painfully self-aware

(need?)

i dont need you like i need air or like i need a sharp stick in the eye.

maybe i need you the way i need advil or a good nap

or maybe i need you the way i need gin and a smoke.

(i don’t know if you’re good for me, i don’t trust myself enough to know)

does it feel different now? when did I stop loving you? when did I stop Loving you? 

first memories:

three-year-old me is afraid of her family disappearing.

four-year-old me is afraid of ghosts and falling trees.

five-year-old me fears volcanoes, house fires, alien abductions. five vomits frequently.

six fears car accidents. she fears that her stomachaches are something more serious.

seven knows that her parents are going to die one day. she wants to vomit. she is also afraid of burglars and kidnapping.

nine is convinced she is possessed by the devil. aware of its absurdity, she will not tell anyone about this. she will be alone in her fear. she does not vomit. she does not sleep.

eleven-year-old me clings desperately to a blanket and a wall she cannot sleep she does not vomit she is terrified of being pregnant. eleven-year-old me, who will not menstruate until high school, not even kiss a boy for six more years but, as ever, petrified... that her womb has an unwelcome visitor, responsibilities entirely too vast and unknowable growing inside of her. she fears becoming an adult, fears that she is not capable of surviving. she tells no one.

eleven-year-old me plugged her ears during sex ed not wanting another thing to be afraid of. she avoids reading magazine covers in grocery lines and catching stories on the news there are too many bad things happening in the world she doesn’t want to add fuel to the fire growing within her.

eleven-year-old me felt breast buds blooming for the first time and wished it was cancer. there was solace there. a thing to be received, and not responsible for, a thing fixed by medicine and doctors— or maybe not. when the anxiety was too big, dying of cancer was always a comforting thought.

anxiety has always been a world too big within me, a forest i am lost in, an ocean too vast to traverse or even understand. it does not just color my memories, it informs them. it creates them. it is the hand that holds the throat of my fourteen-year-old self during sleepless nights and it is the fear that i have when i think about them, it is me and not-me. cause, and effect. anxiety breathes when i breathe, laughs when i laugh, my body is an anxious body.

but nineteen-year-old me does not fear getting pregnant. she does not ache for safety from ghosts or aliens or tornadoes or demons. half a decade of therapy and medication and diagnoses have hardened her skin, white forms to initial and capital-c Chronic illness. i guess that’s where my fear has settled, on the kind of future for which i still don’t feel prepared. my memory knows empathy for the child i was. i hurt for her, for what she will face, for what she does not yet understand. but when it is capital-c chronic illness, i fear that i am still her, that i will look back years from now and think how hopelessly lost i was, or hopelessly lost i would be.

i mean, as a chronically-anxious kid the thought of getting a period or even going through puberty was gut-wrenchingly (heh) terrifying so it's probably a good thing that i was a late bloomer because i would not have been able to handle that shit at 11 or 12. it was still nervewracking as hell and i def cried about it when i did get it and i was just a few months shy of 15. i guess i had some therapy under my belt (heh) at the time so i didnt feel the same overwhelming shame that periods threatened to bring me when i was younger.

but hey, growth (physical//mental//emotional) isnt linear so whatever

i might return to using this as like my ~*personal*~ personal blog bc my regular personal blog is actually an art blog and it's way too full of emotional exhibitionism atm and i'm losing followers/losing my mind lol what's new

i dunno emotionally i'm f-i-n-e but sadder than i have been lately, definitely an effect of winter vacation & adhd getting me down. like such a big theme in my life right now is Productivity and how can i best be a Productive Young Adult who gets things Accomplished and is Self-Motivated and and and and and &c.

BUT I KNOW (and i know i know) that when i don't have structure or things i need to do i just become a space cadet like my attention span is thirty seconds MAX--even writing this post i've been on like five different wikipedia articles and had several conversations with my mom and eaten some fruit leather and checked facebook and probably more stuff that i just do without thinking.

The closest I have ever felt to god is biting into a ripe summer peach. It is an event in itself. In the haze of august, I stumble awake in the afternoon and stand over the kitchen sink, dusty and blinking. Alone with a paring knife.

Two cuts around the body to the heart. The skin does not cling to its fruit, but peels away without complaint. It feels no resentment for its consumption. Four fat slices on a paper towel, and I am with bounty. Quietly feasting among linoleum and steel, juice running from my chin and elbows like communion wine.

I anticipate this all year. In the back of my mind the trees are rooted. If I am anxious for change or halting, the peaches keep growing, constant. Bowing to the long exhale of winter or swelling under the rise and set of the July sun, the earth maintains its flux. Buds do not stay closed out of fear. Flowers do not resist wilting for pride. I know that I, too, am mercurial.

This is the strength in accepting change that nature has yet to fully teach me. But I cannot pick apart the fruit to find the source of its knowledge, I am no Eve, just left with pulp and disappointment. Try to eat them too early and they are still green, firm and sour to the tongue.

I will always want it to be August when peaches are fleshy and sweet, but no matter how many crates I buy, they will rot if coveted, and fruit is stifled in the binding of a can. September will come despite acceptance or resistance, no cocoon of denial can protect me from my age.