me

Tags

alone, anger, control, hatred, heartbreak, identity, life, loss, love, redemption, renewal, self hatred, suffocation, unfamiliar

do you not want to?
how easy. how simple. and yet i cowar. what do i want? i don’t know what i want anymore. my right to choose has been sucked from me, much like my soul. i’ve given so much. so much love. so much tears. so much money. so much time. so many years of my life. to so many different people and to some the same, too many times. i broke in hurt and each time, a piece of me broke off and was left behind. i wanted to leave parts of me with each person, all people i’ve touched in some positive way. instead i allowed them to touch me with dirty hands, taint me, hurt me, break me. and now i do not know myself. i feel suffocated and controlled. i feel anger with words of profanity before love. i feel inhabited by a stranger i detest. 
i guess i’ve grown tired by unrequited love. i’ve grown tired of the pains that can be controlled. so i’ve controlled a safe distance. i find doubt in myself where there was once trust and clarity. i never struggled with my identity. i always knew who i was and who i wanted to be and now i don’t know. but i know i’d rather my lips fall silent than speak anymore ill words, anymore bursts of profanity, or words of anger and hate. i’d rather fall silent and crawl in a ball and break than be touched by hands i want to walk through life with, who only tear me down.
i don’t want to hear the phone ring tonight or the sound of voices. driving through reflective streetlights and the world is a haze. i am not present. i am simply breathing. i am not happy. i am full of empty holes seeking redemption. i’ve asked other people what they thought more than i’ve made my own choices, seeking approval, seeking forgiveness, seeking completion. but all i’ve done is lose myself in what everyone else thinks and wants and asks of me. my fear is greater than the importance of my desires but now i don’t know who i am. and i fear that more than saying no, more than deciding, more than loss that is not death. 
i have not felt this serene in.. well.. i cannot remember. walking outside in the rain, in shorts, with my hair wet. it’s the first time i feel like me. it’s the first time i feel beautiful.
something stopped me tonight. something came over me. something changed. and it washed through every fiber of my being. palpitations disguised as anxiety but i didn’t push it out. i accepted it. i embraced it. i stayed silent and let it run its course through my body. and tonight, for the first time, i smiled and you know what, i was alone. and that is everything. 
-Allison Ryder 

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winter serenity

Tags

alone, art, clarity, noise, photography, poetry, silence, writing

this road was desolateand yet i felt 

ever so alive. 

i guess that’s the difference.

it’s unkind 

to stand with the closest people to you

and feel utterly alone.

but to be alone, with clarity,

with no false noise

full of pretenses

and broken promises,

that is true serenity.
-allison ryder 

alone

Tags

absence, alone, escape, freedom, heartbreak, life, lonely, loss, love, peace, people, poetry, presence, quotes, silence, value

being alone has always comforted her,

much like the silence.

her mind never shut off 

so the silence was nice-

vacation, freedom, escape..

being alone made her happier.

this was the first time,

she was not simply alone

but she was lonely.. 

here she felt 

the heavy presence 

of the absence 

of her forever. 
-Allison Ryder 

five stages of grief

Tags

alone, anger, daddy, daughter, death, denial, disappeared, father, five stages of grief, fuck cancer, guilt, lonely, loss, love, memories, poetry, post op, regret, rest in peace, sadness, tragedy, writing

sadness.
thrown over your body. tears break

every blood vessel. breathe. ear to your chest. 

you’re not breathing. your eyes are staring

at me but your breath is gone.

breathe. please breathe. please don’t leave me.

take me too.

those men in their black suits, white shirts-

I glance at them. delivering a death sentence.

I cry. tears steal my breath but you don’t breathe,

and then, they close the casket.
anger.
the tears may only come alone at night

or when water can wash them away,

but the sadness is not gone. it erupts

in a short fuse. it attacks each living soul, 

punished for being alive because you are not.

angry at a world for taking you.

angry at a world for not understanding.

angry I don’t know why. but so much easier to manifest.
post op.
you hit the bottle. half of you hopes

it blacks you out, the other half hopes 

it numbs you out. out with friends,

out to bars, out to eat, out to the store,

traveling down the list in search for fulfillment and purpose-

none of it feels the same anymore.

forced to try to resort to an old life,

a life that died because I died when we buried you.

nothing is the same.
guilt.
guilt for going out. guilt for trying to be normal.

guilt for smiling. guilt for breathing.

guilt for living. guilt for not knowing sooner, 

for not saving you, getting you better doctors,

for not stopping those ignorant physicians 

who saw hospice and stopped caring,

instead of honoring the oath they took to save lives 

guilt for stealing your pain with the result of your heart stopping.

guilt for not being there enough.

guilt for death. guilt for all of it.

guilt for living.
denial.
maybe denial comes before death

and coping masquerades itself as denial.

picturing you and talking to you, because you 

surpass life and death.

immortality. you were supposed to be 104.

denial. this isn’t how it was supposed to end.

I know you’re not here. I know I visit you at a tombstone 

instead of home, but my mind can’t comprehend this loss.

it’s not denial. it’s coping. coping through 

the one impossible thing

we never thought would happen.
there are five stages of grief

but maybe there are more.

some the get you to healing,
some that take you to whatever

is on the other side of that

because I’m on six.

blankness.

I have nothing left.

Five Stages of Grief

By: Allison Ryder 

4.28.16 

on the edge

Tags

allison ryder, alone, ending, giving up, impact, life, matter, miracle, pain, poetry, quotes, suicide, weakness, world

  

up against the wall

Tags

alone, Battles, bloody, circumstances, darkness, emotion, failure, fear, fight, flawed, fucked up, give up, guilt, identity, insecurities, lonely, negativity, obstacles, people, poetry, quotes, shadows, thoughts

she bled out the fight in her that night.

there’s something about sitting in a five by five room,

blinding your eyes with white, left alone with your thoughts-

your guilt, your fears, your insecurities, your most fucked up pieces-

that slices open your mind until you bleed dry,

until you fade into the darkness,

until the light runs out.

-Allison Ryder

4.2.14

Tags

30/30, abandonment, allison ryder, alone, anger, April, beautiful, chances, courage, cycle, fear, fearless, finality, flowers, future, goodbye, identity, illness, journey, let go, life, loss, motivation, move, national poetry month, nature, orphan, pain, poetry, purpose, regret, risks, roots, sadness, scared, search, travel, tree, unknown

orphan
by: allison ryder

dirt brown stands tall as
forest and autumn emerge on its tips,
but there lies no roots. it is said:
the lack of veins allows the flutter in the wind.
it can move and in movement,
it can grow.
not tied down; neither
to landfill nor island.
an everlasting ability to be on a search
for purpose, for meaning, for exploration.
to search this world at new heights without
the painful, guilty, insecure, doubtful
attachment of those left behind.
the pain. the sorrow. the anger. the loss.
the abandonment. fuel the journey-
motivates the mind. to leave.
to take the chances we fear,
to make the jumps into an unknown abyss.
it’s easier to leave when you have no roots.
there are no goodbye’s or fears
of illness and death,
of losing time.
but to let roots hold us down, hold us back-
is to have branches like puppets,
living a life we were not made for-
a life like a silhouette shadow,
not real.
it is to have branches with buds
that never bloom.
an orphan has no roots
but it has flowers.

strength comes from fighting alone

Tags

alone, Battles, experience, fight, friendship, learn, life, loyalty, obstacles, relationship, strength

I fight my own battles. I pick myself up. I always get in the ring alone but anytime someone swings and every time I swing, I’m never standing alone. but my strength came from stepping up to the plate- alone, without expectation- only fire in my eyes. -allisonryder

finding out the truth about myself.. in love

Tags

alone, change, confusion, false completion, fear, identity, insecurity, letting go, loss, moving forward, past, pursuit of love, truth

in my life, i have confused love with the fear of loss, the fear of change, the fear of letting go, and the fear of never finding my soulmate on so many occasions that i have pursued all the wrong people, trying to make them the right ones. i have falsely declared love where it was not. i unhappily settled in places where there was always something missing. until now. all i ever knew were the wrong people and painful roads, so i mistook bad males for good men. i did it as close as last year. but as i have grown and endured, i have learned. and as i have taken a chance months ago and had true love touch my heart, i have been blessed to see and know the difference, to know what i want and to know what i deserve. i have learned what is truly worth pursuing, waiting for, & fighting for.