The Long Overdue Conversation

I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want
and you’re not going to successfully tell me any differently.

I eat a lot of shit
outside of my little domain
but even out there
I’m a boss

so fuck off.

I’m going to do what I want.

I’m going to fuck who I like.
I’m going to leave dirty dishes in the sink
and sleep during my time off.
I’m going to play fetch with the dog in the house
and I’m going to ignore when my family calls.

I’m going to eat ice cream for breakfast sometimes
and I may not work out at all this week.

I’m going to leave unfinished projects lying around
and I’m going to have plants growing under a light where
convention dictates a dining table should be.

I might not sweep up the dog hair each day
and maybe I won’t make the bed.

Cook your own dinner
and buy your own clothes
and shave your own hair
because I’m not shaving mine.

I don’t feel like doing the laundry right now
and I’m too tired to give you a massage.
I’ll read when I want.
I’ll eat when I want.
I’ll sleep when I want.
I’ll fuck when I want.

Surely this conversation was long overdue, but it’s done wonders for my overall mood.
Last time I checked, I’m not kept; and unless I am

fuck off.

Dog

“So, what are we going to do if we get evicted?”

Who the fuck cares?  At this point they’re lucky I don’t burn it down out of spite.

My body has started to object to how much physical labor I demand from it daily, and I wish you dead every day.  Just fucking die.

The nights would not be complete without sirens.  It’s such a prominent part of the neighborhood that I can easily tune it out along with the sound of shots fired, and the low musical rumble of car audio base.  At some point having bullet holes–both incoming and outgoing–pepper the walls just becomes part of the decor.

I exaggerate.  There are only four bullet holes, and I screamed when they dropped in.

Sometimes, nice people just need more specific directions to the drug den across the street, three houses to the east, or in the west corner lot next door…depending on demeanor.  That’s fine, but get the fuck off my stoop and be on your way.

Please, don’t loiter in my backyard.  Cut through, but keep moving.  Despite what the fast food fucks sharing the lot line want you to think, this isn’t part of their thoroughfare either.

If getting a dog gets us evicted, when the neighbors can ram their car into our wall without consequence, I’m fine with that.

Believe is or not, my student loan debt isn’t going to dictate my surroundings forever, and an eviction from this wouldn’t fuck up my permanent record enough for me to give a shit.

Now…you said something about a dog?

chemical imbalance

Since early adolescence, I have been in and out of the care of many mental health professionals. I have seen counselors, psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. I know the key variations delineating these titles. I have been hospitalized both inpatient and outpatient. I have had equally varied diagnoses and treatment regimens over the years both voluntary and involuntary.

When you tell me, “I have a chemical imbalance,” there’s no judgement here. I know that you’re familiar with the system. I recognize the language. I won’t look at you like you’re weak or sick or marred by an inferior genetic makeup.

I cope without treatment. It’s a personal choice that some doctors have supported and others have not. It’s not easy, and I’m certain it’s not always in my best interest. I wish you wouldn’t seek my advice on this, as if what I’ve done is a solution. I don’t know you. You say you don’t want to take your medication anymore and that your doctor advises against changing what has been sustaining your current state for over a decade…so you keep taking it.

I can’t tell you what’s best for you. Why do you want to stop taking your medication? Go back to when you started, and think about how and why you entered the system. Try to remember how your mind worked when it failed you. The things that are missing, the things that don’t work the same way on medication, don’t think about that. Think about the worst moments when your brain tripped every wrong wire. Wrong by your standards. Your mind left you where you didn’t want to be and didn’t leave you with the resources to change that. If you’re properly medicated, you won’t be able to simulate the intensity of those feelings. You might not even have those memories anymore, and the healthy mind wonders why you would want them.

If there’s something in you now that’s missing the worst of your worst…

I deal with my worst, because I don’t think the same way when in treatment. It’s a common gripe with mental health patients,but it bothers me. It bothers me more that, despite this construct trying to accommodate the proclivities of an individual, the whole point of treatment is change. It helps alter the links the mind makes. Even if it’s psychotherapy without any physical or chemical intervention at all, it’s meant to help adjust thought patterns.

I don’t want to do that.

I’m essentially an organic alcoholic: There’s not a problem. This is fine. Fuck you. Except, sure, I can see how you might see this as a problem. I don’t like it either, so it’s a problem. It’s not fine, but still. Fuck you. It’s my problem. You’re fine. Fine, I’m sick. Leave me the fuck alone. Fuck you.

Keep taking your meds. Balance your brain chemistry. There’s always going to be a little bit of dry drunk in there.
Always.

Didn’t they tell you?

It’s a disease.

shrug

I have no inclination to write lately.
As it turns out, I’m…happy?

Yes, happy.

Not just happy, morning sex happy.

I was there, too.

Exactly what kind of fence have I erected in my life?
Tell me again with that ever scrutinizing, perfect perspective.

He wore the same suit everyday, even after we knew he was unemployed for over a month.
He would wander up to the gas station to buy a 40, and he chose you, because you had access to a car.

You know that now, right?

He told me in the end, “I just want you to know I’ve never done heroin in my life,” even though I repeatedly tried to cut off the conversation by telling him I didn’t care, wasn’t interested, it didn’t concern me, and it was none of my business what he did or did not do.

He really wanted me to know.
He hated that I gave my time and consideration to a fuck up like you with a stand up guy like him right there.

You.

I sought you out.
I stayed with you in the pile of cans you passed out in next to your rotting mattress and fetid takeout containers.

With the carpet of roaches.

You always drank yourself stupid with him and told him he was so much better than the degradation we were all experiencing, but what you failed to see was that he wanted to be there.
He wasn’t going through a rough time working his ass off to improve with his dress shoes tapping up an optimists tune.
He wasn’t beaten into submission like half the washed up dropouts crawling through the halls.

I don’t think I need to clarify how I felt about him
or you.

simple perks of being alone in a singular space I can finally call my own

Yeah, I still have to work my ass off almost everyday to keep it, but

I get to sleep when I want, eat what I want, listen to what I want
as loud as I want.
I can dance the way I want, naked in the kitchen if I want.
I can put whatever I want on the walls.
I can fill the place with plants and books.
I can talk to my bird, and ignore all phone calls and knocks on the door.

This house is my world.

morning sickness

I don’t know how to find you anymore, and that’s probably for the best.
Sometimes I still think about you, but it’s not consumptive anymore.

I confused Tolstoy with Dostoevsky last night and lost a bet

You work harder than I do, but you haven’t brushed your teeth in at least three days.

I used to knock on a stranger’s door every day
several times a day
until she didn’t feel like a stranger anymore
even though she never answered.

It was a compulsion.

There are still half naked pictures of you here from ten years ago
frozen in pixels.

We’re getting so old now.

I don’t wake up wishing you were someone else.
After I drop you off, I want to go back to sleep,

but I can’t.

conversations

He had already asked me the question before, but he stopped me after I unlocked the front door and before I could open it to slip in quietly. Maybe he forgot that we’d had the conversation about a month ago…or was it two?
Yes, what exactly is wrong with me, anyway?
That was not his question.
At least
Not in so many words.
In his subsequent, cheer-up, speech he let an odd sentence drop:

“I’ve tried being depressed,” and of course he carried on with whatever he was trying to say, although I didn’t hear much after that.
My mind got stuck on this phrase.
I think he meant that he’s been unhappy before.
I find it impossible to fathom anyone attempting to be depressed.
It’s not like it’s fun or anything.
It’s not an act or modifiable behavior.
It’s not an activity.

I’ve tried killing myself.
I’ve tried drowning out the malaise.
I’ve tried frozen yogurt at the strip mall up the road.

Okay.

But, “I’ve tried being depressed”?

Interesting.
I suppose it’s no different from saying, “Ive tried being happy.”
Although, happiness is not necessarily measured by duration, whereas depression does carry that qualifier.
Well, psychiatric major depression does, at any rate.

“I’ve tried being depressed.”

Instead of stating outright that this sentiment confused me, I hung back and let the conversation continue however he saw fit.
After all, he did initiate the exchange…or did I?
Shit.
I’m the one who said hello, but I also say hello to the heroin addict two doors down, and my stalker across the way.
I even say hello to the people I live with when in actuality, I would much rather sucker punch them for invading my space.

This particular man is different.
He says odd things like, “I’m not a creep or nothin’,” and “I’ve tried being depressed.”
He sits on my steps and smokes, drinks, gossips, and humors the neighborhood children with a benign fatherlike charm that’s incredibly rare.

But while he has tried being depressed and found it cumbersome, perhaps due to its chemical nature; I have tried being happy and found the whole ordeal fruitlessly exhausting, most likely because I’ve failed.

At this impasse, he offered a suggestion for a quiet, isolated spot for me to read that’s within walking distance.

I considered it a thoughtful gesture, canceling out any awkward statements, and making me happy to have said hello and waded through the uncomfortable question of why I look like I’m always having a really rough day.

Life is kicking my ass, but it sure is beautiful.

I have to unlock the door and turn on the light in the hall.

I must dig a tunnel out through the burning leaves.
What year is this?
The ground has been soaking for two days. It has been two days since you were coherent.
I’ve stopped counting.
It takes 30 seconds of fuzzy math to determine that you’re disturbingly ill-informed.
The cat attacked me and ran away.
I didn’t recognize the eyes.

It wasn’t Casper.

She was crying, but I don’t think it was because her tooth hurt.
I didn’t know what to do, and it felt terrible to watch her cry.

The wind will carry away the residue of bad dreams with gusts to knock me down.
The ground is cold and wet.
It sinks with a slosh with my weight.

I must tunnel out through the water.

…

…

Wait for the world to freeze.

sleep

I can hear you breathing through the floorboards
four years from where I rest
edging the water out as the cavities collapse
and the roof comes down on our heads.

Take a Hint

You are a stalker.
When I don’t want to come home from work, because I dread the thought that you’ll be at the bottom of my steps…
When I consider parking somewhere other than our designated parking lot so that you can’t so easily monitor my days off…
When I sit in the dark, because I don’t want to turn on my lights and advertise that I’m here…
When I have to lock the door to my room, because my shitty housemate invites you into the common area…
When you physically block the bottom of the stairs so that I’m unable to leave my dwelling without acknowledging you…
When you make me late for work, because you won’t get the fuck out of my way…
When you call me while I’m at work…
When you comment about me to your testosterone saturated buddies outside my place as if you know a damned thing about me…
You are a fucking stalker, and it is not okay.

Leave me the fuck alone.

I’m not now, and never will be, interested in you.
I have given you no indication beyond an initial “date” that I’m even remotely interested, and that outing was coerced.
That outing was a mid-day disaster with no physical contact whatsoever.
You have never touched me, even in the most casual sense.
You will never touch me without me breaking bones in response.
I don’t want anything to do with you.
I have made that abundantly clear.

You’re outrageously judgmental.
You raised red flags for being controlling in the hour we spent in a public fucking area doing nothing but making small talk.
You’re clingy.
You’re obsessive.
You’re self-centered.
You’re fucking weird.

Stay the fuck away from me.
If you’re conveniently friends with my new housemate, I don’t care.
It’s not okay to bother me in my own goddamned kitchen.
That goes for the new housemate as well.
I fucking can’t stand him just as much.
You’re both creepy fucking weirdos who make me uncomfortable where I live.
Fuck each other.

Stay the fuck away from me.

Blackouts

My newest housemate bothers me.
I feel like I need to carry mace and my cell phone into my own kitchen.
I lock my door while I’m in my room.

I come home to windows shut
doors unlocked
lights on
and no one home.

He has been here less than a week, and I can’t stand him.

—

I hear the door open
shut
open
shut.

Open.
Shut.

Open.
Shut.

I can’t sleep when I hear the doors opening and closing.
Constantly.
At all hours.

I know he doesn’t lock the door.

I already have two that hang out at the bottom of my steps.
There’s one that wanders over from the next door down
whenever I come out.

“What are you up to?”
“Where are you off to?”

It’s none of your goddamned business, and if you fucking follow me; I will put you in county lockup.

Don’t leave notes on my car.
Don’t knock on my door.
Don’t ask the neighbors about me.
Don’t fucking follow me.

Stop fucking following me.

It’s different when it’s inside.
Where I live.

I don’t want to bump into you every time I leave my room.
I don’t want to fucking talk to you.
I don’t want to see you.
I don’t want to smile and laugh at your inane prattling jokes.
I don’t want to invite you into my room.
I don’t want to suck your cock, and I am not sending mixed signals.

Yes, I live here.
No, I don’t live with you.

Take your “How you doin’?” hungry head to toe to chest assessment of me and shove it up your ass.

I’m so stressed out that I black out.
I’m missing chunks of time.

My dishes were done and there was a single dirty butter knife in the sink.
It took me two hours to realize that I did my dishes and I used that knife, and I only figured it out, because there was peanut butter on the knife and I could recall making toast. I could only recall making toast, because I hate having to use my toaster oven, and I hate having to use my toaster oven, because I hate having a toaster oven. I hate having a toaster oven, because I know I lost my toaster to a fucking asshole who forced me to move out of a reasonably good living situation two years ago. A living situation that has nosedived into this bullshit.

Fuck if I wouldn’t rather be homeless right now.
Stay away from me.
I don’t want to spend my lucid time accounting for gaps in my memory.

I won’t.

Just stay the fuck away from me.

Hit and Run

The new hit and run dent in my car
the THIRD since buying the fucking thing
which I still do not outright own entirely
will cost more that a fucking hysterectomy to fix.

Thanks for denting my car
my parked fucking car in a goddamned parking lot
where I work and will have to dedicate two months full time wages to fixing this bullshit.

I have zero tolerance for irresponsible people.

Zero.

on the topic of fears

1. Burrowing parasitic insects, like bot flies.
2. Strong water currents such as rip tides and undertows.
3. Babies.
4. Large groups of people who are strange to me but not strangers to each other.
5. Bedbugs.

the flawed rationale

Why I prefer not to drink or get high, and why it has stemmed down into avoiding fast food and caffeine:

I also strive to live off medications that I should very reasonably be expected to take.
Want to take, sometimes personally find myself wanting to take, in fact.
People make very persuasive arguments at times, but in the end the motivation is just not mine.

It’s not in me.

I don’t have a “good” reason, although I do get sick of being asked.

I prefer to live a heavily divided life, because I don’t like people.
I don’t like them close to me.
People are fine so long as they are not an integral part of my life.
I don’t like them showing much interest
or asking a lot of questions.

I find very little comfort in hazing out my sharper thoughts in an attempt to connect with others.
Sometimes, I feel like I need to for the sake of my health, but I enjoy witnessing the caustic things my mind does.
It’s simply who I am.
I’ve never had much desire to fuck up my brain chemistry.
It has always been rather fucked up without outside assistance; although it’s predominately considered fucked up
by outside standards.

I merely tell people now that I’ve done a great many things they inquire about
and simply didn’t like the experiences.

Why?

I don’t know. I have correlating horror stories for most things I avoid, but those aren’t the reasons I avoid doing a lot of things.
They are memories of events that reaffirm that I don’t like people very much.
My aversion to trusting others can be linked to shit that’s happened…but the things that I do and don’t do…

The desire to get a little buzzed just isn’t there.

I don’t look down on people who have that drive.
What grates on my nerves is the insistence that I should do certain things, because they bring the person who’s recommending them pleasure or comfort or relief.
Why? Why? Why do I have to constantly answer your stupid questions about why I’m not like you?
Why do I have to be like you for you to understand me?
Who the fuck asked you to undertake getting to know me anyway?

I can name the day I made the decision not to let other people persuade me anymore, but even before that day, the drive just wasn’t there.

I avoid the things that I’m inclined to abuse, because I have severe problems with the gentlest rebound.
I don’t like to come down.
Maybe no one does, but I can’t even handle a naturally obtained reasonably good day, because the backlash from it is almost unbearable. Do you have any idea how prone to abuse and psychological addiction I am? Because I do.
Even with fundamental shit like food.
The high is never worth what I go through afterward. It has never been worth it. I know it’s not like this for some people. I don’t care if you get shitfaced every single day if that’s what you want to do. I don’t think less of you for it, but I won’t join you.

I can’t.

Even when you mean well for me; even if you’ve seen me functioning and happy because I’ve been doing something, taking something, drinking something…and you just want me to be happy and approachable like that more often, you don’t see what I go through later.

I don’t want you to know.

I don’t want to go through it.
It’s fucking hard.
It’s really fucking hard, so I omit the false highs to curb the real lows.

Self-medicating is not a viable option for someone like me. I can’t just take the Klonopin when I’m actively anxious. I can’t just take one hit. I can’t just have a few beers. I can’t just eat one order of small fries.

I can’t even maintain a normal, loving, healthy relationship
sexual or non.

Understanding why won’t change it.
The desire to start isn’t really there, but when I let you lead…

All it is, is a basic, pathetic fear of the imminent descent.
Please believe me when I say that my aversion isn’t baseless.

Alpha beta

I want you to tie me up and take out all of your frustrations on me. Can you tell when you’re talking to me? Can you see that while you’re making conversation my mind has stopped short and veered off?
Your temper is your most attractive feature, or maybe it’s your seething control over it.
I want to see it. I want to see you lose it.

You probably pretend to be a well balanced person. In fact, I know you’re a relatively nice guy. Maybe you’re a caring, almost selfless, lover with that monogamous best friend/soul mate mentality, and that’s all fine if true, but that’s not what I see or want from you.

I want a rage filled, violent fuck, no strings attached, and then we can go back to this bullshit fluffy back and forth banter if you prefer.

I think it would make our day to day interactions…better

—

I wanted to touch you, which wasn’t that odd to me, but I wanted to kiss you, which isn’t something I’d genuinely experienced before. I wasn’t afraid of becoming emotionally attached; of being vulnerable of getting hurt. I wanted to spend time with you, and get to know you, and be with you, and stay with you, and sleep with you, and love you, and…have children with you, and live that life, with those struggles and commitments and aspirations and truly fulfilling moments shared with you.

I had honestly never felt that before, and I haven’t since.

I didn’t think you were perfect, and I had nothing about you confidently figured out. I couldn’t even expect you to love me back. I just…I found things that I wanted to live for through loving you.

Those things are a part of me now even though you’re not in my life, because you didn’t want me in yours. That’s what makes it so hard to let go.

I can leave you alone, but I don’t know how to stop loving you. I want the very best for you. Only selfishness makes me wish I had mattered; a desire to have been able to offer anything to balance the perpetual reflexivity of…reciprocity.
I guess I just wanted to be happy. You made me want to be happy when I wasn’t…and I wanted you to be happy. I still want you to be happy.
I don’t need to matter anymore.

—

Every time I move, I find out that people think I’m attractive for some unknown reason. My personality, however, is not particularly smooth, and I’m not that nice to people…because…well, it turns out, I don’t want to be hit on constantly. I grew up fat and undesirable, and I’m accustomed to that level of invisibility. I don’t dress for attention. I don’t flirt. I’m an extremely simple, straight forward sort of creature, so it’s only the initial move that offers up the information that…oh, the opposite sex deems me fuckable. Then I become extremely avoidant and the knowledge recedes, because dealing with sexual advances is fucking exhausting. I’m not good at it. As quiet and socially aloof as I am, I definitely prefer to be the aggressor. I’ll tell you when I’m interested, I promise; and if that’s not something you like in a girl, we’re not going to get along anyway.

I’m not used to being asked out by nice guys who I have to see on a daily basis. I’m not used to it, and I don’t know what to do when it happens.
Shit, man. I’m not that nice, normal girl next door. I’m not going to cook dinner for you, and give you a massage afterward. I don’t own any perfume or mascara and when I shave hair off, it’s a good indication that I’m going through some major mental garbage that makes a stable relationship impossible. I’m violent and bitter and swing from two extremes in the bedroom that I really just don’t think you can handle…or want to experience. Hell, I can only fake normal for short intervals, and I don’t need the whole neighborhood hearing about which kinks I’ve got where.
I don’t know how to flatly turn you down, because I have to see you every fucking day…but this is not going anywhere, and I will not fuck or be fucked under these circumstance, and I know you don’t want to be “friends” so…tell me how to be the nice girl with this bullshit.

It’s for your own damned good.

—

I overreacted, and that’s an understatement. I’ve only used my new appendage twice, and both times were…pretty fucking disappointing. Yet, I can get myself off just thinking about using it on you.

Terrible disservice to humanity, my misdirected temper.

I hope you’ve found someone to fuck you.

Productivity

Without steady internet access, I’d like to think I’m slightly more productive with my time, but the truth is…I’m not.

I caught myself lying on the floor studying the spines of my textbooks
comparing publishers
and wondering when McGraw-Hill started collaborating with Glencoe.

In actuality, I am being somewhat productive.
I moved almost an entire ton of books
by myself
in one day.

One very hot and sunny day.

I’ve read around a thousand pages to keep my mind from wandering off without me
while my body recuperated.
When I let it wander for any length of time beyond catching myself comparing textbook spines
I end up in that strange, spongy spot where you still reside.
Upon revisiting the internet, I made a colossal error in judgment
willpower
or some such offensive slight to my character as a human being.

Oh, I also made English muffins.

Love

My first stint of homelessness was brief and due almost entirely to wounded pride.
I had friends who would have helped, and I had family who, had they known, would have forcefully remedied the situation.

Since then, I have deliberately isolated myself further, but…
I still have a few friends who would do anything to help, and though I’ve put an inconvenient distance
between myself and my family, I bet they’d close that gap in a heartbeat if they knew

that I’m really not okay.

I haven’t been okay for a long time, and I thought I could distract myself and fight through it.
That seems to be how most people cope.
It isn’t so much about the motions of life.
I can find an income and a safe harbor. I can do the necessary things to make sure my basic needs are met.
I do them without too much resentment.

Sometimes I don’t care for the situation.
Sometimes I’m able to change these superficial aspects of my life a little.

My second stint of homelessness was shorter than the first
and it was due almost entirely to restlessness.
I settled out of it and returned to my original plans
because I wanted to
but as far as life events providing the impetus to re-root

It was only a phone call from a stranger
who received my number from a former employer
asking me if I was interested in loving their Timneh African Grey parrot

and I found myself interested.

I’m going to miss her a lot, as I tie up loose ends before entering in
to my third round.

Don’t worry.
I’ve found her a much better home than I’ve ever provided for her.

the parlor trick

For over five years, the most superficial thoughts of creating a drawing or a painting not only caused me to mentally shut down, but also prompted me to actively fight off the desire to hurt myself. No one knows, because there’s no one to tell, and suicidal ideation still has a nasty, emo, drama-queen stigma. I am chemically imbalanced, blah, blah, blah.

Insincerity.

Fuck everyone that has ever conversed with me from the healthy bird’s-eye view of absolute bullshit pertaining to mental stability. There’s nothing to say, because there’s no one to tell, so…as with every lapse in my personal history, to the expressed amazement of multiple clinical health specialists whose expertise ranges far beyond my budget…I somehow manage to pull through.

Incongruous.

I’d still like to stab a compass needle in and tear from wrist to elbow on my left side. Maybe, I think, if I twist my arm just right, I can wedge the sturdy steel bar between ulna and radius.
It’s not about cutting
and it’s certainly not about suicide.
It’s not even simple self-destruction.
It’s really not much different from my desire to drink
or fuck strangers
or teach myself calculus from textbooks I find in the trash
books which are only salvageable because the Americanized Chinese buffet moved to the next strip mall down the block.

Eating from such dumpsters is dangerous.
Reading from them is…mostly harmless.

I turned down money.
I did this.
I fought with people who saw potential and wanted to help me establish myself.
I ignored
dodged
and sabotaged the prospects of a career based on my “talent.”

We’ve been over this
and over it
and I’m fucking over it.

I walked away from an education I loathed, and I still don’t know why I went back to it
aside from finding myself so far adrift that an outsider was able to distracted me from the lure of a bridge and
tell me what to do.

A bridge I was later detained in the back of a squad car for visiting
and a person who later asked me to abandon what was previously advised that I return to.

I met you during the interim, when I was just going through the motions.

Waiting.

I still turn down money.
I still fail to return inquisitive calls.
I still blacklist people who ask me to perform.
I make myself extremely hard to find
or even contact
and this is not an accident.

I still fucking miss you.

And it’s still hard for me to coax the rabbit from its hat
but I will.

I will make peace without subjugation.

Quiet in the dark watching the rabbits in the kitchen
and the rabbits in the snow
and the rabbits in the mountains
and the rabbits in their cages
commercials
children’s books.
Top hats for cats, but no rabbits in hats
and you think you know all the answers.
You think you’re so fucking smart.

Maybe.

Maybe you are.

I felt obligated, because you went to the trouble of sending me pink colored pencils through the mail.
That does not mean that I am now at your beck and call.

It’s much closer to meaning that the next package will rebound
unopened
“Return to Sender”

I’m busy.
Busy working on my math at 2:00 in the morning.
Busy ignoring the subterranean river of shit.

pink colored pencils in the mail

some things

Some things are the same.
The scent of crushed clover underfoot and sweet honeysuckle on the breeze knock me back.
The world holds still long enough for me to hear the measure of my own steps,
my breath,
the birds before dawn.
I crossed paths with a rabbit, two foxes and a stray cat.

Some things don’t translate
to the blue glow of a Blu “cigarette”
with a pale white face in the dark.
In disappointment, I make no acknowledgement in passing.

I miss second hand smoke.
I miss identifying the brand by how it burns in the air.
I miss…

I once had a Stetson fur felt pork pie hat
but I never could grow a proper pencil mustache.
I’ve been told I’m not even allowed to want such a thing.

Too much hair to be considered a woman.
Not enough to warrant shaving off.

Homely but not particularly confused.

You crushed my beautiful hat
and no one smokes your brand of cigarettes anymore.
But you’re still there.

Still in my measured steps
late at night
when all the drunks have gone to sleep
and a stray blue light bobbing in the distance
doesn’t mean anything.

my love affair with traditional print

I was sad when porn shops became mall warehouses in an attempt to compete with internet sales, disappointed when used CD and DVD corner stores went out of business, indifferent to Borders going belly up, but I’ll be absolutely devastated when I can’t find a second hand book anymore. If you like, it’s baseless sentimentality.

The spines don’t make fun of me for staying in my room naked with them all day with the lights out until dusk. They don’t care that I don’t talk much, and they don’t feel the need to comfort themselves by judging me aloud the way my housemates do. They care nothing about the soundness of my mind, and if we violently disagree with one another, I can simply set them aside where they will wait, unchanging, for me to come around again. They don’t even draw attention to my failing eye sight the way that my addiction to the internet does. I can curl up with them outside without having to concern myself with battery life or rare earth elements, and my family does not have to worry much about this penchant of mine to spend stray change on paper rather than food. Almost all of my books were previously purchased and abandoned. Some were rescued from garbage water and broken glass in the bottom of industrial dumpsters.

They’re a fire hazard and a storage burden. They recoil in disgust if I get them wet. People make fun of me. If I just stopped buying books for a few months, I could get half of what I read for free with an ereader. I could borrow electronic best sellers from the library with a simple time sensitive download, no wait list, no pick up, and no late fee. I’m clinging, they tell me; clinging to the wrong side of history. People “lightheartedly” joke with me for reading at all.

That’s okay. You just keep misreporting via the Twitter feed. “Multitask” however you like. I don’t bother you, and you shouldn’t bother me.

switch

In grade school, art class fell on Wednesday. Wednesday also went by the moniker of Chocolate Milk Day. I considered it the best day of the week for these two reasons.

During college, I ran into something that we used to do as children on Wednesdays. It was a communal sort of clusterfuck.
You may remember it well.
I also recall dealing with it under your command outside of this specific context of drawing a picture.
Start something, and then, at timed intervals, pass it along to the next designated person in a chain.
Continue until the massacre returns.
Sometimes, in case the point hadn’t been driven home forcefully enough, the same abortion would be passed around numerous times
until the stain on the page was unrecognizable
both as something self-initiated and as something identifiable as anything worth looking at, at all.

My brain does this to me.
I putter along slowly gaining confidence in interpreting what I experience.
Then something in my brain clicks off and switches over before humming back into coherence.
Occasionally, I witness the muddled down time in between thoughts when everything is familiar, but nothing makes sense.
Usually, however, the shift is relatively graceful.
Everything has just shifted without warning. Everything is in place but slightly askew when compared to its previous position.

Everything is fine. Different, but entirely fine. Not new. Not outwardly changed.
It’s entirely internal.

Adaptation follows with minor resistance.
There is rarely an epiphany, and it’s not as simple as changing my mind.
It is not a conscious effort.
It is not even a linear progression.

It’s as if someone just shouted “Switch!” and my own page has been handed back to me from some unknown journey time and time again.

Bell Curve

This post has been deleted.

I’m sorry you’re unhappy.

So…you resent your girlfriend.
From what I can gather, most things beyond her arm candy qualities taunt you.
Maybe the sex is okay.

I understand that you think I’m a little smarter than the standard ilk.
I’m not sure what you deal with on a day to day basis.
I’m pretty sure you’re not discussing the merits of Dostoevsky over Tolstoy
or BRMC over LMFAO with your girlfriend.
I don’t think you expound on Marxism very often when I’m not around
or marvel on the central nervous systems of small invertebrates…

I could be wrong, but I’m not.

I should stop you now, because…I don’t want to be your friend.
I’d fuck you in a heartbeat, and maybe that would do something for your faltering ego
that neglected portion tied to your unacknowledged intellect, but…

I’m not really that smart.

My mediocre intelligence is also pretty much all I have going.
I’m not pretty.
I’m not healthy.
I’m not social.
I’m not happy.
I’m not successful.
I’m not even remotely fun…unless the only interacting you want to do is sexual.

I think you already have those bases covered.
I just…have a hard time imagining that you would stray from something
you’ve assigned monogamous
entrenched in three years of commitment
for rug burn and reading recommendations.

I’ve met her. She’s better than me. Believe me.

I’m not driven to settle.
My main objective is not a picket fenced in life.
I don’t want kids.
I’m not that interested in making money beyond removing my debts.
I didn’t go to school for financial gain.
My motive to go back is not for financial gain or status.
I have no interest in climbing the socioeconomic ladder.
I do have goals.
I am selfish.
I have no intentions to stay here.

You’ve lived here your whole life doing what you’re doing now.
I’m sorry that you’re not happy with what you know is safe.
Your girlfriend is going to keep the same job for the rest of her working life
unless she’s forced out.
It’s her career and her glass ceiling, because she’s content with it.

Issues that you’re worried about; where this resentment pops up…yes:
She’s going to get older.
Her sex drive might lag.
She’s going to gain more weight.

Get used to it, or leave.

She’s also obviously in love with you, and she’s going to stay with you
and laugh at your stupid jokes
and watch you get older, and fatter, and more inclined to watch TV
than fuck her brains out.

I can’t offer you what you seek.

I love nerds.

Probably the most amusing anagram ever:

1st – Mike Keith with:
hydrogen + zirconium + tin + oxygen + rhenium + platinum +
tellurium + terbium + nobelium + chromium + iron + cobalt +
carbon + aluminum + ruthenium + silicon + ytterbium + hafnium +
sodium + selenium + cerium + manganese + osmium + uranium +
nickel + praseodymium + erbium + vanadium + thallium + plutonium
=
nitrogen + zinc + rhodium + helium + argon + neptunium +
beryllium + bromine + lutetium + boron + calcium + thorium +
niobium + lanthanum + mercury + fluorine + bismuth + actinium +
silver + cesium + neodymium + magnesium + xenon + samarium +
scandium + europium + berkelium + palladium + antimony + thulium

[This is a “doubly-true anagram” – if you replace each element with its atomic number (= position in the periodic table), there is still equality:]

1 + 40 + 50 + 8 + 75 + 78 +
52 + 65 + 102 + 24 + 26 + 27 +
6 + 13 + 44 + 14 + 70 + 72 +
11 + 34 + 58 + 25 + 76 + 92 +
28 + 59 + 68 + 23 + 81 + 94
=
7 + 30 + 45 + 2 + 18 + 93 +
4 + 35 + 71 + 5 + 20 + 90 +
41 + 57 + 80 + 9 + 83 + 89 +
47 + 55 + 60 + 12 + 54 + 62 +
21 + 63 + 97 + 46 + 51 + 69
[= 1416]

—

And with that, I log off for the move.

boxes

I’ve been slightly negligent regarding my mental health.
There are all sorts of quasi-legitimate excuses I could make for myself,
but
for the most part, I just don’t care that much about my own well being.

It’s something that I struggle with constantly, and I openly resent how much energy it takes
to try to give a shit about myself with any semblance of regularity.

This is why I get into situations where I’m completely willing to leave my job in a fit of rage
with no solid justification
much less backup employment.
I also move frequently, and just as frequently, at the drop of a hat.

I’m currently in the midst of such a move, and almost all of my belongings are once again
packed away in boxes.

When pushing these relatively superficial
yet overbearingly time consuming necessities of life aside
that insure that the minimum scaffolding required is set in place
so that I can meet basic needs…

I actually allow myself a few minutes here and there to enjoy existence.

So, in addition to packing,
searching for a new day job,
truncating the night job,
and making sure that my bird, fish and plants have what they need in order to at least appear happy,
I have been combating the worst bout of insomnia I’ve run up against in years of chronic sleeplessness.

But, I’ve managed to whittle out a little place in my mind where I feel okay by flat out ignoring…myself.

Now.

If I could just get some sleep.

Reversing the Preference

Stop shaving your pubic hair.
It’s not cleaner.
It doesn’t improve any act I’ve come across.

It looks awful.

I’m going to start rejecting anyone that shaves
on the spot
from this point on.

No exceptions.
Yes, I’m just as shallow as you.

Insomnia is not a simple thing.

The first time I knew I had a problem was with a stuffed animal that winked at me.
I also remember a situation with the sky being the wrong shade of blue and the sun failing to go down.

A history of night walking and talking goes back as far as my parents are willing to share.
I once became the ass of Freshman jokes for carrying on coherent conversations with no recollection and screaming profanities at random on the few occasions when I let myself sleep soundly in college dorms.

Wake up in the middle of fucking…repeatedly.

My parents thought I slept a lot as a kid.
I had a relatively strict bedtime. Lights out.
From about nine years old, I read books via street light into the dead hours of the morning
and then “slept in” when morning came.
I’ve averaged about four hours of sleep a day for a very long time

broken into two shorter periods.

The main problem with this is REM rebound.

I probably don’t dream more than average, but I remember.
My dreams have their own history, and I remember some from when I was very young.
I was still in grade school when I started to manipulate lucid dreaming.
I rarely dream without lucidity…or recall upon waking.
Not sober anyway.
I have to be so exhausted that I forget to breathe when I fall asleep for memory to evade me
and that is an entirely different problem.
That level of exhaustion provokes night terrors as well as apnea.
Great combination, by the way.
I was still in grade school when I could recall flashes of my night terrors.

Yes, I do know the difference between a night terror and a nightmare.
It’s like the difference between boredom and a panic attack.

I have read what information there is available on the subject of sleep in most capacities.
Don’t correct me.

I know what I deal with when I sleep.

I’ve definitely earned the dark rings under my eyes.
You’ve got to be kidding if you want me to cover them with makeup
and deny that I like taking or doing
anything
that makes sleep the least bit
comforting.

I’ve had chronic insomnia for most of my life.
It’s one of those things that I don’t suffer from, because I don’t know differently
except vicariously.

As with a few of my other problems, though, I find it hard to respect other people’s superficial common usage of soft science definitions.

I also still resent being told that I’m sick, but sometimes; yes.

I want help.
I don’t have to lie or exaggerate to find myself on a cocktail of Ambien, Seroquel, and Prozac after one visit when I won’t be able to pay for a second one.

I want to know what it’s like to be my sister
and have allergies to cashews and internal organs that require removal for sabotage
instead of…this shit; this shit in my head.

What’s it like to be a woman that suggests Passion Flower in lieu of Librium?
In what state of existence are those two interchangeably useful?

She tells me that the gene we share that’s responsible for Parkinson’s is active
because we have trouble sleeping.
I refrain from telling her that I hate just about everything she has to say.
She tells me about a doctor that didn’t ask for her medical history
and prescribed something that made her hallucinate.

I don’t tell her that I hallucinate.
I don’t tell her anything.
She lives in a world where she can resent her MD and praise her herbalist.

I live in a world where those entities don’t even exist
where I’m two steps away from becoming a ward of the state
defaulting on life
and half the time hoping I lose the lucid moments and become certifiably insane
after killing a client
or a boss

or my sister.

shower stalls

You treated me like a hobby problem worth conquest
like those really shitty teen movies
where all men are assholes and write all the girls up on a fuck list
with points

or

you treated me like cheap, low-brow entertainment
like those really shitty Hallmark made-for-TV after school special tear jerkers
about peer pressure or the exploitation of retards.

Do you understand what I’m saying? Your greatest motivation when interacting with me was simple corruption, but I didn’t hold that against you. I didn’t really care, because you held no influence.

Upon reflection, it would have been nice to grow up with decent friends, but…you weren’t one of the few that momentarily had me convinced. I remember you as the sad, fucked up bitch that lost my keys.

That bothers me more than anything.
I lost my keys that night.
I never got them back, and it was your fault.
That’s why I remember you.

You were the third of dozens of people I’ve met since childhood
who got your kicks from casual sex with an audience present.
Let me rephrase that, because I’m not sure what I just wrote is accurate.

You were the third person to successfully employ me as your audience for a sex show.

You pulled me out of my world
with no way to return without your assistance
because we were miles away from anywhere I’d ever been
or knew.
Even if I had managed to call a third party for assistance, I honestly had no idea where you took me.

Kudos.

Where are my keys?

okay

I think I’m going to be okay for a short stretch, or if not okay…better.

Better.

We’ll go with better.
Write me in.

As I was saying…

The field was gone, but the mud looked fresh in the swamp where the cows’ hooves sink and suck as they graze. Without a field, why would the cows still graze, and why weren’t they sinking up to their bellies?
Why wasn’t I sinking?
The mud spattered my shoes, but I felt easily and evenly supported. This was not the marshy field behind my house that I once knew, but there was still no mistaking it as the same place. Surely, the cows knew.

I followed a shallow depression; a canal paved in bricks almost entirely obscured by the fine clay sediments congealing into a thick slurry. The ditch bordered two sets of fencing that ran parallel to each other with a gap of plush, finely manicured grass growing between them. Even if I could have walked between the fences, I would have found the idea of touching the grass uncomfortable.

The fence closest to me consisted of standard chain link that I could easily see through. While it had no forbidding razor wire running along the top and only ran over my own height because I was trudging through a canal, it did appear to be as well maintained as the lawn that created a 2 meter alley between me and the farther stretch of fence. Periodically, the metal netting arched across the canal and buried itself into a damp cinder block wall that significantly hindered my view in the opposing direction.

The second wall of fencing varied inconsistently and changed in short lengths.

I was looking at the individual property boundaries to the backyards of forgotten neighbors, but I only realized this when I reached my own yard. Here, the two rows of fence converged abruptly to accommodate for an older, taller and sturdier fence made from the same standard chain link…although showing more age.

There was no way into the yard, and it didn’t look like anyone had bothered to try for quite some time. At some point red brick replaced worn lath and plaster, but no one closed the windows to the wind or the rats. When I turned to the field, I understood why.

Fuck you.

Fucking high, and mighty old man.
You ruined my day.
I was there to pick up a 67 cent can of corn
to live off of for the next two and a half days
after finishing my forty hour week
before crawling around at night to make ends meet
and you fucking ruined my day with your smug “state law” bullshit.
How long were you rehearsing that shit?
Did a few too many people pass you on the right this year?
I’ll have you know I broke zero laws within ten minutes on either side of our exchange
and it took a hell of a lot of self-restraint not to fuck you up during your condescending, unsolicited, and uncalled for soap box speech about how you’re so much better than me.
You are.
You don’t have to live off of bargain basement canned goods.
Maybe you’ve seen some shit I haven’t, because you’re an old fuck.
Maybe I’ve seen some shit you haven’t, asshole.

I hope you fall over dead in your social security funded white wonderbread Christmas ham.

A question of taste.

Invitation declined.

My world does not incorporate large
flawed
engagement rings.

I can see the flaw with my eyes unassisted.
I’m not a snob, but you push your snobbery on me.
Slobbering.
A significantly smaller stone is of higher monetary value
when polished and cut to a flawless display.
I’m sorry that I know this.

I’m sorry that I’ve seen this.
I’m sorry that I understand this.

I’m even sorry that I’ve read about South African diamond mines at length
because I have a fascination with:
minerals
caverns
monopolies
propaganda
and
chemistry.

Don’t worry.
I really don’t care.
Just don’t show me your engagement ring anymore.

I don’t take cruises.
My family does own lakeshore property
but it’s not ocean front, and it’s not a Great Lake
and they don’t want to own it, but inheritance has entrapped them a bit.

My life decisions do not incorporate plastic surgery consultations.
I don’t have any use for Black Friday shopping deals
or Christmas
or New Year’s.

My credit is better than yours
and my education is higher.

You’d never guess it to look at me, and I make a point not to say it
because I’m not better than you
but I do hate you and your $30 lunch invitation
that I can’t afford to accept

and never would anyway.

Become a real person.

This is where I sleep.
This is my personal space.
I am inviting you to look at my best kept secret; the closest physical representation available

of my mind

breaking.

I haven’t painted in almost four years.
My writing is gone.
You took it.
I told you it was the only comfort I had.
You.
You were the only comfort I had, and you pushed me away
as sick
and delusional.

Of course, I fucking know I’m sick!
Jesus Fuck.
Only the most unperceptive could miss what I can’t hide.

I never hid this from you.

Look at this.

Look at me.

Look.

I’m still a human being.
I know I don’t matter, and I know that I’m sick.
Was I really that greedy?
You saw me.

You saw me.

I’m so quiet.
I so rarely even seek attention.
I almost never show this.

I trusted you, and I know that’s my fault.
I know it’s not on you.
None of this is on you…but you saw me.

You saw me and deliberately turned away.

—

I’m not going to get better this time.
I don’t want to.

Phishing

“I disliked them all immediately, sitting around acting clever and superior. They nullified each other. The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of writers. Like flies on the same turd.”

-Bukowski. Women. 1978. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 53.

Like Vonnegut, Moore, and Adams; Bukowski is a surefire literary phishing device. It’s the equivalent of asking a pre-teen if they’ve read Stephan King, or that fucking Twilight Series…or Harry Potter. A reference point.

Bukowski was not my first choice. I’m not a huge fan. Never mind why. We all have our preferences.

I started with Dostoevsky, Camus, and then Celine, followed by a biography about the most amazing Russian man alive.
Edward Albee, Flannery O’Connor and only then Douglas Adams.
Finally, you bit with Bukowski.
I’m reading his work now, because I’m emotionally exhausted and needed something light.
You didn’t bite hard. Although you referred to him as amazing, you were not aware that he wrote novels and short stories in addition to poetry.
I found that disappointing, because I prefer the short stories to the poems.
They’re all a comfortable, quick read; but again, we all have our preferences.
There’s no accounting for taste, but at least it can be cataloged.

I wondered at that, have you bothered to read more than one or two of his poems?

I shouldn’t be interested in you at all.
You have an exclusive live-in girlfriend that’s four years younger than me and twelve years younger than you, and you work the same dead-end day job that I do. You don’t even have anything going on the side.

I’ve met her, by the way.
Your girlfriend.
She wasn’t at all what I expected.
The encounter actually cheered me up considerably.

I’ll be able to host again soon.
Why don’t you bring her along?

Mental Craft

He told you that your mental craft was weak
and he told me that illuminating text from behind
was too literal.

I hated him for using the word right, because I’m not convinced that he intended to.
I’m still thoroughly convinced to the contrary.

Given the context of what he was telling me, he only meant that what I’d done
was overkill.

Content
fully thought out intentions
and flawless mental craft; flawless in that it held a semblance
amidst company that was truly lacking.

He claimed that he painted sound.
What he did is what the guy I sometimes humor now does.
He tiled out randomness as its own pattern…

which is not without its own merit
but it’s a strictly aesthetic approach to something that is ultimately

formulaic.
Search Penrose tiling if you like.

His opinion never mattered much, because he was so outrageously hypocritical, but yours did.
I could never get you to understand what you did for me,
and I was never able to offer you anything of comparable value in return.

For that personal failing, I still struggle with the conceit of self-worth.

—

It only took two decades for the memory of you to seep into the wrong corner of my mind.
You showed up last night…and I wasn’t horrified by what happened.
I met you when I was six, and I stopped responding to you when I was 14, and the last thing you said to me…

You approached me in the hall completely of your own volition
and instigation
and asked me how I was doing.
It’s the only memory I have of you ever being civil towards me…

and I hated you.

The only reason I hated you was because you made someone I cared about sad
with vindictive pleasure
and I couldn’t get over it
until last night.

I could have just as easily cared about you given weight to why I didn’t.
You’re both shitty people.

You’re both still petty, squabbling, intellectually lazy, mean-spirited, egocentric assholes.

For fuckssake; please, stop breeding.

Solace

I found it wedged between a busy highway glutted with shitty drivers
and a well trafficked set of train tracks that the Amtrak takes through the mountains
nestled under a busy airport air strip that’s a sizable regional transfer hub.

The drinking fountain has long since been disconnected
and the tables are damp with mildew.
A dilapidated, weather worn shack sits across the concrete plastered with signs forbidding my natural curiosity
and no one ever stops there

except me.

Shit

I might not drink
but I take more and more pills
because I can’t sleep.

I wake the strangers I live with
because I scream profanities.

I wake myself crying.
I fall asleep crying.

It’s better here.
The scariest part is that…

I’m better here.

shift

You gave me the good news
contingent on a relatively small file
attached to a delayed email response
to a casual introduction.

Yes.
“It sounds good.”

I threw out my first major sewing project;
a full sized quilt
that won best of show
before I hit my teens.

During the same year of its construction, I was informed
that I can neither cook nor take appealing photographs
by backwater white trash
such as myself.
If not pertinent, part of this is still marginally relevant.

I won’t be restocking the pharmacy when I go.
Hopefully, you have a high energy level to compensate
for the lack of synthesized sedation that will ensue.

There is a certain level of sentimentality
in the midst of symbolic eradication
reflecting a more elaborate overhaul that cannot otherwise be seen.

My superficial motives are transparent
and the nature of yours
are of little to no interest to me
so long as you give me enough honest information to work with

for your sake…and mine.

You are embarking on a long term commitment
based on a very short span of contact.
I am not easily swayed from what I want.
If you upset my plans
due to petty, fickle bullshit

I will get mad.

glass of water

I had to shut everything away at a safe, muted distance and reduced myself to traveling to and from the drinking fountain
with a glass.
I kept the glass from a pair we drank from.
One shatters against the wall before he put his fist through it
less than six inches from my face.
I carried the surviving glass to and from the drinking fountain.

I drank heavily
but I ventured to and from the drinking fountain
to sustain my Krebs cycle.

You breached the subject unexpectedly.
You’d noticed me
going to and from the drinking fountain.

You said that I was a lot like the people you painted
the way you painted them…

but you painted homeless people
from photos.

You may have been right.
I probably am more like those people you watched
than I’ll ever be like you.

What you saw, I feel, but your rationalization of it will always fall short.

I don’t pretend to know you.
I don’t sit and watch you and analyze you.
I acknowledge that you exist, and I might take note of what you’re doing.
I might attempt to change courses if you step in my path

to and from the drinking fountain.

Peanut butter really makes a person think.

You made me feel like
no one but you
could ever love me…

and even though I’m fairly certain now
that you did

love me

you didn’t make me feel like you cared
by trying to make me feel like you were the only one
that could ever possibly accept how damaged I was.

I’m a shit ton more fucked up now, by the way.

As a matter of observation; the more fucked up I admit that I am, the more people seem to accept me.
The more they expect and demand.
Here I am
estimating how many more days I can live off of a jar of peanut butter
because my best meal ticket
is out of town
and I spent grocery money on…a different part of myself.

I was never what you wanted, and if you thought I was…

“You can’t leave me. You know everything about me and still accept me.”

That, I suppose, is one of my major traits
good or bad
although you’re the only one to ever call me on it.
I haven’t had anyone say anything even remotely like that to me since you.
It gets me into a lot of trouble
presenting
and taking
at face value.

A lot of the shitty things you’ve said have been matched and surpassed, and all I can do is laugh, because what am I honestly going to do differently?
There are no huge surprises. There are no elaborate fabrications to untangle.
I am always this state of partially unhinged.

I believed you for a while.

It wasn’t me.
It was you.

I’m sorry you couldn’t accept that I’m stronger than you.
In all of my disgustingly weak, insecure, openly expressed flaws and vulnerabilities…
I’m my own person.
I haven’t grown out of it yet.
I’m not a thing.
You can’t gain a sense of ownership or control, or you can, but without my consent…you’re left with something completely different in my wake anyway.

Not me.

How long did you expect me to humor you?
How long will this jar of peanut butter last, because the end of the month is still

a long way off.

Dear Annonymous Private Institution of Higher Learning,

I regret to inform you that after three years of meticulous consideration, I have still not succeeded in quelling my resentment towards you. Not only do I remain actively agitated when forced to confront residual financial obligations pertaining to our time together, but more importantly, I have yet to recover my desire to create.

This is a difficult affront to my sense of well-being that I find much more devastating than any monetary arguments dissatisfied alum generally express, and while I hold no delusions that you will ever acknowledge any responsibility for the personal damage I have endured, I would like to take a moment to reassert that you are a terrible excuse for an educational asylum.

That is all.

Decision Point

I’m fucked up at 3:40 in the morning.
I left work early to five people
all infinitely smarter than me
telling me how to live my life
because I left an hour early
with a headache that has been progressing
and worsening
for the past four days
into a paint that I could still ignore
but I couldn’t see anymore
and I was having difficulties standing up.

I just wanted to go home.
This is my home, where I cooked for myself last night for the first time
and came in the door to that skinny, chatty bitch telling me
that I’m welcome to use their kettles whenever I want to cook something
because I used my own last night
and cleaned up after myself.

Not out of kindness; because I cleaned up after myself.
Because I have no room in the fucking kitchen to store anything, so I bring my food down the stairs with me
and I take my cooking utensils back upstairs with me.

I don’t want to use your stuff.
I want to use mine.
If I wanted to use your stuff, I’d ask.

If I wanted the advice of three of my coworkers
and two of my bosses
and all of my sexual encounters

I
would
ask.

I’m perfectly capable of living my own life
making my own decisions
and cooking with my own fucking pots.

I’m out of pain medication
that can hardly touch this headache anyway.

I don’t believe in God, but I’m going to fast for the month, because I’m starving to death anyway.
If being skinny weren’t so fucking idealized, someone might notice before I fall over from malnutrition.
I know all about nutrition, but thanks for all of the bullshit advice that I didn’t ask for and don’t care about.
That’s for paying me absolute shit. I’ll do what you tell me in regards to work, but that’s it.

Stay out of my personal life.
Stay out of my way.
Let me cook the way I want, fuck the way I want, and despise this religion the way I see fit.

I do not need any more outside irritants than what passively bombard me just by co-existing.

Do I tell you what to do with your life? Do I? Have I made any mention of what I think you should or should not be doing with your life? Huh? The only shit I say about what you do is in regards to how it directly makes me feel during or afterwards, and if you don’t care, then don’t fucking change; but don’t expect me to maintain a high level of composure with the constant repetition of bullshit.

Stay the fuck out of my way. Does my body language not express this clearly enough? I don’t talk to you. I don’t hold up my end of the conversation well when you talk to me. Do I really need to put on a dramatic verbal act for you to fucking get it?

My head is conspiring to explode, and I just want to be alone with it in a vain attempt to calm it down, because it’s going to take me out with it when it goes.

I hate you.

The first girl I ever loved.
Her family for taking her away.
My sister choosing her white trash friends
and then money
money
Money.
The little boy that wasn’t too good to play with matchbox cars with me in the mud
and his pedophile father in the corner house.
All of their friends.
The neighbor girl that thought her name was more important than my memory
and baptism made playmates.
Sara.
Danah.
Sara.
Sara.
Sara.
Sara.

Sara?

The boy from the drug house that decided I was too weird to be pretty.
The fat kid that I can still taste and his older brother.
The indian kid’s fire engine red half brother, Danny, and his full sister Suzy.
The whore that stole from me.
The whore I stole for.
My third grade teacher.

CoryJacobJerryMitch

The freckled girl’s father and the Buddhist.
The Pynes and all of their bastard children.

My freshman roommate.

Zac and his dealer.
The dancer that never gave me her real name.
Katie and her print making.
The asshole that spent hundreds of dollars to make his name a little more pretentious.

Reagan

The first psychologist I ever saw
and the second.
The psychotherapist I didn’t pay.

The crackwhore that took my money.
The crippled old man that spit on me, and his cunt of a daughter, and her worthless son, and his sister’s bastard baby’s stupid made up name.
The shitty kisser that gave me unsolicited advice.
The bitch that dyed my hair “a more natural brown” than my natural color.

The bitch that wrote the book I’m reading about the most amazing man alive.
The pretty boy that ruined Plastic Beach for me.
The anonymous individual that stole my chair painting.
And the fucker that took my rat painting.

Huey.
The prolife dumbfuck who named her asshole kid Huey and failed to kill him before he hit puberty.

Brad. Pretty much every Brad I’ve ever met.
The journalist.
My Great Uncle.
My dry drunk former uncle.

Everyone that’s ever wanted me to call them Daddy.
The fucker that tells me I fight with him for no reason but won’t leave me alone.
His friend that’s going to pray for me.

You.

Femininity

A sheath of staples touches a tiny packet of airplane salt, and I nudge it away to expose a male to male coaxle cable connector and a purple paint chip from the last apartment I rented where I could afford to live alone

above a pedophile from my own youth.

The questions of happiness and God are humming in the back of my mind. Well over a year ago, you thought a petty sort of jealousy had come over me, because you were happy for a moment

without me.

It upset me much more that you betrayed my trust in order to entertain someone more feminine than me. Happier. More confident in seeking the acceptance of the masses.

Someone normal.

I dole out imitation happiness in a life that has become a little too one sided lately. Sex and femininity apparently go hand in hand for me, although one comes naturally enough and the other fails to follow.

Lace on lace with rhinestones.
Synthetic floral scent imprints.
A pervasive, sickening nauseation with the self-imposed shift.

Confirmation comes that you like this, but you still notice.
You still tell me what’s wrong with me
what I need to fix
how I am “too smart for my own good.”

You tell me again and again about happiness, each with your own path to enlightenment.

I can stand still and manage to hold up the facade, but when I lie down, it doesn’t lie with me.

I lay it down.

I’ve had enough.
It’s time to throw some of this shit out.

not just instinctually

After giving it serious thought for about a month, I’ve come to the same position I was in the second you let the words slip.

My answer is, No.

I do not want to marry you. I do not want to have and take care of “your” children. I do not love you, and I cannot love you.

Now, after a little extra thought, it’s the same…but based on more than the simple fact that you don’t like dogs.

I suggest when you’re home, you buy yourself a ten year old. Unfortunately for you, I’ve already developed a mind of my own.

Note to Self

You cannot kiss a grown man on the forehead before leaving for work at 5:30 in the morning.

This is not
fem-in-ine.

Originally…

The plan was to give a go to being a girl when I found my jeans hitting at 7/8, soo…

Not just any girl,mind you, since my sex inherently lends itself to my enrollment with the gender, but a typical girl; the sort that’s photoshopped in all the magazines and parades around on the TV (that I still haven’t convinced myself to turn on for the sake of making case studies regarding who I’m aiming to be) whether adhering to some joke of a counter-culture or sub-genre of femininity or the trite tried and true. They’re all essentially the same; these women. Aesthetically speaking. With a nuance here and there. There’s a formula. It’s a mold. I intend to squeeze in.

Temporarily.

You see, I made this deal with myself quite some time ago, and now…I’m having trouble discerning the merit in my original motives.

The company I keep is also not helpful in clarifying certain things I find confusing about presenting myself as a typical woman. So far, it’s been a very objectifying, condemning

emasculating

experience.

I will give you two years to teach me something new, and two months to change my mind about the next stages of this experiment.

What’s ‘a madda, baby?

I want to talk to you like the waiter in Lady and the Tramp while we play Nintendo games, but then I find myself thrown off by the additional drawl. You ask me the same thing every time. What makes you think I’ll tell you this time?

The receptionist makes fun of me. I think she makes fun of me. She repeats what I say, and I can’t tell if she’s mocking the peculiar word usage I’ve picked up from reading literature rather than text messages…or if the accents aren’t mingling properly. Is she talking with a funny lilt or just repeating funny words the way we say them here?

Did I say something?

I think I’m falling in love with the teller at my credit union. She has the most beautiful rubber bands holding her jaw in proper alignment, but she’s not afraid to smile. She’s fucking gorgeous.

You tell me you don’t get it. I’m not hot. I’m not nice. I’m not outgoing. I don’t even talk to most of them. You really don’t get it…but that’s not to say that I do. Who cares? Drink your caffeinated sugar, take your cut, and shut the fuck up.

A week in, I got cornered. I got asked. I laughed. I honestly don’t give a shit why you invited me in. I don’t care who you fuck, what you smoke, or when you have to wake up in the morning. Leave me alone, and I’m as close to happy as I’m going to get with this arrangement. You go right ahead and cook meth, but don’t ask me a lot of questions and don’t touch my shit.

The math is starting to make sense.

Follow the rules. Follow the rules. Follow the rules.

7:34 on a Monday morning. 7:34.
It’s 3:17 on a Thursday now.

20 rabbits

Today, I finished drawing. Tomorrow, I go back to work.

Rabbits

Blue hair, blue car, blue smoke.

You have a bluish black stain on the backs of your upper front teeth.
I know this, but I don’t think you do.

Point of view.

Early this morning, I decided to start drawing rabbits again.
It’s been about three years.
I’ve been preparing to start painting for approximately two years.
Solidification came a week ago on month old ideas and year old ambitions.

Today, I started drawing.

Four Years Later

I owe my boss money, because I ate on Wednesday night.
I think I’ll stop doing that again now that I found a pot for cooking in.
I sleep on my bathroom floor now.
You wouldn’t recognize the person I’ve become.

The trouble is that I loved you.
Yes, I really did.

What could you possibly have to say to me four years later?

I changed my phone number because of you.
I live an entirely different way because of you.
I’ve made no indication to you that I’m even alive anymore.
Not since the day I begged you for hours to leave.
Not since I locked my door behind you out of fear that you’d come back.

Do you want me to live this way my entire life?
I won’t.

I won’t.
I won’t.
I won’t.

What could you possibly have to say to me?

I cut your letters up this year, and folded them into little birds
marking days without any help.
Hard days.
Difficult decisions.
An increasingly stringent resolve.
I’m strong enough.
It took me this long to accede.
I left you.
No one’s loved me since.
You were right about that, but…I’ve loved.
I walked away from some of the most intensely positive feelings I’ve ever had

because they weren’t reciprocated

and I don’t want to be like you.
I don’t want to make anyone feel the way that you’ve made me feel.
I don’t want to spread this.
I don’t want to live it anymore.
What the fuck could you possibly have to say to me?

I don’t hate you. I still love you, but you’re not welcome into my world. I’m tired of hating myself. I’m sick from holding all of this anger for so long.

There’s nothing.

Same.

You say it’s a good idea for me to go home.
Do me a favor and stop telling me what you think.
What the fuck do you know?
You think a book store and a library are the same thing.
No, they’re not the same.
Yes, baby. Same.
No.

Not the same, and we won’t even discuss calling me “baby” again.

Even if it is a good idea for some reason,
even if I grant you that;
What about what I want?

I’m right, because it’s my life. You’re oblivious.
What’s wrong?

I watched the man in front of me scream at the clerk
in the express lane
for making the wrong change.
Eventually, the customer got his change.
I don’t know who was right.
It’s not exactly necessary for the cashier to think when making change.

I placed my items down.
Everything went smoothly until the end
when I was waiting for my change.

I saw the man insist on pouring french fries and birdseed together over his counter.
I saw it, but I know it didn’t happen.
I offered him a penny so that he could give me .45 instead of .44
but this just confused him more.

I started shouting.

I’m not going home.
This is my temporary home.
This is it.
You’re not invited in.

sexual proclivities

I think I was with him for less than an hour before I hit him and he told me to go home like I was a stray dog.
I was pissed. Disgusted/pissed. I don’t like some loser (and they’re all losers) to use any “daddy” terminology…ever, but especially in bed.
I have a very healthy relationship with my dad. It doesn’t cross over into that fucking role reversed Oedipus, Freudian shit. It’s not that submission is impossible to attain from me, although I am somewhat naturally predisposed to passively dominate.
A. You’re no where near as highly respected by me as my dad, so let’s not bring him up in direct comparison, because you’ll lose every time.
B. I don’t want to think about my dad while I’m fooling around. It’s not a turn on. It’s just creepy.
C. I don’t want to fuck someone with children that still need a daddy, because I wouldn’t have wanted my daddy to be fucking someone like me when I needed him. (That’s as close to fucked up as my daddy complex gets.) so I don’t want to think of you as anyone else’s daddy either.
D. I do not need to be coddled. I’ve been on my own for quite a while now, so I’m not looking for a stand-in father figure to take care of me; a task you’re not up to anyway, and finally,
E. I have no interest in having your children, so I don’t see you as daddy material in your own right, which brings us to slapping you if you don’t fucking shut up when I ask you nicely the first two times, and lowers your fuckability to next to nill.

I try to like men, but it never seems to work out.

We don’t speak English here.

Do you want me to be jealous of the other girls…
because I am, you know?
Maybe not jealous; that’s the wrong word…

but they make me feel inferior.

I am not enough, and then I have to ask myself:
Do I want to be?
What happens when I start to care
too much
and you don’t care enough?

Do you want me to chase after you
and hurt myself?
You should stop me soon if you don’t want that
because you asked me to start

caring.

You asked me to do this for you.
Subservience.
Isn’t that what you’re testing for?

I hope I failed.

fuck me

Let’s switch shifts.

I stared up through the glass at her legs,
and then gazed over at her friend.
The skirt ended just above the knees.
Conservative length
in a flamboyant print.
I stared at the back of her knees
imagining the fronts
and burning for her to turn around
as I traced each pore with the hair shorn close.

This is considered attractive.

There’s a rash between my fingers
and I’m losing my mind.
I joke
and rationalize
but

it’s really slipping further
each time.

When stumbling across something genuine, it’s deemed strange.

wake up

I woke up amidst a clusterfuck of people all engaged in light, happy conversation about
Leon: The Professional
which was playing on the TV.
I confused the time and place for a second thinking myself back in the Freshman dorms, but I quickly checked myself.
That wasn’t right.
Who were all of these people swimming in the blue flicker of electricity, and why were they in the room with me?

I recognized the room; a familiar bedroom, although not mine. This many people should never naturally find themselves sandwiched into such a space.
I curled over to my side, bumping into someone and clamoring over them as I went like a drowning rat in a state of emergency.
Emergency: vomit splashed into the bowl. I flushed, proceeded to clean up any imagined residual mess rinsed my hands
mouth
face
and stood staring in the mirror under the unforgivingly bright bathroom light.

You interrupted me then. I thought, I might have a profound thought, but it quickly passed when you barged right in; you the same creature I’d just scampered over in my desperate escape from waking.

Were you really clothed, and was I actually all but naked? Like it mattered? It didn’t.

“Hello,” I offered with a tight smile that fell off and refracted off your own toothy grin. Did my eye just twitch? Let me just excuse myself then, so I did, slipping away as you took a piss.

Downstairs
clothed
with shoes
I stopped short to find a scene I wasn’t expecting and couldn’t accept.

Keep in mind that this is after the awakening I’d just met.
I understood then why I woke up where I did…although I’m still not sure about all those people.
I’d been waiting for you.
Waiting
and waiting
and
waiting.

Here you were
downstairs…

and I didn’t want to understand.

I sat down to check my email.
I went back upstairs.
I came back down.

Will I ever forgive myself?
You deserve to be happy, and I’ll find a different way home.

the everyday shitstream

There are people in my house. No, that’s not accurate enough. There are people with children and a dog that’s the spawn of Satan in my house…and they look like they’re staying for a while…a long, long while.

New life goal: revert to old life goal of living alone in a shack in the woods…but nothing like Thoreau. Fuck Thoreau. And Hemingway. Fuck him, too.

I had to narrate while watching myself on tape today at work. Narrate. I had to narrate step by step what my space cadet thought processes might have been.

Thoughts of note: Are you making history without me, Wisconsin? What world did I wake up from with all that tepid water overlooking mountains instead of the mountains looking over me? I can’t go over the physics of constructing furniture out of cardboard right now…Oh, shit! Fuck! Damn!

Do you want me to narrate accurately, boss? Or would you like me to edit out to the pertinent information only? Step by step. Here’s the breakdown: Fuck you. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this…Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck this. Fuck off. I’m done.

I need a haircut.

Asshole

You kicked me out of your house after midnight, and I had no way of getting across the city. No money. No one to call. I thought about walking. I could walk it. I’d be within the public transportation routes by dawn. I started off away from your locked door.

Asshole.

I couldn’t walk it. No. Well, I could. I could if it was just walking. I could walk the whole distance and be home by the next night at this time. I could walk it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t go through that neighborhood at night. No. I couldn’t.

Asshole.

I was young at the time…as if I’m particularly old now. I felt younger then. I’d been harassed there before. I’d been harassed every trip through that neighborhood as a matter of recollection. Every time. Because I was young, and female…and always alone. I always met with a confrontation of some sort. Some escalated out of my grasp in the middle of the day. On a sunny Sunday morning. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t walk through it at this hour. I doubted if it could even be done with accompaniment. Protection. A group surrounding me from the actual neighborhood.

Asshole.

I sat in a park on a swing trying to come up with something to do. A policeman interrupted my thoughts with a flashlight in my face. He wasn’t helpful. They were so rarely helpful in that city; always so suspicious, never willing to believe anything. They were always flashing lights in my face and telling me I was lying about my own fucking name. They were always asking for proof of my identity just for walking in the dark or sitting by myself…or being summoned to my aid from a 911 call out of county. My aid.

Asshole.

The policeman told me I couldn’t stay in the park. The park was closed after sunset. He didn’t believe my story for what brought me to the park swing. He said that if it was true, you were an asshole, but he said it with kid gloves. He didn’t say; “You’re a stupid whore and get what you deserve.” Instead, he said, “It doesn’t sound like you have very good friends.”

Asshole.

You wouldn’t answer your phone, which upset me. It was actually my phone, and I was letting you use it, because I didn’t want to pay the early cancellation fee. You wouldn’t answer my phone, which upset me, because it clearly indicated that you didn’t give a shit how I got through the night.

Asshole.

If I walked around, I decided. If I walked around the north neighborhood all the way down to the south side where domestic violence was the aggressor of choice, I could make it home alive and unscathed. At least, statistically, my chances were higher. I started south until I came along the west edge of the massive cemetery where my grandpa is buried. He wasn’t there then. He wasn’t dead then. He’s there now, and I’m not.

Asshole.

I sat on a bench and stared into the darkness of this fenced in expanse. I could doze in there, away from the city. I thought about it. I scanned the wrought iron fence. I thought about it. I went as far as one of the car gates where I could find a way in, and then I went back out to the street where each car was a potential threat. Each car could be some…

Asshole.

I walked through bar time as if I had a purpose and destination within grasp, and then I sat down and stared off for long bouts. I didn’t get it then. It didn’t even occur to me at the time that you were such an asshole.

Whoops!

It just dawned on me that you are the literary version of Boris.
(No, I will not link to Boris…or you for that matter.)
I’m just never going to agree with the rest of the world on this.

Carry on. Enjoy yourself.

This realization has retroactively explained a great many things.
Hell, I’ll go as far as to thank you.

what i really want

I don’t want a house.

I want a building; just a step up from a shack where I can live above a storefront on a street where people gate off their windows and doors at night. Upstairs, I want to leave the four deadbolts unlocked and the windows open to feel the cold damp drafts during the rainy season, and hear the trains roar past. I want a weak and spotty satellite signal and brownouts; power surges to nudge the antiquated appliances awake in the middle of the night and have them lulled back to sleep by the drip of tainted faucet water into watering cans–water to feed the plants choking out the light and basking in the breeze from every window. Cut flowers fade fast, and metal irritates my skin.

I don’t want a ring. I don’t need a yard with a fence. I’m still uncertain of the rest…although, I would really love a dog.

do you have any idea how ignorant you sound?

Earlier, he spoke of artists
critiquing the look of an older woman on his TV
sans makeup.

He said she was “fucked up” on something.
Definitely.
I didn’t know who she was
some vague figurehead for a world
I despise
where transferred signatures on silk
are worth more than my entire existence.

He said he preferred his artists a little off.
I thought about how I’m…a little off.
All good artists, he said, are a little off.
I stirred my cup of hot water quietly.
I am not an artist today.

He cited Van Gogh, and I stopped listening.

Later, I came down where they sat in the same places
in front of the TV
this time, I heard Hitler giving a speech
and felt dizzy
sick
and ready to pass out.

This is because I’m working full shifts with a fever
but I also felt like I’d stepped back a decade in my own life
when curiosity assuaged revulsion to some extent.

I stirred my cup of hot water
while I listened to them critique.
“That wasn’t even a good speech.”

I padded quietly back up to my little sick bed
that is nothing more than a huddle of blankets on the floor near the vent
forced air heat
wondering

Do you have any idea how ignorant you sound
all the goddamned time?

impulse control

You have been blacklisted for the next two months.

Have you ever noticed…

You regurgitate each other’s ideas all the time. You pick up on something and claim it’s inspiring thought, but you move in this frothy mass of your own vomit and rarely slosh off into something “fresh”…freshly thrown up again, unless you know that there are enough nauseous people gagging right next to you. You and your “friends” all thinking the same thing and spitting it up in clever ways, massaging it into each other’s sense of purpose to feel good and comfortable and accepted and understood. Clean yourself up for fuckssake. Clean yourself up before you talk to me.

I live on the other side of the shit stream where nothing I think to say matters. This is where I’ve been told to stay. Shit. Fine.

Shit.

At least I know my place regarding the shit stream.

first doodle in over two years

First unforced scratching of any kind since graduating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired by birdshit dropped onto a student loan envelope by my best friend.

You lied to me.

Papers are stacked to a height ending mid-thigh in piles that gently lean against each other to support the weight of their combined content. Not a single sheet has yet been deemed trash, although I cull and groom the mass regularly. The stacks line the walls and come out to visit me halfway across the room where structure dwindles and the pages spill haphazardly into my breathing space to remind me…

and I’ve lost my place.

title pending

I’m supposed to be my own cheerleader.
I’m supposed to interact with like minded imps that will cheer for me when I’m tired.
I’m supposed to gather some form of satisfaction from marketing my soul.
I’m supposed to believe I have one.

I’m supposed to gain acceptance.
I’m supposed to make it happen.
I’m supposed to play the games and find them fun.
I’m supposed to give a shit what you think.

I’m supposed to care if you give a shit what I think.
I’m supposed to appear humble but happy.
I’m supposed to spend time set aside specifically mandated for family.
I’m supposed to make a name for myself.

I’m supposed to be able to make up my damned mind.
I’m supposed to be able to set this shit aside.
I’m supposed to keep trying to be someone I’m not.
I’m supposed to fucking tell you what you want to hear.

Well, I fucking want you to fail, you smug little shit.
You’re the one that replaced me, so what I’m supposed to do

no longer applies.

fuck

I want to talk to you today, but I can’t allow myself to pretend you’d answer or care.
Care enough to answer?
You said you cared.
You put this idea into my head that it’s not even you that I want to talk to.

I guess I just want to talk to myself, so here I am.

I think about coming to see you sometimes
even though I can’t afford to make the trip.
I might have yet another job soon so that the option becomes real.

Dangerous.

I’m even willing to manage and supervise to get there
just for you to reject me and ignore me and tell me I’m delusional again.
I’m still quite convinced that my thoughts
are
reality
rather than the distortions as you always insisted upon classifying them
and me.

Granted, I’m very likely wrong, as I usually tend to be.

It doesn’t matter.

I’m not feeling well today, so naturally, I find myself hoping that I’m dying. Of course, I know this is far from true, so it is not naturally hope. Clearly, if I actually wanted to die, I’d be a little more proactive on the topic, so I must just be stating all of this for attention now. Ironically, people don’t tend to pay much attention to idle threats of suicide, and let’s face it, we’ve all jumped to that conclusion about my current rambling and have hence zoned out. Yes, myself included. I don’t want to hear it either.

If I could interject now: We’re wrong. I am not suicidal, nor am I in attendance at a particularly well established pity party. Apathy is not the affliction of choice, and, frankly, it’s hard to write if thoughts are going to drop off in that direction so mercilessly quickly.

Fuck that, and no, I’m not notably upset either. I just don’t feel very well today, and it is only my backhand way of saying I would like to feel better (without hoping for it in the least) that I bring up the emo topic of death. Death doesn’t interest me much beyond a respite from a life that’s not…well.

I woke up to a closed bathroom door, so I walked past it down the stairs where I found myself confronted by a stranger on the couch. He made sleepy eye contact for a second and then turned himself around to face the cushions in a caddywompus mess of legs and blankets.

“Who the fuck are you?” I wanted to ask, but of course, I said nothing and quietly walked past to uncover my bird. I was even polite enough to take my bird back upstairs with me so that she wouldn’t wake up the stranger on the couch.

I proceeded to wait half an hour for the bathroom door to open. While waiting, I cleaned up my living quarters a bit. In the process I found an uncashed paycheck from two weeks ago that I was vaguely aware of missing and an unmarked envelope partially folded, but mostly crumpled, that contained $100.

Now, I am not a person with means; money. No.

This internet connection is not even something I pay for. Even after leaving for several months and coming back to strangers, I am granted control of the access point and subsequent network, because I am the only one with any experience dealing with such unexciting things. Everyone else that drifts in and out of the house just magically expects the dishes to be done, the bathroom to be clean, and the internet connection to always be hot.

I consider myself accommodating, and I like to forget about any income and what I’ve done to attain it.

I will trade many mundane services in exchange for mention of money not to be made in my presence. Ah, yes. And here I am bringing it up. How hypocritical of me, but it’s not as if I’ve climbed up on my dusty old soap box to preach about the nation. No. There are enough righteous minds dedicated to that task, so the information received here is a more personal rendition. I am just talking about myself the way I always do.

I am very important.

I was merely trying to ascertain for myself whether I’m having a good day, a bad day, or some sort of common, brooding moment mired in what I’ve been told is passive suicidal ideation.

I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter.
I don’t matter.
Yes, that is what this aside was all about.

I decided.

I won’t know for sure until February when the last tie comes undone. Maybe then, I will be able to crawl along the inner lining of my thoughts and find something that makes sense. Then again, maybe not.

I have this wretched, elaborate plan with a resolution that has an opportunity to present itself come February. Why February? I don’t rightly know, but someday I might. It comes about on a Friday afternoon, which I find fitting, because it came about on a Friday afternoon.

I’ve had this plan for quite some time now, and it will probably not resolve itself. For a long time, I feared this enough to try to talk myself out of it and into healthier directions, but…It’s not healthy to deny that I want something, and it’s not healthy to give up on something I want…even if it’s so improbable that it borders on impossible and delves into delusional and psychotic and…I’ve been staring off into space for around a year now, trying to decide how to fit together my life with my mind.

Yesterday, staring at the ceiling and clicking at my bird to tell her I was sorry about the heat that we don’t have, I decided.

I decided.

It might not be a good plan. It might not turn out well. I’m going to follow through with it anyway, because it’s mine, and I set it in place…because I want something.

Maybe, come February, I’ll know what that something is regardless of the actual outcome of events.

I’m scared, so scared, that I would rather turn my back on the world and pretend that I’m okay; fake it; just fake the rest of it, pretend to fit, and waste the rest denying that it’s bullshit.

I’m so scared that it makes me physically ill; brings me close to tears; erodes any lingering shreds of confidence that I cling to. This is why there is a plan set in place; so that the plan pushes me when I can’t push anymore.

I have to trust the girl that put that plan into place without knowing why. She’s gone. Time does that. I trust a shadow of nothing; something; me. I know better than her. I’m older. I’ve been through more. I set plans for future me. There are already dozens in motion; in their infancy. Future me will question present me as I question the past, but in the end, the plans are set like tiger traps. Rigid and with reasons without knowing if I need to be predator or prey.

Who’s going to win today? Ah, wrong question. It’s never been a game.

Autumn

I am waiting for the mail.

“How often do yo do this?” I asked you, and you responded that you did this all the time. It was the first time for me, and I followed you down the pavement towards the water. We were alone in the woods; two strangers.

I met a man in Chicago once that told me that he liked to get high, dress up in girls’ clothing, semi-suffocate himself, while jacking off all at the same time. I responded quietly that, that seemed like it would take a lot of effort and coordination.

Totally worth it though, he’d assured me with his mind going somewhere else, riding the waves off into distant times. He looked me over, huddled in a blanket curled up in a chair and pondered aloud why he felt comfortable telling me such an intimate thing about himself. This was our first time meeting after all.

I thought about how people tell me this kind of shit all the time. I thought about how I hadn’t bothered to put any effort forth to get off in a long time, but I didn’t share. I just met his gaze with silence for a moment and then offered: “Maybe complete strangers are less intimidating to you, because you’re impartial to the judgments of those you’ve never met, don’t know and never have to meet again.”

“You’re not complete.”

Well…I’m not sure that was the point I was attempting to make at the time, but I couldn’t argue either. I thought about sitting with that guy while I followed you down toward the water. We weren’t complete either, walking together. Strangers. You kept texting and talking about inconsequential things. I stopped listening and stopped short to watch a knot of snakes unravel and slither away.

You had something to say about them, but I didn’t care. Your chatter had no substance, and my mind no matter. We stood silent staring off into the water for a few minutes when we reached the edge. I’m sorry. I’d become unresponsive by then.

Water.

I was listening to the water.

I no longer wish to be addicted to you.

Since you first showed up in my daddy’s office in the mid nineties, I have had problems turning away. A hedgehog kept me company then, and a pedophile shook me to tears with the emptiness of suicide. I found friendship in dusty corners of unused minds, and my eyes have grown heavy, aching and unable to focus.

The expanse has ebbed and flowed over the years taking me in any direction I’ve fancied, and while a heavy hand and merciless stance has proven futile in dismissing what has become my only stable companion…it’s time to coax this unhealthy relationship to more productive ends.

Yes.

—

I miss you.
I hope you’re happy; happier again.
I miss you.
It feels strange to be back.

I sit with a bird for several hours each day. My housemates can hear me stutter and stumble as I read to her.

I always hated reading aloud. I have this speech…deficiency. I have an unnatural aversion to placing thoughts into words, and yet I write constantly. When I was younger, I had the idea that I lacked confidence with this everyday task, talking, because my vocabulary proved so limiting. If you’ve ever been in a conversation with an asshole that likes to throw in elaborations for no reason aside from haughtiness, you know the feeling of inadequacy I’m alluding to…but I have this feeling all of the time. Even now. And while I don’t flaunt it, my comprehension has vastly improved since those earlier days. No, that is no longer the problem.

Now I find language a burden for contradictory reasons. There are too many words, and I can only use a few…because others have told me that I have inflicted them with the same confused misery I once felt when I utilize a richer vocabulary, and I strongly assert that this is not language’s intended purpose. Economy, then, becomes stilted for the sake of clarity…but all of these words exist for the sake of a clarity that does not come.

I will never understand.
I simply do not connect.

At one time, I sat in my favorite teacher’s classroom, and he called upon me to define various terms that my peers had not bothered to learn. I was treated as the class dictionary. He would throw out a term and then seek my definitions. I think it was quite evident that I knew what the words meant, but I struggled greatly to break them apart into other words. I did not memorize dictionary definitions or read straight from the text books to answer questions. This teacher either appreciated that I tried to use my gummed up brain, or merely found it entertaining to prod at my somewhat embarrassing idiosyncracies.

I spent so much time building these terms into their own meanings with unique nuances and connotations, until I truly felt like I understood them as their own words, that deconstructing them back down into their fundamentals was difficult…sometimes impossible. I have this same problem with foreign languages. I pick them up quickly, understand them relatively easily, but translating them to and from my native tongue? No. Defining them from one another? No. Defining anything at all?

I can’t.

When asked to explain anything I stumble and stutter and make odd hand motions that people often mimic derisively. I am an awkward human being, and I struggle where most do not, but inside…in here…in my head where I belong, things connect and make sense sometimes.

I wish you would have stayed with me…or let me stay with you. I wanted so much for there to be…a connection; any weak line through to the world outside of myself at all…but you just kept pushing me back
and back
and back
inside my head.

No, no, no. You angrily reaffirmed and shut me out. I had it all wrong. It’s all wrong. I’ve got it all wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Closed me in. So, here I sit again…by myself.

I’m not even allowed to know what love is.

I look around the reflexivity of this shell, and I think thoughts that aren’t assigned words, and I come here to put something down…

but the only reason to ever put it down was in an attempt to push it out into something else…somewhere else…as someone else, where I don’t belong.

I’m not trapped here.
No.
I look around.

I do know what love is.

this is how you translate into my head and come out again…

A short story about your day:

The frail, effeminate creature sat hunched over a hot cup of coffee. Both curled together weakly fuming in the back of the windowless, modern cinder block classroom. Repulsed by the stale slurry, he failed to drink but instead felt consumed. Absently, he dipped his scraggly chin whiskers into the steaming brew while mulling over fanciful, swirling plans to end this entire miserable charade. “Right now!” His head throbbed. It ached and egged on, “Do it in front of them all!”

One of the sickly lemmings left under his guidance addressed him in that fragile moment of silence with complete disregard for the morose weight bearing down, pinning them all to the floor. With the whine of the incompetent little puke’s voice, the sulking mass in the corner jerked up, dripping and spraying a transparent, brown smattering on the wall. He met a room full of empty, dull eyes with a wide, mirthless grin. With a snap of his wrist, the coffee cup hurled into the plastic, pink wall shattering into a blinding field of rainbows.

“What else would you expect from that fucking flamer?” one of the mortified lemmings squeaked. Christ, what a joke.