in my next life im the color green
in my next life im the shape Circle
in my previous life i was a 15th century agricultural concept
FUCK reaping what you sow im going to lie to god

in my next life im going to lie to god
in my next life im god remembering god
or you remembering me as you
or me remembering you as me
in my next life im forgetting about remembering and starting all over again

right now i mourn the idea of being trusted with myself
right now i turned 27 years old yesterday
right now i mourn the idea of cohesion
right now i don’t feel right inside of my body or outside of it

there's some place in the middle where i stitch myself up / the pieces of me interlock / my body learns to scream  / cathedrals are everywhere and im closing my eyes / cathedrals are everywhere and im making a blood pact with the river / i passed a tree in the shape of a person throwing their hands up towards the sky / and i asked jesus christ / my version of jesus i mean / the closest thing i have / being the river / i asked jesus christ the river if he really did weep

i asked jesus christ the river if it felt right when he wept or if it felt like wearing someone else's skin

sometimes i look at the moon when im driving to pick up my beef lo mein and i think about how long she's held me
wrapped in reflections and asking jesus christ the moon if anything ever feels familiar
im standing on the shoreline because it’s the only way i know how to feel closer to her

I’LL BE HONEST I SORT OF FORGOT WHAT IT WAS

I DREAMT I COULD FIND IT INSIDE OF AN OPEN PALM OR A BLUE FOOTBALL

I DREAMT I COULD HEAR MY SYNAPTIC CONNECTIONS SNAPPING INTO PLACE INSIDE OF MY FRONTAL LOBE

I WOKE UP TO A PIN DROPPING

I WOKE UP BITING MY TONGUE

I PROMISE TO NEVER EVER WANT ANYTHING EVER AGAIN

I’m putting feelers out.

Tendrils of desire cascade from my eye sockets and nostrils in search of flesh/absolution/something I could curl up inside of like a fawn instruction. I only know how to perform reciprocity alongside fixation, or with a clenched fist, or with a scream swallowed up and saved for later in a to-go box. That is to say, not at all.

I’m open to learning new things.

I’m learning how to curl up inside of you like a fawn, for example. They’re teaching us in school. I’m learning how to be devoid of scent and belief. I’m lying in the shape of an oval, in the brush, inside of you. I’m learning how to take a nap surrounded by the tall grass of your indecision.

I’m making a seemingly honest effort to stretch my displeasure all the way across the globe.

I’m eating three-day old pan fried Wontons with Szechuan sauce on the floor of an empty living room. I’m lying on my back in the United States Post Office parking lot with my arms tied in a knot screaming at the top of my lungs and at the bottom of them as well. I’m biting the inside of my cheek until it bleeds then sucking on the wound for hours and hours.

I’m standing in line at the grocery store in my pajamas, reeking of nothing, wringing my hands cherry red (maraschino) and licking at my lips like a dog. I’m contorting myself into the shape of everyone’s desire simultaneously.

It’s a blob shape.

I have an obsession that makes me want to rip my amygdala out.

I have a recurring vision of us sitting in a meadow having a picnic and you’re picking bugs out of my ears for me and we crack open the top of our skulls together just like we always said we would. Cicadas swarm out, screaming all the way back to creation.

I imagine breathing smoke into your abdomen and running my fingers along your adoration. There’s a place behind my 97th eyelash where nothing is complicated. I imagine knowing something about something. About amygdalae. About abdomens. About yours.

I asked god if there was anything else and he said just another dimension where limbs intertwine upon mounds of gingham. I close my eyes and I cannot make out the shape of your ambiguity. I close my eyes and our bodies follow after our minds. I animorph into a goose or several geese.

I didn’t know it was an option to be something different than what I am but once I learned about that I did it immediately and then kept doing it 109 times every day.

I call into work so I can spend more time imagining myself being absolutely crushed between a rock and a hard place, like really squished all the way up and out of my frame, like really something totally and completely different than I am right now. The doctor keeps sending me emails like “CALL ME BACK PLZ. WE GOT THE SCANS BACK AND UR BRAIN KEEPS SHOWING UP AS A SWARM OF CICADAS ON THE X-RAYS. THE CIA IS HERE.”

I respond with a butterfly emoji and a pic of my pad see ew.

I’M 324 MONTHS OLD AND I’VE STOPPED FEARING DEATH CUZ IT’S BEEN TOO PRESSURE ON ME.

SOMETIMES WHEN I’M WALKING I CAN FEEL MY BODY PUSHING / MOVING THE AIR AROUND ME.

I THINK IT’S BECAUSE OF ALL THE PRESSURE.

IF I WERE A HORSE I WOULD FAKE INJURIES FOR KETAMINE.

IF I WERE A TWIN I’D EAT MYSELF IN THE WOMB.

IF I WERE A DOCTOR I’D TEND TO MY MOTHER WOUND. I’D BREAST FEED IT.

IF I COULD LOVE SOMETHING MORE I WOULD.

I wrote this during the big bang. I wrote this while hurling through becoming. Everyone thinks there was nothing before the big bang but there was everything. Your mother was there. My birth control pills were there. Vintage taxidermy rats were in there. They had little bowler hats on. Look inside of any kombucha scoby and you’ll see it. Shove 13 daddy long legs inside of your ear canal and they’ll tell you all about it. Stare directly into the sun until you remember.

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1. I know what I think, I have my own thoughts, and I feel good about them.

2. I’m not confused by anything. I understand exactly what’s going on around me. I know everything.

3. I feel normal about being perceived in a way that does not align with the narrative perception I’ve created for myself.

4. My heart is pure and so are my intentions. I will never hurt anyone.

5. I love thinking for myself. I love forming opinions. I know what my opinions are. I can tell them to you.

   1. Opinion 1:

   2. Opinion 2: When I was very young my wiccan grandmother cast a protective spell on me in her laundry room. The lights are off and in my mind’s eye I can see her silhouette cast against a decade’s worth of cigarette smoke. In my mind’s nose I can smell her laundry detergent. I remember her sort of moving her hands around me as if she were encasing me in a shell, or an orb. I remember her chanting something under her breath. My mind’s mind does not recall what I was thinking. Probably that magic was happening to me. When I was young, I believed in magic because of my wiccan grandmother. Time has stretched on and on, as have these limbs and my understanding of the things we make up to assuage our grief such as “right” and “wrong”, and in my mind’s nose I can still smell the beer on her breath. When my body goes cold and the morning finds me anyway, I dream of seashells.

6. I don’t even care if I feel bad. Sometimes in life I’m going to feel bad. I can’t always feel good and I feel good about the idea of feeling bad.

7. No sorry I mean I feel bad about it.

8. No sorry I mean I don’t even care.

9. Things are happening. I understand them or I don’t. Neither option will stop me from staring into the dead center of the sun. Neither will stop me from lighting my frontal lobe on fire like a child might do with a magnifying glass and an ant. And the sun. There is no level of comprehension or lack thereof that can make this different than it is.

10. I have power over those who love me and I won’t even abuse it. I don’t even want to.

11. I know who I am. I know what I am. I know what’s under your anger.

   I.  know what’s under your

12. skin.

I had a dream I was in the yellow house. I had a dream about who I was when I hadn’t yet registered my parents were people yet. My alarm goes off and I snooze it so I can stay in the yellow house. There’s a period of time inside of there before I knew that what I was experiencing was 

13. pain.

14. My alarm goes off and I snooze it so I can stay in the yellow house.

15. I will eat an entire orange with the skin on.

16. I will go to the park and piss down the slide

17. I’m scared

18. I’m scared

19. I’m scared

20. I don’t even care if I feel scared.

21. No sorry I mean

22. Sorry

23. I will eat an entire yellow house with the skin on.

24. I let problems roll off my back

25. Like water

26. Like piss

27. This is all real. In the sense that I am real and I could peel my skin right off if I wanted no problem. I can shove my arm shoulder-deep into the earth. I can bob for apples. This is all real in the sense that existence is tactile in the sense that when I was born time hadn’t stretched on and on and

 28.  I am strong. 

 28.  I am independent.

 28.  I love and accept myself unconditionally.

 28.  I believe in the concept of no conditions.

 28.  I believe in the concept of unmitigated delusion and unlimited desire.

 28.  I believe anything can happen.

 28.  I believe nothing has ever happened

1111.  I will start believing in numerology.

29. I am capable of facing any challenge that comes my way.

30. I am challenged. I am

31. Challenging

32. I know what I am.

33. I can differentiate between reality and fantasy. I am drawn to disfigured things. I know I feel good. I know I can feel good. I know I can feel. I know what comes after.

34. i

35. know

36. what’s

37. under

38. your

39. Skin

Have you ever been scared? 

40. Do you remember being that small,

41. and being that scared?

42. I have no power.

43. I don’t know anything.

44. Burnt to a crisp and gnawing at the gates

45. All veins and tendons and apples

46. Stretched thin across a distortion in the machine

47. I feel

48. Are you still scared?

49. Are you still scared?

50. I feel

51. No sorry I mean

1. I know what I think, I have my own thoughts, and I feel good about them.

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i burned the bridges firing between my neurons for you 
released something tender  
from shackles made of bone and  
shaped something like my mother 
sharp around the edges 
uncertain of anything including but not limited to 
something like self-worth or 
something like certainty or 
something at all like something else 

memorized hues of ruptures blooming 
red then purple then green then yellow 

i let go of nightmares 
of spherical masses 
bouncing and bouncing and breaking 

and now on the inside 
i feel rotten 
and i move through the molasses this grief has placed upon my bones 
and i see your smile in my dreams (crooked/stained//learning/faltering) 
and i feel your touch on my skin (warm/weathered/flush/flesh) 
and i hear your voice in my head 
(baby, darling, beautiful) 
and i hear your voice in my head 
(i love you i love you i love you) 
and i saw you with my mind's eye 
and both of our mind's eyes touched and held hands and danced around the fire  
something like witches  
something like embers  
something at all like something else 
and for a brief moment we were good 
together

i wash my hands of devotion 
falsified
swallowing shards of dejection 
splayed out  
across the barren landscape of me 
i repeat the mantra 
“i know i could love you  
through a blissful ignorance” 

instead i swallow the key 
place a four chambered gun 
behind bars 
build a bridge 
dig a moat 
construct a maze  
making friends with minotaurs and 
ghosts and something at all like 
somethingelse 
something at all like 
redthenpurplethengreenthenyellow 
i don't remember 

do you remember 
where you were 
when you heard that ball drop? 

bouncing 
and bouncing 
and breaking  

cracking the soft shell of my heart like an egg onto a hot stone 
laying in the grass eating dirt to be closer to you, or to my mother, or to my sister, or to my great great great great aunt 
spreading my fears out for you like a deck of cards 
shuffling and folding and bending 
i miss you like a thread misses the spool 
or like stars miss being understood / comprehended / unquestioning / unquestioned / unwavering / unwavered / planets / birds / trees / me / you 
like the soft part of me misses / the soft part of you 

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im walking on water like jesus christ
im melting the microplastics in my lungs
im popping my nails off and
baking a quiche
in the easy bake oven i stole from
the meth smoking oracle
outside the 7/11

eating hot coals off the grill
and doing a Zumba class in the sauna
to exorcise the polyester
from the inside out

woke up upside down with
ribs pried open
to make room for you
woke up hungover with
limbs stretched out
several kilometers in every direction
reaching
all the way to the other side
of dissolution

now there’s this absence
so large it’s
hollowed me out
im subletting the space
between my left and right ventricle
to a right-wing polycule from Utah

now im buddha
or boodah
or nirvana
whichever one sits under
the fig tree
lets the horses run free
and bright yellow relief
skip through the gray matter

injected 50 units of wegovy
into the soft underbelly of
my ego
im giving away all my belongings
shaving my head
and moving to Tibet

prickly scalped
eating lentils
ujjayi breathing
and shrinking
and
melting

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farewells dance like
grapefruit on my tongue
choking on the angels
ascending from my stomach
all wings and 
well wishes

time travelling 
with the ghosts in the trees and
lapping up nostalgia

gravity bongs in the kitchen sink
lego harry potter on the wii
in the basement
with a side of tito’s 
a la water bottle
seance in the abandoned chinese restaurant
crying in bathroom stalls and
snorting footballs in your parents’ fireworks stand

lighting the cigarette backwards
laying in the mud
laying in the mud looking at the stars
laying in the mud looking at the stars next to the world’s biggest bonfire
lighting the cigarette frontwards
laying on the train tracks and
counting the seconds til
infinity

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today i learned if i open my mouth wide enough you'll fall inside 
yesterday i learned they can say the word bitch on satellite television
next week i remember how to stay quiet
remember how to fit inside the space between your fingernail and skin

today i know one of two things:
there is a moldy avocado in my fridge
god isn’t real

in an hour i will subconsciously forgive everyone for the 34th time this week
in 2 hours i will forget the way our pupils melded into one another
forgetting blood rushing to skin and warmth in my ear

today you cannot see me
the indignation has worked its way up from my ankles to my widows peak
and covered me up in its reprieve 

tomorrow the doctor will tell me there are a bunch of bugs in my brain
and they get in there through my ears and nostrils

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i'd like it if you held me
all the way close
finger tips curled
into palms center

i think i see you now;
iris to iris
eyelashes tangled up

braiding our hair together 
like avatar
and counting your teeth
with my tongue

learning to listen
when the two-headed bug
bites

i count your freckles 
to memorize the constellated shape 
of you

praying to your
taxidermy pufferfish
that you don’t mind 
a little self-flagellation

i fall asleep in ribbons
of incense and cigarette smoke

and dream that we exist
on the molecular level 
in the space between two pieces of dirt -

holding hands and
expanding

the oracle i met
in the grocery store tells me
i have all the time in the world

so i gather it all in my arms,
swaths,
and shove it down your throat 

after, 
we’ll love until our veins run dry
and make friends with the devil
on my shoulder
and maybe slow dance 

we’ll create a language
only we understand

and i’ll shrink myself down
to live inside the pores on your face

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to be known is to be seen

so i press my front to your back
affixing a red expansion of paisley
across your eyes -
double knots and kisses 
at the nape of your neck

i spin you around
and around
the exact amount of times 
i'm supposed to 

into your hands;

the handle of a wooden slugger i stole 
from the abandoned chinese restaurant

and every time i warned you
you mistook me
for something more honest

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I spend a lot of time with my ear pressed up against different realities, listening for proof of myself.

I clasp my hands together and rest the joints atop my sternum, mustering the wherewithal to address the space behind them.

I urge my psyche to lay the evidence at my feet,

I beg my third eye for its testimony,

I pray to the blank space behind my eyelids to let me exist with or without witness.

Instead I find echoes of one million fragmented projections - remnants of ghosts I touched or tasted or hurt or all of the above.

I become a patchwork mesh of tangled up nerves and ephemeral strangers.

I’m afraid that when I die all that will flash before my eyes are dusty stills from nights spent retracted inward,

searching for any indication of life.

I’m afraid I’ll never be able to trace a path back to myself,

unable to extrapolate any meaning from the leftover scraps of me.

What am I,

if not whoever you are?

Everything about who I am was decided for me the moment the universe expanded from that hot, dense point.

Millions of inconsequential moments giving birth to liminal echoes;

I live downstream from the consequences,

counting bruises I don’t remember earning.

My third eye,

laid bare and weary,

sighs and lies its head down.

I turn to ritual to will myself into existence.

I pay my tithes and confess my sins and nail myself to a cross as an act of sympathy.

I lay my tender heart down on the altar as a sacrifice to a God I know is not listening.

I get down on my knees and pray anyway,

“Please, let there be no meaning.”

God responds with silence and I know this means everything I can possibly imagine exists somewhere and I just can’t reach it yet.

I want to scrape the dread off of my tongue.

I want to be curious enough to care about what might be on the other side of the ache beneath my ribcage.

I want to roll around in a field of my vulnerability,

and I want it to smell like grass in my backyard in 2012,

like the sediment separating me from the reverberations of my past lives.

I want to feel safe there.

My words converse with my apprehension instead of my heart as they stumble out of a chipped and crooked door. They arrive bruised and unsure of themselves.

My longing is a thousand-ton boulder that I cannot lift and the bugs underneath whisper sweet nothings to me in my dreams. When I am awake, they only scream.

Can I evaporate into my yearning, can I meld myself into something more corporeal?

Can I remove the gauze from the wound, can I let it breathe, can I let it heal without picking at the scab?

I press my ear up to one thousand different dimensions and hear my desires refracting back out to me in a million different shapes.

I manifest permanence even in the unfamiliar.

I reach my hands through the echoes and extract myself.

I learn that personhood is heavier than impersonation.

If I let the wound heal,

once the bruises clear up,

could I carry it?

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But, these things catch up to you. How do you ignore a mourning so rampant you feel the weight of their absence like a boulder on your ribs? I was so removed from a reality in which I was a victim of some sort of horrid, wretched event. Overhearing a person speak of sibling loss would always evoke the same thought from me: “God, that’s fucking terrible. I can’t even imagine”.

I try to escape being a person who can do more than imagine.

And indeed, it would be easier to live in a place where September 21, 2019 didn’t mean anything to me, or I could at least feel detached without it feeling like dishonoring a memory, or I could at least laugh without it feeling cruel and undeserved. It’d be easier if I could tell you that the last 5 and a half years haven’t been me reliving it over and over again, that sometimes I do forget — until I don’t.

When I am reminded, it is a gut-wrenching pain two-fold in the sense that it did actually happen and in the sense that I allowed myself even for one second to be happy, to smile, to not have her name on the tip of my tongue the entire time.

I want to say “God, that’s so fucking terrible, I can’t even imagine” and have that be the truth, or a reality I can comfortably settle into. I want to forget and I want to forget that I ever forget or want to forget.

Instead, I remember September 21, 2019.

I remember a phone call that I thought was some sort of joke; brain short circuiting as it searched for meaning in words that began dismantling my psyche from the inside out. I remember the fabric of my understanding of emotion, of true and primal despair, unraveling at the seams.

It didn’t make sense. It doesn’t.

I remember being alone when I found out. I remember screams escaping from my lungs and the way the carpet stifled the reverb. I remember tossing a body possessed by grief around my 500-square-foot apartment, grasping for her, clawing for her, desperate for her, as several loved ones sped to me from hours away. I remember writhing, writhing, writhing. I remember the feeling of the ground being removed from beneath me, and my stomach doing somersaults. I remember my mom feeding me a Xanax so I could breathe again.

I remember floating.

I remember people calling and all I could do was sob and scream in response, incoherent grief splayed out across a phone line. I remember eyes so swollen I couldn’t see properly for two days. I remember not being able to move, or think, or conceive a reality where she was not here.

I remember 5 months before it happened, dad asked me to call and I didn’t. I didn’t call, I didn’t fucking call.

What if I called? What if I called? What if I called?

Would I have saved you?

Could I have saved you?

My baby sister.

I held you when you were small and helped you tie your shoes and snuck candy out of the pantry with you.

Forever 18.

Too much to hold.

My baby.

I remember being outside of my body.

I remember all black, tissues, a cold body, a stiff hand, vomiting.

I remember I remember I remember I remember I remember you, my heart,

my baby

butterflies and vodka. I remember you.

Chocolate milk and summers in the Deep South. I remember you.

The ceremony of pricking your finger and hands clasped together before supper. I remember you.

Cane corsos and Spanish moss and trampolines. I remember you.

The dead frogs in the kitty pool and the bruises and blood that followed. I remember you.

Being scared together.

I remember you.

My baby

my baby

my baby.

When I say I want to forget, what I mean is I want to place a veil over your silhouette in my minds eye. When I say I forget, I mean I’ve stifled the pulsating ache emitting from memories of watching Peter Pan with you. When I say I must forget, I mean some days I have to dissociate from the amount of love stored inside of me for you.

When I pull off the veil, when I am present in my body, it is like the breaking of a great dam. It is accepting once again that there is no you in the way there used to be. It is accepting that I never got to help you through college classes, or job interviews, or dating, or apartment hunting, or the uncertainties that come with being young and alive and wholly too aware of the infinite possibilities swarming from within.

When I am weak and the dam breaks, the weight of missing you becomes too heavy to carry.

And yet — some days — I allow myself to be swallowed entirely. After all, grief is demanding,

grief is loud,

grief does not ask for consent,

grief crawls under your skin and makes everything good taste like regret.

Grief is nicotine stains on my teeth and blood under my nails from trying to scratch an insatiable itch.

But grief is also the most tangible thing I have left of you. It is proof of my love for you, it sustains your memory, it forces the image of you in front of me time and time again so I can remember your face,

and the color of your skin,

and the shape of your hands.

Grief allows me to miss you in a way that is so corporeal.

And yet — some days — I feel I don’t deserve to miss you at all.

Because I didn’t call, because I didn’t visit enough, because I should’ve asked you more questions,

because I should have fucking been there.

I should have been

there.

And then, I miss you anyway.

And when I miss you it is new,

the wound is fresh,

open and aching,

I am 20 years old and wrapped in a cocoon of heartache.

When I miss you, I want to know if you ever missed me too.

When I miss you, we are together again.

When I remember you, we are together again.

My baby sister,

I remember you.

Jasmine, I remember you.

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In memory of my beautiful little sister who was so very kind, undeniably smart, and strong in ways I will never be able to comprehend. I wish you stuck around long enough for me to see and know the rest of you. Jazzy Rinae, I love you forever.

1. against my will

2. as a metaphor or

3. a lesson to be learned.

There are no hard lines keeping my being contained within some sort of softer shell, only ambiguous approximations. There is no “beginning” or “end”, only cells giving up division, only the swell of mitochondrial dysfunction.

You cannot quantify a wet, lifeless thing,
only carry the cold, dead weight of it

Mouth opens wide, an attempt to mimic oxygen spreading through the bronchi
Dome-shaped fascicles draw downward, contracting silently beneath a cage

Lips peel back, a parody of a thing that used to stir beneath the dermis
Plaque builds upon the ivory, a bacterial consequence for weeks spent buried in feverish recollection

On the inside I am sticky. Fragments of memory get stuck there like a fly in a web or the gnats on my Zevo in the kitchen. I do a cartwheel or two to try and shake it all loose but it just moves everything from my stomach to my throat. I open my mouth and artifacts spill out. I cannot separate myself from this.

When the rain arrives, I’ll throw my head back and open my mouth wide to wash it all back down.

Now there’s this sort of ache in the back of my throat. I try to give it a name but the words escape me. I shove my fingers down my throat to grab it. I cough up blood and false prophets.

I find absence attaching itself to my ribs. I reach for someone or something but memory fails me on how to finish the action. Do I contract, phalanx folding over phalanx? Does it feel more like drowning, when your breath catches on the memory?

Now there’s this sort of buzzing in my ears. I try to hold eye contact with you to distract myself but there is a projector behind my eyes casting echos up against your silhouette. Neither of us asked for that, nor do we acknowledge it in conversation.

Instead you swallow feigned intimacy until you’re full. Instead I regurgitate pleasantries into your mouth like a momma bird.

Now there’s this sort of stipulation to proximity. I’ll only know how to pay attention to you with my hands or my tongue, brain and heart only trail behind wet fingers and whispers warm on your neck.

No matter what I do I can’t make you real in my head. You are not tangible or corporeal. I reach for you again but my hand slips through your abdomen and comes out the other side. I think I must have contracted the muscles incorrectly.

I toss your bids for affection up into the air and catch them in my mouth like popcorn or M&Ms. I swallow them whole and shit them out. The cycle repeats until I allow you to reach inside the hollow center of me and turn me inside out, like you might with a shirt sleeve, or a pant leg, or a sock.

I want to be a baby again. I want to be new, without memory. I want to be reborn, I want to baptize myself in the fountain at the mall, I want to take my eyes out of my head and eat them off of a toothpick like a martini olive. I want to sink through a hole in the ground until I reach the center of the world. I want to be the most honest person in the world in the sense that I know when to tell the truth and when to bend it, stopping just before the moment it breaks.

And I want to be able to explode things with my mind I guess.

If I’m wanting things now then I want to be able to want that. I want to be allowed to want without it tasting like decay, 
like I’m evolving backwards, 
like I’m unravelling from the center.

Time will pass and I will become asymmetric. My regrets and fears will continue to nibble at my feet like those little fish that eat dead skin. I’ll forget the taste of desire and then I’ll learn it again and then I’ll spit it back out and I’ll change my mind everyday.

First and foremost, I have never wanted anything. Secondly, I am a very good liar.

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I use my teeth to dig
I excavate memories of skin pulled taut over muscle and bone
I go until I start to taste the dirt, until artifacts catch in my teeth
I organize my findings based on how far they make me retract into or out of myself

I use my teeth to dig
I learn the taste of shame as it is of the earth
Its tendrils make home in the rot,
in crows feet and the asymmetric
I close my eyes and use my hands to read the stratigraphy like braille,
mapping out eons of remorse

I extract pieces of you from my skin
I save them in a mason jar
When I recall the consistency of your saliva I examine the biology
I find traces of desperation from the neolithic era;
An ancient sort of yearning passed down from generation to generation;
A longing so ravenous it can only be ancestral;
The result of a millennia worth of appetites never satiated

I trek from tundra to rainforest and back again
I find fossilizations of my anger
I find it frozen in icebergs and subdued in amber
I pray for a booby trap to drop a boulder on me or shoot me with poison tipped arrows
Instead I sit and watch the ice thaw
Instead I wear the sticky resin around my neck as a reminder 

I use my hands to dig
I erode the lines that separate my sense of self from the fourth dimension
I till at barren soil until I am pale
I hear the sound the planet makes as it rotates about its axis
I reach the mantle and stop just before I hit the core
Grief emanates outwards and repels me back, 
like magnets too alike to touch

I use my hands, sparingly,
rescuing shards of memory before the decay sets in;
Bestowing preservation as a gift
White gloved, lest the oil seep through
My skins biology enough to soil
A disturbance by default,
the day arms and legs sprouted inside the womb

I place a shroud around it and worship the silhouette
An eternity of failed attempts at immortality, now memorialized, etched into bronze
Unveiling an inability to persist no matter how deep we dig
Granting shape to whispers of resurrection all the same

Is memory enough to hold impermanence at bay?
If I preserve it well enough,
mummify the feeling,
can I reach back through the veil and pull myself through?

What I’m asking is, can I be remembered to infinity? 
What’s the limit? Until the sun implodes?
Can I conjure reincarnation through the relics I leave behind? 
When they dredge up my bones, will they find my despair in the marrow? 
What parts of me will be left floating through the dust?

I use my bones to dig
I open my skull and pull out the pieces that resemble vulnerability
I tie my ribs into a neat little bow over the front of my heart to frame the resentment growing there
I interlace my hands above my head and stretch until my carcass unravels
I run until my legs collapse 

I am an archaeologist
I use my hands to dig until I unearth something shaped like return

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• A fancy blender for my morning smoothies

• A set of comfortable, oversized moomoos

• Fancy silver jewelry, particularly rings, particularly rings that would make people think “she definitely eats pussy (very well)” when they see me

• The windows on my Honda to be tinted so people can’t see me singing to myself

• To float down from a cloud and land on something forgiving

• To be released from the burden of knowing

• An early 2000s video camcorder for vlogging

• A weekly slice of plain cheesecake

• To hold eye contact with someone without feeling like it means I owe them something now

• The ability to let go of all that plagues me

• The ability to live in tandem with the things that plague me, to play with them, to kiss them on the cheek, to say “I know why you’re here and I know why you have to stay”, to hold them on my shoulders, toss them into the air and yell “for he’s a jolly good fellow!”, to breathe them into my lungs in a way that doesn’t burn

• An intricate, colorful rug. Thick, nicely made, huge

• One of those bath things for your feet. You know what I mean. Like it does the bubbles and stuff. Somewhere to soak my feet that isn’t the bath. The ability to soak my feet while I sit on my living room couch

• A big giant pot for soups that will last me 40 years

• A goldfish

• Every Junie B. Jones book

• A liver that never had to process a 4loko

• A hand that never had to touch her corpse

• A mouth that knows when to quit

• A magic 8 ball and a tamagotchi and to be able to solve a rubix cube in 10 seconds

• Panasonic DMR-EH75VS

• To be fluent in at least 6 languages

• To know how to do a backflip

• A phone that never dies and never rings

• To hold something without squeezing the Good out of it like juicing a lemon

• To allow myself to be held without withering like a butterfly in a closed fist

• To fold myself up neatly like an old quilt, to make myself small enough to allow room for kindness, to make myself big enough to be seen, to fit inside of the hollow of a tree, to recall the taste of reckless abandon, for it to not taste like bile when I do, to tie myself in a knot around my regrets, to keep them nice and neat and contained, to pick a scab until it bleeds without consequence

• Trix cereal the way it tasted in 2008

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• Kissing (no tongue just sweet, tender, pecks; over and over again)

• Holding hands

• Being embarrassed then deciding not to be anymore

• Being in “the moment”

• Birria tacos, classic style (on a corn tortilla with only onion, cilantro, and a savory green or red salsa)

• Live music

• Experiencing insurmountable amounts of grief that allow me to understand why people do things like climb Mount Everest or swallow swords in the circus

• Playing guitar, badly, but earnestly

• Taking an edible and getting really scared then pep-talking/meditating yourself out of it

• The possibility that I could climb Mount Everest or swallow swords in the circus

• A really good homemade apple pie

• Live music on a lot of drugs

• Eating dried cranberries, cheese, and nuts and feeling like I’m emulating that one scene from Ratatouille

• People who swallow swords in the circus

• Board games

• Holding hands, again

• Kissing, again (with tongue, passionately, sloppily, for hours, until your lips are tingling with that numb sensation, not worrying if it’s good or bad, just moving your lips and tongue all around theirs, in orbit, sometimes sucking on their lower lip, sometimes biting it, not remembering what day it is or how you possibly ever could have felt an ounce of sadness in this life and deciding you probably won’t ever again)

• Feeling an ounce of sadness

• Drunk karaoke

• Sober karaoke

• People brave enough to put “Intimacy without commitment” on their dating profile

• Buying a new favorite piece of clothing

• Nights on the beach, toes in the sand, moon in the sky, crescent-shaped, stars obstructed by city lights, laying atop a blanket with wine and cheese and grapes because you’re young and want to be what you imagined was fancy, Frank Ocean playing off of someone’s phone, inching closer and closer to each other but too scared to touch

• Never talking again after the night on the beach

• Dreaming of them constantly after the night on the beach

• Being able to recall tastes, smells, and sensations from memories (in excruciating detail) more than I can tangible moments or words exchanged

• A really, really good bowl of ramen (marinated soft boiled eggs, two not one, and they’re actually soft boiled, and they’re actually marinated, and pork belly that melts in your mouth, and so many veggies, and a broth that is almost too spicy)

• Being at the airport

• Lighting that is too warm instead of too cool

• The way the grass smelled in 2009

• Playing The Sims on my PS2 in 2009 and Mario Kart on my 3DS in 2011 and Just Dance on the Wii in 2013

• Cognitive dissonance

• Laughing to the point of tears

• Talking to myself

• Having empathy, being a good person, forgiving myself when I’m not, forgiving myself for always having to label things “good” and “bad” when most things just are, having the capacity to love deeply and wholeheartedly despite being given one too many reasons not to, choosing not to anyway, allowing myself to carry my heart in chest instead of on my sleeve, saying “I love you” outloud to myself in the mirror

• Hot yoga

• Hot dogs

• Hot women

• 60 degree days, foggy days, rainy days, the Twilight series, the Pacific Northwest

• Therapy

• Trails rated “Moderate” on AllTrails

• The year 2015

• That one day in New York when I walked around by myself, smoking skinny cigarettes while it was raining, holding an umbrella, eating a bagel, teenaged and full up to my ears with an unnamed, unfounded yearning

• Mix tapes

• The bass clarinet I played in high school

• The TV series Broad City

• The Fleetwood Mac vinyls my grandma gave me

• Laying in bed for 1 - 11 hours

• Indie music pre-Tik Tok

• Lists

  Subscribe now

(I edited misspellings for comprehensions sake, but left everything else punctuation/grammar-wise. Any notes I added are in italics. TW for just like everything really; substance abuse, SA, suicidal ideation, self harm, etc. All the fun ones.)

October 31st 2015 7:55AM

I want to say "I'm acting apathetic because I believe you have realized I am nothing special, I am ordinary."

I want to ask "Aren't you disinterested?"

Your answer will not be the truth. No one wants to make it hurt bad enough to bleed, but it will anyway.

I want to let you know "I'm trying to distance myself from you; the ritual of preparing for a departure."

I want to yell "I'm indifferent to the things you say now so when you decide you have nothing left to say at all, it won't tear me apart."

Instead, I say "I'm sorry"

sometime in 2015 or 16:

do you want to be with me?

do you want to know me, intimately, or platonically?

do you want to know what my bones feel like beneath my skin, intimately

or do you want to know how my day was and how i am feeling, platonically

we can see the colors shift in the trees at night and feel them shift between us, do you want to feel the colors we can create?

do you know what it's like to feel colors

we can play each other on online games

we can bend things with our mind

we can help each other with our homework

i will if you do

i'll do if you will

i'd like to know the name of each of your brain cells, i'd like to know the noise they make as they migrate across the crevices in your brain

i'd like to tell you things are okay if you're sad, i'd like to tell you the things that will feel most pleasing slithering between your ears and across your brain

like the cells

like i want to be

can i slither across your brain?

can i know you?

do you want to be with me?

i never knew skin could breathe, (pores inhale exhale) , until i fell asleep next to you on my trampoline while the fire was dying and your hair smelled like cigarettes and i was finally hearing those brain cells moving moving slithering

April 28, 2016 8:03PM

waiting for this carcass my being embodies to unravel itself

May 15, 2016 7:29AM

scene of night after Xanax lucid dreaming with jazz music in background

July 6, 2016 1:33PM

I feel like my life amounts to my text messages

July 24, 2016 3:47AM

mcpick double cheeseburger nuggets sauce

snack wrap (rip)

tea

2 Mcchicken

November 6, 2016 3:10PM

you think it's a federal offense to throw up in a police car?

what if i piss in his seat

i can't stop shaking and i have to pee

i hated him for asking me about college , the big scary one

i loved him for using the word fucking and being honest and kind

the smaller one had a stuffed animal in his back seat

i said “he has a kid" absentmindedly

i thought she wouldn't say anything back for a while

eventually she responded "that's cool" or "yeah"

November 17, 2016 2:49AM

365 days x 17 years = aprox 6,205 times i've gone to sleep and woken up ( variables : the days and nights i haven't slept, id hardly consider ages 0-3 counting just cuz this is recollectable sleeps to me isn't that what matters yeah) x 24 hours in a day = 148,920 hours i've been alive people's salaries are larger than the amount of hours i've been alive isn't that weird not really

i don't wanna live but i wanna be successful cuz if i have to then i should, and people who wannabe successful don't do this bullshit

November 20, 2016 10:50AM

i drove past the hill where i buried the squirrel 6 months ago and children were playing atop it

my first thought was that they had been digging up there, found its carcass, and were now playing with it

tossing it around

poking at it with a stick

November 28, 2016 8:17AM

are you hearing voices? im asking because you don't tell me how you feel. you just smile at me and say everything's okay (a real thing my mom said to me)

January 8, 2017 7:04PM

a cop pulled me over for the same reason the other cop pulled me over (speeding i think? maybe a broken headlight)

i was smoking a cigarette and im 17, i couldn't throw it out because he'd see

i put it out in a styrofoam box filled with snicker doodle cookies

he didn't give me another ticket

my wallet got stolen at a party

the police station was closed so i sobbed while banging on the door until an officer finally came

only to send me to the sheriffs office instead

i'm sorry if i got you in trouble katie i just want my $100 sephora gift card back

March 27, 2017 11:25PM

when i can't sleep i imagine the super villain from spongebob screaming sleep into my brain

March 30, 2017 1:23PM

warped tour set list, in order of must sees to eh

left foot

-must sees

• nevershoutnever

-if i have time/for old times sakes (for old times sake is so funny because what is “old times” when you’re 17)

• attila

• watsky

• bowling for soup

• hawthorne heights

right foot

-must sees

• neck deep

-if i have time/ for old times sakes

• beartooth (imagine the moshing)

• hands like houses

• dance gavin dance

mutant north

-if i have time/for old time sake

• being as an ocean

• counterparts

• stick to your guns

mutant south

-if i have time/ for old times sake

• silverstein

• sworn in

skull candy

-must sees

• microwave

full sail

-if i have time

• bad omens

• trophy eyes

• waves

April 30, 2017 2:34PM

life is an invitation to sensory experiences

May 15, 2017 11:34AM

3/8 graded tests 09-55

3/14 helped students with 14-55

3/15 writing assignment work day 18-55

3/16 "" 14-55

3/17 worked on fact and opinion sheets ""

3/20 created graphs on google docs ""

3/21 " and analyzed them 18-55

22 analyzed graphs 15-55

23 worked on quizzizz 16-55

24 19-55

3/27 grades test 16-55

3/28 "" 15-55

3/30 assisted with grammar walk 15-35

4/3 graded analogy worksheet 11-43

4/4 "" 12-37

4/5 "" 15-45

4/10 analyzed titanic story 13-45

4/18 ""17-43

4/20 graded worksheets 12-40

4/24 helped students w worksheets 18-45

4/27 graded worksheets 12-43

5/2 graded tutorials 15-40

5/5 "" 13-40

5/8 assisted w assignments 15-45

5/11 graded worksheets 13-45

5/12 assisted w assignments 18-45

June 4, 2017 12:49AM

Operation: repress my entire high school experience

July 24, 2017 2:14PM

Watch every. Danny Devito movie

November 13, 2017 10:22PM

do you think it hurts do you think it hurts do you think it hurts do you think it hurts do you think it hurts do you think it hurts do you think do you?

February 3, 2018 10:35PM

will it make the pain go away

will it make the pain go away

will it make the pain go away if i hurt myself

if i punch the wall

if i punch the wall until i reach the concrete

if i punch the wall until my knuckles bleed

will i feel better

will my anger subside

will i talk to a therapist

i’m coming undone unraveling untethering

decomposing

will it make the pain go away

will it

if i pretend i enjoy it

if i pretend i like the way it feels

if i almost change my mind but say yes anyway

does it make me feel better that they always beg and lie and want and touch and need and suck and feel and feel and feel and feel and

are you okay?

they kept walking in

they want to try both

they wanted you to arch more and take more and talk more and be louder and tighter and faster and better

they wanted you to say yes

they heard yes when yes was no

they wanted you to not say anything

they wanted you to be okay with it

i’m just helping out

they’re so so hungry

okay fine

okay whatever you want

does this mean i’m pretty

will i feel better if he

will i feel better if we

feels better

now?

.

you’d be so

if you were

if i looked like

then i could

it’d be so much easier if you just

i wouldn’t want you if

i won’t hate you if

i won’t tell if

if you want to we can

if you’re thinking about it

if you’re thinking about me

let me know

let’s go out to eat

to get coffee

or something

i’ll trade you my xanax for some adderall

February 10, 2018 4:33PM

i was raised in a crazy family with crazy women and they’ve put the crazy in me and i’ve spent my entire life trying to get it out trying not to be like them trying not to hurt others trying trying trying

i’m going to end up bitter and alone because of the crazy

i’m going to chase everyone good away

i’m bitter and alone

February 17, 2018 6:15AM

that’s your pee on the toilet instead of wiping it off i sat in it :the closest to physical contact we’ll ever get

February 20, 2018 7:35AM

intrusive thought number two:

in my bedroom

in my bed

very warm

maybe i should stay here, so cozy

don’t need to wash my face

might be too high ive heard water running for five minutes

in my bedroom

on my bed

if you don’t wash your face it will sprout pimples if you don’t brush your teeth they will fall out and no one will love you

on my bed

i don’t know if that’s true but my head is tired of loud thoughts so i’ll do it

February 27, 2018 11:42PM

repressive memories

depressive spit

list of people i’m charging for using me to reflect themselves

March 12, 2018 12:47AM

check beer (I think this was referring to checking our fridge so I could steal beer from my alcoholic stepfather as I often did around this time)

$20 from ***insert friend name*** house, she pays 15 from that(i’ll repay her with half later)

caseys for cigarettes and split money into 5s for jo (different friend, left name in cuz ambiguous)

go to jos

get it and go home

come home and smoke a lot and play fireboy and lava girl or watch netflix

May 8, 2018 10:13PM

At what age do I stop being embarrassed of being alive (i think like 23 maybe idk)

May 15, 2018 8:05PM

ive decided i’m (decisively ?) indecisive but also i’m not really sure yet

May 18, 2018 12:38AM (start LSD-induced ramblings)

ducking ripping myself apart

May 18, 2018 12:52AM

hah not that i wanna die or anything no worries i’m fine everything’s great i’m having a good time here

May 22, 2018 12:08AM

no it’s funny because my brain is trying to deconstruct/re construct itself i get it

May 22, 2018 1:47AM

these sounds don’t yell at me

May 22, 2018 2:19AM (end LSD-induced ramblings)

they don’t NEED NYTBIKFN from me i mean

August 6, 2018 2:01AM

Hello my baby hello my honey hello my ragtime gal

August 12, 2018 10:55PM

teeth skin

September 7, 2018 10:28AM

like a bandaid it’ll hurt for a while but then i’ll finally feel like i can breathe again

this is what giving up looks like in its physical form

this is what a quitter looks like in its prime

this is what the will to be lonely looks like as a fleshy thing with a brain shoved inside it

and a heart that refuses to quit

and a heart that hurts and hurts and hurts and breaks and pushes away

this is what arms that were constructed to push and shove goodness out looks like

this is how they bend and reach and shove

hands that grab and squish and hold and only know to crave the cold embrace of no one else’s

this is how and why and when it hurts

a mouth that doesn’t know how to warn

fingers that do but give up so soon

mouth that wants to

eyes that are so loud and why aren’t you listening

to my fucking eyeballs

do i need to rip them out of my sockets and shove them into yours

bend and reach and shove

and break and push and grab and hold and push

i wish all of my body parts knew how to scream and yell and warn and be so so much louder

i wish all of my body parts weren’t created solely to hurt

like a bandaid it’ll hurt for a while but i’ll learn how to breathe without you

that’s what this fleshy thing was created to do

live without

September 10, 2018 5:02PM

killing my self over and over again like a nightmare but i’m awake and it’s real and i can’t open my eyes and end it it just keeps going repeating itself over and over again i can’t just get out of bed and brush my teeth as it slowly drifts out of my mind it’s happening over and over again i’m not eating cereal wondering why there was blood in my dream im not even waking up screaming i’m not even waking up i’m experiencing it living it breathing it

over and over again

November 9, 2018 10:46AM

2 kpins 3 shots of vodka a line of coke a bowll and off to school

November 21, 2018 12:54PM

what i wanted to do:

take all my xanax and some tramadol

smoke all my cigarettes

get so high that it scares me get way too high even though i know it scares me

what i did instead:

threw cigs away

stayed sober (smoked tiny bit)

took a shower

did a hair and face mask

changed all my lightbulbs

rly tried to clean my shoes but couldn’t find magic eraser wtf mom

naired my hair

shaved legs and puss and armpits and belly

plucked brows

December 28, 2018 1:02AM

Put on this earth to love, not be loved

To slither in between the cracks in your longing

And fill

To put my hands inside and mold like clay

To reflect the best parts of you

To tell you it’s okay

To take it all in

Tangled between your threads to satisfy, not to ask

But conform

Not allow

But bend

Not break

Breathe but not swallow

Take it all in

Put on the stand to testify, not defend

one hand on the holy script the other on your throat

And I promise I’m not lying

And I promise I can hold you here inside me

And I promise to be that thing you always wanted, no objections

And I promise to take it all in

The worst of you, all of you

I don’t know who to tell about the shadows on the wall

And is it real if I can’t grasp it

And is my need to dissolve genetic

And is it normal

And will you call

And will I care

And I guess I’ll take it all in, anyway

/And I guess I’ll meld into you now

Posting this one feels…. naked. I think I’ve just over-analyzed these decade old thoughts and decided people will find them too disturbing or weird or bad or cringe. I am waiting for people to comment “WHY WERE YOU SUCH A WEIRD TEENAGER THIS IS ALL SUPER WEIRD AND I HOPE YOU’VE GOTTEN HELP!!!!! And also I hate you and everyone is mad at you now and also this is bad and you smell bad”

At which point I will just be like “knew it” then leave the post up so I can feed off of mean comments and when I say feed off I mean literally read them over and over again and memorize them and start reciting them as a little bedtime prayer before I sleep so I can really soak it all up and even dream about it maybe if I’m lucky. Like comment subscribe if ur also a girl who lives inside the part of ur brain where the self-loathing is stored.

(I am much better now than I was then, but I am also the same person. I still am so scared of everything and worry all the time but I have tools now to not spiral when bad things happen so that’s good, I think)

I’m 10 and I’m 20 trying to break free from the shackles of bedtime and reality tv shows.

I’m 14 and I’m 22 learning how to hide the scary, less digestible parts of me beneath a substance.

I’m 17 and 25 and wondering if any of it meant anything at all, if it ever does, or can, or should.

What’ll it taste like once it all falls apart again?

I want to give it all to you.

I want to place the manifestation of my grief in the palm of your hands.

I want it to look sort of like my mom sort of like my sister sort of like my ex sort of like a starfish.

I want you to look at it, then I want you to look at me, then I want you to say “This is so, so heavy. No, thank you”.

I want you to hand it back to me, of your own volition.

I want it to taste more bitter than it ever did sweet.

I think:

I’ve spent 25 years avoiding hard truths. I think I’ve been shutting my eyes realllll tight so that when all the bad things happen I can say it’s not my fault because hey, I didn’t even know. I think when my frontal lobe developed, life took it’s dirty, grubby little hands, and pried my lids wide open (without my consent? weird). I think I’ve been holding it all in so tightly that my nails bent backwards.

So, what to do when you’re ready to face it? So what to do when I maybe want to see something besides the inside part of my eyelids? So what to do when I wanna get a fuckin’ manicure and not be ashamed to show up because of my weird looking nails?? Because that is very much something I’d be embarrassed about; weird nails. I stopped getting pedicures 6 months ago when I stubbed my big toe, the right one, and a really weird, ugly bruise formed under the nail. What, I’m supposed to show up and say “sorry my right toe nail is weird and black it’s just a bruise not like mold or a curse”??

Whatever.

I think:

I’ve spent 25 years trying to be “normal”. Which is strange, because you learn at very young age that a square-shaped thing cannot fit into a circle-shaped thing. Trying to fit your credit card into the hole of a donut or something like that. And now you’re surprised when talking about marriage with your friends makes you experience something you can only describe as preemptive misery? You’re surprised that shame keeps rubbing it’s sticky little fingers all over every crevice of your brain like a child in a candy shop? You don’t understand why compliments always melt right off your subconscious like throwing ice cream at a hot car, yet criticisms so easily make themselves at home in the deepest corners of your psyche like a cat on top of a heating pad?

Whatever.

I think:

I’ve spent 25 years trying to be “different”. Which is strange, because of that whole big deal I just made about being normal. But it was some sort of mystery balance that only I knew. Like, nooo I never think about dying but I do smoke a lot of weed and listen to music genres you’ve never heard of like neo-psychedelia and whatever the hell space rock is. Like, yeahhh I understand what you mean when you say “my mom is my best friend” because I obviously totally relate to that super normal thing you just said but also I go to music festivals you’ve never heard of by myself and accept drugs from strangers while I’m there because I’m so cool and solitary and mysterious and adventurous.

Subscribe now

I’m like likeable but not too likeable. I’m like a culmination of 1 million “Whatever you want!”’s and “Did you know Tame Impala is just one guy?”isms.

Like, whatever.

I think:

Eventually I have to try asking someone to paint my weird ugly toenail. The thought of this evokes a crying toddler screaming “I DON’T WANNA” over and over again behind my eyelids. The thing is, no one ever tells you how hard it is to ask someone to paint your weird ugly toenail. There’s not really a ton of prep work for that sort of thing; no workshops or “For Dummies”. No one sits you down when you’re just a little girl tells you the cold, hard truth or gives you any sort of warning. I sometimes wish they had.

I wish they had said “One day you will feel sorrow all the time. One day it will fill you up from your weird ugly toenail to your eyeballs until it pours out of your ears. One day it’ll feel like the grief never ends, like you’re withering around it, like you’re cowering in its presence, like it’s all way too much for you to hold, like you’re always running but you can’t get away from it no matter how many 2AMs you allow to slip in as a distraction so you can never catch your breath. Like it’s sucked your insides out and left a shell of you. Like you wish someone would stick their hand down your throat and just pull it all out. So all of that happens, then you keep going anyway, because you stick your hand down your own throat and throw it all up. And then it’s something close to “okay”, so don’t give up!” But I guess that would all be very confusing to hear at 9 years old. Maybe just a quick MySpace msg from Tom being like “heyyy in like 10 yrs shits gonna hit the fan. gonna suck lol but just know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel queenie! xoxo” or something along those lines.

I don’t even know if there’s a light out there yet but I think the kids are calling this manifesting. I don’t know if placing my grief in strangers hands in hopes they decide it’s too much is the best way to go about reaching the other side of this imagined tunnel. I don’t know if there is a building in the world without a sharp edge somewhere in it, or if everything has to mean something. I don’t know if any of this makes any sense to anyone but me. I don’t think it has to.

I think:

What I am trying to say is being alive is confusing. I think what I am trying to say is when I was young I thought growing up would feel like High School Musical or Hannah Montana in the sense that I would make a lot of friends and be so good at singing and kissing boys. And now that I am not-so-young it feels more like Midsommar or Her in the sense that I want to set a man on fire as a sacrifice to the Pagan god of a Swedish commune and I also think a computer would treat me better than any human person could. Turns out, not a lot of people breaking out into song out here, and I am closer to full fledged misandry every second I am alive, and some days I sort of just want to become a nun even though I’ve never believed in a god. Not sure which outcome is most disappointing, but probably the singing part.

Whatever.

you’re so hot! youre the prettiest girl in the world! okay? who cares? spell pharaoh.

1. i'm body neutral so i am not interested in people's essays about wanting to be skinny, or being upset with the way they look, or their “fitness” journeys. i’m not saying (some of) these essays aren't valid, or don't hold merit, but as someone who is moving away from caring/thinking about my body in that way at all, they just don’t pique my interest. yes we all have bodies, yes they all look different, yes most of you hate yourself and have an ED. i was on tumblr in 2012 too, next! (i am all about intuitive eating (read the damn book before you assign meaning to what intuitive eating means) and doing things that are /healthy/ for your body, so i'm more into the ramblings of nutritionists who understand health is more important than aesthetics!) anti-diet all the way babie.

   

   ---

   my parents didn’t baptize me and i never hopped on that spiritual psychosis train (even after all the LSD in high school)

2. i don’t know if i’m atheist or agnostic, but i do know i am so completely disinterested in musings around the topic of religion and spirituality. was mercury in retrograde when my little sister shot herself in the head because at the age of 17 she decided it was all too much? did god tell her that was the right thing to do, or did he just sit and watch? was it apart of his "plan" we are not allowed to know the details of for some reason? if she had more crystals or sage or read her horoscope for that day, could she have been saved? no, thank you.

   

   ---

   we! are never, ever, ever! reading a post about a celebrity and what their favorite xyz is

3. pop culture………… no one in the whole entire world is more bored of pop culture than i am. sometimes i do feel like a hypocrite here, as my biggest criticism is typically "why are we putting millionaires on pedestals? you know you have nothing actually in common with these people, and they are just a brand being sold to you, right??" - i can’t stand a die hard swiftie and im not afraid to say it (i am afraid to say it because i hate coming off as mean but this is my truth and i’m practicing living in that this year!!!). but, a quick peek at my IG feed (an app I no longer have or use as of November last year when I saw a picture of my ex with their new gf and then the election happened the week after lolol, i’m tired of knowing things!!) would reveal primarily videos/pictures from concerts i attended every month.

   my scapegoat there is i go to concerts where the tickets are maybe $20 and the performers are likely struggling to make ends meet as is, but i do admit there were a few "popular" artists on my Spotify Wrapped. i think what makes it different for me is, i do not know these people or care to. i like their music and that is it. i have a tattoo of a modest mouse album cover, my favorite band in the world who i have seen 6-8 times live, and i could not tell you the name of a single band member. they are all white men, what could i possibly have in common with them?

   

   so, i will say again, i could not be anymore bored of pop culture. you all can continue to salivate over celebs who do not care about you, i'll continue putting myself on a pedestal for being cooler and better bc i choose other avenues for escapism. (this is a nod to the fact that i understand everyone has their "thing" getting them through the dystopian hellscape that is capitalism and for that i do have empathy! whatever keeps u going bestie, if it happens to be that Taylor Swift album then do ur thing. i am only silently judging u just a tiny bit and would never say it to ur face)

   ---

   i was already a pre teen and on tumblr

4. teenage girls who remind me too much of me in the sense that their writing is /so/ angsty that it's meaningless (and inevitably, unintentionally recycled bc we have all been there). i need more rugged 30-40 year olds with stories of substance to tell and less 17 year olds just recycling one liners from various angsty corners of the internet. love u though teenage girls i was u once and my writing was exactly the same <3 and my writing is also still so angsty i’m just a hypocrite in more ways than one <3

   

   congrats u made it halfway through me complaining! subscribe if u also like complaining about stuff and being gay and the like

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   cheese makes me constipated

5. lots of romance here.... this is v much a me thing. i try to avoid all of these odes to past present and future lovers. for a long time i have thought of myself as "aromantic". i think really my PTSD made my skin so thick nothing can pierce through it, not even cupid’s arrow. i am what the kids are calling “avoidant”, i’d have to know you for at least 2 years to even begin to have an inkling of romantic feelings towards you (something i will probably write a separate post about eventually). so, pieces about romance are always so cheesy and unrelatable to me. maybe therapy will "fix" that for me. we'll see!

   

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   elitist or honest lmk

6. the “poor me’s”…..the wallowers...the self diagnosers…. the need to be so obsessed with what’s “wrong” with you….(you’re going to read this and think it’s about you IT’S NOT it’s about a very select subset of people. i am also known to wallow. it’s what substack is for in a way, i get it, i am talking about a different thing!) as someone who has been in therapy for a very long time, it's very easy to spot someone who isn't. I UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THERAPY IS A LUXURY AND A PRIVILEGE. but, as someone who also could not afford therapy and just put it on their credit card so that they could get the help they need (lol) sometimes i do have trouble understanding people’s aversion to just getting help. i think a fair amount of people who say they can't afford therapy probably could if they spent the time to find resources available to them (this line is giving “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” to me and i hate myself a bit for it but i think there’s some truth in it regardless). it should not be that hard to have to get therapy anyway, so i digress. i think as someone who was suicidal for years then finally realized i could just do things to make me, well, not that way, it’s easy to be on the other side saying “why don’t you join me?”. my point here is i have a hard time relating to folks whose every post is about their ADHD or autism or anxiety and the way their whole life is ruined because of it.

   

   i have a lot, lot, lot more i could say on this but i think i'll save it for a separate essay, it'd be a whole 10 minute read on it's own. i just want to say i see you, i hear you, i love you, and there is a better way around/through all of this. i just can’t relate to people who refuse to try and save themselves. i won't be engaging with these types of substackers because it is triggering usually, sure, but also sometimes it reaches a point where it feels like intentional helplessness. like you’re getting off on your own suffering. starts to feel very reminiscent of tumblr 2012 when everyone had an ED and depression and self harming was soooo in (as a 12-14 year old who was easily impressionable, i was alllll up in this shit lol) so i am probably just over it all, having already been through that cycle.

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   self explanatory

7. the “grow ur following” and business gurus, of course. i’m here to yell into the void i could give a flying fuck who sees it.

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   haters are NOT my motivators

8. pessimists… haters… i know it is so cool and fun to be a hater now and maybe this post is giving hater in a way. but notice how on every single point i empathize and understand why people need to connect with these certain topics, i just personally do not. i am talking about folks who are just negative nancy’s to the max. who do not have anything good to say about anyone or anything. i am overly optimistic in the sense that i can see the good in everyone, so i just don’t relate to people constantly writing about all the things they hate.

   

   this isn’t a list of things i hate, it’s a list of things i simply cannot relate to in general. i also like to write about luv n light and the joys of existing. i understand everyone is going to like/dislike things, it’s the duality of man and such, i am just not interested in any writer who only knows how to be mean. unless we’re being mean to nazi’s, we need more of that actually. and now i’m going to be hypocritical again (iykyk) and put this Smith’s quote here:

   “It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate
   It takes guts to be gentle and kind”

   ---

so, there it is. i feel i still haven’t found my “niche” here. the only public writing i was doing before this was on tik tok, in the form in short-form poetry. i think i do want to lean into my poetry a bit more but trying out this long form stuff has been fun. will likely just pursue a combination of both on this substack thing, if i keep it up that is. i am sure as i continue to peruse this site i will find more things that make me feel “alienated” but honestly i always feel alienated from everyone so, again, a lot of this is a “me” thing (take a shot for every use of quotes and parentheses in this one, please! then check yourself into the hospital for alcohol poisoning shortly after!).

it’s a scapegoat in a way, if my writing doesn’t do well here, it must be because no one gets me! like, i’m just so unique and special and different and insightful no one could ever understand me type shit. that’s a joke but it is also definitely a thought process my brain defaults to sometimes. we’re all just figuring shit out so i understand the need for all of the above niches, they just don’t fit into my 25 y/o, queer, black, mentally ill, oldest daughter, overly-optimistic despite being on a bit of a downward spiral, life right now. i am sure i’ll contradict myself on one of these things later and continue to be a hypocrite in many ways, but such is life. i am still young, after all.

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1. My mother lost a piece of herself she would never be able to reclaim

2. A witch cast A Spell on her womb damning her second born child to be a societal martyr

The day I was born, 2 more things happened:

1. The weight of the world was placed upon my little baby newborn shoulders

2. Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” celebrated 5 weeks of being #1 on Billboard Hot 100, making it 1999’s “Song of the Summer”

I think already knowing you are meant to be a martyr when you are only the size of a lima bean does something irreparable to a person’s psyche. I didn’t have any fingers or eyeballs or hair yet - only a primal, innate desire to be a really good person who everyone loved and never ever ever got mad at for anything, ever. You would be surprised what sustaining others’ happiness, no matter the circumstances, really costs, how much that really weighs. Like 100 tons probably. This witch was asking a small baby lima bean to carry 100 tons. Sick and twisted, in my humble opinion.

My mother had me naturally, but not intentionally. The military hospital I was born in fucked up administering the epidural. The whole time she’s fighting with them about the epidural, I’m in the womb dreading that her first interaction with me was already a huge inconvenience and indescribably painful. I would spend the next 2 decades (and some change) trying to make up for all the ways I hurt people through just existing. I’ve never asked my mom, but I have a pretty good feeling my first word was “sorry”.

As I grew, I would come to find Christina and I are alike in the sense that there is a price to pay for being with me. I would also find that we are different in the sense that her price seems to be “rubbing her the right way” and my price is more like, be sort of nice to me just once, just a little bit. Or have an eyebrow piercing. I spent a long time oblivious to the faults that come with allowing every “nice” person into my life in fear of hurting their feelings, while simultaneously wondering what this all-encompassing, 100-ton weight was that seemed to live in the pit of my stomach.

Thanks to a combination of intensive therapy and my frontal lobe furiously marching it’s way to its final stages of development (against my will), I have been forced to question why I have this irresistible urge to contort into whatever version of me feels the best for someone else. Why would I feel most comfortable in a room full of eggshells? Why do I find myself wearing white to better display strangers projections of themselves onto me? Probably because I am in my prime when I am trying to avoid pain and be intentionally unintentional. Probably because if I don’t then who will?

As my brain continued to develop without my consent, it started to become clearer and clearer to me that something was not quite right with me, and quite possibly never had been. Everyday I felt like I was wiping away the condensation from a fogged up mirror and feeling horrified that it was always someone different staring back at me. Someone bad. Being bad and feeling bad are bad and not allowed, not with The Spell.

So, I started clinging to The Spell, leaning into my Ella Enchanted-esque method of existing, which (much to my chagrin) only made things worse somehow. I just wanted someone to look me in the eyes and tell me “you’re okay you’re normal you’re a good person there’s nothing wrong with you nothings wrong with you no one is mad at you you are not bad everyone loves you and will forever no matter what you do”. Naturally, I assumed this is what therapy is for. It was going to be my saving grace, it was going to fix me, make me better, make me good.

I had therapists before; the one my mom forced me to see after I admitted to her at the age of 12 that I hadn’t quite figured out how to want to be alive yet, some I briefly tried in my teens and early 20s that never panned out because they were white or men and/or I was not ready to be that vulnerable with anyone yet, etc. When I finally landed on a black woman who specialized in helping people like me (queer, PTSD, a guilt so ravenous it consumed my entire being), I learned therapy actually has a way of dismantling everything you thought you ever knew about yourself.

“But, I’m so self aware!”

Sure, you can be aware you have a broken arm all the doo dah day, but are you qualified to fix it? Do you have the tools you need to mend all the things you’ve decided are broken?

Therapy has been working its way through undoing The Spell. It is a painful, vulnerable, intimate process. All things I hate experiencing. I’d hoped maybe The Spells undoing would be something more fun like true love’s first kiss, but I guess I’d have to know how to really let someone in for that to happen. Turns out it’s moving your eyes back and forth a whole lot while intensely thinking about and reliving all of your worst nightmares (EMDR). I don’t know yet if it’s enough.

Before therapy, I could take solace in being the perfect person, to every person. I always put my cart back at the grocery store. I always tipped my wait staff. I swallowed everyone’s pain and released them from the burden of having to be a decent human being.

Yes you can cut in front me in the Taco Bell drive through,

yes it’s fine that I didn’t finish again,

yes I can hold it all for you. Like, all of it. I want to, really. I’m just waiting around for you to ask.

Before therapy, I didn’t know what I was if not a martyr. Not in a “feel bad for me” way but in a “this is just my role in society” way. It’s just a matter-of-fact thing. You don’t feel bad for a fly who eats poop everyday because that’s what he was made to do and maybe he actually quite enjoys it.

Before therapy, I wanted to ask everyone I met:

“Do you like me?”

“Is it okay that the cost of us being together is my sense of self?”

“Can we pretend I am not trying to fit my grief into the palm of your hand and my yearning into the space between your two front teeth?”

There is no “after” therapy yet. I am still figuring it all out. I am not “fixed”. Everything is not “better”. I am neither “good” nor “bad”. I still spend a lot of time questioning the person behind the condensation. I still feel perpetually exhausted from carrying the 100-ton weight in the pit of my gut.

But I am learning to make mistakes and not crucify myself for it. I am learning to let go of people who only add to that weight. I am spending a lot more time dancing all by myself and smoking a bit (a lot) more weed. I am learning that my worth can come from literally anywhere else besides the way other people react to the things I do and say.

I am deciding to swallow the feeling to keep it inside. I am rubbing nostalgia on my gums to remember the sensation. I am standing inside of my anger and growing roots there. I am dissolving my need for more of everything. I am undoing The Spell and I know someday I will wake up with an empty stomach.