Joshua 1:9

 I went for a walk with God this morning.

He met me in the sunrise and on the dew tipped start of green grass.

I asked Him why I always sense His presence behind me.

He told me He sends His angels out ahead of me.

That they fight with bloody fists, battles that I never see and clear my path before I set my foot upon it.

Then He explained that He walks behind me to guard my back.

He told me He was there blocking knives.

He said He doesn't walk ahead of me; because He promised to never leave me behind.

He promised He would be with me wherever I may go.

Be strong and courageous for the Lord, your God will be with you wherever you may go.

Joshua 1:9

Feet that aren't moving can't be guided.

Take the step, make the move, do the thing.

xoxo, Gussie

Joy

I’ve always wrote about pain

And of all of the unjust things

I’ve never known how to write about joy 

Someday I want to tho

Someday I want to write for you about the most beautiful things

Like

A morning sunrise so crimson and so gold 

That it actually heals some piece of your soul

Every blood blister, every bruise, every broken heart, every false I love you

Was a price you paid up front 

For all the true love, true peace and true joy now before you

Happiness is overrated 

It’s temporary and materialistic

Here in this moment and gone in the next 

I want you to feel pure joy 

To sit in the presence of God 

With the sounds of brood mares grazing and stomping and the panting of tired dogs 

To feel the warmth of sun on your face on that first hint of spring day

To smell a batch of cookies fresh out of the oven and a gentle hand holding yours

The little gifts of bliss

Someday I’ll write you something beautiful 

Something you can feel deep in your bones

Xoxo, Gussie 

Where Nothing Left Lies

Surely time will dull it down I hope,

Because right now it's awfully raw.

The gaping wound is gushing,

A twist is in my gut.

All the world is shaking,

The trembling just won’t stop.

A future of dreams, 

A death of every could be,

All lie lifeless at the ring of just one shot.

Could it be that this is the plan,

Or consequence of a mistake?

Did my ears choose deafness,

Did I refuse my eyes to open?

Perhaps I selfishly chose this,

All to end up broken.

There is no words that bear the pain,

No poem to do it justice.

Comatose, habitual breaths,

Only teardrops and sorrow,

A dreary trudge,

And a hug gone by tomorrow. 

This ending is unworthy of everything we built,

It’s shameful and gruesome,

Our broken souls’ guilt.

Happiness is perspective,

It does not exist without pain.

True love can not be gained or lost,

Without some great sacrifice.

I’ll stand watch while it fades,

Perhaps time will wash it away.

Leaving scars and proud flesh, 

A brave bandage as proof of the price we paid.

A story of what once was,

The history of us.

Built and gone, 

Dust to dust.

xo, Gussie

Alone

I need to be alone,

Let whiskey peel back the calloused layers of my brain

I need to feel something, 

To live for something,

Or die for it

I want to know where the line between experience and trauma lies

At what point does it turn from a lesson learned to inevitable self destruction

I need to peel the masking tape off of my wounds and let them have some air

Let them bleed what they have left to bleed so they can finally grow into old scars

I need to relearn a respect for pain, 

Instead of resentment 

Find my former appreciation for scars and poetry

Is it possible to have a healthy relationship with fear? 

Can I know it well but without the intimidation and superiority?

Or perhaps I will always keep it held with a white knuckle grip but at an arm’s length

Emotionally paralyzed in my own tired skin

Vomiting cuss words with a raspy yell because I don’t know how to express myself anymore 

Every breath feels like being smothered, 

Or the dreams when you can never catch your wind 

Each scream falls silent on the breeze

Nothingness 

I’ve lost the ability to distinguish whether it is my body that aches or my soul 

How does one lose themself?

Are we not in the same bodies, attached to the very souls we were born to? 

Then how can it feel so foreign? 

Does it happen over night or slowly grow into a stranger we don’t recognize? 

I need to feel something

I need to be alive

To listen to horses breathe again

Watch the sunset and actually see it

Smell the morning air when it’s fresh and innocent

I need to be awake.

Xoxo, Gussie

Some Shit About Stress and Happiness

     It's been a roller coaster the past 6 years. Just this stage of life, or perhaps all stages feel this way as they come.

    I've watched my health as a woman in her early twenties declining like a rock slide. One rock smashing into another larger one till the whole damn mountain is falling.

    It's been hard to watch, harder to feel. However, the hardest thing about it is coming to terms with the gruesome truth that it's been my fault from the get-go.

    Merriam-Webster defines the word EMPATH as

    "One who experiences the emotions of others" 

    I define it as mildly to extremely toxic, AF. 

    I believe that many people are born with a sense of empathy in them. It seems to me to be more commonly acted upon among women, though I have met some very empathic men too.

    I think there's surely nothing wrong with empathy. In a sense it makes us more human. Men seem to be better at telling people to "F off" though and I envy that.

   I took that empathy shit way too far, and it has caused me so. much. stress.

    And I know my girls are out there raising their shitty wine glass, or whiskey (I feel you) saying "Yo, me too."

    It's exhausting worrying about what someone thinks, wondering if you did a good enough job at something you weren't even required to do. 

    It's crippling wondering if it'll be taken wrong that you're prioritizing yourself tonight by taking a bath and getting to bed early instead of going out to the bar. You're not trying to hurt any feelings. You're trying to prepare yourself for kicking ass at your dreams tomorrow. AND THAT'S JUSTIFIED

    Better still, going above and beyond to be the most helpful person ever and then creating a situation where you're expected to do what you originally did as a thoughtful favor.

    I'm a people pleaser, I get it. I want to be everything for everybody's something they need.

    So when does this circle back to where this post began?

    Right, with being 25 and feeling like complete sh*t for 3 straight years.

    Funny thing, as I've dug deeper into my menagerie of health issues that many people close to me probably don't know exist, I've found one repetitive catalyst.

S T R E S S 

    Six letters of destruction. Self inflicted or not, stress eats away at you until you and your body really just can't take it anymore. Then if you add a healthy dose of alcohol, an empathic personality, an extremely physically demanding and under-eating lifestyle, you've got yourself quite the cocktail.

    I really love my comfort zone, there's a whole lot of people to corroborate that. My old boss and mentor loves to giggle at how tense I am riding colts and how he would remind me to breathe. And if he's reading this he's surely laughing at it again. (P.S. come ride with me sometime, not much has changed J. Law.) 

    Point being, it takes a lot for me to talk my mind into allowing myself to do something I'm surely capable of. I'm having to try really hard at it and sometimes I don't succeed. It's the most awkward in my own skin feeling ever.

    You write your own story in your mind. You create your reality with your imagination and subconsciously act upon what you think. I've seen myself play this out over and over until I just really can't deny its truth.

    I've been reading some books and I've finally started to make some headway on my health issues, it's going to get better and better, I can feel it.

    I feel like everyone has these huge dreams somewhere deep inside and it is really just a matter of whether or not they act on them. So I decided to do some acting and make some changes to my lifestyle and my business. 

    The rewards haven't yet been reaped but I think it will be worth it, there's already a load of stress and huge weight off of my shoulders. I've even found myself writing again, and I love it.

    I hope somehow these monotonous ramblings will make you contemplate what you truly value and I hope you prioritize it above all else.

    All the love, 

XOXO, Gussie 

Mental Nothingness

 The most worn out metaphor I can think of is waves. 

And yet my best metaphor to describe my ever changing feelings is; waves.

Sometimes they're drowning me, sometimes they're taking me for a hell of a ride.

Either way there's exhaustion of some sort, a wariness waiting for me on the other side.

My fingers have gone so long without typing now that it feels truly awkward.

Which is sad because writing used to be such an important piece of my identity.

Now it feels like something I used to do.

And it is. Writing used to come to me like a flood of words dying to escape my head.

Then I began to fill my mind with facts and concerns, with heavy memories and trauma, with stress, anxiety and shit I can't control.

What begged to escape me then, was curse words and anger, hatred and blame.

Writing was no longer an outlet but just more work. It became work to express my emotions, my ever so complicated, self inflicted misery. 

I made myself start a journal.

I've always struggled with the idea of a journal.

I'm a planner by nature so once I've spent my entire day figuring on how I'm going to do things it seems pointless to list it all out.

I realized I had so confined the idea of a so I decided that I would just write.

At first I had nothing to say so I just wrote what I did that day.

And then I start to spill over the top and the words were coming back to me.

A couple times I even escaped back into the place of mental nothingness where I used to write from so much.

Just an honest and peaceful, clean slate in my mind where I just allowed the words to leave me without effort.

It gave me a little bit of faith again, that maybe I still have that shard of myself inside dying to be unpeeled.

Xoxo, Gussie

Something to Say

 Well I guess I just don’t write anymore.

My hands are out of shape and getting cramped up.

I don’t bleed through my pen laying on a floor. 

I’d tell you that spreading my time too thin is what has made it tough. 

It wouldn’t be true. 

“Busy” is my usual answer when asked “What’ve you been up to?”

But busy isn’t why I don’t speak to you. 

I think I lost me, I can’t figure out where, but somewhere I lost who used to philosophy in inky blue.

Maybe deep down I think maturity equals silence.

I’ve felt that. 

But then does silence equal shame? 

‘Cause I’ve felt that. 

I rarely relive memories in my head.

The knots tied in my stomach over simple memories leave me something to untie and reheal for another precious long time.

I don’t know who I really was, but I liked her. 

I don’t think many approved of her, but she wasn’t all bad.

Perhaps that was the very essence of her, the lack of need for approval. 

Who I am now, I know less than ever. 

Floating fragments of each person I’ve been but they don’t all quite fit together. 

A little bit of pretty doesn’t get along with so much rough. 

You can’t be well spoken with as much as I cuss. 

And I know that, but hell. 

Or maybe it is well spoken, or rather well said.

I say it how I see it, and most of the time what I say is equally as harsh as the emotion it’s rasping down through me. 

Maybe now I speak so harshly because I never spoke for so long. 

This rant I feel should end somewhere here soon, before it quits making sense to you...

But maybe we’re past that now, oops.

I’m going to try to get me back.

The loud and outspoken, the brave and unashamed, the breathlessness of happiness, I’m going to find it again  

I hope you do too.

XoXo, Gussie