in-the-blank... Every time I put myself out there, I get punched in the ... Not sure if this is a topic. But, fuck it”

---

Moving through loss, heartbreak, trauma and grief is not just relevant, it’s something I’m in the middle of myself, and I don’t know many who aren’t.

I also have a lot of experience with Death itself. I have experienced an abnormal amount of it for someone who hasn’t been deployed to an active war zone.

---

Part One

What I’m re-learning and want to HONOR is that grief, regardless of scenario, demands to be felt and heard. Yet we live in a society that will shut you down the second they get a whiff of it. Why?

Same reason they look the other way when grave injustice or suffering occurs— cowards act like this shit is contagious.

Because of this, we are often navigating these things alone, with no frame of reference of what to do, other than what’s widely encouraged in this culture as a solution for everything — bread and circuses.

Part one is going to FIRST honor the grieving process of what anyone has been through, whether betrayal, feeling suicidal, heartbreak, death of loved ones, etc — it is all valid and the only way I can adequately reflect that is with poetry and music, so that’s what I’m going to share with you in part one.

Part two and three will be different, but even with the darker things I share in part one, I still stand by this:

LOVE IS NOT DEAD.

It is so very much alive. I can tell you this while currently having a broken heart and processing more betrayals than I can count from someone I loved beyond words.

Oddly enough, even if we were stabbed in the back or betrayed, the fact that our hearts are still capable of love, AND we got to love someone that deeply, is a win.

But more on that later, because right now, that probably sounds completely insane.

Love still exists, and there is NO hope lost. However, I understand why people feel that way.

That’s why we’re starting from the base of the experience, and not jumping into some ra-ra love and light bullshit, because that is why these processes can be so isolating — people look at you with that fluoride stare as if they can’t for the life of them understand why you’re in pain. “There’s something on the TV, there’s beer in the fridge, why don’t you just say fuck it and be fine, like immediately?”

Lord. Okay let’s get into it.

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Everyone’s Favorite Piece Of Trash

Odds are, if you’ve REALLY been through the wringer, you may relate with this song:

It’s called “Everyone’s Favorite Piece of Trash”. I believe when I released it, I called it Everyones Favorite for the sake of brevity / attention spans.

I wrote/recorded it in a motel room in East Tennessee, late summer 2022. It prevented me from ending my own life.

I had a pistol in one hand, and a mic stand set up in the corner.

Somehow, I chose the mic, freestyled the vocals and sent them to my engineer. He then built the beat around my vocals. Then this song was born.

It saved my life, and it may very well validate what you are feeling. (This is PART ONE, there is a part two and a part three to this song, it does get better, hang on.)

*Want to know a behind the scenes twist to this? I wrote this about one “situation”. Then a year later… guess who helped me shoot this music video for it when I finally released it? The next situation, the one I just got out of, the one that nearly took my fkng life.

It was SO weird to be releasing a series of “recovering from abuse” songs while literally re-living the cycle. I am NOT kidding.

BTW don’t judge…we had no idea what we were doing regarding shooting a video and we kinda left it grungy and shitty on purpose, but yeah this was our first time using a GoPro to shoot a video, as I did not have a music video budget.

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Poetry 🌟

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Poetic ground-zero purging…when we do this, we can start to answer our own question of WHY..

Or, at very least, allow the ghosts inside the abandoned haunted houses that have become our bodies the dignity to SPEAK, so they may be set free:

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“And what hurts the most

is people can go

from people you know

to people you don’t” 

How do you extract medicine 

from a skeleton soul 

So many loved ones ruptured or dead 

it’s like no one sees me no more 

...

Unless you've been to an active war zone 

Im not sure you understand death on this level

Unless you've seen your tribe fall like dominoes 

Im not sure you understand death on this level 

🖤

And im not the surface type, I see the god in them 

and they see me too, better than I see myself often 

time stops when we conversate 

time stops when we congregate 

but what happens when your congregation explodes into flames

💔 

People look at you as you suffer in silence… and if they notice slightest injury.. 

They look at you like, “Why are you sad, just move on, or I WILL, for fear of your leprosy!” 

💀

But there's no life in their eyes 

Because they’ve never lost it 

There's no love in their eyes 

Because they’ve never lost it 

There's no depth in their eyes 

Because they’ve never been that low 

And for the ones that have.. 

Well.. 

Those are the people I know

“And what hurts the most 

Is people can go 

From people you know

To people you don’t”

And what hurts the most 

Is when everyone dies 

And you’ve given up hope on having another life 

You plan ahead for your suicide...

Give a grace period, but make arrangements for the ride

And then someone comes along 

And puts the color back in life 

You didn’t realize ‘til then 

You were living in black and white

🌟

You start talking to God again 

You think it’s a second chance at life

Prayers you didn’t have strength to articulate have arrived 

Because when every other reason I once had to live does not suffice 

This person came along and I was no longer a flat line 

I was revived.... 

What the fuck kind of a game was that?!

Was that gods redirection in the form of poison

Or was it the demon that my pastor told me of?

LISTEN:

The one who possessed a child 

brought him to the brink of death repeatedly 

But the torture lied within the fact 

that he could never taste the sweet relief 

And thats a hell of a lot like what this person was to me 

A reason to live turned into a roller coaster ride 

Then plummeted straight into a demonic soul tie

Pushing me to death I had a gun at my head three times

But always pulled back, always pulled back, 

Only to have hopes restored and thinking god would save us 

Then it happens again, it happens again

Then im screaming to god, with a pistol to my head

🖤

It felt like a bad acid trip meets Stockholm Syndrome 

And as the layers of this ware off I am a walking landmine 

Nightmares at night and flashbacks by day 

Horrible things play out and I am confused by feeling ten different things 

And someone pointed out to me in the midst of my rage

That I was still grieving, grieving something I refused let myself see

Because if I truly looked, I’m afraid it’d have me running back to…He

🖤

And in a world that grows more cold 

And with a tyranny that rages on 

And with a population more dumb and docile than anything I could’ve conceived of… 

This is not the time to be a lone wolf 

🖤

Not to say we should link with assholes 

But it reminds you more than ever, when you stare extinction in the face, 

That it is not so easy to give up on the sick 

When you bore witness to their willingness

And you, who saw yourself in them 

Looking in a mirror of your past demons

You were twins

Except I’m in the future, or rather in the now.. 

And you… are still back then… 

How do those timelines collide?

🖤

And that is what is so heartbreaking

When something is not so black and white 

That is what is so baffling 

Living in a wasteland with a soul tie 

🖤

So, how to extract medicine from a skeleton soul? 

This is how I was left, they picked flesh from my bones 

When I figure it out, I’ll let you know 

An empty and cold, bone-break Saturn silo…

When I figure it out, I’ll let you know 

Though we may feel dead, estranged from “home”, 

There is medicine..in every shadow

We are still alive, more adventures await 

It’s just hard to see, in the suspended place

The chapter between chapters, the space between spaces

The waiting room to the void, I know it feels like the end 

I know it's not easy, dying with living flesh 

but as the Ancient ones have said…

One must aim to die 1000 times, before a physical death 

welcome to transformation, i know you didn’t sign up for it

at least not from any, re-called consciousness..

growing pains like death, a snake shedding skin 

whatever your assignment, this is training season

everyone is here for your evolution 

but not everyone is for your destiny 

I know it fucking hurts

but there’s another chapter, so come with me…

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END PART ONE.

Part two will come out… either tomorrow or tuesday.

*Disclaimer: The four lyrics that I put in quotations and in the block quote are that way because I did not write those, they are from a Halsey song that I had stuck in my head, just those four lines, as I freewrote the above poetry. Everything that is NOT in a block quote is original material. Wanted to credit either Halsey or whoever the songwriting team was on that song.

The above photo was taken as a re-enactment of what happened that night in East Tennessee, as I was getting ready to promote the series of these songs.

Picture taken by Libby Danforth in Madison, TN at Apple Annie’s Inn.

Model and Pistol is Me and Mine. Same one from the East TN motel I told you about.

Music and art save lives. Glad I chose the mic stand. If you ever feel that low for any fucking reason, REACH FOR ANYTHING ELSE other than a weapon and I swear to God, something will reach back.

Just do not do that. I can tell you FULL FORCE that I am so glad I didn’t make that decision. Even though I’ve continued to go through hard things, I have also experienced straight miracles, and tremendously beautiful things, and have evolved so much.

I actually WANT to be alive today, and I think the life I have is beautiful. That’s saying a lot, coming from someone who has struggled with suicidal issues since a child.

JUST SAYING. If it can get better for me, it absolutely can and will for you too.

See you in Chapter Two.