Friday, September 29, 2017

9-29

It must be raining. There's a gentle noise coming in through the window, like lightly crumpling paper. The cat is pressing his paws into me, one by one, just slowly enough that it toes the line between comforting and irritating. I'm not overly responsive to his requests for attention at two a.m. and sleepily demand he stop, but he purrs and presses, and I'm just on that line where I decide I don't really care after all so he carries on.

There's a comfortable aura in the room and I don't mind being awake even though it is two a.m., because my body feels lax and warm and I like being up to listen to the rain. It will be gone by morning, the pavement will be dry, but I will know that I communed with nature at two a.m. and things were different for her then.  She was open and vulnerable, cleansing herself to make way for the sun, and she let me hear.

I have made way for the sun in me too. It took too long. I've leaned hard on others and become a burden, but I am ready to stand now. I feel guilt for making them care for me, and I feel love and renewed strength and I am ready to be myself again and care for them. That is who I am, not the leaner. I want to open my wings and protect but I suppress my urges to meddle, to mother, to push push push (unless I think they need to be pushed) and try to stand calm and supportive and learn what is needed from me. That is how I grow. That is how they grow.

That panicked urgency he unleashed in me is fading and I am myself again and I do not need to fight, only protect. I must let them have their battles, but I will stand guard as needed. That is how I grow. That is how they grow.

I am letting go of it. I am letting go of him; no more grasping, no more fear as this fades. No more clinging to memories. What's left? Why do I clutch at it?

He leaves my body and my blood and it makes way for new things and old things. Old strength, new comfort and faith, old freedom and desire to love and trust. I am not a girl who reaches, but when someone reaches for me I am there, I want to always be there. That is who I am. I want to be better every day. I want to be someone who is reached for.

My body feels so calm and I hope it lasts. Fleeting concerns swell into me from time to time. My mood flips and I am That Person again, frantic and selfish and grasping at things that do not serve me, but for now I push my mind inside and appreciate my stillness, my slow heart, my loose muscles. I must be kind to myself, I must be gentle when I err, but it is time to be strong again. I must open my wings to myself as well and protect that fragile woman, because she has been through enough, and I am tired of seeing her hurting.




Thursday, September 28, 2017

9-28 Writing Prompt

I have nothing to apologize for.

You blamed me for shutting the door

Because I knew in my core

You weren't worth me.


I have nothing to apologize for.

Except coming back for more

Letting you continue to bore

Was beneath me.


I have nothing to apologize for.

My heart's coated in gore.

My dreams you ripped apart and tore

And you want an apology?

9-28

Taking the plunge.

That's what all this hard work has been for after all, right? To get where I wanted.

I've been scratching my way up for a long time, and now I'm at the top. I'm scared to fall backwards, but now's the time to take the chance.

I'm choosing good. I'm choosing small and simple, art, making the world a better place, crying and worrying because not enough people do. I choose to make a small and simple life. I'm happy with that. I'm happy with my choices and I'm only a little frightened to fall.

My body was warm and textured and soft like the tines of a feather as I lay in bed, and I realized it was because my heart was beating slowly. My muscles were relaxed. I did not lie there in a panic. I did not tense and worry. Is this how other people feel? Like the back of their neck blends into their spine and is not wires wrapped around glass? Like their organs are in harmony, not struggling to be autonomous?

What a strange small pleasure most people hardly notice.

I am choosing good, and I have faith I can make it work. I can adapt and adjust and I know now I have the determination to survive no matter what happens.

My heart beats slowly and I know I'm making the right choice. I do not chew the inside of my lips and cheeks until they bleed. I do not sit rigid. I roll over in the bed, delighting at how limber and limp my limbs feel, and I smile and choose good because at my core I am good, and I am happy with small and simple.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

9-26

I wrote you a story on the way but I outwalked it. I left it behind me with my shoes in the sand. 

I sit at the end of the pier and remember how you kissed me like you had to kiss me. That was a part of the story. How you kissed me like you'd die if you didn't. And I am a girl who does not like to be kissed or touched without expectation and I was so glad when you kissed me because I thought I would die if you didn't.

Then I wonder who else you have kissed like you couldn't stop yourself, and the brilliant memory fades. I don't have many left, these days. 

I took your hand that first night, do you remember? I lay my head on your shoulder in the rain. I am not a girl who touches. Did you know that when I reached for you? I wonder if you knew that I had never reached for someone's hand before, if that would have meant more to you.

I was writing you a story, a beautiful tragedy, my story, but I walked very far and the cool lake air is blowing it from my mind and leaving only traces. 

I want to look at the timeline and see the mark in black ink where you decided you didn't love me. Somewhere between that time I reached for your hand, and that day I told you I missed you more than anything, you marked the page.

You decided you would go on to love others. Slim girls who love poems and girls with bright whore lips who love music and more - who will they be? What image will they fit for you? What image did I fit - who were you for me, who was I to you?

Somewhere in that timeline you decided my story didn't matter. Where did that happen? Because I never stopped being the girl who reached for you. The girl who fled love wanted to go to war for you. I want to ask you why. It's in my mind from waking to sleeping. Why? Why did I cease to matter?

Would you have been callus if you could have been in my mind? If you felt my insides too when you marked the page with black ink and reached inside and twisted and turned and plucked and pulled because you were bored (I guess?) and it became a game to you. If you could have felt the way everything in me swelled when you sometimes reached for me too, or when you turned to see where I was when I was behind you, or when I kissed the moles on your neck, could you have done that?

You decided I was not your story and so I did not matter, but this story was a girl who does not love but she reached for you that night. It was a beautiful story- a hard one maybe - but my mind reels that you did not see its beauty and importance. That you did not nurture it so it could bloom in a thousand colors. What a gift I tried to give you, Dorian, how could you never see what I was offering?

It is dark and the corn-silk colored moon is slim as your other girls in the sky, and there is a cloud of silence around me. I am a ghost, I can move unseen and quiet and barefoot. I have words in my mind but the wind is blowing them away. Masts are creaking in the water and they are me, they are a part of this, they disguise my silent passing. In the safety of being unseen I am myself again. I sit and stare into the endless water, splashed with moon, and think of all the things beneath and I feel strong, not frightened. 

I am a night creature and this is mine. I am the water, I am the dark and the moon, I am the creaking masts and a million hot particles in the air; how stupid you were to think so little of me when I am the whole night. 

I felt bad for the girl in my story as I walked here, but I walked farther than my sadness, and I am too much wild to be sad when I am free and the breeze is blowing you away. For a moment I wish you were here, being quiet and steady and strong with me, but you wrote yourself a new story to get away, and I like my calm soft night's tale too much to leave it. 

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

9-26

Just like that, it's gone.

A huge burden that I have carried with me, and pushing always up the hill like Sisyphus. In thirty seconds, eliminated.

Who can I be, now?

This is the year I invested in myself. This has been a year of risks. I tried love and being stupid and being honest and being open and being vulnerable (it was terrible); I started a new career where I feel in way over my head day in and day out and I struggle consistently but I take home thick checks and I have insurance that pays for pills that keep the weight in my chest and my shaking feet and hands under control; I took money and I moved it around and I put it into myself, because it's time to start believing I am worth it, and, lo, some of that money is starting to come back to me because maybe I really am worth it.

This has been a year of growth. I am not who I was when it started. I am excited to see who I am when it ends.

The steps are lain out for me now, and I can see for once they're attainable. Independence. A home. Stability. Friendship. Love. Rest?

It's there, and I edge over them carefully, trying to be patient, trying to keep my footing. I've rushed in the past and I've tumbled over, but I am learning to be cautious- lightly, my darling, lightly- and I move forward.

My excuses have been stripped away and there's some level of anxiety there. Will I fail again? Will I fall back on bad habits?

I pause and look into my options, I weigh them, I step carefully and slowly. Who will I be when the bad habits are gone, when the burdens I've carried with me are no longer weighing me down? I already feel so light and strong. I may be unstoppable.

Monday, September 25, 2017

9-25

My fingers are fast and twitchy with potential.

I hate waiting. Things are falling into place but I hate waiting for them. My future is there and I itch to reach out and grab it, to skip forward.

Waiting builds character. I don't know. I think I probably have enough character. Too much, even. I'm rich in characters.

I want Instant Pleasure. I want to see my life lain out before me. I want to leap ahead to my autonomy and my own authority where I live how I want to and I am at no one's mercy and I make my own choices and I make my own things and in that I build my own life.

All the pieces are around me and they're beautiful and promising. Sun hits them and they dazzle and I am nervous to reach out and take them; they seem too good to be true. I've been in the cave so long the brightness blinds me, but I edge toward the warmth.

Is this what I've been fighting for, all these years of struggling and discovering and experimenting? Have I reached the end?

Then what?

Can I please rest?

I want to sit in the autumn sun on the drying grass and appreciate what's around me. I want to close my eyes and breathe and feel secure. I haven't been still. I haven't felt calm. Briefly, I was able to rest, asleep on his chest, curled up next to him, but that became another war and I'm exhausted, my sanctuary crumbled.

I'm scared to stop. Things click and turn silver with promise and my determination only grows.

He says, sometimes I think you'd break through the wall instead of going around it.

He's right. Damn.

I pause, I collect myself, I close my eyes and picture that moment in the sun when I can sit and my head can be quiet and my body can be still, and I tell myself to be patient, because the wall will fall if I give it time.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

9-24

She calls it compounded grief, but I call it exhausting.

I don't want to talk about it anymore. I change the subject. She lets me. I'm lucky to have her.

I am a new person, with bright hair and new roles and a new life and things are good for me. Things are so beautiful. I am tired of talking about my grief. Fuck grief.

I have pulled hands from my throat. I have slept in a tent made of blankets in a rain storm. I have wiped human shit from the floor. I have struck out to defend myself. I have curled leather and metal in my hands as a weapon. I have thought I would die, once, twice, too many times to count, and I did not die, because I fight.

I don't care how much of my life's grief is compounding - I am sick of it, because this is no longer my life. Grief is nothing compared to what I have survived. Fuck my grief. I fought with words and with nails and with fists and with education and by shutting myself off to the words that were killing me and here I stand, and fuck it entirely.

Who would look at me and know what I have come through? It's hidden under a crooked smile and new white hair and a career and motivation and ambition and cool smooth words and I will keep it there, quiet, suppressed, until one day I forget who I was and where I came from and how fucking hard it is to sleep some nights with all of the ghosts that chase me.

I walk in the dark and I hate my smile and I hate my crooked eyes and nose and I pull the new words around me that I have been given. Special. Memorizing. Fascinating. They're beautiful words. I picture myself and my nervous crooked smile and they don't fit. I wonder if they'd seen me crouched over a body I knew was dying, wide white eyes, tense fingers, if they would think the same of me. If they'd seen me rage, throw bottles of pills, beg for an ending, strike out, fight, shake with fright and rage, if they'd call me beautiful words or if they'd recoil in horror or maybe pity or maybe both depending on the day.

Compounded grief. The weight of all of my life, crushing down now upon me. She's right and I hate it.

How fucking terrible. Now, when things are so beautiful and bright and I sleep with the light off without fear, and someone touches me with patience and gentleness and lets me pull away when I need to, and when people open their arms and I know I can go into them and it will be okay, okay, now this is when the weight of my horrible fucking life hits me?

Fuck it.

No, I carry on. This one stupid ridiculous blip in my violent urgent timeline does not define me. I pause and let hands linger, adjusting. I fight my fear of being touched and held. I lean into warm bodies. I listen to their beautiful words because I fought for those words. I fought to be more than nothing. I fought to be more than what they raised me to be and I have come so much further than they, than I, ever imagined, and I will continue on and on and I will grow until they are nothing behind me. Their hard hands and their cruel words are nothing.

Who am I? Who was I?

It doesn't fucking matter. I am now. I am me. I fight and I fight and I fight for the day I can rest.


9-24

It's leaving my body. I no longer feel sick and weak. I no longer shake and sleep.

Some part of me clings to it. It has been who I am now, for the better part of a year and a half. The girl who is sad over you. The depressed waif who wails and walks the halls at night. The one who lacks all self control and self respect. The one who makes excuses for you. The one who lets herself act like a fool because, for a while, it feels amazing, before that inevitable drop.

I don't know why I would want to hold onto that. My body still glows and burns like embers and I miss your touch, but your poison has left my body and I think what I felt for you goes with it and my body will turn to ash soon, untended.

I'm acknowledging the greatest tragedy in my oft-tragic life. This was my happy ending, my silver lining, my proof that all of my struggles were not in vain.

And this is how it ended.

But it ended. It's done. You made sure I couldn't come back to you this time.

And I am moving on. I am moving on to laughter and acceptance, to affection and touch. I am opening myself up to being soft again. I have energy and hope. I trust myself, I'm beginning to trust others again. I see other endings, that I did not anticipate, and they are a rising sun of promise and warmth as I wake cold from the death I have been living.

Friday, September 22, 2017

9-22

I wonder if I'll ever stop missing you.

Missing what? I want to shake my shoulders.

Who are you? Who are you now, for her? I hear stories of who you were for the doe-eyed poet, and I don't recognize you in them. Are you someone else now, and do you like that person better? Are you a good man who prays at night and loves his mother and has asked forgiveness for all his sins?

For how long?

You run and run but you still find yourself looking in the mirror at the end of the day.

I miss who you were for me. I thought that was you, but maybe I was wrong? And I'm wrong. I miss who you were when you felt like it. When you kissed me honestly and I felt loved. When you wanted to hear me talk. When you drove out late and spent the night and drove out early just so you could see me for a little while and lay beside me.

Was that you, or did you simply know I was looking for a man who would drive out to lay beside me? Who walks barefoot and tries all the beer and makes silly songs and jokes and loves his cats and sitting outside in the grass. How could you lie to me about who you were and be everything I wanted, when I didn't know it all until I met you?

My brain spins. Who was I, and who were you, and what were we? Why do I feel empty now when all you did beside me was take from me? Who are you and who is she? Why was I not enough, when you sapped me of everything I had? What will she give you? Will she make you a good man?

I lie awake in the dark and my body burns hot with missing you and missing your touch and your smell, but I remember that those hands were touching others and I shudder to think that they meant something to me.

Time will cool my body. Time will heal my mind. It slows, from time to time, and I forget to mourn you, whoever you are. I remember that I was and am whole, and you never will be. I flood with rage and then sadness, and I hope she breaks your selfish heart into small jagged pieces and you understand what your thoughtless way of handling me did because you feel it just as deeply.

I lay my hand on my chest and I feel my warmth and the curve of my breast and the strong heart that beats underneath the skin and interlaced bones and I know I can only be patient and wait to forget the feeling of your hands and lips and the sound of your laugh and I pull the betrayal around me as protection. I will wait, and you will fade, and I will survive in this cocoon of reminders.

Will I stop missing you?

Thursday, September 21, 2017

9-21

I walk in the dark and I cry, but it's no longer hopeless tears and tragedy; it's infection leaving the wound; it's poison bleeding out. I have so much to get rid of within me, I can't seem to move on until it's gone so I walk the familiar path and I let it ooze out. It poured out in words, it pours out in saline tears that wash my eyes clean.

I feel like too much, my sadness is leaching out around me. It's getting boring. I'm boring them, I'm boring myself. I say the words over and over and I cry and I think, I must be done now, but the next morning there's more, and I try to pack it into my body and compartmentalize it but it's a heavy padded mess and it won't stay neat.

It's no longer something I want to deal with. I want to shove it aside and forget it. I want to stop forcing others to hold my hand and help me through. I am tired of this. I am tired. I am exhausting myself chasing my words in circles trying to make sense of it, and I cannot, so I spit the words onto others and let them pick over them, but I am dissatisfied still, and so I walk in the dark and cry and try to shut the words off because I am so so sick of them and they will never make sense to me.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

9-20

I have always been afraid.

As a child I slept with a wide flat light plugged in beside the bed, to ward off the things I couldn't see. The things I couldn't see, I imagined, and my imagination has always been unguarded and wild.

I was frightened of things I did see, undisguised in the light. My father's angry fists striking through walls and doors, or falling on the ribs of my brothers as I sat in still shock and did not know what to do because I was a child and the parent must be obeyed so what he was doing had to be right even though it did not feel right.

I was frightened of my brother too, in different ways. I was frightened of his attention and his ridicule, wondering what mood he would be in, whether he would love me and perhaps even be kind and play a game with me, or if he would be jeering, feeding me candy coated with salt or encouraging me to jump off the treehouse, or pinching the sides of my body and telling me I was getting fat and no one loved me.

Once as a little child I was very sick, sick enough that I could not go to the Titanic exhibit which, even then, was strangely crushing. I read children's books by Robert Ballard and stared with wonder at a pair of boots buried in the sand, their inhabitant eaten away by time and sea water and fish. I wanted to see this marvel, this destruction, the pieces of memory that remained from a tragedy that took so many from their boots. I wanted to see what was left of them and try to learn who they were, so they were not forgotten. I have always been frightened of being forgotten.

But I was sick. My father and brothers went without me, and my mother sat with me over a hot bucket as I breathed in steam with a towel over my head and cried because my body hurt and my throat was on fire and I was so tired and I wanted to see the Titanic exhibit.

When I slept that night, the wide flat light cast the shadows of skeletons on the wall above my head. They danced and laughed, disregarding me, but still they frightened me. I tried to cover my eyes but the darkness was worse - large gaping mouths - I preferred the merry skeletons. It was a fever dream, perhaps, or a hallucination, but I cried and I was afraid, and I am sure I scared my mother with my talk of seeing dead things dancing above me.

I don't remember when I stopped being afraid of the things in the dark. Adulthood settled in on me. Reality settled in. I slept with the light on because I was more afraid of my real life. Something sharp under the pillow, a phone nearby. How could I be afraid of things that don't exist when a true monster lived rooms away?

I became frightened of other things. Of proving people wrong, of being disliked, of failing. Of people finding out that I slept with a knife under my pillow and I knew what red and blue lights in the dark look like. That I have struck out to defend myself ,and I have thrown bottles of pills at the monster that haunted me and taunted him to take them so I could finally be free of the fear and the humiliation and the constant constant wondering when the moon would rise full and he would turn.

Those memories are finally fading, though I will never be free of them. I can only build myself a new life, where these secrets are not my shame. Where I admit that I lived frightened like a small animal and yet I survived. I have a foundation around me and it is new but strong. I do not have to be the frightened girl anymore.

I drag them with me, now, fighting their pull. I make nine cakes in two days because I am scared to ruin a cake. I can't be the girl who can't bake a cake. I can't be the girl who fails at something so simple as a cake.

I shake my shackles and I pull harder. I pick up the paintbrush and the pen, I mix sticky resin in a cup and I spill it on myself and I smell like chemicals, but I brace myself and I push forward.

It is hard to be gentle to myself. I want to ignore the things I carry with me so badly. I want to sleep, comatose, until I wake and all my lessons have been learned, but that is not life. Life is messy and frightening and bloody and bright and brilliant and I will not move forward unless I let myself feel it.

So I cry into the pillow and the dog, I wipe resin off my pants. I tell myself it is okay to make just one cake even if it is not the best cake.

I blink fast to rid myself of the pressing urgency to be perfect, perfect and tell myself I have nothing to fear.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

9-19

When I am sitting still my restless hands have little to do but hunt out ways to reach out to hurt you.

Things are boiling within. I want to unleash them, but then I'm proving you right. I lash out, I regret, I retreat, I fill up with steam once more.

The unfairness. The injustice. I roil with anger at it. That you think you can just leave this path behind you and choose another. That you can turn away from the consequences of your choices. That we won't haunt you.

My hands twitch and itch and I look for ways to strike at you.

But I am not a ghost.

I cannot be still with this pressure burning in me.

I am not a ghost. I remind myself, pinching the fat of my palm between my thumb and forefinger. I look at photos of myself to remember. I exist. I am real.

I am more than a haunting memory. I cannot enforce your guilt. You will never feel the shame that you should. You walk away from the damage you inflicted and you see only the beauty ahead for you, not the storm clouds and broken buildings you left behind.

They say life is unfair and this is life and I wonder if I want a life where things are this truly unfair.

But I am not a ghost, I must focus on living.

When I can move, I forget you. I sit cross-legged on the floor and my hot angry hands move fast and they fly over new things, touching and feeling and experimenting and learning, and I am alive again for a while.

You have no place in my living mind.

I twist wires with thin-faced tools and there is red paint under my nails and things spread around me waiting for me to come to them and make them alive, and I am focused, and you are gone from my mind then because you are nothing in comparison to living.

I am not bones and a corpse to bury in your muck. I am not the wraith you made me, crawling and clawing after you, gaping toothless mouth, wide unseeing eyes.

I am warm blood and fast pupils and a bright brain and eager fingers. I am happy when I move. I feel music bubbling under my ribcage, replacing the empty socket where you drained and drained and drained me because you did nothing, nothing but take, and then you demanded more, and better, and you left me an open wound.

Dorian Gray, you were exhausting. You did nothing but pull the good things out of me and scoff at what remained.

The unfairness of it.

When I sit still it overwhelms me. I must keep moving, I must stay alive, because you are dead for me.

Monday, September 18, 2017

9-18

I looked at your face last night, Dorian, and I did not feel anything.

No drop in the pit of my stomach. No swelling blackness behind my eyes. No frantic urgency. No desperation. No anger and loss.

I did not feel anything.

I remember seeing your face for the first time. I thought it was a nice face. Good hair, good smile. You were wearing bright colors and you hugged me, and I thought you were a little shorter than I expected, and your eyes were rather too close together, and your nostrils were strangely pinched, but overall, it was a good face. It was a face I didn't mind looking at.

And then I fell in love with you and that face became so beautiful to me. I stared at it in wonder. I traced the lines and imperfections and I thought myself so lucky to have them. You didn't like when I touched your face too much, but how could I help myself? Everything about it was so incredible because it was yours and you were mine and you let me touch your face even though you didn't like it.

Now I see your photo and it is the face of a stranger. It is a pleasant face. It's a concerning face. It worries me, how deceptive that white smile can be. Those close-set eyes and tight nostrils became a metaphor, a symbol. You keep everything close and tight. Your very body is built to hide things from others.

My throat is scratchy today from talking across the water. I am a quiet person but to speak of you made me loud. To let the words come out and have the wind whip them away, they are gone now. I've said the words over and over in my own head, but to speak them aloud, that has freed them. I will never be able to find the right words to fully express how deeply you betrayed me, but I no longer feel I must. I spent so much time picking and choosing what I will say to you when you come back, I lost sight of what matters. That you won't dare come back. That I couldn't have you if you did.

I understand now the concept of burning bridges. You tried to keep the fires low, keep yourself an exit back to us, but you're a selfish man and now they're just smoke and ash.

To speak of you aloud is to hear how cruel you were to me.

Yes, cruel. You are a cruel man. You are a selfish, grasping individual.

You hated how I made you feel because that is who you truly are. You were so angry that I made you feel mean, but you are a mean, small man. You were cruel to me. You played with my mind and you made me feel small and nervous and crazy.

I am an island, I am a volcano, I am a wild creature. I scared you. I overwhelmed you. You admired me and you wanted to own me and you, in your smallness, misunderstood what that means.

You cannot tame a wild creature by being cruel to it. You only make her more wild. The more tightly you wound me around your fist the more wild I became, and now I must pull apart my strings and undo the damage you inflicted.

I can no longer be the animal biting her own tail and tearing out her hair. I have been freed of my cage.

I will wander alone or in my pack, until someone reaches out to me. Until someone kneels and holds their hand still and speaks to me gently.

I am sad, that I let you make me into this, but I feel my strength coming in through my marrow, and I sense the needles of my compass swinging back into place. I move forward, forward. I am not afraid, like you. I am not unsure, like you. I am not weak, like you. I let you convince me I was, for a time, but that did not change me. Now I look down at you from the burning bridge in contempt, and I walk on through the flames.

What you will be no longer matters, because you chose to be cruel. Who you are no longer matters, because you hid behind lies. Who you love no longer matters, because you will only seek to crush them to your will until they snap and lash out and leave you and I feel sad for them, but they make their choices too. I made mine.

I let myself be stupid because I had never been stupid before, and I fucking hated it. I made the wrong choice, loving you. Being stupid was not fun, it was destructive. You and your pinched face and your false words and false smile are a pleasant grinning force that swept through me and tore me into pieces, but I have been a million million pieces before, and I always rebuild.

You will keep sweeping through, seeking, never stopping your damage, but I stay still and I rebuild and I know now I am safe from you, I am free of the pain you inflicted and the ruin you left, and I am free of the anxious small angry person you made me.

It is my curse to carry these words within me, when I so wish I could express them to you, but I know it does not matter. You would not hear them anyway, and now the wind and the water have carried them away, and I cried but it felt good to cry, poison bleeding from me, and the words are gone and you are gone and thank fucking god my nightmare is over.

Friday, September 15, 2017

9-15 The Insomniac's Curse

i wrote you a poem last night
as i fell asleep
it was warm and soft in my head
like new bread
like fresh beginnings
like moving on
and it said all the things i was feeling
and thinking
it put words to
the damage
the love
the shame
the shock
the anger
it was words
even you, in your denial
would have understood
and you would have felt shame
and anger and love
and damage
even you, in your selfishness
would have been touched
i was touched
i was transformed
but i fell asleep
or maybe i was already dreaming
and the words are gone
they will never move you.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

9-14 The Frustrated Empath

He's telling me a story. He's a good story teller. I admire people who can find words in their mouths. Mine stick in my hands and my head, beating like moths against my skull and fluttering in my fingers. I enjoy listening to him, even though it's a sad story. He tells it well.

Even without the words I would know it's a sad story. He wears it on him. His body changes, his eyes focus elsewhere, on remembering, on finding the words. He pulls them from his past and he gives them to me, forming images. I am there with him in this memory. His dejection creeps through the air and I feel it seeping into me. He has felt sadness and loss--he feels it now again, and as he feels it, I feel it too.

It's so clean and clear. So easy to understand and interpret. The air shimmers with particles of his emotions, and they touch my pores, becoming my own. There is a sense of comfort for me, even through this sad story, that I can connect to him on this level. Gratitude.

For so long Dorian altered my radar. His words did not match the feeling in the air. His face did not match his stories. I have loved who I am, this person who senses what others feel because it becomes me, too. To feel one thing to be told another, to see an expression that does not match the sharp edge on my skin that he is sending me, it confused me. Sonar blocked. My internal guide distressed and uncertain.

He is telling me a sad story; he is sad, I am sad. Simple. I can't get enough of it, this honesty. My analytical mind wants to poke and pry, to uncover more emotions so I can feel them with him, so I can understand him entirely, but it is late and I am tired and I am making him sad with my poking and he is making me sad with his sadness so I calm my roving questions and I just appreciate what I am being given. Truth.

My boss has wide wet eyes that are always looking into mine, and he asks me why I'm agitated, what's been going on. I cannot hide my truths. I alter the air around me with the darkness I've carried in recently and I cannot shroud it, so I take it with me. I try to keep it away from others. I do not want it to leak into them. But he has sensed it anyway, and now it leaks out my eyes, mortifying me. I cry without purpose, face still and I look away until the horrifying honesty of tears has slowed.

I glimpse honesty all around me and I marvel that Dorian was so false. How can a person look another in the eye and lie? I felt the lies all around me, I was covered in razor blades and suspicion, but I let his words overwhelm what I knew was true. It is incomprehensible. He looked me in my leaking eyes and he lied, he told me the sensations cutting my skin were my own, my own fault, my own imagining.

My skin feels soft and whole again without him destroying me, the scabs are healing over in smooth white scars.

I see the truth in people's faces, their bodies match their words. The air they carry around them moves in rhythm to what they say, and I want to weep with gratitude.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

9-13

Something clicked within today.

I walk the night trails, the crushed gravel glowing and soft like I have forgotten my glasses. Only the water is sharp as I pause to look down into it. It reflect the world above, duplicates, confuses. Against the sky the mundane have their chance to be noticed--telephone wires no longer in competition with clouds and sun look poignantly black against their backdrop.

This morning I admired the sunrise, without him in my head. He stole too much of me. A feeble comparison. Why did I waste so much of myself admiring him and losing this beauty?

I have felt her, Myself, hovering, coming closer, and tonight she clicks back into place. Somehow my bones feel sweet and hard like brown sugar left too long in the air. My body is decadent and sticky in the night. I glance down with my night-cat sight and see my two legs, white, and note that I am not eating enough. I miss my thickness and my strength. It is like waking up from a long sleep. I look down and realize I have been hurting.

Against the sky, vivid leaves. I am a million layers. I am every other life I've lived, one cycle after another. I am my past and my future. I am my choices and my heart. My sugar bones move within me, crusted and sharp on the outside, and I feel myself building a new life, new layers.

Those who want to be whole, how small they think. He wanted to be whole. He seeks himself in others, in everything. He will always be unhappy, seeking himself, searching to patch holes, because we are everything. We are a hundred million pieces, we are a swarming biosphere of incalculable moments.

Why is that so frightening to some?

Why be a droplet when you can be a pond, a lake, an ever-moving river?

Why be a cell when you can be a hot vibrant living being?

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

9-12

The little body is already cold and stiff, formed into the shape of a tufted stuffed animal bed. She holds her position as I lift her, and though her face is stretched strangely in death, her pose, curled and languid, speaks of comfort. I hope she was peaceful as she died; not the gasping, fighting death from earlier. I resisted that death, and I wonder if it was cruel of me to struggle to keep her. In the end, she seemed more pained, her thin delicate chin elongated somehow in that face of inevitability, than perhaps she would have if I had simply let her go.

I wrap her in a towel, gently, carefully but she is no longer there. She does not care how I wrap her; she has left her small fragile body. I do not know when or how, and I feel excluded from something important. Slighted.

I am growing distant and cold as the dead kitten, I feel nothing either. Nothing but surprise, as if she had fled and left the back door open rather than died. She is gone, she left, and this artificial soft cold thing in my hands was discarded behind her.

I go through the catalog in my mind, paging through. Filing her under failure, glancing at successes as a reminder. A strange sense of disappointment in her and her sister, dead creatures. Why did they not tell me they were ailing? One lies gasping, more than gone, on the floor, and I fight for her. I have done all I can, I tell myself when she fades and her eyes go still.

This one, I resent her peaceful death. I cannot soothe myself. She did not give me the opportunity to find my own peace. I was abandoned. I was not consulted.

It is a cold week for me, and I have withdrawn. I shut myself down. Quarantine. My mind needs to rest. My body needs to rest or I will become cold, cold, again. Bar the doors and close the windows. I shutter my frantic thoughts in darkness and they settle slowly like sleepy birds, quieting and rustling but never still.

Around me, death in the night, and life, and things move forward, and I carry on with my sadness and my heartache and my joys and my anger and the world spins onward without any care toward the burdens I nurture, so I snap the cords and I let them fly into the ether.

Monday, September 11, 2017

9-10

My eyes have been dry for a while now.

Harsh and itchy, but dry. I feel him there in the pit of my stomach, but I push him aside. Walk it off. If it's not bleeding it's not broken. I smother him with Kobe beef and Pellegrino and vodka, the food of rich folks pretending to be good ol' boys. Typical Americans. It feels good to take joy in food again. I am a person who takes joy in the senses.

The sun is warm but not overwhelming, and people with more money than me swing clubs on manicured grass. She and I drive through trees and open fields where people have paid to lean on their knees and size up their surroundings, and I mourn land I would have wandered happily for free.

Wind whips my white and red hair into my face and I smile my true smile, teeth I am ashamed of, crooked and wide, because no one can see and no one will care that my smile is odd and it is nice to feel the breeze and the sun, and as we take corners I slide to the edge of the cart and almost lose my balance but I don't steady myself because a strange part of me wonders what will happen if I fall.

I am the girl with white and pink and red hair now and she is the kind of girl who would fall just to see what happens.

She tells me a dream and I remember that she was in mine, and I flush with vodka and clementine soda and I tell her how in my dream I lay on her lap and she stroked my hair. I expect her to laugh, to be uncomfortable, but she understands and she is flattered. A little glass shard of me warms within, to be understood and accepted for all my strangeness, without question. To understand that I am not a person who knows how to ask for love and affection. Who knows that she should, sometimes, but does not speak the words.

I think about the last time I was touched but the memories are all tainted now. We have lain him out, the timeline, the final excuses I made for him ruined. The touches I thought were meaningful. How can people do that to another? I am not a person who touches, who asks for love. It defies my comprehension that this selfish boy man could lay on my lap and feel so genuine, could run his hands through my hair and make goosebumps on my arms and I felt love in his touch but it was not love. What was it? I can't separate these things anymore. They've gone past explaining. I am accepting that I will never understand, that I will never know what was real, or why, or how he could fake love in his touch when he could fake so little else.

We swerve around a corner and I let his memories fall onto the cut grass. I have nothing to show for this but a wasted year, so many tears and anxiety and screaming and losing my mind, and I thought, I thought, it was in a fight for love, but now I know it was nothing. I let myself be ruined for nothing, and that is the hardest truth to accept.

She laughs and I touch her back briefly. It's a motion that feels strange to me, to reach out. I feel silly and awkward, but she only smiles. I know that the people in my life who accept me and know me and understand that I am not mad and angry and wild, I am a warm soft center and a sharp mouth and a quick mind and a loyal, loyal heart, those people will let me reach for them. They will reach for me. I am warm as the sun, I am flushed now with excitement and happiness not shame. I bubble with a laugh, and it expels him from my system.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

9-8

I lie in bed and I think of what the doctor said.

Mindfulness.

I had shuddered at the word when she asked me if I knew its meaning.

I do. I thought I did. I knew the twisted convoluted connotation Dorian Gray gave it, with his condescending granola smile while he spoke pretty earth words and yet lived his life tense and judgmental and sharp with blood full of smoke.

The pretty earth words lost their flavor for me over time.

I lie in bed and I want to reclaim the earth he took from me, the freedom of thought he suppressed, my fearlessness, so I pull it through my brain like taffy.

Mindfulness.

I shut out thoughts of Dorian Gray, of Wickham, of the lovely villain in my life's novel, and I push my mind down into my limbs.

The fan beside me, humming gently, a murmuring sound I have become lightly addicted to, steeps into me. I feel the weight of the blankets, the warmth of the dog, my one ever-loyal, curled under my arm breathing moistly into my palm.

I rise out of my body like mist and droplets of dew, like the aurora of the bright moon that had guided me on my night path only moments ago. She reflects, thick and lopsided, in the water that runs through my territory. I release my mind from my body and listen to her.

There is food in my stomach for once, not harsh acidic liquor, and my fingers and knees are still. I push my mind into my body and my surroundings and he vanishes because he is inconsequential.

There is strength and determination in my body. There is love and caring and devotion in my life. I sense it around me; it washes over me and makes me glow.

There are lessons in everything. There are choices and chances. I want to trace the paths in my mind and remind myself of what good things have come, but I tell myself tomorrow, tomorrow, and feel instead.

I detach. I am free. Diana, moon, night creature, survivor, sister, mother.

I burn silver with opportunity and love.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Angry Letters to Dorian Gray

To my dear first love,

I have said these things to you, as much as I can in quick bursts and flares of temper, but now I put them on the page, for me and for others. I need to break myself open and let them free because I am done loving you.

I told you you were the love of my life, and I would always love you, didn't I? I suppose I can lie too, then. Though is it a lie when I once thought it was truth?

The truth is that love doesn't exist.

It carried on, somehow, stubborn, through everything you put me through. Through all the emotional and psychological damage you inflicted on me, somehow, this love lingered. I walked away over and over because I knew, in that drowned suppressed piece of my brain that remained sane, that I did not deserve your thoughtlessness. Your voice overwhelmed her. You convinced me I needed to be unhappy. You pulled me into your self-pitying whirlpool abyss and then you scolded me for not saving you.

I knew all this time who you were, and now I go through our moments in my head and I feel foolish and ashamed on such a level I didn't know existed. I have new pity for the heartbroken and stupid. The greying women on television who fell in love with an alias and had their bank accounts emptied and still, somehow, they stare into the camera with a bewilderment and hope that somehow, somehow, they were wrong and they were truly loved.

We all want to be loved. You prefer to fall in love, though, don't you? It's much more pleasant. It's easier to hide who you are, when they don't know you. You take our love and it makes you warm inside, where you are cold and dead.

    "All the pieces on the floor only wanted to be seen as their own fine work of art."

It's pretty to feel broken but it's not pretty to break others. You tried to patch yourself together with my pieces and left me clawed full of holes.
 
But I don't matter, do I? You're your own fine work of art. You're obsessed with your own loveliness. It's so pretty to be tragic. My story means nothing beside your own, I am only a device to propel you forward.

Dorian Gray, you smile and speak gently. Inside the dark canvas your soul prowls and rots.

I look back and I am mortified at myself. I knew you. I saw that blackness. A jangle of wrongness in the air, a confusing sensory blip. It did not make sense.

I lay on you and looked at your face in the dark and I thought, this is the face I will always want to look at. This is the one that will stay beside me, that I will keep.

It's fun to fall in love, isn't it? I didn't know. I was frightened. You took my hand and you gently lead me down a new road, and I closed my eyes and trusted you.

It was fun, catching me, wasn't it?

No one else ever had, not like that. A true prize. Hold me up and take a photo on the pier. Look what I have done. I must be beautiful and good after all, to win this.

A tension in the air that never felt right. The spider you killed, those small things that didn't suit who you pretended to be. Dropping my hand when another approached.

They grew larger and larger. You left me wandering in the dark searching for you in the orchard, abandoned and fearful, and you blamed me for my fear and anger.

That's where it began, the blaming. The avoiding. Hiding me. You caught me, the fun was done. How could I expect you to continue caring for me? It was a silly female notion I suppose, to think you would carry on with your affections.

The questions you avoided answering. The anger you directed at me that I could never anticipate. The accusations.

How did I become the woman who wanted to see your phone? I hated myself for that.

You just have to trust me, you said, and I was ashamed for my doubt. I was ashamed for being a woman who doesn't trust.

I must be cheating, since I was so suspicious of you. Tables turned, you smile victoriously. Am I projecting? I just have to trust you.

I rack my head trying to understand why you would think these things, why you saw me as you did, but now I know that it was nothing but pulling the strings of a puppet.

It confused me how you had no relationships. No friendships. A few scattered people who used you (you liked to be needed) and your drug dealer, keeping you sedated and tasting of smoke when you lied to me about being high.

Relationships are real, and you are not. Friends learn your insides, and yours are poison.

I mourned you for so long. But I'm mourning a ghost. That man who made me love him does not exist. The man who broke my mind and heart, he is the truth, he is the ugly looming face in the dark.

I can't decide if it helps, knowing there are others you've left in your wake. It's a cruelty I can't open my mind around. I think you must feel nothing. Crocodile tears. You preyed on us. I wonder how you can work with the broken and damaged and love them so, but behind you, you crush others and leave us bleeding and wounded, and do you feel nothing?

Still, somehow, at night I lie awake and I wish you would say you feel something, but I know that too would be a lie.

You're the hero in your story, but what a tale you must have to tell yourself.

We will lay you on the table and we will pick over your bones and tendons until there is nothing left, an unrecognizable carcass on the wood. Will it help us, to see your truth? Even now it's still hard to understand, and I reel at the extent you must have ruined me to continue to make excuses for you.

You are a simplicity, that is what we must come to accept. Your complicated brain, your poetry and your fast love and your fast anger strip away and you are nothing but a little violent animal, hungry. We fed you what you needed and you bit our fingers.

I wonder what she is like, this new love of yours, and I feel such overwhelming pity for her. I hope she is a pretty fool and is swallowed by your tide. I hope she is strong and sees you as you are and breaks you. I hope she is a lie, I hope one thing and another and I twist this around in my head. I overanalyze, didn't you say? I must not read into things. Because therein is the reality, and you tried to hide that from me.

I think about your past, your family, what things made you this way, but then I'm overanalyzing once more. My flame for the mind begins to burn and I want to understand why, why, why, but this is the lesson I am learning - the why is not an excuse. The why is not what made you. You built yourself, this smiling, lean, cold creation, and you and your broken pieces will wander haunting forever because that is who you choose to be.

I have no love for you left. I looked for you, my whole life. I wanted you. I thought at last my search was over, but what I know now is that that One Man for me doesn't exist. I am the cat who walks by himself again and all things are alike to me. I wanted to be in love once, and now I have been, and in all of my damaged life, it was the worst thing I've experienced.

You will always be the monster in my dreams, but that is where I will keep you.

I am happy having myself back. You took her away from me and you twisted her against me. I frightened you, didn't I? You didn't like when others listened to my voice and not yours. You hated  when I was smarter than you, or kinder, or calmer. You took the best parts of me, the parts a good man would admire and nurture, and you crushed them in your palm because they made you look more dull beside me. How dare you?

You'll always be moving, trying to shine, but your light is dim, my love. Your heart is weak and clumsy and fearful. You love to control and silence and confuse. How can you ever glow? You must keep moving, my love, before the veil drops. Always forward.

I cut you from my heart and I leave you behind with nothing but contempt and disgust. I must shake off the anger and rage. That's your influence, twisting me. Making me a mad woman. It's easier to leave a mad woman. It's easier to look bright beside me in your story, when I am wild and insane. So I let it go.

I release the ruin you have done.

I won't let you leave me with that final insult. I won't let a weak black creature take my strength.

My legs shake, I have no taste for food. I force myself to eat, to rise, to smile, because you do not own me anymore. You were fucking careless with me. I am taking myself back. I am tired of weak men using me like a ladder.

I wonder where your story will go, and then I shut my mind off. It does not matter. You are a waste of my consideration, my sympathy. I have seen who you are and it is disappointing. You are small. You were never worthy of me, so you tried to make me small too.

I rise, I eat, I work hard because I know inside my sharp mouth and odd tendencies I am good and I am worthy, and I strive to be better every day and I am building myself a life. To grieve over the broken pieces you left makes me no better than you, wrapped up in maintaining my pain.

I shrug you off, I move forward. You were faster than me always, but you lack direction, you lack impulse control and motivation and ambition and I move, slowly, surely, forward while your erratic path leads you nowhere.
 
Goodbye to my first love, perhaps my only love. I leave you in the dirt where you belong and I rise to a new day.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

9-7

My grandma used to tell me I'd scare the men. Intimidate them.

Annie Oakley, she said.

It seemed ludicrous. I was no gun-wielding hooting wild woman; I was uncomfortable in my skin and tried to hide that I sweat too much and wore glasses with silver rims long past when silver rims should have been worn.

Missing her is constant. She knew me before I became me. I don't know how she saw so much.

Annie Oakley, most days.

Her last words to me were, "I love you."

She was cranky, eyes closed, trying to die while all around us we clung at her, wordlessly enticing her in our confusion and fear that she stay. We blotted her head with damp towels and on the television, in sepia tones, an old-fashioned duo sang Red River Valley as she waved our nervous hands away and wanted to be left alone to die.

She rallied, though, to tell me she loved me. I don't think I knew death then. It didn't seem totally final, saying goodbye to her. I wanted to feel something when I left, but there was nothing in me. I was new to farewell, though I've become accustomed.

I wonder what she would think of me these days. I have stumbled and fallen, but I am Annie Oakley after all. I grew into a wild woman with a wild heart and a fast trigger finger. How did she know? I love the things she loved - rich foods and making things with my hands and trips to the grocery store. The books I made her by hand have become reality, no longer childish pages stapled together, but agonized over, hidden away and protected.

I think of her now and I can imagine her shaking with anger and rage, hugging me, scratching my back with her hooked arthritic hands and insulting the man who hurt me with violent surprising words. Susie Q. Little Missy. Annie Oakley.

I brace my knees in the dust and I rise slowly with my gun in hand. My body aches and is colored with bruises, but I rise.

I am not a woman to be broken.

9-7

A final death.

My love was not a real person. He was pretending to be a man he wasn't. I fell for it. I want to be angry at myself, but I have been hurt enough. I will be soft now. I will be gentle with my damaged pieces. Someone must be.

I'm trying to find the satisfaction in being right. My instincts, always, were sharp. I look back over our timeline and I see all the moments I resisted and dragged and argued, and he convinced me I was wrong, I was broken, I was mad.

You just have to trust me, he said.

My instincts were right. I want to go back in time and shake my shoulders and remind me to listen to the inner voice. I was lied to, manipulated, gaslighted.

I am not sure if I am in shock, because I am calm. I can no longer mourn the loss. He was not real. He was the monster, the dark brutal creature in the attic, the Devil with a pretty, earnest face and easy tears.

I am in shock that someone can be so cruel and heartless at their core. I did not think much could shock me anymore in my life, but I am just that. I am blown away by his level of deception. I recoil at memories of his touch, hands that were touching others.

I saw the signs and I ignored them, I turned away, or I listened to his words instead, poisoning my ears.

I am sorry to myself. I am sorry.

I am scared now. Everyone wears a mask. Are all of our cores rotten? How do I keep finding the same men, each worse than the next? He told me he was different, and he was right. He is crueler, he is blatantly more evil to me than anyone before.

I dreamed of my father last night, in the home he burned down. We were looking at the stars, the beautiful boundless night sky, and I told him my troubles. He laughed, because to him they are truths. They are deserved. There is a love I will always chase that does not exist.

"I don't see the big deal," my dream father said, and he wouldn't, because he is the same man. The same selfish drives, the same penchant for mind games. A sterner face, perhaps. Harsher hands. But I went seeking his opposite in the soft pretty boy who claimed to love nature and peace - and found instead his equal, warped like a shadow in the corner.

I looked up at the dream stars and forgot my dream father and he faded away. There were a million white lights above me and I read them all. They spoke to me and called me sister and I did not feel like I was broken into shards and fractions.

I felt like a million white lights.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

9-6

I wake up calm, serene. I gag into the sink, but it's been three days since a meal hit my stomach and there's nothing to empty. I close my mind off, but his words continue to roll through. Love words for another. I remember when he loved me. Or was it only words? I am beginning to think it was. The thought roils my empty stomach again and I fill it with dark coffee.

There's wide pink clouds in the sky in the evening, and the dog soars over the grass, thankful that I've managed to stir and move my tepid stiff body outdoors. We take the path through the trees as another comes up.

He's youngish, his dog is golden and silky like the inside of corn. He sits with me where I rest on the bench on the hill, gentle silence until he works up the courage to ask why I'm so unhappy.

I tell him about you and how you deceived me. False words, pretty words, earnest eyes, exasperation at my seeming madness. It all drove me mad in the end, I think. My sanity broke down into crumbled sand. I became the woman in the attic. I became the monster.

He is sympathetic, kind. He has been hurt before; he knows. His eyes go warm and sad for me, and his thigh touches mine, hot through his jeans. He leans close.

I ask him what's going through his mind. A sad girl in the woods, Manic Pixie hair and glasses and a dog she leaves untethered. Gin on her breath. It's a fucking fantasy, isn't it? Every man's a fucking hero until they're the villain. Do I strike him as weak, vulnerable? Will he sweep me up from my sadness? I stare through him, reading his intentions. Men have been trying to save me for years and somehow I only end up more and more broken by their clumsy efforts.

I rise and continue through the woods. The boy, or man, he's too far to tell, and his yellow dog carry on their way across the hill. I wonder what he would have said, if he had truly come my way.

Probably hello. That is real life. Nice night. Have a good walk.

Lies and deception are real life. This is how it is, for people. Injustice, thoughtless cruelty. Dishonesty. This is the norm. I don't know how I continue to be surprised.

There's feathers on the path again, and I collect them to add to the vase growing soft with those I have gathered. It feels like an apology lain for me in the dirt.

I have asked the sky why, but it responds only with beautiful feathers and pink fat clouds. I have tried to live a good life and be kind, but I think I carry with me the shackles of the past. They call me silly or superstitious, but at night I lie awake and wonder what, in another body, evil I did to deserve what I have been given.

No matter how I fight I can never seem to fully rise.

But I will keep fighting.

I twist the feather around my chin and admire the sky, brilliant and bright. In the trees birds are settling for sleep, a long journey to warmer climates tugging at the edge of their brains.

The dog chases a flock of turkeys, and there are more wide feathers for me to collect.

The Long Fall (2016)

The Awkward Girl has Fallen. And it is rough.

They say love is a battlefield, but I've lived my life on a battlefield. When I close my eyes and I think of my past, I see flares of red and flashes of grey, hear the echo of screams and violence as dirt and flies around me.

Love, for me, even in its most simplistic sense, has always been war.

Those most basic relationships, those that shape us as we grow--father, brother, even sometimes mother--were bright beacons of siege for me from whatever age it was that I began to retaliate. I could not hit as hard, but I could find other weapons, and so I did. Fighting was in my blood. I was born to this.

Always, I am cautious giving people my past. There is a disconnect for those who hear these vibrant war stories and yet see before them, unassuming and (relatively) well-adjusted, myself. I keep them close, buried away and even forgotten, and yet no matter how I wish to escape them they drive me in everything I do. They burn hot within; over time I became a forge, glowing and searing, but hardened.

I was sharp, even as a child. I knew our "normal" was not what the world saw. I grew quickly to resent this insanity that I fielded each and every day. People confessed to me their troubles and I marveled what it would be like, to have such a trivial existence. For such trials to be all-consuming. I did my best to understand, but, mostly, I envied them. The violence in their lives was slaps and pinches; for me, bombs fell. Lights dimmed with the vibrations of distant explosions and I slept my nights in fear.

I had two faces: Life required one, and War required the other. Where violence and threats and fear became trivial to me, outgrown, I learned the damage of psychological warfare. And I thrived on it, in the most pitiful sense. It was exhausting, and bizarre, but over time I became good at it. I pushed back against the physical worry, daring them to touch me, seeing how far I could go before hands closed around my throat. Smaller and more delicate I might have been, but something more surged in me. I would not bow or be cowed. I might be bruised and damaged, on those times I pushed too hard, but my forge glowed with the knowledge that I had more than them. I could See them, for what they were, and I could strike down with my knowledge. Those beasts of war may froth and rage, but at the end of the night, they have made nothing of themselves.

I struck my blows, but blows were struck back, whether I wished it or not. One day someone discovered shame. Perhaps I was the one who discovered it for myself, relating some gory detail or another of my day-to-day. Somehow, I learned Shame, and Shame drove me. Shame of my family and the strange life I lived. Shame from my family, of who I was, how I thought, every detail of my existence from my musings to my developing body. I fought hard and struck true wherever I may, but wounds had been inflicted and bled freely.

One day, I woke up.

I never said a true goodbye to this lifestyle. I simply hung up my battered armor and my weapons and I avoided my eyes in the mirror, and I walked away.

Those stories I envied, the ones others could so easily relate to, that is what I wanted. I could no longer ridicule these people who existed in the real world. It was no longer a victory, what I did. I was tired, I had fought to no end, and now I wanted to be able to sleep at night without fear. I wanted to be able to look at myself without Shame.

These things followed me, however, and follow me still. I smile and I listen and I, for once, believe that I understand the stories others tell me. Yet still when I close my eyes the flashes of war haunt me.

They trailed along as I tried to make my own relationships out in the world. People have read about them--superficial and silly. I didn't understand them at the time and I scoff at them now. Something in me craved closeness, but, as always, that Shame rode up in me. I found men who pushed me away, validating this. I convinced myself it was my error. I found men who loved me, hard. I convinced myself it was their mistake.

All along I carried within me something cobbled together from the stories; an idea of what might be true. I navigated the falsehoods every day. Those I fell for never lasted. They were ambiguous and unformed. Cold reality shone in, eventually, often too soon, and I found them lacking. I tried dating men more distant-- geographically, emotionally--but eventually still, one day I looked at them and I had the resonating, overwhelming realization that I had been faking them entirely. Not our relationship, but them, as an entity. I let myself be guided, at first, and, after time, I myself took the reins and I led them on a merry chase. Come with me and it will all make sense, I teased. Poor men fell and broke. Stronger men became distracted.

It was a game. It was a sweeter version of warfare, yet everyone left the field just as bloodied.

I loved it and I hated it, like an addiction. Something felt wrong at all times. Still, no matter how much I played; convinced myself to carry on and fight a little longer or laughed and disappeared in a puff of smoke, something felt off. That drive was there, as each brief fleeting opportunity fell around me. I shook them off and carried on, instinctive as an animal. All of it was wrong. I didn't know what would be right, but I knew that, when I met its eyes in the mirror, I would recognize it as an equal.

All metaphors and dramatics aside, I gave up on the idea of love. I gave up on it long ago.

In my mind I felt I knew what something like Love should feel like. I wasn't immune to it, after all. Maybe I had never found romantic love, but after I walked away from the wars and opened myself up, I found things that spoke to me about love. I loved my best friend. She taught me loyalty in strange fashions. I learned I could be angry at someone and still love them. I learned that fights are not an end.

I loved my dog, too, and I learned from that. I discovered what it was to trust someone to return to me. I understood what it was to never stop thinking something was beautiful.

Silly ideas, and odd, quilted together with romantic movies and novels and pieces of brief happiness here and there, but enough for me to design what I thought Love might be like.

Impossible, it began to seem. I wanted too much and what's more, I wanted some visceral connection. How could I list these requirements on OkCupid? I often found what I wanted on paper, but the connection was lacking. Or, some flickering interest, perhaps, but soon to wane.

And then, almost on accident, a stubborn fluke, I found it.

I won't delve into the rollercoaster that was that relationship from the beginning. I think, maybe instantly, though my cautious nature was slow to warm, I felt that spark that implied something deeper within us both. It was that hint of a spark that kept me going against all rationality for months, while I battled with uncertainty and confusion and hurt and resentment and still a bubbling, overwhelming desire to break through the coldness and find that brightness I had seen glimpses of. That is another story, one I have partly shared, and I wish to put it behind me.

What matters now is that my hardened forge is crumbling to ash. The horrifying realization is that what is left is not strong, as I have always seen myself. Brick and mortal and metal are falling and what is there, deeply buried, is human and soft and deeply, deeply vulnerable.

My envy has returned, for those who have experienced this before and learned to navigate it. I have not. Everything I feel is new for me, and wildly confusing. Sometimes I curl within the crook of his body, as I have done many times, and I feel ripped apart. I have missed out on these things. I have never learned what to do with the swelling sensations that bombard me. What can he see? I am a ship on churning, uncharted waters, terrified and elated, and when he asks me my thoughts I have nothing. I love him, I can say. Small words but my own, for once. Yet they mean nothing when I compare them to the beating in my blood. There is a new war within me, and I do not know how to fight it.

On occasion, when old habits rear their head and I become my old self rife with conflict and anger, I rise above myself and I look down at the woman I am now, and I feel so terribly sorry for her. She screams and she lashes and she clutches to herself the falling pieces of the person she once was, because she is terrified. Had she known that to love someone meant such vulnerability, she might have ceased her seeking ages ago. This woman, small and fierce and much too proud, does not understand what this all means, and in her blinded fear she reacts with violence.

But the violence and terror die down. Each time they flare, they are a little less certain. Because in this crook of his body, so simple and quiet, she finds a strange peace. I don't think she knew what it was, for a long time. She hadn't tasted of peace before.

But now that she has, and found what it means to take rest and comfort, I know she'll continue to seek it out.

I look down at her, sometimes equally frightened, but I wish that she will find the calm she has been searching for.

9-6

It's familiar, this sense. I know what to do with the anger and betrayal. I harness it, I live on the fumes.

I didn't know what to do with heartbreak. Loneliness and sadness were new to me. They spilled out and over, out of my control.

This, I thrive on this. I collect it to me and I build my walls thicker and stronger and I coat them in gasoline and broken glass and thorns.

This is what life prepared me for, all those hard times, the fear and distrust. My body lies tense in bed, awaiting an enemy, and I must force my mind down into my limbs and relax them so I can rest for the next battle.

The enemy is outside. The enemy is past. I can only take the lessons I've learned and build myself strong again. My body is thinning out at an exponential rate but I feel energized and impatient and capable.

I press the thoughts out of my mind--it's time wasted now, analyzing. I know the truth. I always knew the truth, and no matter what he says or doesn't say, I now know to trust myself. What clarification can he give, when I know they're lies? I have the truth before me. I saw it, I let him talk me out of it, and I broke bonds with my body over him. Never again.

My future is before me, quivering, a new bud. It's the future I always wanted. I worked hard, I bled and toiled and struggled for this, I was lain low, I begged and cried and fought.

It seems such a simple thing to want. Stability. Comfort. A little bit of joy and excitement here and there.

When I look back over my shadowed past, it glows in comparison, new light. Stability. Comfort. A little joy. Making things with my hands, making things with my mind. Simple pursuits. Warm animals to care for, a little money in the bank, feeling maybe I've done some good in the world when I close up my eyes and die.

I won't let anyone take that from me again. I won't let myself regress back into the hungry animal, the creature they broke and used for parts.

Different faces, same man. How do I continue to let them silence me?

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

9-5

Disgust churns my stomach, and rage, and a vibrant brilliant hate that I pull around me like armor.

I shut off my intuition because you told me to. I ignored my voice because you said it was lying.

Truth glares at me as I look back over what we had and know I was right, but you stifled me.

Just trust me, you said.

It turned me mad. That flickering on the stove, don't you see it?

Bile is high in my throat, filling me, and I swallow uselessly. Careful words. Careful lies.

Everything I held for you shattered. Your colors show, finally, not just in glimpses but in vivid honesty, and I see that the man I loved was not underneath there. He wore a mask to hide what he was, and I fell for it. I feel foolish, I feel ill, I feel nothing but angry.

You card was the Devil, and I should have listened to it. Not to you. Your words are lies. Your truth doesn't exist. Your cracked foundation is worthless and false, and I tried to build upon it.

It taints my memories. It turns them black and shadowed. I recoil at the thought that you have touched me, and I you, and then you her, and those hands are my hands somehow and I want to strike them out at you and seize back what you took from me. Time. Sanity. Love. How thoughtlessly you played your games, and how stupidly I allowed them.

Your world will end. Your love is misleading. She'll see it. You'll grow bored when the work sets in. She'll see how selfish and entitled you truly are. I wish you had told me kindly, softly. I wish I had not learned this way, but I am glad of the anger. I cut you from my brain and I scrub my skin and I leave your memories in bloody tangled pieces behind me and I move onward, to a place you in your weakness could never follow.


Saturday, September 2, 2017

9-2

He sits close and touches my shoulder periodically. It feels intimate—my shoulder is bare, I am trying a new look, a new dress that shows glimpses of more skin than I am comfortable showing. A new look to match my new hair, which makes me feel fresh and strong and makes me smile because people turn their heads to look at me.

This girl with the phoenix hair is flashy. She likes to be looked at and relaxes her hips when she walks so her dress swings side to side. People stop her and they say they like her dress and her hair, and they tell her she is beautiful, and she thanks them nicely; inside she is blooming with the reminder.

I had forgotten that I like the looks.

This flashy girl isn’t sure about hands on the shoulder, cool quick touches on her warm skin, but she is trying new things, and she doesn’t pull away.

She argues intelligently and teases. She jokes, and she drinks good beer in a tall sweating glass and then she drinks wine and then she shares his straw—her version of a touch on the shoulder.

She knows the meaning of the Latin words, and he shakes his head in surprise and appreciation and looks at the person beside him as if bringing him in on a secret.

“This girl.”

This girl has forgotten what it’s like to be admired, to glow. She has forgotten to appreciate her own sharp mind and strangeness and words, which flow free and gently when they are appreciated. This Girl is happy that when she speaks people listen.

No one is censoring her with looks and tense shoulders and sharp words, and she burns soft light, fireflies inside. The volcano has cooled and settled back to sleep.

I did what I could, and I learned lessons, and then I became This Girl. A patchwork of my best pieces. I clipped away the jealousy and hate and anger and threw them aside.

They don't match my new dresses. They don't go with my bright hair.