What happens when you become a stranger to yourself? When everything you say and do seems like it belongs to someone who just... isn't you? Feelings that betray the person you believed yourself to be for so long, suddenly you're scraping the bottom of the empty peanut butter jar for anything to fill you out and take you back to before --
Before when?
I can't tell if my daily persona is just this awful, extreme caricature I've created for myself as a costume to cover all the holes. I am exaggerated, I am theatric - he asks, "How does so much personality fit into such a small person?" Everything is a stage, I made it that way long before I knew what I was doing.
I hate to be left alone. I start writing sad, sad things. Desperate, lost things, and I hate all of it. My light is so much brighter when it has (you) to bounce off of.
Keep your fingers moving only for yourself, darling; all of your notes and letters for anyone else will bury you.
And don't say that's what you've wanted all along.
[The both of you can just fade to black.]
Friday, November 28, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
mad in the blood
My therapist likes making me beat pretty pink pillows with a foam-covered plastic bat. She likes me to yell angry things while I do so. Tonight's subject was my step-father who took a brutal invisible beating while I screamed some pretty awful things.
He and my mother are in town this week and it's making me ill.
There is this big, burning ball of anger inside of me that I do not like. We are not friends, this burning ball and I, which is why I rarely let it have air -- the moment I let it out, it will feed on the oxygen and the freedom and swallow many, many people in it's wake. People that may or may not deserve to be hit in the face with this ugly, fierce thing that they had no idea was bubbling inside of me.
One of the pitfalls to pushing it down, down, down is that it needs something to feed on - otherwise it'd just fizzle out, right? Pair this anger with an over-analytical mind and it becomes a breeding ground for self-hatred. It's been around so long, if I liked it, I would've given it a name by now. My only constant and my worst enemy, my angry nameless ball, feeding on all of the ins and outs that I come across by picking apart every aspect of my (honestly, in this day and age) rather average, mediocre, boring life. Addiction and co-dependency and depression runs in the family - what's new, right? Oh, but the ball, the ball loves this. The ball is hungry and it needs anything it can get it's fiery little hands on, and like me, it's a fighter.
Blame this flaw on this, explain that by pointing the finger at that piece of my childhood. It all makes sense, but I can't FEEL it.
This is the reason I started going to therapy. The ball and the over-analytical brain. My brain, that can find loopholes in anything that isn't pretty... but can't. feel. anything. positive. coming. from. the. reasons. I know that I have co-dependent tendencies. I know that I'm mentally self-destructive. I know, I know, I know, I have concluded all of these things, but I can't use them. All I know is that they feel awful, they've been there for a very long time, and I can't exorcise them because -- this includes the ball -- they are a part of me. They are mine, they are me.
So I beat at pretty pink pillows with foam-covered plastic bats, praying to a God With No Name for an epiphany, for an exorcism, for relief, but until then it's... "It runs in the family?"
This song explains... way too much of me:
Now I'm off to put on a happy face and have a vegan dinner with hyper-literate Bay Areans... but all I want to do is take a long bath...
He and my mother are in town this week and it's making me ill.
There is this big, burning ball of anger inside of me that I do not like. We are not friends, this burning ball and I, which is why I rarely let it have air -- the moment I let it out, it will feed on the oxygen and the freedom and swallow many, many people in it's wake. People that may or may not deserve to be hit in the face with this ugly, fierce thing that they had no idea was bubbling inside of me.
One of the pitfalls to pushing it down, down, down is that it needs something to feed on - otherwise it'd just fizzle out, right? Pair this anger with an over-analytical mind and it becomes a breeding ground for self-hatred. It's been around so long, if I liked it, I would've given it a name by now. My only constant and my worst enemy, my angry nameless ball, feeding on all of the ins and outs that I come across by picking apart every aspect of my (honestly, in this day and age) rather average, mediocre, boring life. Addiction and co-dependency and depression runs in the family - what's new, right? Oh, but the ball, the ball loves this. The ball is hungry and it needs anything it can get it's fiery little hands on, and like me, it's a fighter.
Blame this flaw on this, explain that by pointing the finger at that piece of my childhood. It all makes sense, but I can't FEEL it.
This is the reason I started going to therapy. The ball and the over-analytical brain. My brain, that can find loopholes in anything that isn't pretty... but can't. feel. anything. positive. coming. from. the. reasons. I know that I have co-dependent tendencies. I know that I'm mentally self-destructive. I know, I know, I know, I have concluded all of these things, but I can't use them. All I know is that they feel awful, they've been there for a very long time, and I can't exorcise them because -- this includes the ball -- they are a part of me. They are mine, they are me.
So I beat at pretty pink pillows with foam-covered plastic bats, praying to a God With No Name for an epiphany, for an exorcism, for relief, but until then it's... "It runs in the family?"
This song explains... way too much of me:
Now I'm off to put on a happy face and have a vegan dinner with hyper-literate Bay Areans... but all I want to do is take a long bath...
Sunday, November 23, 2008
i am destroyer, i am lover
No, I am a Warrior.
I got the word "Warrior" tattooed over my heart on a whim. One lousy fight over something lousy with a lover and my first instinct is -- what? Is it really just an infatuation with body modification, or is it a seemingly healthy replacement for my screaming but currently duct-taped-silent self-injury urge? It makes me wonder, every time I get a hole punched through some random bit of cartilage or, say, a word that is constantly referred to as the "Scandal song tattoo."
I'm trying to get better. There was a switch that went off - no, I lie. It's been a gradual decent, I think, or kind of like "gradually, and then suddenly." I knew something went wrong when I couldn't write or read, but trudged through it thinking it was one of those typical "blocks." But then I got desperate, got into therapy, and I'm currently trying to work with Zoloft again (to no avail up to now) to hopefully get to a semi-happy medium. See also: finding that creativity channel again, finding energy, finding safety in that which provided me a shelter during the hurricanes of the past 7 or so years.
I don't know what happened, maybe it was the weight of my mother finally falling flat on me, maybe it was the intensity and investment in my current relationship triggering something, maybe it was this and that and this and that. All I know is that I don't feel well, and I am not writing, and I am not reading; I am not well.
But, every time I look into a mirror and see my impulse ink - "Warrior" - I know that somewhere, somewhere inside this mind that's currently so empty and desperate that I begin to think it's eating itself from the inside out for substance, there is something that knows that I am better than this. (I am better than this?) There is something that continues to tell my heart to pump blood, something that tells me to buy a book, something that tells me that this song is beautiful, something that looks out into everything and sees something that is worth running toward and there is something to fight running away from. There is something to fight for.
It's always been a flaw of mine, justifying and imposing drastic change and expecting immediate results. One day at a time.
I got the word "Warrior" tattooed over my heart on a whim. One lousy fight over something lousy with a lover and my first instinct is -- what? Is it really just an infatuation with body modification, or is it a seemingly healthy replacement for my screaming but currently duct-taped-silent self-injury urge? It makes me wonder, every time I get a hole punched through some random bit of cartilage or, say, a word that is constantly referred to as the "Scandal song tattoo."
I'm trying to get better. There was a switch that went off - no, I lie. It's been a gradual decent, I think, or kind of like "gradually, and then suddenly." I knew something went wrong when I couldn't write or read, but trudged through it thinking it was one of those typical "blocks." But then I got desperate, got into therapy, and I'm currently trying to work with Zoloft again (to no avail up to now) to hopefully get to a semi-happy medium. See also: finding that creativity channel again, finding energy, finding safety in that which provided me a shelter during the hurricanes of the past 7 or so years.
I don't know what happened, maybe it was the weight of my mother finally falling flat on me, maybe it was the intensity and investment in my current relationship triggering something, maybe it was this and that and this and that. All I know is that I don't feel well, and I am not writing, and I am not reading; I am not well.
But, every time I look into a mirror and see my impulse ink - "Warrior" - I know that somewhere, somewhere inside this mind that's currently so empty and desperate that I begin to think it's eating itself from the inside out for substance, there is something that knows that I am better than this. (I am better than this?) There is something that continues to tell my heart to pump blood, something that tells me to buy a book, something that tells me that this song is beautiful, something that looks out into everything and sees something that is worth running toward and there is something to fight running away from. There is something to fight for.
It's always been a flaw of mine, justifying and imposing drastic change and expecting immediate results. One day at a time.
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