Anxiety Made Me Do It

This whole process that I am about to introduce, quite literally, I blame it on anxiety. The process that I am referring to is what I now call "Codependent Poetry" or "Codependent Haiku". I have played with both hashtags on Twitter and FB, mainly because it is a process that is still in creation.

It all began with an anxiety filled girl that was once a relatively extroverted individual. She got pregnant at 19 and these feelings of stress, butterflies accompanied with the urge to vomit, appeared out of nowhere. Of course, this girl was me. I had no idea what the feelnigs were or why. It was just out of the blue one day that there was this sudden urge to dash when there were people around. I went from being relatively well adjusted and enjoying going out to lunch with friends, shopping, and other social activities. I had previously done slam poetry in front of crowds and went to Disneyland a couple of times per month. Then, I had my son and all of a sudden it was like, I couldn't go out. I had no desire to be social.

Of course, life doesn't stop just because we want it to. I still had to do these things. It was just so hard.
So,I started going to therapy. I was familiar with that process for reasons that don't need to be stated here. My therapist suggested that I bring a book with me, something to either read to distract or if that didn't work, to write in for the same reason. I complied and began going out in the world on my own for short trips. I would go to the coffee shop or to a restaurant and order a meal by myself. I brought with me a notebook and a couple of pens.

Eavesdropping is Easy

It is actually hard to ignore people... at least it is for me. I don't really know how to tune people out. I have a hard enough time filtering myself and others can be impossible. I have sound sensitivity but I didn't know that that was what it was at the time.

In any case, because of the inability to ignore, I found that when I wrote I would start with my own thoughts but then would wander and kind of mindlessly write what I would hear mixed in. Then, it became sort of a selective hearing process. I would unintentionally try to make sense of conversations. This meant that I would have to strain to hear people and I would have to pause to see responses. This cut down my productivity. This was also rude.

Being rude, fearing that others are judging me, even strangers tends to cause me more anxiety. This is counterproductive.

Developing a Style From Someone Else's Words

Always a fan of haiku, I began to stealthily turn people's words into poetry. Sometimes it was funny. Other times it was just sad.

I have years of poetry that I wrote like this.

Over time I would loop them into stories and I would carry a notebook with me just about anywhere. I could grab words from one conversation or another and began to mix the words based on my feelings. I didn't take time to think. I just went with it, counting syllables in variations of 5-7-5. I also challenged myself to continue this practice regularly.

I have been doing this practice for about 20 years.

During the last couple of years, I have been through a lot and my anxiety was on full alert. I hadn't actually done the practice in a while because things were mellowing. When my life exploded again, I had a few friends around me. One of them finally asked me one day what I was doing. I didn't think about it really. I just sort of did it.

I tried to explain the process and now I am more aware. I aim for whenever I am in a group conversation that I will have writing like this as a backup plan. when I did this during my last crisis, it was just me. This time, I had kids on my own that needed care and clients that want stuff done. Because the issue of being overwhelmed is still there though, so was this process.

Friends Make Life More Fun

When I introduced people to the mix, it got interesting. A few of my friends kind of knew what I was doing but I don't think that anyone realized the depth or how many journals I had. Plus, I had gotten quick at it. So, when I have people around and they know what I am doing, they tend to show off. I end up with some crazy haikus these days. I have been meaning to share more. I know for me that they have helped a lot when it comes to being able to be more social. It's sort of like counting backwards, naming of presidents or this kind of thing.

The trick that I found worked for me was finding a count in the schem, this is why I opted to do it in haiku.

Codependent Poetry Samples

As you can see, the results can be wildly varying on topic and function. It really depends on who is talking. Needless to say, it is almost always enough for me to get out of a funk if I remember to do it!

You'll find a few more as well. It is all I can post for the time being but if you look on FB, IG or Twitter, I believe there are more on there. Other comon hashtags that I use include # -

• haikuforyou
• RumDancer

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Resources
All poetry are created by @RumDancer (though many were with "help"). Images are not - they are screen shots of work I have posted in the past.

I am always down for my work to be reused, please just let me know if you do.

Enjoy the Ride!

If you happen to find any online please feel free to forward to me. I am having to go back now and collect a bunch of them to get them together. I will post as I go and find them around the web.

Note to Self Learn to use your hashtags!

Stay cool, Steemians in Steemland! Thanks for reading!