Covet!

I come to you, as myself.

I am trying to come to you as myself. It is long overdue.

Forgive me if it is nonsensical, but also, and very importantly, fuck you.

You will lose me in certain parts, because even as myself, sometimes I am not myself; and because I believe that this unfurling of soul is for me.

My ribs have not extended in a year. If I inhale deeply from my sides now, they may crack and split. My hinges are unoiled. So I leave you here. Do what you will. I try not to concern myself with the actions or inactions of others. I try not to let them get plague me and haunt my dreams. No man is an island, and I am no man.

If I tried — if I squeezed my eyes shut, I could cry. I could cry until the tears hung me like a noose. But I will not. I refuse. I was born with my eyebrows tucked back and my arms folded. It is my state of equilibrium.

This is punishment. I will sit and I will not get up until I have written myself out of this hole. I will free myself with this whip against my back. Until I remember what it feels like to be vulnerable. Until I remember how to write my feelings in a way that does not repulse me. Even now I struggle not to delete, or to very flowerily deviate from what I must say.

What must I say? Is this me? Or Is this not me? Do you deserve to know? To see?

I have been listening to Magdalene by FKA Twigs. It should be an Eusexua year. It is an Eusexua year. But things can be many other things while they remain the things that they are. My heart can be just as rigidly wired shut, as it can be open.

Let me begin. I hate you. I love you. Life is amazing. I’m in hell. I hope you die. I am better than you. And I am the worst of you. I am the best I’ve ever been. Beautiful, worldly, full. I am far from the best I’ll ever be.

On fullness: brimming and straining. Regularly bursting at the seams. Gathering threads of sanity and holding onto them desperately as they slip into hot flashes and visions and words and phrases engraved in memory that unwind me and trip me; that have me holding onto the bathroom wall so that I don’t pass out from the noise and the light, the oxygen pervading my lungs, and the never ending niggling feeling that there is much to do, and there always is, and the pressure, oh the fucking pressure.

What little time I have, I spend wanting things that I am embarrassed to want. It makes me angry. I am restless. I do not forgive or forget. I bear no grudges but the ones etched beneath my skin. And I will hold myself into the sun. With fierceness. It is enough. It is enough on most days. But it is also often not.

I refuse to let you see me struggle or care. You do not deserve it. You deserve nothing. And yet. I do not deprive you but myself, hence this exercise in self-flagellation. I hold my hand down the path of insanity.

Self-fellation? That I can get behind. I am the sun that sets a golden hue against your face. I am as boundless as the night sky; as inspired and inspiring. I am a tangy and sweet and strong cocktail. Yet, I am a stomachache in the early morning. An unrepentant scowl etched deeply into your forehead. It is hard to know what I am always. Or even just sometimes. And it is exhausting. Nobody is worth it. Nobody ever will be. And yet! Do you not punish me this way?

Flagellate, fellate, repeat.

Covet, want, need me. In the ways that hold water. With a face and eyes that are not artificial or wicked or lost.

Whatever decisions led me here, must have been wrong. Rightly ordered steps could not have led me here. And yet, is it not glorious? Am I not glorious?

I am hit by lightning on occasion with the realisation that I should not be here, doing this, with you. You’re insane. You make me uncomfortable and you frighten me. I feel like you could really hurt me. Maybe even kill me.

I am nothing if not worldly. Some fresh air and a strong drink will make me forget. Will revitalise my will to live. Dancing, ferocious kissing. I will forget. And I am forgetful. But even if one forgets, you can not leave your feet where they are. Even the things I have forgotten, I remember. They refuse to leave me. You can not walk away and then come back to pick up your eyes and your nose and things. They must follow you even when you’d rather be a sightless, sensory-less thing, floating around like the bouncing DVD logo screen. Doing nothing and going nowhere.

Have I said anything?