Closest to how life is sensory-wise

yep

You don’t get to tell me every day that you wished you’d cut my throat when I was six. All of us. I want you to have care but you don’t get to hurt anyone else. I’m nothing like you. We’re not like you.

intimacy, safety, rest

I wish I could heal her

My mom is refusing meds and food, pulling out her pick lines. Hitting people albeit not very hard because she’s so weak. Hallucinating. Saying she should have killed me and my siblings years ago. I know it’s because she’s so afraid and in so much pain. 

I’m trying my best.

infinite jest

I’m not suicidal, but many things haunt me. Dang, what I’m trying to say is I have that… I am that. I am David Foster Wallace sometimes. But I am not him. I don’t have to win. I don’t have to destroy myself or anyone else. I could write a much better book. Meaningless.

I sat this morning waiting for something. Some kind of wisdom. Realizing I’m waiting forever for nothing if I can’t make it myself. 

Many thoughts I cannot express. 

I’m not done here.

—-

There’s no mandatory self destruction for people who can feel and think in different ways than others do. I heard it, felt it, was less alone because of it, but I don’t have to act like a man who turns his pain and anger into inevitable self satisfied destruction. I won’t.

Bull in a china shop

Bullshit. You walk into a china shop and carefully place cups on the edges of glass shelves and smirk at other people who put them back.

I was an actual bull in a china shop for most of my life.

In sixth grade I walked straight out of the classroom and all the way home after boys made fun of me even though I knew my mom waited for me wishing I was dead.

I used to want to bring a baseball bat to a crystal shop.

You said you were a bull in a china shop and now my fantasy is being a huge bull… crushing the entire shop. Grinding it into sand. Thinking about how porcelain is made. Thinking about how fire transforms sand into glass.

This is why I think I’m not easy to love.

The first poem recited to me, Longfellow

There was a little girl,            Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,

            She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

universal

One of my earliest memories is also what I consider my own creation myth. 

I think I was about three years old. I was staring at the sky through a window and at the same time watching dust particles float on the surface of my eye. I was frustrated.

I began thinking about atoms and molecules. Not in a scientific way; but the way you think about stuff you need to do something with. I mean, that shit was piling up.

I began making things out of these atoms and molecules. I made oxygen and water. Then I started making furniture and clothes and houses. Then came the planets and the solar system. I didn’t think I was God or anything. I knew it was all inside my mind.

I’m realizing now that the impetus to do that when you’re an infant is kind of unusual. I don’t mean it’s spectacular or intelligent. I mean I wish I could have been just a dumb kid mad about being left alone all day in her crib.

What I did with my feelings and my mind changed me forever. It gave me a kind of cognitive flexibility that makes it somewhat difficult to feel like a real person.

The first movie I remember is Pinocchio. At the drive-in with my dad and my sister and brother. I understood immediately what he felt like. He wanted to be real in the way others were real. Flesh and blood. Stupid. Capable of lying and shame. The sort of things people do when they’re acting.

I wish I could go back to that time and kill a few hundred thousand of my brain cells. Take a different path.

When I saw people acting differently than their values, I cut off those parts of the universe as best I could. I still made mistakes. I remember each time I acted out of malice or against my values. I’m just as flawed as the next human, but I knew I was doing wrong every time. Experiments. 

My brother was always the smart one. The kind one. My sister was a real human. I wonder what it was like for her. It was probably pretty lonely.

It’s ironic to me that I’m so smart but chose to be stupid. I needed to muffle it, needed to put it all somewhere. I tried to hide it because I didn’t want anyone else controlling me. 

I had my own universe. What else could I possibly need?

stone soup

They say you have to believe people when they show you who they are. 

Last week I told you I would never knowingly betray you. I promised. You said “never say never”.

You said you wanted me to be strong enough to say “If you don’t like my soup, get out of my kitchen.” Which, ok. Yes, I needed to become stronger. I needed to become accountable for getting my needs met.

You don’t have any soup in your kitchen. You were never planning to make any soup. 

sunday afternoon

collaborative artwork