i cannot write poetry or narrative any more because the inclination to turn the end poignant or pretty is too strong, and always false. it's too tempting to end on an upswing, a hopeful note, a call to action, or a comforting scene, but in fact none of those endings have ever happened in my life, so i don't know why i would pretend that they have. 

i hear toni morrison in my head saying that the point is to live beautifully in completely impossible circumstances and i feel cheap and low and empty and useless saying, i cannot do that. i am not capable of that. i am only capable at this point of screaming the rest of the way down to hell, the fire has been at my feet too long, the flames are up to my neck. 

it's possible i have never healed from anything. it's possible i have never gotten over anything.

these are the memories that circulate the most in my head right now:

brandy L and i running to brandy S's grandmas house to call the cops after we got flashed in sixth grade

texting claire that reconnecting is not in my best interest

all the times i didn't yell at jackie, or olivia, or katy, all the ways i didn't explode in horrible workplaces doing immoral work for unethical people, all the times i wish i had yelled, all the times i should have exploded

breaking up with david for not coming to see me when i was sick, which wasn't really about that 

in high school telling my mother i have depression and her saying no you don't 

sentences i wish i could say to my mother: have you ever considered that maybe you are just a bad person 

sentences i wish i could say to my father: you're a fucking dumbass (and when he interrupts me) how can you argue that you want to talk with me if you refuse to listen when i speak. a piece of me wishes to be talking with my mother, let him interrupt us, and then scream

the time i ran over a tree in maryland on fourth of july when i was a little drunk and the guy walked past and said nope not my problem

when sean and i lived in the shit apartment above a garage and took the grocery carts out away from the garage and the guy knocked on the door 

not being understood by kabir, his little preaching about how malcolm died because he was too much for the people 

every fight i have ever had with jared and how the past several have wound up with me just shrieking that he has to be more careful with me and how he never is and probably i don't think we will ever be together and if i actually think i want to be in a relationship (which i probably don't) then i would have to actually go find someone to date (which i don't want to do) (so then why would i push him farther away if i'm not going to do those things) 

the impending doom of my financial situation

i don't like people

i don't like interacting with people

i don't like fake smiling at people

i don't like small talk

i don't like traffic or how anyone else drives

i don't like how neighbors behave anywhere

i don't like how no one has social graces anymore

i don't like how the kids haven't learned how to talk

i don't like overhearing other peoples' conversations

i don't like witnessing gossip

i don't like listening to small spats

i don't like supporting people with the same problem over and over and over

i don't like people who never ask questions

i don't like uninformed viewpoints

i don't like when opinions are taken as facts

i don't like how podcast voices are somehow trusted experts now

i don't like AI or chatbots 

i don't like how many people use AI or chatbots

i don't like other people's unprocessed emotions

i don't like maintaining my temper in the face of someone else's loss of control

i don't like being ignored when i have attempted to contribute

i don't like personalities that have to talk constantly

i don't like external processors

i don't like providing support and i don't like needing support

i don't like passive aggressive behavior or commentary

i don't like being parented or seeing other adults need parenting

not even i want to hold all of the pain that has been placed in me, much less the work of healing. why would i expect anyone else to do it? 

i know my rage is toxic. it is bright green radioactive sludge, like the simpsons depiction of nuclear waste, like the simpsons writers' pedophilia on full display at epstein island, like christian white supremacism in the duggar family, like the bile you throw up drunk before your stomach empties. 

interesting that throwing up on an empty stomach, throwing up pure fresh bile and stomach lining, is white. is white. is white. is white. white and frothy and soft. white like snow, white like snot, white like pure cocaine. 

i will never get a moment where my mother looks me in my face and offers any kind of explanation, or healing, or love. i will never get a moment where my mother offers actual love. i will never get my mother's love. 

and claire, texting me on my birthday, with no idea that i had unblocked her drunkenly a few weeks before eager to start a fight, eager to ask her if she still loves her MAGA FEMA NRA white supremacist north florida husband. and the truest thing i could have said: that doesn't seem like that's in my best interest. my best interest. mine. my interest, my best sense of self and purpose and future. no room for any of that in my family. 

i wonder if they text me, i wonder if they think of me. i wonder if they wish they could call. i wonder if they know my absence is commentary. i wonder if they read my iron spine as trauma or as truth. none of this matters, it would only feed my fury to know more than i know now. 

i cannot go to therapy any more and not be seen. i cannot be in a friendship any more with someone who does not see me. i cannot exist translucent, white noise, partial, a half-thought, any more. for anyone. 

i am confident about the fact that my mother is a narcissist.

i am confident about the fact that my mother's narcissism was taught to her by her mother, and her mother taught by her mother. 

i am confident that abuse does not exist without willingness to turn a blind eye. i am confident that both my parents fucked up. 

i am confident that i experienced medical neglect in a two parent household where only one parent was a christian scientist. 

i am confident that i am bigger, stronger, more capable, more powerful, more visible, with better capacity to see and hear and witness and love those around me than anyone in my childhood had the capacity to teach me to be. i am confident in what i have taught myself, and in what i have sought out from others. 

i am less confident now that i am veering into antisocial behavior. witnessing is a skill, one i learned and polished; i am now using it to witness my own suicidality and homicidality. i see me. i cannot turn a blind eye. 

i see a soul stretched to ruin, fabric worn into the lack of a pattern, skin burned into a wound. i see bones riddled with cancer, blood thick with rage. i see fat deposits of hatred, disgust, fear; some of it inherited, but all of it living in me. 

i see a life run red with other people's bloodletting from my veins. i see a riverbed run dry with my inability to process anything for anyone else, ever again. 

i am not bitter; they always depict women as bitter. scorned women, abandoned women, traumatized women. bitter bitter bitter. acidity is no protection. 

fire is the only thing that is both protection and self consumption. there is nothing in my two hands that will not light. i am my own kindling. i am my own twin flame. 

who could tell me not to set myself ablaze? who could argue that there is not a long, loud history of others charting the same path? who could tell me that the man in tiananmen square and thai monks and aaron bushnell did not share the same path? who could tell me not to strike a match made of my body on the char of my soul down the box of my body to set loose the consumptive shriek of my heart? 

so few get caught in my crossfire. i am so careful, but never careful enough. 

so then, would it not be better for everyone if i did burn down? would not a hollowed out carcass of pinus contorta make more sense on this hillside, for eyes and ears of others? they will not miss my toxicity, they will not miss my rage. who would mourn a wreck finally cleared off the berm?