♥

i do and don't want to make sense. dovetailing back and forth between him trying & my curtness then my apology then my -- i want to scream at you why won't you fucking love me why won't you fucking be here -- still how it smarts, all these years and when it comes down to it you're like stone -- maybe that's just it -- but what do i engender in you?

eventually to actually be able to bring it up -- what you shared with me once -- was that a moment of defensiveness for him? "mostly consensually" but how much t.'s horror reverberates in my brain -- how much i wanted to prepare -- but in the end he was just vulnerable, too. to be years into -- to not trust when you were in this country, and i wasted it -- and now to be -- no, not that.

i don't know how to do any of this.

the microwave with some white smear, the only respite being that it's not meat or fish, because we don't eat meat (or fish, anymore) at home. somehow -- the start and stop buttons forever getting dirty, too -- the halfhearted wipe -- just staring -- or wondering as i get some water if the fan's air is radioactive, even though that's been disproved -- i think

all the crevices in this decaying apartment. almost 8 years. i can't do this anymore i can't do this anymore i can't do this anymore

i know too much about all the terrible things that can and do happen all the time. i know too much about being disposed of -- myself & others. witnessing people i love shatter so deep i can’t find them anymore. witnessing my own shattering. there’s no emerging from it, really. not really, not ever. so having hope is terrifying, it has to be.

i still commit to it forever

i still miss you & that’s all, dried roses & i take you down, i unwrap myself and still call you beloved. it couldn’t be otherwise

i often wish i could tell off these men more, and sometimes i have, but when there's some kind of sustained relationship it's harder to do so. too often i default to "nice sexy girl" because it feels like that's the only way i can keep getting attention, and the only way they'll want me for more than sex too, which is really sad.

and like i know with jay it is more than sex because it has always been, because we share this traumatized passionate formative past of our teenage relationship. but it's still hard.

and sometimes i just talk to guys about my various problems and sexuality issues in this honest way, but what they really want is something to get off to, and sometimes they'll just fixate on the things that do get them off and i just take that anyway, because what else is there?

actual kindness? is much harder, and something i try, but cannot always have

i also feel annoyed by the cutesy ways people interact and type and such -- different and similar among POC and white people in the west, sometimes more similar than anyone wants to admit -- these things i tried to do too, still do in various ways, but it didn’t matter because i was never going to be part of whatever fucking social justice niche

and i have both stopped trying and also keep trying, and it’s a fucking curse

defensiveness / hopelessness / utter confusion / unknowing / wishing i knew what i looked and sounded like when i lash out / wishing someone would do the same to me / mental illness + lashing out + all the ways i feel so deeply, irrevocably hurt / dismantling the systemic vs. interpersonal violence/hurt false binary / weaponizing social justice rhetoric / using my pain and fear to fuel my rage / what the fuck is healing / am i worse than other people will i ever be able to escape this defensive need to compare / hurt people hurt people / what kind of accountability in this punitive landscape / constant fear and paranoia about disposability politics / equalizing / despair

NO. that is *not* true. that is a really violent and puritanical assumption and it does not conform to actual lived experience. there is no simple fucking formula to intrusive thoughts, and certainly not one that is based in moralistic fear.

i don’t know what to do with myself. i need to clean my room and i still can’t. this has been going on for weeks, months. i need to do so many things. i need to get up and go to the bathroom. my lips feel dry but i want to rinse my mouth before applying chapstick. i need to get water. i want someone interesting and fashionable to want me and fuck me, but fashionably.

i don’t feel able to watch tv just yet, and what’s the point anyway... i was reading sick by porochista khakpour a lot today and i love it, but i don’t feel able to return to it just yet. i feel so stuck in my thoughts, my loops, everything. how will i adjust to the diurnal hours of the summer program i’m leaving for this saturday? it will be so difficult. what will my roommate be like? will there be AC in my room? ugh. travelling is always such a nightmare. what if the program turns out to just be an exhausting mess? i don’t know why i do this to myself.

Epilogue by The Antlers

This song always makes me feel so many things. I relate to it from both sides so, so much. I’m the “you” and I’m the “me” and how could I ever separate these things? And is it ever possible to write beautiful things from the perspective of the perpetrator as well as the survivor? At what point do I become irredeemable?

who was I before her? surely nothing at all, surely everything all at once yet something that needed to be assimilated. I don’t know whether to call her an instrument of my assimilation or an elementary call, a storied deconstruction of convocation.