you deserve the love you keep trying to give everyone else
“I was going to say I miss you but I guess I’m not that brave yet. Already I can hear the people talking and evision myself throwing my brain radio into a bath tub lined with candles.”
@sarahxerta does not run out of magic // her fantastic poem “spill” is up at metatron today
I have a new poem up at the Metatron Blog xoxoxoxoxoxo
One day, it just showed up on my doorstep.
Honestly, I don’t know how it found me again.
The last night we spent together, I lured it away
with a trail of breadcrumbs–a necklace
it swallowed one diamond at a time. Such a hungry
little bloodhound. I led it deep into the forest,
fastened its legs with twine. Dug a hole.
Said I will jump if you jump and it did
just like I knew it would. And now,
here it is again–on its submissive back,
its pink underbelly exposed—and I cannot say
I didn’t want this. That I haven’t waited
by the window. I sculpted your body
from the dust on the doorknob. I’ve hoarded
your name in my mouth for months. My throat
is a beehive pitched into the river. Look!
Look how long this love can hold its breath.- Sierra DeMulder
This poem can be found in my forthcoming book Today Means Amen. Available for presale now! For every book ordered or purchased between January 2nd – February 2nd, my publisher Andrews McMeel Publishing will donate $1 to To Write Love On Her Arms, a non-profit which aims to present hope for people struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury and thoughts of suicide while also investing directly into treatment and recovery.
I made a new Instagram account, I’d be so happy if you followed me. I am excited to make photos again/ write the light xo
@sarah_xerta
“It’s the thirteenth day of spring and all the snow
is dirtier than it was yesterday. My teeth
are one day older and the sky
has another thousand molecules of cancer moving through it,
but my eyes have been dry,
and that feels really nice, in bed eating Oreos
like a normal person, my feet getting warm as my brain
softens and slips away from itself
like a moon, a sailboat, all the pretty things
we don’t know how to hold.
You asked me for a letter
and I sent you a star-shaped piece of my tongue.
You asked me for a letter
and this isn’t it. I’m sorry. I get so busy
thinking about you that I forget
to think about you. I imagine my insides
like a whole sea of sailboats
murmuring to each other in the dark,
and I wonder how many secrets exist on the Earth at any given moment,
what breed of flowers
will dig their roots into our graves, what shade of gold
is your breath when you dream?
You make me want to make stamps out of morning,
seal every envelope with a moan.
How many fibers of the universe have we given birth to?
Like this I am always wading through an orchestra, my hips
always brushing against some sort of glass, all these breakable
thoughts about God, the sun
in April, the sound you make when you look at me and don’t make any sound.”-Sarah Certa: “JULIET”
thank you so much <3
some ppl confuse empathy and/or spirituality with hyper-optimism & I think this is dangerous. whether the hyper-optimism comes from a place of privilege or is itself a self-defense mechanism to keep their own painful emotions buried, when ppl respond to other ppl’s pain with hyper-optimism it often further invalidates that pain, which ultimately only leads to more pain. I view emotions as energy frequencies, ranging on a scale from high to low, so it only makes physical sense to me that low-frequency feelings, such as depression, for example, are not going to suddenly bounce up to the high-end range of the scale, & even if they did, this dramatic shift would be unpleasant & maybe frightening, forcing your energetic system to adjust from one polarity to the other. my own energetic system used to do this all the time & it was excruciatingly painful, known to some in the western psych world as rapid-cycling bipolar disorder and/or the rapidly changing emotions that often accompany the class of symptoms the DSM calls ‘borderline personality disorder’ (which I have a *very long impassioned theory about that I will maybe share at another time*). So anyway if someone is feeling on the low-end of the spectrum it makes sense to me to 1) validate those emotions! Emotions are energetic signals – they are telling us something, even the unpleasant emotions we would rather not hear from. We are energetic beings & exist in so many more multi-dimensional ways than our physical bodies. Low-frequency/painful emotions are messages that something is wrong, & some might say “well yes there is a lack of serotonin in the brain” but that still doesn’t answer *why* there is a lack of serotonin in the brain (and sometimes it has nothing to do w/ serotonin or the physical brain at all so neuroscience as the universal foundation for figuring out emotional pain really doesn’t cut it for me & also largely ignores or at least does not center the roots of trauma & sociopolitical oppression), & if you’ve been my facebook friend for a while you know I am all about getting to the root of things. which brings me back to my favorite topic: QUANTUM PHYSICS. I believe that feelings are composed of subatomic particles just like everything else in the universe, which means I believe that our feelings have a direct impact on the physical world simply because feelings are, at their subatomic root, already a part of the physical world. BUT – I believe it is dangerous to translate this into the idea that hyper-optimism is the key to transforming painful emotions into less or not-painful emotions (this is known as the cringe-worthy concept of “positive thinking” as the cure to all yr woes), because to do so is to ignore or resist the energetic messages those painful emotions are sending us, & it is **resistance to energy** that is most painful of all. I believe painful energy needs to be processed & before it can be processed it has to be recognized & validated, & to me recognizing & validating where people are currently emotionally at is the first step in extending true empathy. and this true empathy is, at an energetic level, the highest frequency of all!!! I call this highest frequency Love & it is so fine & so electric & so infinite & multi-dimensional that you don’t even have to speak it for it to do its work. it works subtly, beneath the surface of what we can see, so that when someone is in pain & you choose to empathize with that person instead of project hyper-optimism or what *you* think they *should* be doing/feeling, you are both meeting that person’s current emotional need, an energetic alignment which helps provide some energetic stability, (which is much healthier than jumping from low to high anyway), AND stirring up the subconscious or perhaps unconscious high frequencies of Love that will continue to do their work even after you are finished extending empathy. this is why when we are in pain we cringe when someone tells us to just “cheer up” or “snap out of it.” that cringing is a sign that their energetic vibrations are not what we currently need, otherwise their messages would feel good! often we know exactly what we need: someone who is willing to listen & validate us, which is why it feels so good when someone does. that good feeling is the subtle work of Love as we process our pain. we need empathy/ Love.
a lot of hyper-optimism comes from privileged New Age thinking that does not empathize with sociopolitical experiences outside of the status quo, which is partly because we are currently living in a global empathy deficit & it is exhausting & downright awful. yet somehow I have hope, & I swear that’s not hyper-optimism lol.
I love you. <3
some edited excerpts from my 2015 journal & why the seemingly insignificant words we write to ourselves matter as much as anything else
cw for self-harm, suicide mentions
without social media as a distraction I have been forced to be deeply alone with myself & goddamn if I’m not the ugliest & most beautiful person I have ever known. I can barely live with myself/ without myself I barely live.
I deleted all of my social media accounts because I didn’t know how to exist anymore as a holographic image sourced only by other people’s perceptions/ ideas/ inner self-projections
but here I am now alone with my perception/ there’s not even an echo
but here I am alone now & it’s not any more or less spectacular
I keep trying to tell a story but it starts out real boring like this: once upon a time the Universe got real big in my ear & said DUDE you have GOT to wake up
but it’s scary to wake up without you so I just kept sleeping in your coffin & this is how we both died & it has been terrible
I am so tired of things being terrible & so I’ve stopped pretending to be a person after all
the Universe doesn’t care about coffins & that really is in our favor but goddamn yes I am exhausted too
without selfies I am going to forget how I look & I am so excited
my heart moves at the speed of light, which shouldn’t be that weird of a concept since hearts are literally made of light but gosh I think I scare people & so mostly I stay away from them
I am every moment you have thought about suicide
I am every moment that came after that
Hi
hello
let’s pretend we know each other/ let’s stop pretending we don’t
Crying. That might seem obvious, but it’s okay to cry, and you probably haven’t heard that enough. It’s okay to break under all the weight of feeling broken. It’s okay to break because they broke you. It’s okay to break because you are broke. Tears mean nothing in a capitalist system. Crying as resistance. Crying as expression. Crying as manifestation of the personhood they took when they broke you. Like you your tears are pointless. Like you your tears are infinite.
it’s my birthday & if you love me enough to want to gift me this is what I want: for you to take a moment to love yourself today.
when someone else’s words resonate with you it’s because they’re aligning with the tone of a truth already inside you