the unreachable barrier between I and not-I

The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

you sit a long time, quiet, under the thick pines, in the silence that follows. as though it were your own twilight. as though it were your own vanishing song.

you never thought your body could be anything except bruised. your locked door. your haunted house. the unlearning is taking so long.

My heart is a stone I skip across the river. Not a single wave is made.  I forgive the stillness. Sometimes the words just aren’t there  anymore.  I don’t have the hands to carry the love I ask for in prayers. A highway full of people all headed somewhere, and I’ll never know them past these roads. Do the oceans think about what they’ve taken? Do they mourn the countries erased from maps? My heart is a stone tied around the ankle of everyone I love. I forgive the eventual untying. Sometimes I think of a name and I don’t let go of it. My body is stubborn. It holds on to secrets even I don’t know about. I stopped writing because what’s left to say? I’m lonely. My heart is a ghost story, and I forgive the haunting. My big fear is that no one else will.

There is always a man eager to explain my mental illness to me. They all do it so confidently, motioning to their Hemingway and Bukowski bookshelf as they compare my depression to their late-night loneliness. There is always someone that rejected them that they equate their sadness to and a bottle of gin (or a song playing, or a movie) close by that they refer to as their cure. Somehow, every soft confession of my Crazy that I hand to them turns into them pulling out pieces of themselves to prove how it really is in my head. So many dudes I’ve dated have faces like doctors ready to institutionalize and love my crazy (but only on Friday nights.) They tell their friends about my impulsive decision making and how I “get them” more than anyone they’ve ever met but leave out my staring off in silence for hours and the self-inflicted bruises on my cheeks. None of them want to acknowledge a crazy they can’t cure. They want a crazy that fits well into a trope and gives them a chance to play Hero. And they always love a Crazy that provides them material to write about. Truth is they love me best as a cigarette cloud of impossibility, with my lipstick applied perfectly and my Crazy only being pulled out when their life needs a little spice. They don’t want me dirty, having not left my bed for days. Not diseased. Not real. So they invite me over when they’re going through writer’s block but don’t answer my calls during breakdowns. They tell me I look beautiful when I’m crying then stick their hands in-between my thighs. They mistake my silence for listening to them attentively and say my quiet mouth understands them like no one else has. These men love my good dead hollowness. Because it means less of a fighting personality for them to force out. And is so much easier to fill someone who has already given up with themselves.

You deserve the kind of love you would give someone else.

6 July. Insomnia; headaches; jump out of the high window but on to the rain-soaked ground where the fall won’t be fatal. Endless tossing with eyes closed, exposed to any random glance.

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.

Home is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing … knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.

My final image of this world would be of a mother crumbling.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.