Unconscious-slip

A patron of the gym i work at informed me his father is dying. I apologized, a silly unhelpful way to attempt to coach someone into comfort. I recognized this and immediately offered him a hug, that he turned down. Instead he asked me to keep his father in my thoughts and told me his name is Claude. What a simple request, what a non-religious request.

I am here to do exactly that, to think about him, to remember him, to wish for him. I hope that his death is a gentle one. I do not wish for him to heal or to overcome, I was told he is dying so I'll wish accordingly. I hope his breath doesn't feel labored. I hope that with each second he weakens he starts to feel the warm embrace of his mother. I wish for death to feel like being held in your mothers arms after you're born, that gentle heat enveloping your body, the soft sounds of her speaking. I hope what he hears is not the crying of his saddened family. I hope that its the soft sounds of his mother saying "Claude, oh Claude, look at you, I love you". I wish for his final days, his final moments, to be enveloped in a cloud of warmth, love, and the spark he'll leave behind. The spark that lives on in his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I hope he passes the way warm summer nights pass by our awareness, with all the joy in the world to fill his heart and the soft murmurs of love to fill his ears. For should our final moments not feel the way our hearts did? Full of love and acceptance?

Look at Sparta, a warmongering culture. The main aspect of spartan culture is violence, the horrid ideal that the weak must be culled. They created art. They formed sculptures from clay. Tenderly brought imperfect art into their lives.

Mongolia, a country with historical ties in warmongering, a country who's past leader raped so many women his DNA can be found spanning leagues. They created art. They weaved intricate tapestries to withhold stories. Gently took thread and interlocked it, so they could remember and be remembered.

Rome, a country that cared very little for art. A country that held immense power for hundreds of years, that took what they wanted, when they wanted, from several cultures. They created art. They painted. They found plants and bugs that could formulate beautiful hues of color and painted masterpieces.

I imagine my brain, specifically the area that thoughts live, a bit as a river-leaden mountain. There is a main waterfall and river path, that's where the foremost thoughts are, and it flows voraciously. At the base of the waterfall lies a pool, this is where some thoughts get stuck and they spin, and roll, until they are reeled out. Some thoughts flow by too quicky to get stuck, they join the rest of the water flowing around and back through the mountain, until they eventually get stuck and are pulled out.

There are branches off the main river that feed into streams, ponds, and lakes. These are the thoughts that cycle but do not take up as much of the river, they will be fished out eventually.

To catch these thoughts, to verbalize them, is much like fishing. You try but you don't always succeed. This means you have to wait, to bait it, to consider it, until it comes back around.

Sometimes, the genre of thoughts creates its own pool. Depending on the type of thoughts, the landscape surrounding it changes some. Thoughts used to calm myself are kept in a pond within a meadow. The wind softly blows, the plants grow tall, but not hugely so. There's meadowlarks singing, frogs humming and crickets chirping.

Anxiety has a lake of its own, the trees are dark and hang imposingly over the water. Its dusk here, there's light but not enough to see properly. Its isolated, there's not much noise. The wind still blows but its not gentle, it rattles leaves at random moments, shaking the spine.

I suppose, the river traces the paths to the ponds and lakes. It is the road to the pieces of me.

I believe there is a ferryman, or boat, that helps me to cross the waters of my own self.

I want the words to flow from my hands like water flows from a spring.

I want what I write to glow, like stardust fell from the sky and adhered itself to the page.

I want lilted words to spill from my lips.

I want to write something beautiful, evocative, and wrenchingly touching.

Unfortunately that's not me, I write with a pretentious brutality.

Punching my words, lengthy they may be, into the readers skull.

I voraciously consumed un-poetic writing. A move that has temporarily damaged my ability.

I hunger to be graceful and gentle with my writing.

I yearn to dance and spin across the page.

Someday I will.

At 16 I didn't have a concrete plan for my life because I expected to be dead by the time I graduated high-school. At 17 I met a man who I assumed would be a fleeting moment in time. After I graduated I had no plan because I burned out. At 20 I was handed a diagnosis for a lifelong degenerative disease. At 22 I was struggling to stay afloat in my new life in a new city.

Now? I'm getting better, I'm finding life again. I get to lay in bed and relax while my fiance cleans and sings to music.

I don't know what it is, I don't know why, but this moment hit me like a fucking freight train. I AM LAYING IN BED WHILE HE CLEANS! I NEVER WOULD HAVE FELT COMFORTABLE IN MY LIFE TO DO THIS EVEN 6 MONTHS AGO!!!

I consider myself gender fluid/genderqueer. I haven't ever really cared all that much about what my gender is to me. I did try to narrow it down, to fit into box. To find something that felt like me and described me. To be honest, there isn't one. Even gender fluid isn't quite correct. What I do know, is that I may not be a woman, but I love the performance. I love the freedoms. I love the act and the dance and the songs I get to sing when I present myself as a woman.

Someday I will fall into my masculinity. I will find the part of me that enjoys the performance of masculinity. Its there, it's just hidden for now.

The love of my life doesn't understand. I know he doesn't get it. What matters, what's the most important, is that he tries. He sent me a pin, he tried, and I think it's the most concrete way I could explain my gender. My gender is a performance I put on for others because when im at home, with my light and life, I don't exist within a gendered box.

One of which is that I feel like I received absolutely fuck all in the way of any sort of emotional support from my family. I was given a diagnosis of a lifelong, degenerative disease and no one in my family bothered to try to comfort me. I spent the entirety of my preteen and teenage years in pain and when I was given the answer my family did nothing.

I told my mother about it and she went "that sucks, anyway here's what's going on with me". Not particularly surprising as she's a terrible mother, but it was devastating for me in the moment. See she has hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and decided at some point in my life that I absolutely have it. This decided on disorder for me was really the only reason she loved me. As I allegedly had the disorder she does then I have something of hers and she's incapable of loving me unless I am just an extension of her. Since the day i was diagnosed with RA and subsequently more disorders she does not have, she seems to love me less and less with each passing day.

This was supposed to be a rant about many of my family members but the hurt from my mother is too well intertwined with my blood I suppose. I no longer have the wherewithal to continue on about the rest of them.

THE SUN, THE SUN, SHES OUT.

I had that young person mentality that the correct way to be is pessimistic and angry. I thought that dampening my natural joy was how to live. It's not.

I want to be soft and lovely and joyous. I want to be everything that my love saw in me when we first met. I'm not entirely sure why I decided to be angry and pessimistic. I don't like that though. I am an optimistic person. I love joy and I love bringing a smile to peoples faces. I can't help but compliment random strangers because I know it makes their day.

I am a soft and lovely person. I can get incredibly angry about things and I can be mean. At my core I am soft and there's nothing wrong with that. It is stronger to be able to look at the bad in the world and recognize that while it sucks, there are millions of people that don't suck.