Ash And Ink

(What I picture after transition)

It's quiet when I wake up. It's eerie because it's a light kind of quiet. The kind that breathes in the corners of the room, leaving space for me to exist. For me to think---not violently, not abruptly, but fluidly.

My thoughts aren't foggy but clear, well-defined, with a shape I can easily identify as... uniquely my own. I can grasp them and toy with them because they aren't elusive. They dont try to escape me.

I laugh. Not because of something funny. But because I can. Because I am happy. The silence is broken, of course---the laughter bleeds through my lips and clings to the walls of my tiny room. But it's ok because only I exist there, and this silence doesn't mind being broken. It thrives off it.

It's not the heavy kind of quiet, interrupted by the ragged breathing of my brother, and the absolute stillness of a still pitch-black sky. Not the kind I feel when waking up at 05:30 am to go to university. Not like the violent commotion of my family stampeding through the house in the other days. The ones where I stay up late until I pass out from exhaustion because staying awake in bed is too terrifying.

I dont wake up with an alarm. Or perhaps I do. But either way, I wake up with divine golden rays streaming through a clear window, tingling my sleep-warm skin. I feel its heat seeping through my skin, warming my body out of its numbness.

My eyes lay closed for a while. I can see that red and orange, the color of molten lava, as light fights its way through my shut-down eyelids. Unlike today, where I dont ever get to keep my blinders up and must wake up greeted by the overwhelming darkness.

When I do open my eyes, I see the weathered walls of my room. They aren't new. They are experienced. Warm from the rising sun and... mine. The room is large enough not to be claustrophobic (unlike mine). But small enough to be cozy. Small enough so that I can cover every inch of it with my latest artwork and writing. Some are framed because I must have liked them. Others stick perilously to the walls with duct tape. They are frayed at the edges, and the charcoal has escaped them and begun staining the walls in shades of dark. Some are finished. Others aren't. I like all of them. But they need not be permanent. Soon I will make more. I always make more.

I dont get up and just... lie there. When I get up, muscles aching as blood forces its way through my veins, I dont have urgency. I have no rush. I have no deadlines or commitments hanging over me like an executioner's ax--- I get to just be. And for once, that is enough.

I go to the bathroom. Because here, that doesn't scare me. Because here the reflection is right. It rings true. My features are sharper, but more delicate, my waist is slightly curved, and I can't see the line of a thin, unshaved beard. I can feel the weight on my chest. The right kind of weight, and my peripheral vision doesn't catch thick hairs on my arms or giant hands. It catches slender, thinner hairs and the silhouette of delicate palms. So I don't tuck my arms behind my back in fear.

My hands are smudged with ink from one too many drawings, fingers slender---with longer nails, the shade of obsidian. My hair clings to my neck uncomfortably, and so I tie it back in a ponytail. And I just... exist.

Dolphins are beasts from the deep. Gifted with just enough intelect and cruelty to torture and play with their food in a sadistic endeavure. Their smile is one of open amusement before the misery befalling the world. Why do they keep coming off so fucking HAPPY and... I am disgusted just writting this... CUTE!!?!?

I had already uploaded this one. But I am about as gentle in presenting my art as an ogre on crystal meth. As such the resolution and lighting in the photo was abysmal (no Joey Tribianni.That isn’t a good thing.). As such here it is. Looks like a different painting altogether!

"No. It's not that kind of dungeon… sadly" --- Fan art inspired by J-Baptiste Monge's illustration from Diablo III: Book of Cain (© Blizzard / Insight Editions, there are great illustrations there by the way). Non-commercial fan art. (don't sue me, Blizzard)

"What do you mean you don't want to go fishing?"

The thing about trying to express yourself --- to grab your pain and write it down or draw it --- is that, well… it doesn't really work.

You either make it sound poetic.

Shape it into something beautiful --- deep, cathartic, profound, and eloquent. Words gently flowing like a silver stream winding its way downhill --- clear and calm enough to see right through the surface. So delicate you could shatter it with a single touch. But is your pain like that? Clear and defined? What about the turbulence, the intensity? The clashing waves and breaking foam? The anger of entire oceans lurking beneath the surface? Your blood boiling through your veins? When you try to make it pretty --- to pin it down that way --- it loses intensity. Loses that undefinable quality of grief. It's too well-defined, too eloquent. It needs to be blurred at the edges. Your pain gets compressed into a hollow picture, stripped of its power. Given meaning but not intensity. Given direction but not purpose.

Or you make it guttural and off-putting.

Your writing ugly and brief (powerful, yes) but brief nonetheless. Your drawings dark and messy, blurred by shaky hands. Painted that way, it loses definition. Becomes a violent storm of static. Like lightning tearing up the sky, loud and all-consuming. That same river is now boiling, overflowing its banks, the surface plagued by blisters of white, too violent to observe up close lest you be swept away by it. Honest, but hazy. So vague it could belong to anyone. It lacks personality, specificity, and clarity. You can read it, see it, feel it, weep over it and others will scroll right past it like the morning news.

So you can't get it out. Pain and words don't mix. Because pain, grief --- they aren't poetic or tangible. We make them so. I have written about what plagues me. Made it poetic, deep, meaningful. Made it short and ugly. But none of it fits.

Pain and words don't mix. But pain and people do.

So I guess you're bound to be unseen and misunderstood, unless you have someone willing to sit through the violence and the calm, the deep and the shallow, the quiet, boring moments that make you You, to get a picture that is neither beautiful nor ugly. Neither poetic nor hollow. Neither deep nor empty. But simply You.

I hope you have someone like that. I don't, so I spend my time hoarding eloquence, art, and drawings. Even the shitty and crappy ones. Especially those. Trying to put onto paper what no one else seems to see, fully aware I am screaming into a void. Bound to be unseen, unheard.

Yup… in short --- life's a bitch.

P.S (This is midnight Lilith over here. There is a 90% chance none of this will make sense tomorrow morning. I just felt like saying this, so yup)