My Cardboard Balcony

I am an emotional person. In other news, cows produce milk and vaccines prevent you from getting measles. Yes, it may seem weird that I'm mentioning this. Everyone who loves me knows that I'm emotional. I am extremely sensitive. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve - I wear it pulsing on my arm. There are benefits to this. People can tell I'm genuine, know that I can empathize with them during hard times, and can tell that emotion allows me to be creative and in tune with at least some aspects of the human condition. And while for the most part, especially in a professional setting, I've worked hard to keep my emotional side tamped down, when it comes to moments of stress, pressure, and discomfort, my emotional side can really rear the uglier part of its head. It has not helped that I have a history of being bullied, or that I suffer minor forms of compound trauma due to bad job experiences in the past. So it's been a lot of work to build a shield to deflect...

The Ocean Calls by Belinda Roddie For my sanity's sake, I will swim to England tomorrow.

We were builders once - constructing an empire out of mere shadows, which, once they collected lights, became monoliths of their own reckoning. We forged alliances with angels who wore celestial swords like talons on their hips, and so we crashed upon the chasm of Hell with chariots raging with fire. But then we were dismantled; piece by piece, we were segmented and relocated, and now the deconstruction is complete, and the realm is riddled with never-ending holes.

Wish Me Luck by Belinda Roddie Wish me luck, for I go down a new road tomorrow, one I do not know how to navigate, and the distance only grows between my knowledge and my comfort. So many friends and loved ones proclaim to me that I have their support, and I'm grateful for it. Still, though, I'm used to planning three times over, to having a map or stroll down the path just to get a feel of it. But now I have to learn to improvise, to understand that while I may be hit with criticism, most unjustified, I have to forge myself a spine of steel, something to overcome all of the feels.

"Hey, you two look like you could be twins! Are you two related?" I force a smile and lean my back against the cold glass of the bus stop, while my friend Jessie keeps looking at her phone. It's true that we could be mistaken for cousins or even siblings, but twins? That just seems a bit too much.

Sometimes by Arden Roddie sometimes,             just existing                         is enough.