clairvoyentvale

I never wanted things to be this way –

And yet they are.

Is being dead better than this?

Why do I only feel alive in brief moments in time? Seconds?

I often catch myself sitting and staring out at nothing. Whether I just parked my car or I’m at home.

It’s like I freeze – my brain stops functioning.

And I’m so tired.

And everything…hurts. When I let myself feel things.

And I’m really confused.

That all these people in my life are just passing me by.

And I think I’m starting to realize that I’m the one who has been leaving recently. Not the other way around.

But I was always the one to reach out to begin with.

And I hate being ignored but I hate being bothered.

It’s all kinda hypocritical, the human condition.

We all just want to be loved by certain people I guess. And anyone else serves no purpose.

It’s uncomfortable even. Especially for someone like me.

And I think right now, that I’m realizing I no longer know who I am, or maybe never knew in the first place, I’m really sensitive to how people are interacting with me.

And I don’t take that to mean I have less value – but it makes me angry.

Why do you get to express yourself that way, but I can’t?

Why do I have to be the bigger person?

Oh you think I’m upset?

I AM UPSET.

You don’t like it?

I DON’T CARE THAT YOU DON’T LIKE IT.

You’re a bitch, and I’d shove your face in the dirt if there wouldn’t be lasting damage.

I’ve become so…tempered. So even keel.

No reactions. No emotion. Don’t want to upset anyone.

The great equalizer. Neutral. Because if that’s how I am, you have no reason to attack ME even if I’m the one who upset you.

We can just talk it through.

Be calm. Be rational.

Because that’s what adults do right? Treat everything like a therapy session and move on?

Oh I’m supposed to feel something? Where is that in the script?

Where is my line?

Can we do another take?

Oh shoot, it’s too much now? I said it with too much feeling?

Got too heated? Too biased?

Damn, maybe we can try again next week?

Oh I don’t seem like I mean it now?

I guess that’s because I don’t. I haven’t meant it for a long time.

I can be fake as much as you ask.

But to be real? Live life out loud? I don’t know how to do that.

I think my on switch is broken.

I don’t even know if the glimpses of “me” are really ME ya know?

I suffocated her. She’s a corpse I left in the trunk of my car.

And I can’t revive her.

I have to navigate to an unknown destination without her.

And I’ve completely lost the plot – lost the map.

I actually think I threw it out the window a few towns over.

Said I didn’t need “it” or “her.”

That they were too much baggage. They were too much to hold onto.

But I can still hear her screams.

I can still hear her laughing as she pointed at the map that’s now blurry in my head.

And I pull over and vomit for the 15th time even though my stomach is empty because the weight of my choices is crushing me.

I killed her. I know I did.

Said I was better off if I threw her away.

Kept telling myself that she was too fragile. That she was too soft. That I couldn’t protect her.

And I couldn’t.

And I became some grotesque manifestation of her rotting skin.

Wrote the map all over me, the pieces I could remember. And then still scribbled out the parts that were too painful.

The pieces I hated.

And fuck it all if I can even remember who she was when she wasn’t in everyone’s shadow.

Did she even know freedom?

Is it too late to give it to her? Do I want to give it to her?

Or do I want to put it all in a box and lock it away for another time (never) just like I did in therapy?

Except I know if I keep shoving her away, she’ll continue to haunt me.

Because she wants to be heard.

Understood.

Just like I do.

And that’s the great big disaster isn’t it?

We’re starting to intersect – and that’s what I never wanted.

But I started making little allowances.

Aspects of her would seep through –

The skirts

The makeup

And that urge, that yearning for just a little bit MORE.

Not being content – wanting freedom above anything.

And before I knew it, the trunk cracked.

Just a little.

Just enough for a hypothetical breath – if a corpse could have one.

Then enough for a finger.

Then two.

Then three.

Maybe even four or five now.

I’m scared to see her eyes. Her face.

Does she look like me?

Is there still innocence there? Kindness?

Or did she devour it in her attempt to survive?

And if I offer her a hand, will she let me pull her out?

Or will she pull me in?

And how do I convince her to live loudly now?

That I want her to be quirky and awkward and kind.

That it’s not too much.

And that it’s colder out here but we have each other and maybe we can be whole again?

And I know she’s scared but so am I.

I’m so so terrified. And it’s eating me alive.

And I want to ask her how she survived all those years, but I can’t ask her right now because I can’t hear her because I’m also scared of her.

She only knows the truth, and I don’t know if I’m ready for it.

She knows EVERYTHING. From the past to now. She’s seen it all.

I…danced the other night. Probably for the first time in years.

Who was that?

It definitely wasn’t out of joy but…I don’t express myself like that anymore.

Did she grab onto me at some point when I wasn’t looking?

I don’t recognize myself in the mirror.

So ugly, this person.

I’ve made myself an art collage. Just put all the pieces together that I like in hopes that the final result is something that expresses “me.” Or the idea of me.

I forget I have tattoos and piercings most days. But I am also so attached to them I would rather bite your fingers off than let go of them.

Because they are a form of freedom to me.

The first of its kind.

And it was the first disapproval I could stand.

They make me feel something.

It’s rebellion with all the benefits.

It makes people see me, not as a sex object, a pleasure of man, but just ME.

And maybe that’s scary.

Maybe I’m scary.

But sometimes I think I still can’t see myself outside the lens of another’s gaze.