Fiasco The Second

to live in this place  is to earn your seasons the ice turns into mud as to dare you to hope  your butchered heart has yet to thaw from its icy prison the river opens up and the currents  are set free  as to dare you to move forward

the cold air stings your face humbling the long shot forecast  your February legs lay shame to your triumphant August still, the bliss of the ride conquers 

to live in this place is to accept the tragedy or the solace  of impermanence 

The ink is not yet dry on our word of the year. The pixels still adjusting on your screen. The hashtags still being refined by the Influencers. The Twitter convos still being screen captured to repost. The black and white celebrity protest videos just barely posted having quickly obtained the appropriate copyrights for that new song you like. 

Welcome to the “Best of” Dissent in an age of assumed consent. Click here to accept the terms and conditions of everything. We have pre-populated the Revolution for you, just buy the T-shirt with the ironic slogan and press the Like button. 

What should be a wondrous movement is reduced to its glittery form and I struggle to make it my own. I feel intimidated and reluctant to jump on the bandwagon, even if I secretly wish it lots of success. I wish it well because I’m a girl who thinks any kind of girl power is a good thing, no matter what the brand or the channel. Still, this particular brands’ aesthetic somehow makes me green with envy and totally pissed off at the same time. Oh! How I wish my life feed was so well curated. Oh! How I wish I existed with such effortless real beauty in my eco-chic Mom jeans that are too big for me because I’m so appropriately skinny. Make your own deodorant they said, it will be fun they said. 

Has being a feminist turned into another cultural construct of an unobtainable aspiration for the exact audience it is supposed to empower? How the fuck did this happen?

Welcome to your very own post-modern-post-wiki-post-Snapchat Feminist revival. A newer, more polished, sexier than ever, way to fight the patriarchy.  

Long gone are the long skirted suffragettes throwing lady tantrums and the Woodstock bra burning hippies. I quite like the hippie suffragettes, but I’m a self-proclaimed contrarian, so don’t mind me.

I am also a product of this era:  a well behaved consumer who always recycles the tags and is really really good Facebook friend. I am nor proud, nor ashamed of this - I have not fallen into the trap of taking insult towards a whole generation personally, nor have I the arrogance of taking credit for anything my generation is praised for. I’m wary of premature historical and socio-anthropological conclusions and still believe in the notion of free will …

I also believe it is a pathetic, easy and dreadful thing to mock the next wave of adults as we so inelegantly step into Century old shoes, crossing our fingers that we perpetuate evolution. I feel (wait for it...) grateful for the dumb luck of being born into these conditions. Conditions that make Millennials in South Sudan reflect on how their YOLO only applies to fetching water from a drying well while dodging bullets and swinging machetes. Hashtag blessed anyone? 

I didn’t want to be cynical about it, truly, I didn’t. I wanted to be inspired by all the togetherness being reported on all the feeds. But it never becomes real offline. IRL, there is still only a minuscule edging towards real change and progress. And that,  is what makes me an angry feminist. 

Coming home to him is a strange new normal. The high pitched “hey baby” - oozing with honey and domesticity resounds from across the small, yet perfect, kitchen - is extraordinary and terrifying at the same time. My ability to resist an All Systems Go activation of my flight response is, frankly, award winning stuff. I adore him. He’s wonderful. He’s beyond kind, he’s smart and mature and for christ sake he looks like a college quarterback or at the very least a Calvin Klein underwear model - at.the.very.fucking.least.

I am expecting my Nobel prize for emotional soundness and stellar choice in men in the mail any day now. I have made a bloody excellent choice, or at least I stumbled upon some left over luck quota.

I breeze into said perfect kitchen and embrace said perfect man. I melt into his arms. It’s disgusting, how perfect he is. How perfect this fucking kitchen is. There is nowhere for me to hide. I am exposed. I am the sherpa at the top of the mountain, I have guided the silly tourists up this deathly ridge and I stand firm against the cold wind, pretending to know what the fuck is going on. But I’m just a short little person on a very high, very cold mountain without the proper winter attire. The more perfect he and the kitchen become, the more vulnerable and afraid I become.

And then I start to wiggle.

And then I start to squirm and twist and twitch.

Instead of relaxing into the warm embrace and finally letting myself be loved - I start to flounder angrily. I start to pick at scabs. I invoke the ghosts of Mata Hari and Miss Marple as I embark on a warrior mission and utterly epic spirit quest to uncover something wrong about anything.  And of course, I always find something. Something MUST be wrong. Nothing ever feels just right.

(I am always homesick for a home I could not name if you paid me. Where can I go, where can I run too. It has entrenched itself into every single relationship I’ve ever been in. This wanting to be elsewhere, to be away from wherever I am. It really feels like homesickness. I seem to be homesick for myself).

I will ruin it. I cannot ruin it. Good God, don’t let me ruin this.

So take your trust and thrust it down I’ll look on the bright side when you give it back to me It was just a tiny thing Smaller than a pea But it filled me up, Unbeknownst to me - yet another trick, some sorcery It slid right out of me, blood and guts

No mix, no master

Just raw, uncut 

I won’t censor the gore and such I won’t turn away from the gush and such I’ll be destructive if I damn well choose too 

I’ll go down down down down

Just so I can show you That I can get up  That I am the knock That I am the lock down  That I am the boss 

I’m left with a sickening sense

Of just me

No more good excuse to accept this body Back to the platitude of this

Desert storm troop beverly hills I can’t decide if I want to scream bloody murder or if this is the good life I can’t touch base with my home base 

the mindless chatter in my head is still too loud 

somehow, some way, I find a way I let the hot dry heat rise and burn my face and burn my eyes and burn my restraint I let go, my body warms up and suddenly I want to be engulfed by you every minute of the scorching day and starry night I want to be consumed, taken, swallowed whole I want to only feel your want

And every time push comes to shove I get shoved off the goddamn kitchen table with the grace of a potato head person

Without fail I catch fire in my own storm

I pull out big guns at the peace treaty table

I push all the recovering alcoholics to drink

And all the users to a brink

I make it cold when it’s warm and block out the sun so only I can see in the new dark I’ve made

I just wanted to

I just thought I could

It’s just ever what I want it be

Sorry never seems to be a good enough apology now, that in the dark, only I can see

I look at you like I’m going to leave you, just in case you do it first

Truth is I would die first

Learning how to let you love me is my catastrophe

Because now, I’m held to all this fucking happy

How do I deprogram how he built me

How hard and sad he’s made me

I could lie and say one day I’ll let go, be easy, in flow

But I won’t

For you, all I can do is keep trying and failing

Maybe, miraculously, I’ll learn to be

The me that loves me

So I can love you.

The actual thing actually happens.

The background is a heavy grey sky. The overtures are the anorexic and bare trees. The sound is the low hum of the electricity, tucked away in the closet. The air is slightly thick, all windows and doors closed for this early winter. November is a great month for this, most excellent.   The square footage is, well, it is what it is. Described by some as cozy, by me as suffocating.

The finishings were not my choosing, I live among another woman’s tiles. I’ve been told this is inconsequential and unimportant. Still, I thought I should mention it. 

The cats have finished their morning gymnastics and nothing else moves but the rising and falling of my newly ever slightly more controlled breath.

I am sitting alone. Well not really. I’m a sitting duck among all the ghosts of me. They violently parade one after the other with bullets of regret and self-doubt. Hunting season in full swing.

Had I inadvertently signed up for a lifetime membership to this fucking bullshit? 

The poster is “the only way out is through” and “if you’re going through hell, keep going”.

My fractioned, exploded, broken, exhausted identity just wants to rest its head. Have its poor tired shoulders rubbed.

Who the fuck are you. And does it matter.

I remember nothing. Maybe that’s my gift. I’ve unwrapped a blank canvas. But not really, right?

The fantasy is that by resisting reality, I can avoid it. It’s utterly pornographic.

If I see another self-help book, I will tear out each pathetic page with the meticulousness of serial killer and individually set them on fire, thus liberating the world of this easy-fix filth.

Whatever - I won’t really do that. I’m just pissed off I can’t find the answer anywhere. And no, it’s not inside man, it’s just not OK. Stop it.  Stop.

The process is linear, simple. You’re in it. You’re playing the game. You know you’re in it. You’ve got control. You’re fresh out of school and you will.not.ever.sell.out. You’re just spending a few years on the market, you know, to make a living, just for now. Like a good baby capitalist.

Then you take yourself seriously, someone tells you you’re good. You need those words a little too much. You make money. You’re working hard. But not that hard. You play a lot. Spend a lot. You become a boss. You work that hard. Too hard.

More people to disappoint.

I reassure, in my most rational voice, to mask my pathological fear of going bat shit crazy:  “no no I’m not depressed, I’m just tired”

I rest.

I feel like all this rest might be making me go crazy. In the motherfucking clinical sense.

Also, I’m pissed. 

Did I mention I’m pissed. Because I was promised, PROMISED, that once I found my true love, I would live happily ever after.

So -  Can I get my money back. Because, no. I mean we’re in love. And, jesus h. christ, we’re so good together.

I’m just no good alone.

Sorry I digress. With the love shit. But I always default to the love shit, because it was always the source of all the crap but now its not and now there is another problem, which leads me to believe, love was never the problem, that I was and now that makes that problem this problem and holy mother of god I’ve got 99 problems don’t I ….

Some people start cooking I hear.

I’m just sitting here.

Pissed off.

Is it even possible to fail at one’s own goddamn burnout.

Be pleasant, grace will bridge you to some truth. It will always get darker and darkest depending on your disposition.

Not once, will casting your shadowed perspective, help the outcome. Be rational. As if this was the only viable option. Knowing very well you’ve never rationed anything. Chocolate. Case and point.

Dramatization should of course remain on the stage: No - this life is not your 15 minutes. The tears will come on their own, there is nothing to be done there. Kindly refer them to that time of the month or to be attributed to your overtly empathetic reactions to every-fucking-thing.

You will have to sleep a lot to conceal your level of exhaustion. Make-up, coffee, psycho-stimulants and/or cucumbers will also do.

Don’t be a burden or a whining nuisance. You’ve not gone to war or been rescued from a sinking raft dear, be the poster child for poise and resilience. (Ah!Yes! Resilience. Such the word. Such the sentiment. The absolutely perfect aspirational mantra for the beaten down workforce.)

Never let a day set, never let their heads lie, thinking you are weak. You are physically unbreakable and mentally incredible.

They will wonder how you maintain such a sunny disposition. You must meditate or medicate, or both, or something.

I live in a time of curated masochism. There is no insouciance, how can there be when I can so easily search in the annals of your brilliant past. How can there be when, at the tip of my masterful fingertips and inquisitive resolve, I can reveal some of what was there before me. All the places you are tagged in, all the traces of a time where I was dust. Remains of a time when I existed only in another dimension. All of those nights and mornings where you were searching for your next exquisite and non-replicable memory. When the ecstasy of living was all there was. A time I know I can never live up too and don’t have the arrogance to assume I can offer you better.

When you had beneath your sheets, all I think you ever dreamed of.

And it is the object that lay under you sheets that I continue to hunt down. Depraved and jealous, I am the stalker and she the prey. I examine each pixel with such care, desperate to find a flaw, any flaw. Any evidence that you could love me more than you loved her. Any evidence that maybe, just maybe I’m better - that maybe, just maybe - you would still choose me.

Any single clue that I’m not some kind of runner up or consolation prize.

Yet, all I find in her galleries are absolute uniqueness, artfulness, self-confidence as shown by the complete absence of self portraits - of which of I have abused of to feed my need for love, attention and praise.

How can I be so desperately jealous of your ghosts?

I am haunted by coming up short, by being second, by not being chosen.

And so, to defend my butchered heart I must keep it cold and ruthless.

And so it must be trained like hard soldier to withstand and survive all of the dirty wars.

And so I keep coming at myself like a blood thirsty hound.

The stirring, it starts slowly - insidiously, like the tail end of a bad hangover. 

It’s a latent rumble, a quiet screaming that something is not right. It feels like someone is poking into your side with a spoon, trying to burst your kidney with the slow grind of an unrelenting resolve.

I feel fine but very sick all at once. 

The city is woken up, bustling - but I know I will stay in this daze if I don’t get going soon. I know I will succumb if don’t dizzy it away.

Keep moving, you must always keep moving. You must stop the thinking and then the feeling will stop. 

It is winter. You are alive. 

There were too many heavy words spoken in the lasting hours of our evening. 

Too heavy. I can’t carry so much togetherness, I need to sit alone with this enemy. 

I need to stare her down and checkmate her back into the dark damp hole from which she crawls out of from time to time.