Alli’s Shadow work
Part one
I'm Alli. I'm an 18-year-old writer from New Mexico. Welcome to my little corner of Tia Khaleesis Garden. For me, this place is where I can share my story and my poetry. I'm hoping for you, Reader, you can feel less alone or at least entertained. I've had the craziest past 10 years and 6 months. I am more than excited to share all my stories. Welcome and enjoy!
I’ve always found myself to be a very wordy person, though I’ve been fighting a lifelong battle with dyslexia, I’ve always found writing to be a sanctuary. Misspelling and punctuation errors have never stopped emotion from showing through my writing. I’ve written poetry and songs for years, and not too long ago I started getting paid for my poetry, though not a lot, and it all goes into savings, nevertheless, I get paid for what I love.
I started writing poetry at the ripe age of 8, though my developmentally delayed brain didn’t know it was poetry, 8-year-old Alli loved the sound of rhythmic writing. My first poem read was full of misspellings, and it told about how smart, pretty, and full of love I was. Looking back I wish I still had the confidence I did back then. That same year I wrote my first song; “Love is Where You Want”. Oh my God. I still remember the melody to this day; it was atrocious but good enough for an 8-year-old.
A little hobby soon turned into an escape, and an escape turned into a coping mechanism. Getting moved around the system so much meant I needed some consistency. I found consistency in writing, in expressing my emotions through melody and rhyme. I’ve always found that I have a better knack for poetry.
I started writing horror poetry for a website back in May 2022. A way to express my fears and I got a lot of positive feedback, that validation felt really really good, but as things got good online, offline things were getting worse, and as things got worse offline, the more poetry I would churn out. My poetry went from horror to cries for help. My poetry went from a way of expressing my fears to a way of outwardly processing everything that was going on at home. I felt like Van Gogh, turning depression into something beautiful. That’s the thing though; Depression isn't beautiful. Van Gogh didn't eat yellow paint because he thought it would make him happy. He ate it because he hated himself.
I’ve drifted from horror poetry, and now I just write what I feel. I take experiences and try to make them eloquent and easy on the eyes. Writing has always been a huge part of my family, everyone in my family makes music, at first it made me jealous, but now I realize that I’ll just have to try harder to stand out. My poetry has gained traction on various sites, as well as my music.
Relationships are something I’ve always struggled with. I had a bad relationship with my adopted mom and dad. I’ve also had so many failed romantic relationships. I won't lie and say that I wasn't a part of the problem. But these failed relationships have been amazing motivators for my artwork. My thought process has always been: Never Waste a Crisis. I’ve always felt that there was no point in sitting around wallowing when I could make something out of it. I thought I was lucky to have heartbreak, I was lucky to have abusive parents, or lucky to have a partner who cheated on me. I took pride in it because bad things happening meant good art. Until that wasn't the case anymore. In February I stopped writing.
I had just been kicked out, I got rejected from a TV show, and I could barely get out of bed. Life had felt hopeless (not to say it still doesnt sometimes). I didn't write for 2 months. No songs. No poems. Nothing. I found no point. I started to wonder how one person could cause this much damage before I could write my art so easily because I knew that people had done me wrong, but now I was the one in the wrong have always found it hard to take full responsibility for my actions, I found myself lacking remorse. So, learned to drown myself in it. but it ruined my creative process, I could no longer write the way I used to. So after fighting and wrestling with these feelings, I wrote a poem titled The Longest Poem Known to Man. As the title suggests, it’s a very long poem and it’s about how I could never take responsibility for anything but instead, I just stated how I couldn’t. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t take care of myself. I couldn’t write any more poetry, I couldn’t do anything. And the conclusion that I came to was that I didn’t want to. Though I left my abusive parents' house. I found a lot of things they told me I had a bit of truth to them. well, maybe more than a bit. After writing that incredibly long poem (That you can read at the end, so stick around) I finished the album that I started and abandoned, a 13 song collection of horribly depressing pieces of art. i forgot that it was possible for art to make you feel anything besides sadness. but when i picked my pen and guitar back up this time the songs weren’t about how other people hurt me, but how I can improve and I tried to put a bit of a lighter spin on them and talk about my actual life and how as much as people have hurt me, I’m just as capable of hurting other people and I think we miss that so much in our everyday lives. “How people could do such things to us”, but we don’t realize that one person can cause so much chaos. when we’re done wrong, we find a way to strip that power from ourselves. A lot of times we go into the victim mentality, instead of moving on, but you can’t get better unless you start, unless you start forgiving people, unless you start realizing how much you’ve hurt them and start processing it. Because the truth is that we’re all people. We all do good things and we all do bad things and we’re allowed to process our emotions however we see fit.
The Longest Poem Known to Man
I've cried every day this week
and I'm not sure why
I've never been so depressed
but it's alright
or at least I think it is
I've listened to more music
but each song makes me sad
I've paid much more attention to the words
"I had a feeling so peculiar
that this pain would be for
Evermore"
I listened to that song for an hour staight while crying
and lying in bed instead of going to work
keeping my boyfriend worried
keep him on his toes
I'm on my toes too
I don't know why I feel like this
why it won't stop
no one is mad at me
so why do I feel that the world is against me
like there is a gun to my back
I almost want him to pull the trigger
he won't
who cares what I want
but I just want to be okay
why is it so hard to feel normal
I can’t stop my fingers
they move at lightning speed
writing the longest poem known to man
nobody will read it, stupid
it's not pleasant, because my mind hasn't been pleasant
nobody wants to know what you're going through
they want to read an entertaining piece of art
write that
no, I don't want to I can't
who cares who reads it, I wrote it
barely, I haven't even got out of bed today
I woke up at 2 pm
“Lazy”
“Sloppy”
“Ungrateful”
“Be better”
I can't
I'm trying my best
so try harder
I can barely keep myself clean
THEN TRY HARDER
I can’t
I can’t
I can’t
you won't
you won't
you won't
you're the reason for all your problems
self-sabotage is your middle name
you won't get up
you won't write music
you won't write poetry
you won't smile
you won't change your clothes
you won't take a shower
it's possible, you just won't
you want to stay sad
admit it
You like feeling helpless
You like that lack of control
I do
but you need it
I can't have this conversation
you won't
you avoid confrontation because you love it
fine I will have this conversation
goodnight
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