For a couple of minutes every week I pretend fhat I don’t sleep on the couchevery night listening for the sound of your car door
It makes sense to me that people consider ptsd to be a soldiers disease. That we are most aware of it in people of whom we demanded humanity in inhumane situations. Ptsd is a revolt of the body. The deep desire of the brain to malfunction, the guts not-want to function.
Imagine we all live in a world where our public safety system is built squarely on the values you all defined together.
Welcome home. You just entered your house after a long day. You open the door and … What happens next? What do you see when you walk in the house? How do you feel?
Where have you come home to? Where have you just come from?
What did you do today?
in a new world imbued with the right values, systems, and investments, what does coming home from work feel like?
i took public transit home from downtown and it was physically and financially accessible to me. the transit system is in good repair and spans all parts of town equally. nobody bothered me, nobody acted shitty toward the buskers, and the transit system employees seemed happy in their jobs. i do not have to interact with cops at any point during my commute.
my block is mixed use housing and business; there are no police cameras on the corners. the day care centers and schools in my neighborhood are all high quality and well funded. my home is energy efficient and my neighbors and i all have access to land for gardening and plants. my neighbors and i are on a first name basis and i say hi to anyone i pass on my way to my door.
i cook. i take my meds. i have fresh food and filled prescriptions. neither of these needs cost exorbitant amounts of money.
no one has yelled at me today. i have been paid a livable wage for the work i did, including community organizing. i am free in the evenings to spend time socially, recreationally, and consuming local art.
the consequences of ray's choices in my life have been:
losing my job and therefore my health insurance
losing my professional reputation
losing my personal reputation
losing many friends because they believed ray
losing many more friends because they believed lavonna, amber, kim, erika, and the rest of that ilk
losing thousands and thousands of dollars in legal costs
losing my credit score to accrued and unpaid medical debt that isn't mine that i can't afford
losing my love of this house, the place i said would be mine forever, that is now a trauma minefield
losing my financial stability, which has trapped me in this house
losing my financial independence and having to ask for help from my parents
losing my car
losing my nervous system, and a major increase in ptsd reactivity
losing my mental health, and a major increase in suicidality
losing my physical health, and a major increase in illness and daily pain
losing my in-law family
losing my respect for every part of the legal and criminal system i interacted with
losing my ability to trust others
losing my hope to exist in any kind of family ever
These are the mothers of my crisis, standing semicircle watch over the development of my trauma:
your lies grown up in malice and agenda, breadcrumbs and bile you handfed to others so they could learn to hate too, the rumors that lie like engine oil heavy on the concrete puddling like late autumn rain
This is a blight that will outlast my body, outrun my reputation: there is nowhere I can be without you
and even in seven years, when my cells are finally again younger than my nightmares, there will still be your hands grubbing up my memories, the weight of your denial stagnant in my nervous system
I knew who I was, until you
marty mcconnell, "give me one good reason to die"
at the millennial rolling-over point, baby boomer onetime-hippies-turned-parent all across these united states grown: when we said "you can be anything" we meant you could be a brain surgeon, or a genetic engineer, or a district attorney, we didn't mean you should become a poet
but it was dad who taught that the call of my wild heart rings as valid as any voice of reason, and it was mom who showed that raging terror of where you're headed is the surest sign that you're traveling in the right direction
this is a generation beyond definition: unconvinced the american dream isn't a fiction of REM sleep, unpersuaded the better life our parents sought and seek still beats on an unfamiliar highway
the spotlight's afterburn and half a pack of parliaments, breastfed on how many roads must a man walk down
we watched our creators sacrifice their sharp edges to stay within the lines, small wonder we accept this world as almost fatally flawed, filled the gas tank and raced to rant about the wrongs or find the edge of the planet and lean at the lip of the void
we are the change generation, fitted with the inconsistencies of a millennium in flux, vagabond lot, we skitter one city to the next in search of acceptable permanence, a home not in need of so much repair
see, our inherited tools, they fit like a phillips head in a slot screw: we know that sit-ins end in tear gas and tanks, picket lines in promises and compromises, lobbying in backrooms and bullshit
i might believe in this revolution if one person proved he knew what he was fighting for, and how
because the KKK still erects a cross in cincinnati's fountain square every christmas, and teenage girls still have to balance daddy's fists versus back alleys to secure abortions, and promisekeepers fill stadiums while poets play coffeehouses
and if i fucked a woman in alabama, arizona, arkansas, florida, idaho, kansas, louisiana, massachusetts, michigan, missouri, north carolina, south carolina, texas, oklahoma, virginia, or utah, i could get anywhere from 30 days to 20 years in jail
and i don't own enough rage for it all, i am 95 miles per hour on I-81 sprinting to trap the tirade vibrating on the next stage, is anybody listening?
i live in search of a cause worth dying for. it could be this revolution is all mouth and no legs. because we are a generation of screamers, silenced by this conspiracy of comfort that cradles us voiceless in our PC cities where only the drunk and the dangerous spill what seethes in so many
i trade crusades like cards, flip issues like channels. give me a god. give me a rallying cry. give me one good reason to die.
i regret being a ride or die person
i regret not making ray always pay more toward household bills
i regret not filing contested so that i could sue ray for half the cost of the divorce
i regret filing against anyone on ray's behalf
i regret time and energy and money spent on correcting shit healthcare providers
i regret every time i ever put principle or morals above money
the thing about ride or die is, if it's not mutual, you will die
every time
i am not a member of your army
you can neither conscript nor enlist me
you cannot equip, train, manage, or curtail me
i am beyond basic and eschew assignments
i will not board your boats or planes
i will not swim in your lack of consciousness
there is no line into which i will fall
without the ballast of my own beliefs
there is no mission i can be ordered into
except by the force of my own heart and mind
i am without structure and therefore seamless
i am without leader and therefore endless
unbounded, i grow with those who grow with me
we are legion, spores, starlings
expanding and growing in ways you cannot kill
i am not a member of your army
because my goal is for all of us to live
A year ago was married, my house was also home for ray, my in laws picked up the phone for me, and no queers in cleveland hated me
A year ago desperate, in conversation with dozens of doctors and specialists and facilities and connectors and helpers while I stopped eating, stopped sleeping, stopped breathing
A year ago terrified, ruining my nervous system and prefrontal cortex with chemical stress reactions I didn’t cause
A year ago this week got ray out of the house the first time and slept a few hours and then cried because I had been able to sleep
A year ago this week sixth hospital out of seven and then B Riley, meth, bar fights, the garage, barefoot freezing starving and screaming
A year ago voted against trump even as my life fell apart because the trump administration is part of why and how my life fell apart
A year ago sure I would file suit against cops but not hospitals, thinking the cops had done the most damage that we could incur
A year ago employed, a year ago with a strong reputation and a trustworthy presence, a year ago visible, impactful, capable, clean
A year ago in full survival mode for the first time since my teenage years and feeling my brain change inside my skull
A year ago knowing it would kill me and knowing that therefore I would find my escape hatch
A year ago invisible behind my partners chaos, a year ago sure that I would file for divorce, a year ago no one I trusted enough to say that to, and not recognizing it was the precursor of all the aloneness to come
There is so little difference between the cop yelling hold hold hold hold hold and the warble of an opera tenor
Between the
Between silent waiting for the baton and silent just drowned
This is the symphony you left me in
A place not even you can return to
Alone in these sounds I tried to write in rests, I tried to pull your part clear out of the cacophony but you
In your symptoms could not see the tsunami
I wrote timpani warnings and piccolo shrieking in for the depth and pace of my own panic, which you did not see or could not acknowledge
They will try, soon, to diagnose me with bipolar for those highs and lows, written always in counterpoint to you
Symphony that did not belong to me, chaos I did not know could be orchestrated by someone who loved me
People who have present mothers feel burdened by the presence, wish for less weight
People who have gone mothers feel burdened by the absence, wish for the possibility of presence
It is a very specific pain to have a present mother who harms you specifically, whose absence would make your life easier and healthier, to have to wish for both presence and absence in turns as you remember and forget your dream to have a mother
the world does not owe me ease, only opportunity. and that opportunity can be toward harm or good, as i see fit. or don't see. or can't see. depending on my experience, capacity, clarity.
oh i have wanted the sunlit dreams of others. i have wanted simple stories, velvet nights, golden fingertips, the marks of people who have seen me or heard me in truth. but truth is not a debt that others can owe. love is not a gift that is owed. simplicity is not owed. these are earned, all.
earned by individual action, to be sure, but also, by presence in communities who choose to hear and see as much as every individual must choose that as well. i have wanted to be seen.
community chooses, like salmon pulling upstream, what is genetic: what is instinctual: what seems to be the greatest good for the most members. community chooses these things with blood, with time, with the long slow arc of mutuality. there is no individual outcome. there is no singular argument.
so to be set apart is to be set at a disadvantage: to be singular is to be separated from the possibility of communal peace, separated from the opportunity to build communal paths. if i know that i am singular, then i know too that i am alone. in much larger ways than simply today's pathways.
there is such a difference between us: a million miles and all the paths i've already walked, a million tracts and all the books i've already written. you cannot see me. you cannot hear me in the ways i want to be heard.
i write poetry about psychiatric intake. it earns laugh reacts on facebook.
i write poetry about a broken body, the machinations of physicality. it earns shrugs from those who came before, and a round of beers from those who are stuck here with me.
the perpetual struggle: is it me? or them?
and if them, what can that possibly mean about me other than that i am different, other, elsewhere, somehow set apart? whether it is mercedes declaring me an indigo soul or leslie declaring my chakras broken, it will not matter, the outcomes are the same. only me, standing on this cliff, alone and groping for anyone else's skeleton. only me, standing in this tornado, ripping community to shreds to get to the facts of your body.
i miss you desperately. i have forgotten and remembered you ten thousand times. make it a million more.
you could be here with me: you could be in this house, you could be sharing these meals, you could be skin to skin with me and holding onto a hope we sprouted together. you could be here with me. you could have loved me.
on the ways when i forget how much more weight physicality holds, the days where i press knife to skin to remember that psychological, emotional pain simply is not enough. if i cannot prove it in my body, it must not exist.
this too will be rejected. and i remain unafraid of my faith. i will come to you, time and time again, hoping to see love light up your eyes, hoping to see recognition.
this is a public service announcement
i am done fighting. not everything has to be a battle, and i am tired of fighting. if i do not get the job, it is not the right job. if i do not get the funding, it is not the right funder. if i cannot be seen or heard in relationship with a friend, that is not the friend for me. i am done fighting.
i have expected greater loyalty. i have expected a greater understanding of my pain (much less empathy). i have expected recognition, for the years of work and service and love and help and service i have already invested. i recognize now that individual/internal viewpoint does not shift due to the journeys of others/external viewpoints. i am done fighting.
i expected you to get vaccinated in the name of protecting the community. those of you who are not vaccinated have broken my heart. i thought we could mutually understand the safety, the health, the security granted by vaccination. if we cannot protect each other, what are we doing? i am done fighting.
i have been abandoned for other peoples' ease, for their comfort, for their habits, for their preferences. my safety, my livelihood, my ability to exist in cleveland has been buried beneath others' desires for simple interactions and the ease of not having to consider history, connection, outcomes, impacts.
if, when i am not in the room, you have forgotten that ray, kim, lavonna, amber, erika, hannah, and so many others chose to harm me in the name of ease and comfort, i will not be reminding you any further. enjoy your easy, thoughtless, vapid relationships. enjoy your path of least resistance.
if you think i have not seen, heard, known about all the ways that you have abandoned me, you are wrong. at this point, everyone in cleveland should already been knowing who i am and the amount of what i know, can find out, will understand about you and your choices. i am always the spider in the center of the web. i feel every vibration, every repercussion you create.
for too long i have held the burden of being untethered from my family, from my background, from old friends, from people i grew up with. i have held the responsibility for having had to move past those pieces of grounding and understanding that so many others get to enjoy, and the way you look sideways at people who make choices different than your own. but i did not come from where you come from-- my family has been active harm, pervasive toxicity, lethal in its machinations.
i have held that responsibility because my responsibility is to myself: toward my own health, my own future, my own sense of self and community and values. i will not hold responsibility toward those who so easily abandon me. and that is, at its root, why i have walked away from family, from long-entrenched relationships. i will leave you, and i will not look back.
not everything is a battle. i will not fight for your good opinion or your goodwill. either you can see my value, my worth, my offering of love and trust and mutuality, or you cannot. i see your choices clearly, and i will not fight any more.
Elaine Schleiffer is proud to be a resident of Cleveland, and dedicated to improving outcomes for all of us. Elaine has worked in communications and public relations in both the public and private sectors, and these days can be found collaborating with small nonprofits and direct service organizations on values-guided development, fundraising, and organizational strategy. She is the incorporator and founding board chair of the Buckeye Flame, Ohio’s only LGBTQ+ media outlet. She served as chair of the board at Preterm from 2018-2020; she has also served as a board member at Plexus, the LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce, and at Guide to Kulchur. She is also the cofounder of the Cleveland Bi+ Network.
Elaine is terrified, all the time, and normally does a great job of hiding it. Her self-destructive tendencies know no peer, even as external viewers say they see great capacity for work and achievement. The inside of her head is a toxic waste dump and requires regular self-medication with a wide range of substances. She remains neck-deep in her earliest traumas, which include a homophobic upbringing among a fiercely conservative family in an obscure faith-healing religion that denied everyone medical care. She does not believe herself to be capable of the level of healing required to retrench long-embedded beliefs, or the personal, social, and cultural outcomes of sexual and intimate partner violence. She is tired of everyone’s shit.
I am lucky to have had lawny
If I had had to express all the fear and concern I felt at myself, it would never have come out
Only with someone else to think about do I know clearly how deep the threat from ray runs
Only when someone else’s safety on the line will I move to protect this house or this life
what i am now: some nuisance, some rot
to be treated, a half baked dinner left dusty in the oven
you never turn on
a spring birth, a simple child, not worth
explaining the world to
now that we're done
a sty in your eye, slight cut in the web of your hand
a useless device, unprincipled slut
now that we're done the view
changes, a candy tray full of ash, a vase of stems
lantern on a bright day
guide on a lit path raising a hand
in a cacophony, inaudible and made invisible again
now that we're done
emptied toolbox, emptied mouth, drumsticks
but no drum head, all fury and no sound
what i am to you
now that we're done
march 23, 2021
65th & franklin
i wrote this because the system is not working for me, and you individually are the only one i can ask to hear me. the one thing i need you to do most is listen to me. it is not the layers of trauma that are hurting me. it is well meaning professionals who ignore me that is hurting me. i am not well, and i am not communicating well. but the resources i have right now are not helping me eat, sleep, keep my job, or function.
last fall my husband became psychotic, then violent, then homicidal, over the course of two months, alone in my home with me. i fought with cop after cop after lawyer after cop, to force him into lutheran, where he was pink slipped and released without care after only 24 hours, St Vincent's, where they diagnosed psychosis and held him for a week then released him without aftercare or med changes back into my home, marymount, where again he was held for 72 hours and then released without a med change or aftercare plan, and then laurelwood, which put him in an IOP three days a week after i begged them not to go with an all virtual program. at every facility i told the social worker, i am not safe. he abuses me. i need help. what i should have said was, your willingness to follow release protocol blindly has increased the incidence of domestic violence in my home. i'm 33, educated, capable, well networked, ferocious, and an advocate for regular people against systems that don't work in my day job. i wasn't heard by anyone last year and i fear no one is listening now.
today i show up in front of you having been in the ER yesterday, after driving myself there because i thought i was having a heart attack and i'm too poor to ever call an ambulance. the pain i felt was lasting and severe, and women underreport heart attacks all the time, so i go and get an ekg and thank god there's a gay nurse who heard me long enough to get thru drug allergies and history of drug use, all of which you should have to know to prescribe me anything. and the ER doc took one look at my chart, said "i'm dr jon heavey, how's your pain, we'll prescribe you some medicine okay?" left and never seen again, didn't even say what medicine. he prescribed IV ativan, at least that's what the chart says, but ten minutes later they released me, i walked out, drove myself home, made my appt with you, fought with my boss about how to reassign my clients, still feeling so much tension and pressure, then i went and bought more ativan from a friend, thinking if the ER doc said it would help then he clearly got the dose wrong but i can fix that. so i bought three and last night took each of them about two hours apart between each dose, along with tylenol and marijuana. i was awake till midnight and got up at 3am.
i take all my pills every day as prescribed. i am anxious, angry, frequently dissociate, i don't sleep any more, and i am very tired. i do not have the energy to fight with you. i do not have the energy to effectively self advocate any more. i think it's possible all drugs are placebos. i think it's possible the ER didn't actually give me anything other than saline. i think it's possible that i have bipolar 2 or something else you aren't thinking of. i think it's possible that none of you have any idea what is happening to me. but i know that i am not crazy. and i know that something is wrong.
i'm trying to do it the right way. i was in therapy three times a week from november to february. i take what you ask me to take, i develop the habits you ask me to develop, i walk my dog, i paint, i have safe social contact with a few people who love me.
this is not working. i am worse. i am worse at sleeping. my short term memory is gone. i am anxious with physical symptoms including twitching, the inability to sit still, and nightmares. i have expended so much energy staying sober during this. but the thought gets louder every day that a good high could fix this, at least for five minutes, and even a five minute deep breath sounds too good to be true any more.
so i'm asking you to listen to me today. that heart pain yesterday was abnormal, among the worst pain i've ever felt and i got my tonsils out at 26 without taking any painkillers during recovery. something is wrong with my brain, and something is wrong with my heart. and i no longer have the energy to fight with systems like healthcare, cops, doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, insurance companies, and social workers. none of you can hear me and none of you have helped me. the only opportunity between us today is for you and i to take a deep breath, try some different solution, and gather additional resources. i need you to know that this is a high stakes situation, that this is the closest i have ever been in my life of rapes and familial abuse and religious abuse and abusive partnerships and two abortions, this is the closest i have ever been to the edge. i need help. because this is not cutting it, and i do not want to die.
september 9, 2021
me standing in the bedroom doorway
you standing naked in front of the closet in the hall
backlit by the window
holding up a tie
to see what colors were in it
you shaking a blanket out over the porch
you like this sappy stuff don't you
curled legs around each other
you kissing me
the sky mauve leaning purple leaning black
you laid back and smirking at me again
your hips grinding up toward my mouth again
your hands on me, you pulling apart my clothing inch by inch to take what you select
the wind
this was supposed to be simple
june 20, 2021
when i kill myself
when i kill myself i'll use a gun. they say women opt for poison usually, overdoses, quiet ends. but i would add my body to the bearing of trauma on the face of this world.
when i kill myself the note will read "i have loved every single one of you since the day i was born"
when i kill myself i dare you to put on a funeral. i dare you to try to gather people who could speak in any direct way about who i am. i know already they will tell of the work i have done, and not who i am.
this is who i am: pure, and purely terrified. scared in my bones of life, for life, against life. and also: capable of the most fearless decisions you ever had the fortune to witness. you're welcome. you're welcome.
when i kill myself
may 10, 2021
i know how to make you happy
so that's all i want to do
because i don't know how to do any of the other things weighing on me
i am never obligated to accept anyone else's caretaking or oversight
I AM THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR ME
i know me best
i do not pay for services which are damaging
i do not continue with practitioners who cannot see me or hear me
i do not believe any therapist could make it through CBT with me
i do not believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, i do not believe in the rainbow.
may 2, 2021
things you get from a lifetime of trauma that nobody talks about:
heartburn or nausea. all the time! sleep disruption, appetite disruption, and a strong desire for substance abuse. congratulations, other people did this to your body.
convinced that you are alone. all the time! there will never be another human capable of seeing or hearing you. sure, you'll love folks, and they'll tell you that they love you back, but this is a lie, and someday they will hurt you, and you can know right now that you are right and eventually be proven right. you will be proven right.
demonstrable proof that other people are shit. like, a lot of it. lists of it. other people seem to not keep these lists, which i don't understand.
ease of attachment and ease of dissolution. get ready for me to love you hard and leave you easy the minute you cross a boundary.
oh also, boundaries. if you don't learn them, you'll die. and when you do learn them, the ecosystem you live in is so fucked up, they'll make everyone enraged or sad, so be sure to counterbalance with fawn behaviors.
i've been to move than ten years of therapy. group, talk, CBT, ACT, i've done it. i have survived an abusive family, abusive employers, rapists, abusive partners, two stalkers and growing up in a cult. who could tell me at this end of my life that i am wrong?
march 28, 2021
it is just so sad to be here without ray and without so many of the people i thought cared about me.
forest fires give and they take away; i write a lot about lodgepole pines, which grow their seeds in cones so brittle that fire is required in order to crack them open; but this is 2021, and the fire has razed too much acreage.
march 27, 2021
other people have written compellingly about their memory loss but i can't remember who or what they said.
cloud cover means the brighter nights, the downtown lights blanketing my backyard in an orange smoggy glow at 1am
i used to chainsmoke and let the nicotine decide how angry i was going to be, possums trundling past with fleas on their haunches
when i was a child i thought running away was survival, not identity
i think of Nikki, her times that were not meant for tree poems, i think Octavia knew who god was, i think i am
more like Stanley Plumly in an icebox, white stone laying on a black stone, the rot of the system laid bare in my times and on my body:
together we are a mouth without a tongue or teeth, saying
a thing of beauty is a waste forever.
march 7, 2021
when ray is hungry someone cooks for him.
when he is homeless someone takes him in.
when he is sober someone pats his back and when he is drunk someone takes him to a meeting.
for all the weeks that i have been alone struggling just to be alive and to function ray has had help cooking, doing laundry, getting thru daily tasks. and i have been alone.
december 7, 2020
everything could make me cry if i let it. every song is either about our love or our loss, or a song you once sang to me in better days. i remember every word.
there are days when i can't hold it in and the grief flows in the shower, in the kitchen, in the backyard, in work meetings. there are days when i am so angry with you for abandoning me that i could burn my own house down, throw cinderblocks through my own windows, overfill my own tub, all the damages you didn't get a chance to do.
every emotional soprano is me, every solo cello line, every beat drop. i wish you could feel me still.
november 24, 2020
i will never forget the moment when ray said
DONT you dare do an intervention
at that point i had not even realized the extent of what was happening
but ray knew
how did i wind up married to someone who turns to facebook messaging mariska hargitay and then asks me to affirm that choice as though it was any kind of choice
no one loves me because i know how to find orion, or the story of cassiopeia
these are after all human stories
and humans do not love me
how did i wind up married to someone who calls the trevor hotline to tell them about me as though my behavior is the problem
november 19, 2020
even when it's grinding
even when it's slow
even when it hurts more than the original injury
you must heal.
it is your body's imperative:
to live, not to wonder
why you were left alive.
the planes overhead make no sense:
why wish for gravity's betrayal?
the stars overhead stay silent.
the clouds move fast:
the almost new moon still:
a sliver, waiting.
november 15, 2020
a brief list of things i like
when the clouds are a million different shades of blue-grey
when babies start to really look like their parents or make their parents' facial expressions
pets that have people names
creators named maggie (maggie rogers, maggie nelson, maggie smith, etc)
the friendship between megan thee stallion and cardi b
the way the start of an amaryllis bulb growing looks like its sticking its tongue out
october 13, 2020
i need to feel like i have a choice
i can't be condescended to
how dehumanizing it is to be told you have to be babysat
what should i eat
what time is it
should i take my meds
do i have to
can you say that another way
i control what i put in my body
i am not an alcoholic
i am not an addict
i am not sick
katy tried to kill me
katy killed tate
katy will kill my family
how good that someone else can make you feel as though you have choice
how good that you can decide you aren't an alcoholic while chugging beers on my garage floor
how good that you aren't sick in the middle of your manic episode
how good that you do not need to be babysat while you fail to clothe and feed and clean yourself
september 3, 2020
mostly i wish i could push a button and release gravity's hold on me
just me
and ascend slowly, a long last look at the beautiful world we're killing
slowly up past the treetops and the rooflines and the skylines and finally
letting even the shapes of the highways give way, the rising of the coastline, the thinning of the air
the vistas widening and the oxygen lessening and i would really only have to let my lungs deflate
as i rise through cumulus, stratus, wind like ether streaming over so cold skin
let my heart rate rise as the oxygen falls and wait for the sky to start
the surprising long minutes of clear ascension as the body panic climbs too
turning bluer, then blacker, the outer edges of where i know the end waits
and the whole planet tilts her forehead to me as i slide out of her grip
to the eventual loss of pressure, shape, and self
where i'll become a star
a body returning to the eons, carbon and nitrogen and my limestone spine
and the little bits of lithium i paid so much money for on earth
uncastrated and redistributed among the molecules of the universe
unbounded and reforming anew
I don’t know what’s more traumatizing: what actually happened, or knowing that I won’t remember most of it in another year
Don’t forget three showers a night. Don’t forget sex addiction. Don’t forget a quarter a day. Don’t forget cocktail of meds. Don’t forget Kristen threatening inpatient. Don’t forget you lost your job. Don’t forget him screaming, pacing, raging, crying, throwing, breaking, painting, hitting, lying, buying, using, lying.
I’m so mad about everything I have had to live through
And it feels like I am continually asked to swallow more and more and more and more
I go back and reread his abusive final words to me hoping I’ll glean what, some new sense of closure? To see if they’ll ever hurt less? To see if they’re finally meaningful?
They’re not
we have both learned the hard lessons:
both been razed and born again at our hands, with the strength of root systems we grew ourselves.
the doing and undoing, the pushing and stalling, the growing catalog of what we have swallowed, what we have righted for ourselves and others.
still Eden does not open. i fail this catechism every day.
these are my confessions:
that i have taken pride in your presence, that i have been proud to make a gift of my errant mouth.
that i lust for you: that i write sonnets for your hands, couplets comprised of your eyes and mouth, gospel rhythm for the twining of your legs between mine.
that i am gluttonous: that i eat memories of you for every meal, stay hungry for the tracks of your hands across my burned skin.
that i have transgressed, and will transgress again: that i will violate history and geography and meteorology to arrive in the beautiful future where we are wholly ourselves, and full of heat and light.
bless me lover, for i have sinned, and will sin against any deity who denies me my faith. bless me lover with more: more grace, and all the time you will allot me. i am grateful for every moment.
these years have meted their costs from my skin.
what good i had has evaporated out of my blood, leaving only
the discontent, the agonist, the lie. on this morning
the rain falls, drop by drop, and i run from each,
from your hands on my skin, from absolution.
between these pale grey walls i am struck, pinned and wriggling.
after years of chameleon tactics, camouflaged silhouettes,
here finally i am visible, and terrified.
here i am searching, i am lost, lost, lost.
your breath is a command and treks me closer to grace,
closer to heat, closer to god. there is always one path
i know i can find without light, reading only
the direction of your hips, where all of me will bloom
then fall. in the white halo of my throat where your hands
pressed, left, and in the morning your name is in my mouth
a realized prayer all its own. i would leave a trail
here too: remember my wet. you are king of my mouth
and i am loyal, loyal, loyal.
i have worked so hard and come a long way. i have lost much of my self along the way.
i have journeyed hard to arrive in this place where you are:
this place where you can see streetlights and intersections and signals
and i am blind, deaf, mute. will you pull me through this city?
will you tell me who i am? after years, maybe i am willing
or, too tired to say no, too broken to work against the knowing,
learning hands of someone else. i wonder, does the work go to waste?
i have been so afraid. i have been hard pressed to protect and preserve
these last pieces of my self. do i cede myself to this landscape?
what could that grant accomplish? and where i am land—traversed, seismic,
built and rebuilt in a thousand ways—you are
water, blood of my veins, spit of my mouth, working tracks
into the world around us. the river that is never quite tamed.
i could build bridges but i have known many storms, will not extend myself
for structures that can be torn down.
you make a canyon out of me. i am all echoes,
a long, low coyote howl of loneliness and discontent.
a cautious malcontent, i wait always for the breath before the rain.
hovering close to the skirts of the swirling thunderheads
i have waited always just over your shoulder, in the corner of your eye.
i weave a bright web of possibility, washed dull in the years
that preceded the advent of your mouth. i have always waited
and spun, carding gristle out of the warm wool of the past.
i could lie and say i have waited, but all these quiet years i have planned
waited and planned for what my future could look like
but the years turn me over, bend me toward a different scheme.
purled into a more sinister shape i grift my way through days
seeking shelter more than love, comfort more than care.
a common moth, i fly to your flame, flicker only at the edges.
house of wounded things
this is a rescue: the way i hold your hand
and you hold mine. in the world, i show up whole.
blue paint, bleach, smoke: chemicals i use to cover up the past.
at least the smell of blood is gone.
the taste in my mouth, ochre after the noise of you is finished.
i crave, i crumble, i cum for you.
when my voice was small i used my hands.
wrapped in the truth of the body, there is nothing i can't see.
so this too: the lines of you, long and laid out in front of me, the crook of your knee, the curve of your shoulder.
the look of you: expectant, content.
an open mouth retching truth up into open: i wish now for silence, having fought so long to speak.
i never promised to be healed or whole, only that i would live.
a thousand thoughts between me and a single spoken sentence.
i wait for the breath between your words, the motion of your mouth and the rise of your chest.
break me here: the rapture has come and gone, and you and i the wiser for it.
the density of prolonged suicide, the weight of the consequences i carry: i cannot make you understand the tectonic shift of your tongue in my mouth. i would not show you how deep the scars run.
if ever there was peace, it is for us. if anywhere there is joy, it walks toward us now.
break bread for me, the body offered up to the soul. armageddon is your mouth, and i welcome the sudden heat.
oh i am hungry for you. i am the chrysalis, writhing.
on the morning after the fault lines got clear
the sky was blue and the clouds were white, and the taste of you
stayed in my mouth. i have never been fearless
but around you, i ache for freedom:
for a body that doesn't creak with history, for an
ego unbroken with others' weight.
on this morning my heart stays light.
so steeped in the natural order of things are we
that even the warmth of the sunshine
is a mimic of your arms, the breeze
a kiss between us. remnants all, and memories
i will stay proud to claim.
the lines of your body long and lit
soft in the first rays of the day: i reach for
the warm weight of you, the rise and fall,
ballast of my own ability to get still.
i have never deserved mornings like these.
i have had to develop my own toxicity
in order to remain a predator not prey, and every
poison and vice and sin and trick
on which my freedom relies is too visible,
too easily tasted on my mouth and cunt.
i owe too many debts, culled too much damage
out of the world we wake to now.
too many months lived outside my body,
kite lashed hard against someone else's suicide.
too many months spent quiet, hard, static.
i am too strong to break, too smart to fail, except
at my own hands, the true cost of escape.
for you something inside of me grovels, wet,
an instinct doused in fear and shame.
i want to bleed. i want to crawl. i want
the pressure of your teeth on my skin.
i want to be measured and found wanting, be seen
and be silenced. take me home.
i could never have expected the depth of you, the way your mouth can douse me whole. i have been swimming for years in the wide open grey, a tide wrenched against her own lunar needs, capturing detritus and refusing to crest. who i am is more refraction than fact, more illusion than carbon; they see my work, but cannot see me.
you rise me pure over the arch of your eyebrow, the slant of your smile, a soft crash on the rocks of my ego every time. i am bloated with these years, belly-up and hoping for the sky.
in the water are a million ways i could love you, leave you, drown you, breathe you. i could no more demand you than separate any single drop of water out of my body.
you are story already, shaped in air and earth. what you design will stand for decades.
so a myth and a legend meet on the shore, standing in quicksand and shaping the world. the shine of you on this morning meets the glow that's been building in my blood.
like all things in the tidal pools we could grow forever, an ecosystem all our own. or we could get drawn out, in moments or at once, tossed free or crawled home, the moment gone. questions of coastline and current i cannot answer; i can only hold my salt and shells and bones in both hands while the moon moves me around.
the healing always hurts worse than the original harm.
i am the conglomerate effort of everyone who has ever hurt me: i am the cobined detritus
washed up on the beach of my name.
(my name which is not mine, and is not me.)
those of us walking our own coastlines
have turned tidal ourselves.
there is no piece of this continent i have not bounded with my own feet, no stone
on this shore i have not cried over, adding my own heat and salt
to the absolution of these cold troughs.
bury me here: i would stay unknown.
in the searchlight of a bright moon i move down the coast piece by piece.
you thought to join me, or witness me, but i leave no map and this land protects my body
as pure as only trauma can.
you will never be close to me, you will never know my mind, and the body
is cast off as easily as kelp.
i bless your intuition, knowing i can run faster than your eyes can see.
which cove should i start to bail, which cypress copse has the most bodies buried?
i was not made for excavation
(mine is a lunar mode of being, metaphysical, not mechanical)
but i have been told this is the only way.
i dig with slow hands, cupping the grit into my lap one palmful at a time.
there is no end here and never will be: only the surety
that i will leave, keep going, keep digging.
i will never run out of reasons to keep running.
I die ten thousand deaths for you, each a breath caught too high in my chest, each a moth fluttering against the flat red wet of your teeth meeting in my throat.
If you tied me down in this room I would only build new arches, blend blue ink across my skin until you see me for what I am, skyline unto my self, silhouette against the city.
Blind, I have come offering: an open mouth for teaching, the rasp of my breath for taking, I sing for you from this tower, I listen for your reply.
Dead, I could lay you down in the middle of this road in the middle of this summer in the middle of this life and you would rise for me, and stay risen.
When they call you witch and mean it
I have kept my temper too long, short-circuited my own paths for anger by forcing a single outcome over and over and over and over.
No, I’m not mad, you’re fine, of course you meant or didn’t mean that.
I regret times I didn’t take offense, times I didn’t raise my voice. I regret allowing other people in my circumference to feel comfortable in their poor choices and poorer ideas. I regret the inherent inequity of who I did take issue with and who I avoided. I regret failing to tell many, many powerful men to their faces how deeply wrong they are.
I regret not telling you how much you hurt me. I regret excusing you from the outcomes, the bruises, the scars, the way I keep my back to the wall, the holes in my drywall. I regret healing.
I have kept my temper too long and what sits in my chest, threatening to douse me whole, is not my own anger—which people have told me is toxic (not life saving) and poisonous (not evidence)—but is in fact the detritus of years of terrible treatment at the hands of people who ought to have loved me.
I have kept my temper in check, stayed nice, kept sweet, played along, greased the wheels, pushed forward, glossed over, reassured, flattered, flirted, and accepted my way through life. I regret it.
a lot of people fall in love with me. a lot of people want to try it out, think that we could make it work. a lot of people can envision themselves with me for life.
what i am: raw, angry, explosive, tired, rotting and rotten
what you see: soft, sweet, curved, smiling, wet, wet, wet
you've got to stay in your lane, because i am bigger than the journey itself. unless your lane causes the end of mine, i am not interested in anyone else's demarcations. and an ending would be welcome.
it's no longer clear to me that there's anything "worth it" to be won, that there's anything redemptive or even enjoyable at any point along the road. i thought that someone would love me eventually, i thought maybe i'd know what it was to not be alone. i no longer think those things will happen for me.
lived experiences they call them, as though unlived experiences could be any more or less damaging than what reality inflicts individually.
poems i will not write for you:
clean lines of even length that stripmine my trauma out of my blood
half-beaten verses throbbing for your gaze: look at my gaping wound, my festering sore, the apartment where i was raped, the doctor who gave me an abortion, the shower were i stayed with all my clothes on for hours on a day when no one could see me
i will not write a polemic that yanks your heart into the street where my friend was shot, in the gutter, and his blood followed the same concrete rivulets that the rain does there to this day
i will not write you a single word for every dear heart gone for a salt grain of addiction, one chemical too far over the line of appeasing aching bodies and brains, for being one breath too close to peace we have lost you each forever
i will not write you a holy verse for the part of my heart who committed suicide on the steps of the ohio statehouse when his weight was too much to carry, god does give us more than we can bear, there is no god, he deserved so much better.
i will not chart and rhyme the million times i have been catcalled, followed, harassed, bullied, drugged, shoved, slapped, spat on.
i will not even document all you cannot see: the harms you have inflicted by not witnessing all of what is physically evident in my life: the slights, pauses, turning aways, all the slow afternoons cracking the earth and my body open by ignoring
not me but others, not others but all of us, but none of us. complacency strips you of dignity entirely.
I do not beg.
And for weeks
I cried in their offices, at their kitchen tables, on the phone
desperate with love.
I do not grovel but I went
and asked
everyone
for you.
I live. At any cost.
I screamed
once
in October
because I knew
exactly
what was coming.
Tell Ray I love Michele.
Tell Ray there are entire minutes when I do not remember his name.
i have missed my own voice
the only authentic crop i've ever grown
even the words cannot be mine
are only borrowed
mined from someone else's cairn
at best i am a colonizer
a parasite, a vaccuum
for all the worlds and words and dust
that are not mine
i recycle your anger and call it coal
i compost your dreams and call them hope
please
see me
i am entirely without future
drenched whole in the swallows of my mind
i am only capable of overwhelming you.
i drip down your legs, slide into the pores of your skin.
kill me, or else turn my water into wine.
rolling back the stone, it's clear this is an eternal staircase
i struggle up, slowly, without end:
the way i love you is spiritual,
a pillar of fire writ orange in the sky, or else
the legacy of salt, land attachment, nostalgia of the body.
slide your tongue between my lips:
i am whole, and wholly wet, for you.
no one will ever tell you to save yourself
and when you are, finally, collapsed in a place you have earned and name safe, there will still be a knock at the door of your ego, a cry for you to minimize your heart
you will survive armageddon only to have people tell you that the earth cannot kill you
you will survive the density of someone else's active, prolonged suicide, the continual proximity of death, you will survive months of deep trauma
you will survive your soulmate hating you, you will survive your family hating you, you will survive your community hating you, and a second community, and a third, you will survive your soulmate turning a fourth to which you thought you belonged
you will survive all this and more, episodes we did not even bother to record, memories we did not even bother to categorize, only to have people tell you that the earth is a good place
summer child, erstwhile tourist, could i but have invited you to any previous iteration of my existence, you might have known the depth of wrong that occurs here every day
there is no such thing as evil, only human hearts making tectonic shifts against others when their own agency and identity is dislodged, and a cycle that continues
just as the air turns and the oceans visit your home and the body turns over its complete set of cells every seven years, there will come a day
when you have never touched me, and the earth births its own ends
the wild part is how i manage to want anything from anyone when everyone has fucked me over
also, i'm the smartest person i know. and capable. and ferocious. so what exactly. is anyone else bringing to this table right now. what would i even allow anyone to bring.
do i rage? very well then, i rage.
i dare to eat a peach.
nobody told me where to go, nobody told me where to run. there was not a path here and now look: lights, directions, guides. you're welcome.
leave it better than you found it is a rule they have had to teach colonizers in hindsight. fuck me, i am so fucking tired.
Come over here
I like the way you taste
I want to make you feel good
I like the way you moan for me
Can I make you feel good baby
Let me get that off for you
Do you remember how much you like my mouth
Do you remember my body at all
I remember all the right spots, I have learned you so many times
Do you need it this way baby
Do you think I’m good, or bad, baby, do you think I’m good
Do you want to fuck me
Do you like the way I make you feel
When I fuck you I can’t hear me hate me
When I fuck you I claim the peace of sexual penance
When I fuck you and make you cum I claim social value
When I fuck you I make a claim on your goodwill
When I fuck you I take a little energy, a little life, a little love
(they have called me succubus) Do you like the way I make you feel
When I fuck you I tell the truth
You are my family, my religion, and all the brute parts of my soul
Do you want to hurt me a little baby
Do you like it when I hurt you
Do you like the way your body feels
Do you like the way your body feels inside mine
Do you need it slower, harder, do you need more pain
Do you like that baby tell me
Do you like how I make you feel
Baby can you feel me baby can
you hear me
Can you hear
me Can you hear me Can
you hear me
What makes you feel good?
Put your body in my hands—there is nothing
for you to hide here—
I will moderate it all for you.
I will make the world soft under your skin, the air
sweet in your lungs. My sweat, my cum
laces up your hands, find me in the corners of your eyes
and your mouth.
They have called me succubus. They have called me witch.
I would burn the world down for
the pleasure of your body. KNOW this.
Feel knowledge of me warming your back in ten
tracks, there is nothing
to keep here. Beloved visitor, tourist with a hungry soul.
I will open it all for you.
I bleed comfort for you, birth the old glory
of your joy in my bed.
Cunt, they have called me, and meant it.
Tell me again—lips close to my ear, feel me
hot against the veins in your neck—
what makes you feel good?
Things I know about how to go crazy
1) love someone / something / somewhere, lose someone / thing / where
2) ask for help from professionals, let them fail
3) let those that will take everything — it’s easier
4) let the abuser tell their stories — it’s easier
5) always hold all of the legal and financial risk — it’s easier
6) always take the path of least resistance and most loss
7) because none of it matters
8) every cycle of life is trauma
9) you can’t even take your coping skills with you when you’re gone
10) so do the drugs & fuck anyone you want
if a witness could be called, she would have seen me
lives ago, when i was young, and possible: where once i held
gentle and did not shake, now only the raw potentiality of having nothing
and having nothing left to lose.
i i am only bones and muscle, tough on the teeth, all sinew and no soul.
no heart or kindness or softness left in the cavity of my rib cage, no brain
or logic or conscience to keep the rage at bay.
only the framework of an identity, interlocking knobs that comprise motion and this
sandstone skeleton, bones beached inland by receding tides and bleached
by the late millennium sun. this is what age is: a sort of brittle vitality, the knowing
of your own mortal timeline and the fight backward, toward what
we think is love. self love. family love. social love: for when you were
thin, or stylish, or had good skin. i i earn none of these any more. i am too large
to be seen, too integral to be untangled from the rest. visible only in the way
i choke the light and life out of the ecosystem around me, visible only in my hunger
and easy destruction of others. i will never be pregnant, never fallow with hope. i birth only
the earth, and everything on it. leave me: i i am rank and raw with ferocity, sharpened
fangs eager to meet in your throat. i know the taste of blood, the feeling of it
slick down the skin and cold on the ground. i puddle myself at your feet, hungry
enough.
I might forget that I slept on the couch for weeks, months, because it felt safer, and ridiculed myself the whole time for not being normal
I might forget that I watched the same season of the same ten-year-old tv show over, and over, and over, for the comfort of predictability, not having to learn, or pay attention, or hang onto a plot. That I stopped reading, that I stopped listening to music. That I stopped playing music. That I stopped writing.
That I can’t get care from certain teams and facilities, because I called and screamed too many times on your behalf.
I might forget that the dogs behavior changed, that I gained weight, that lawny and I became a tightly wound ball of codependent anxiety. That Kristen told me to write a letter to lawny as a journal entry and I could only sob, thinking of how I hold the consequences for lawnys life changing because of Rays behavior. I wish no one had ever kicked any dog.
Tell ray I love Michele. Tell ray there are entire minutes now where i forget the fact that he exists.
I’m so tired and mad. Why am I awake at 2am, 4am, 6am. Why am I not hungry or too hungry, not sad or too sad, not talking to my body or letting my body shriek at me.
No consequences for Ray other than the divorce really. I hope it hurts. Of course this one consequence also rests on my shoulders.
“Every time I talk to you you’re unhappy, I’m worried about you,” fuck you mom. Absolutely zero concept of what the last several months have meant, any of it. Even what I did tell her seems to have made no impact on her brain. I am always glad I did not tell her more.
2/17
i have this continual fantasy where i get to wake up in a soft bed in the sunday morning sunshine, knowing its a day off, next to the person i love and who loves me, and it's all white sheets and yellow light
usually deja vu only brings me odds and ends, snippets of future me at work or in conversation, but maybe someday it will bring me a moment like this
i don't want to breathe your dust any more -- and i will count my seven years till every one of my cells has forgotten your touch.
there is nothing in the world other than people. i try to convince myself i will always have a home. chameleons always do. watch me match, watch me play this role. i am wholly capable of disappearing.
so i give myself the gift of your heartbeat pressed under my ear-- the small joys of jealousy and fear-- the satisfaction of navigating someone else's body of trauma. i will always make you cum.
cage me in your chest: cardinals, sparrows, and i beating ourselves against the confines of our own mortality. i can see shadows passing across my gaze. there are only voices and the voiceless in this world. i can sing anywhere, but in my body i secret the tendons and talons required to predate those who would harm what is bright, lithe, fast, healthy in me. i have always deserved to be myself.
2/8
on the day i thought ray might kill me i worked full time and i worked full time the next day too and the next and the next and the next
that's it's own trauma
trauma is that tiny ice cube sitting between my heart and reality telling me i will hurt sky someday and also not care, the distance that sits between that warm alive good person and the frozen density of myself
trauma is loving coffee, having it as a self-drawn thread through years of my own trials and experiences but ray gives me IBS so now i can't drink coffee any more
it's just everything all the time and i'm so tired but i can't do anything, like what am i supposed to do quit my job and lose my house and collapse in order to spend the weeks to put my brain right after someone else fucks it up for the millionth time
i think a lot about getting myself pink slipped but there's no point to even that brief reprieve since i'll just exit to increased medical debt, lost income, and lost time at work
i could let the thousand barking dogs of your ego drag you across the too-white sun
but where then would i go
in whose bed would i purl my rages and string them out across the brittle branch of someone else's thin-pressed lips
lol seeing people i love in person really fucked me up i guess
i don't want to leave the house ever again
2/10
i need a more intensive program and time off to function normally
i need time off to get my mental health back
i don't have any hours off left at work
reducing my hours at work will make me lose my insurance
losing my insurance means i can't access care
without care i can't function normally
IF I DO IT'LL BE A WHOLE FUCKING THING OKAY
2/5
sometimes i daydream about the people i hate most calling me or showing up somehow in my life and the joy i would feel in being able to finally say what i know is true
this is never true of ray
sometimes i wonder what 2019's friends think of me, ray's friends, drag or music friends. i imagine crossing paths with them too. i don't know what i would say. i wonder what they would say.
i feel a strong urge to protect sky from myself.
2/1
i have howled outside your door too long, strung between the confines of history and the strain of my new heart. when i am quiet i imagine your mouth on my skin, on my skin. your fingers pulling me taut against the confines of myself. the way my body welcomes you. hear me and your name, taste me on your tongue, feel me in and around you. the delicate combinations only you know how to seek. i can't remember if i existed before this moment when my identity and my dreams await the crest of your mouth. tie me to your trajectory, lash me hard against the promise of my youth. the beat of my heart separates old blood from new and puddles at your feet. where were you before me, where was dawn before this heat? thrown free in the wide waters of hope i trade on the tide of your gravity, swept into safe harbor at last.
1/29
i had a great idea yesterday
i forgot to write it down
i'm so tired. i'm also very shaky today. all my big muscles.
I AM REALLY GOOD AT MY JOB WHEN I AM TIPSY
(the correct calculation is 1.5 beers)
i am so tired. how can this be what people do why do we have to live in structures that make us live this way
i can't even choose suicidality because i will just walk away with $10k in medical debt unless i succeed and i don't want to die i just want to REST and in a coffin is ok
1/27
waking up slower, older, alone. my whole body hurts.
i'm not dumb, i remember fucking everyone after my grandpa died.
open your legs and tell me how to please you.
RA left me the most beautiful voicemail. #stillinlove
i think i am a psychopath when my heart turns off and my eyes don't translate the depth and warmth of others.
i want to hug wallace.
1/26
i might lose my mind
i think about sex and sky and sex with sky constantly
pretty sure i'm just witnessing my brain reroute addictive tendencies to sex and physical stimulation
there is no point to being sober
I AM NAUSEOUS
*
i could replicate and replace every individual memory i have with ray one by one
*
to hear a sound alone at night and know instantly what it is: the next trauma
1/25
it is possible that the sky is falling down
every car door is ray
here to take the dog here to hit me or scream at me or push his way into the house or throw a cinderblock through the back door break into the garage scream at all the neighbors make the cops come
write another police report
i have had to go to the mat too many times already how am i 32
the wasting of entire years, thousands of dollars, on people who make me feel like i'm at home with their manipulation, use, and abuse
how do i think it impacted my view on intimacy? I DON'T WANT IT
i would let sky help me, support me, resource me. let her make me cum in my bed where ray never slept. opened, pried apart by another round of trauma, she thinks i'm sexy...?
some parts of my body have come alive for her. are talking to my brain in a way they never used to. are attention seeking beggars and i am lucky to have sky to catch me when i swan dive into my sexuality.
i don't want it i don't want it i don't want it
i don't want it i don't want it
1/20
i did not expect to cry that hard at the inauguration
i feel quiet
i feel hurt
i feel fortunate, arbitrarily lucky, to have survived this long
dear sky
it is 330 in the afternoon and i'm not sober
i'm very messy and needing a lot of support
and you shouldn't have to clean up someone else's mess
and i wish i could be stable or together or supportive back
but i am full of problems
and you're so strong and smart and achieving goals and
i feel barely human
1/5
mostly i feel like i live in grief beyond end-- that this is normal now, and there will be no exiting it-- that this is all i can do or be any more-- and i will spend what is left of my life with my back against the wall of that fact
i will never be as whole or capable or functional as i was before
1/19
i feel like i have been alone for a very long time. it's weird to reflect on how lonely i feel. wasn't i just married? wasn't ray my partner and soulmate?
i am only weeks removed from some of the worst trauma in my life and my brain is very willing to put it all down and walk away.
even with ray i was alone. won't i just be alone again with sky?
talk about cycles-- rereading my book like YUP I ALREADY SAID IT and ray is so afraid i'll "use him in my art" like i might never write again so what is the true impact of october 2020 on me and ray and the world
i wish i could insulate myself more effectively-- i don't want to have all five senses i don't want to be sober i don't want to be here
will i just cycle thru addictions until one kills me?
i wish i was divorced. i hate how slow probate court is I HATE IT just let me out
someone like sky has so much to offer and i want it all-- the opportunity to be the captain of my ship while having my needs met ?? i can't imagine-- but i think we could pull it off-- and i love, god help me i love, all her boundaries that will keep her away from me so she can think clearly about her own life-- i want to be alone together
it's his last day as president. i can't shake the feeling that something will go wrong.
sometimes my depression lies to me but i know i want to live
and more clearly and cleanly and kindly and happily and sexually and successfully than i am living now-- am i living now? i am a woman standing still, waiting
1/14
life is short. who could tell me otherwise?
i am not ready to go
not ready to give up the physical plane and also not ready to give up whatever optimism or innocence or faith i have left, i will not pack a go bag but i will buy a gun.
things attached to this earth i want more of: kissing, gay sex, long nights with friends, laughing, dancing in libby's living room, petting every cat and dog, feeding people i love, hugging my people, my dog, the wind on my face, the sounds of water on the shore, sunshine, starlight, the smells of amber and vanilla and pine and dirt and the sidewalk after it rains
i can only be glad everything has happened exactly the way that it did
i should not have had to live thru any of this-- nor most of us most of the traumas we have survived-- and turned around and tried to help others
like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, i have tried in my way to be free
tick
tick
tick
tick
ding
one week anniversary
my body is a clock
1/8
day 2 after the coup.
i did not expect to immediately cry as soon as kristen even mentioned it. i have been surprised about my sadness. i mostly think of myself as invested in people, invested in the new world. i did not expect to mourn artifacts of the current state. i do mourn how the police acted. would that they had ever opened gates and doors for me... like marissa said. we have chosen to use our white bodies as tools for the revolution. and yes, it's funny to see other white bodies so surprised at what street warfare can look like-- what little they tasted of it. i feel I TOLD YOU SO so keenly. i cannot imagine the depth of grief and anger and sadness and TOLD YOU that black people must have to bear.
hung art in my new office today. it feels comforting to be surrounded by it.
i'm seeing sky in person alone for the first time ever tomorrow. i hope to god all my memories, and the rapport we have now, aren't lying to me. i want so badly to trust the enthusiasm and awakeness and freshness that i feel, and i think that means having to trust the goodness and emotional skill of someone else.
i told hannah today that i don't miss ray any more. it came faster than expected. i know that the consequential trauma of his presence in my life in oct/nov is part of that. i am glad too to be rid of the financial burden of him. i hope it hurt tremendously when his dad died. it's hard to feel like that wasn't a karmic answer to his behavior taking an entire family from me.
i feel very: calm, capable, in motion, getting it done, established, proud
and also: burned beyond belief, exhausted, needy, lonely, touch starved, addicted
i am once again twitchy, startled, not sleeping without assistance, afraid. i wish someone else would solve all my problems for me.
i wish i could live permanently in a cloud in a pink sunset with good smells and pretty views and a lover who is my best friend.
1/7
it's the day after the coup
930: ArtsNow
11: Juvenile Justice
145: staff meeting
drink water
take a shower
take your meds
feed the pets
feed yourself
go to therapy
breathe
processing???
grief
waiting on my divorce
i want sky to touch me
does therapy matter the day after a coup
why unwind coping mechanisms that have kept me together & safe
don't
yell
don't
yell
at
white
men
don't
yell
at
men
don't
yell
FUCK YOU RAY
1/4
the way i was brought up was decentering and controlling. i always was told to put myself last-- that the most important drivers in my life should be to please my parents (my mother), attain spiritual grace, and attain the accomplishments of a husband and children and a house by ceding my will to my husband's, except this is late stage capitalism so i was also to achieve highly in education and peer-approved activities. i was raised to be most conscious of what things LOOK like-- not what they are-- but that the real shame is in not being able to project perfection 24/7/365. any part of myself that didn't meet that expectation was shameful, including any desires to be different or do something else. so i have preacher's kid syndrome, i am very good at lying and acting out invisibly and harming myself invisibly, while achieving enough of that perfect facade to be left alone. there is a deep divide between my actual self and the self i allow others to interact with, even those who are closest to me-- especially those closest to me biologically. this has made me very controlling and very type A because it takes a lot of planning and energy to make things look good while actually trying to do what i want to do in the world, or trying to be any real part of myself. i believe others will harm me, and that most harm is irreparable. i believe others love me for what i do to provide for or serve them. at best, those who are closest to me still love a projection of me. i believe others cannot see me-- that i am not worth the time and effort it takes to be really known. so i do not usually seek out genuine companionship-- i am mostly content with relationships that hold themselves at arms length, or that are explicitly about service and serving others. trust and safety are supposed to be verbs but no one is safe and no one can be trusted. family relationships are built on memory and mutual obligation. romantic relationships are built on impulse and what i can provide to someone else. intimacy always results in harm-- even if i am able to feel close to someone, all i'm really doing is giving someone the capacity to do harm to me. most types of intimacy can be imitated and no one around me has ever called me out for that or recognized it. most people seek to empower themselves to meet their needs, and that means they either don't care about my needs or are specifically disempowering me to meet their needs.
1/2
write down three things you love
1) i love lawny
2) i love feeling wanted & seen
3) i love having a car again
my sex drive is back
i listened to music that was happy yesterday
i like to play with my dog
my cleaning craze has passed
i have not been doing even half days at work
brushing my teeth every day
we who are still here survived the holidays
12/31
this is your message:
a heavily clouded sky, and the moon one day waning past full, which i should not have been able to spot but for a quickly morphing break in the clouds that let the white light, refracted, halo outwards
fireworks just over the treeline in all different colors
this was an awful year, and you are free to celebrate its close
don't forget that you may always be granted the privilege of a brief break in the clouds.
here's to 2 good years, bitch. i miss you every day.
january
once upon a time there was safety
and a righteous king who held a righteous sword
and her name was make believe
once upon a time there was love
and she slithered, soft and sweet, on every tree limb
in the garden he meticulously kept
once upon a time we sang with our full voices
pure and unafraid, unending lyrics
of all the ways you saved me-- i saved myself
once upon a time i was hungry and you fed me
cold, and you clothed me in the name of the
father, these are all fairy tales
12/30
year end 2020.
i'm not where i want to be. not with who i thought i would be with.
not with my soulmate.
did hold onto the house and what's left of my body and self respect.
did not hold onto my promise to always be safe in my own home.
had to take money from ray's parents.
and then had to take money from my parents.
didn't step foot in a church, not once all year.
didn't step foot in a bar, not once all year.
witnessed a catastrophe of mental health up close in excruciating detail.
heard my mom give a testimony about her normal-sized ears.
married and divorced. almost as fast as britney spears.
i have never been priority #1 and this year is the jewel in that crown.
late november
hopes for future me:
multiple reasons to smile every day
good friends i can see at least weekly
a running car forever from now on
the chance to explore a new place once in awhile
pets
all my books and a couple of plants
the ability to earn money always (financial stability maybe someday)
the ability to cook when i want to
stable mental health
silence when i want it
late november
dear anger,
i was so glad to find you when i needed you. for more than a decade you gave me my voice, the only instances of active self esteem or self love i have ever had, kept me safe, kept me moving forward when there was so little encouragement. i wish we had not been kept apart for so long. i wish i had let alex knapp witness you. i wish i had thrown all of sean's shit off the balcony. i wish i was half as empowered in actuality as you make me feel.
part of the harm this year was how quiet i had to keep you. (and if it's you that is causing my IBS, i forgive you.) ray should have seen more of you. the ombudsmen and orderlies and social workers and administrators and cops and sergeants and therapists should have seen more of you. i know you are as mad as i am that ray has escaped a real meeting with you.
you deserved to show up, full force, about so many things. and for the full duration of the year, not just this fall.
i think you are my only true partner.
early november
i will probably forget-- but do not ever want to forgive-- ray for:
leaving my mom a hysterical 4am voicemail & demanding she pass it on to me
telling me that i just didn't understand his trauma & how he was processing it
leaving B Riley
calling me incessantly from the hospital to make sure i was getting him out
making everything so awful for so long that i had no choice but to tell my bosses
screaming at me, being aggressive & violent, scaring me even after i told him he was
then being angry with me for keeping my back to the wall for a few days after
making me not tell my parents then making me have any kind of emotional discussion with them in any capacity
fucking up my house and deck and basement and garage and car
making me dependent on other people-- especially my parents-- and especially for money
making me divorce him
taking himself away from me & ruining all our dreams and plans and history
laughing about how much bad sex i have had in my life but isn't that just laughing at how many times i've been raped
how many times have i actually said yes said yes like molly said yes like oprah why are those the two polestars of my brain
fucking a man has always been a pleasuring of the part of my brain that desperately wants to secure conventional approval from those around me
i can't even remember ray
i don't remember what it's like to be in love
i don't remember being scared of losing ray
i don't remember
so many things i don't remember: how many others' sins are fortunate for that? how many people i should have written up or strung up.
"i don't think i can pursue this any further" i said of my health insurance and mental health care
i meant it much more broadly
today i watched AOC's video about what happened to her the day of the coup in the capitol building. she was describing being aggressed by a cop, thinking her life was ending, and how slow time went, and how her feeling toward her community was that if this was how her life was written, then that was okay and she had fulfilled her purpose and others could walk that path forward.
it's disheartening to hear my own heart coming out of a stranger. that women like us become wired this way, become programmed by repeated exposure to behave like fierce strategists and abuse survivors-- this is after all the same behavior set.
rereading my book and some of it sure looks like ptsd, looking at it now.
On this side of having sex for the first time I imagine your mouth on my skin, on my skin. Your fingers pulling me taut against the confines of myself. The way my body will welcome you. Hear me and your name, taste me on your tongue, feel me in and around you. The delicate combinations only lesbians know how to seek. I can’t remember if I existed before this moment when my identity and my dreams and my cum await your mouth. Tie me to your trajectory, lash me hard against the promise of my youth. The beat of my heart separates old blood from new and puddles at your feet. Where were you before me, where was dawn before this heat? Gliding at last in the waters of hope I trade on the tide of your gravity, swept into safe harbor at last.
I am eager for you, anxious as an untrained puppy just taken from the teat. Waiting for the sounds of joy, a text message, your footsteps, my voice wearing out from hours of connection, the pitch of me while you are hot against my skin. I feel young. Inhale with me like it’s the first time you touched your own in another. Bloodied with all the ways I am ruined before my death, wet and gaping holes for you to fill and you are good at it. Ballots, bullets, buried in the person because confluence is conflict, in the end. Touch me, I am hungry. Touch me and let me bite you, sharp needles for skin that has known sick already, let me inside and let me eat through your marrow cell by cell. I did not promise to be kind or healthy, only that I would live.
