People tell me that I am strong, for how else could I continue after years of illness & betrayal?
I survive in pieces.
My emotional reactions are out of proportion to any given stimuli; often paralyzing.
I weigh each circumstance with fear and suspicion, even when experience should teach me otherwise; yet it’s false negative is itself reinforced through my inability to achieve normality.
My scars have faded yet they are still visible for any who have an eye for them.
I am not easily gifted.
I should be grateful for any gesture yet I’ve never learned the trick of it.
In the moment, when reaction is key, I falter.
I stumble to correct myself but fail.
Sometimes the struggle is internal and weighs on me for hours.
Other times my failure comes to me long after the fact.
Invariably I weep, though I don’t believe that anyone has ever witnessed this, or if they have, I doubt that they have interpreted my tears correctly.
My tears are not subjective.
Shame and remorse, blossoming from my eyes as I contemplate how I can possibly thank those who’ve been slighted by my wounded psyche.
Before it began, something was wrong and we didn’t (couldn’t?) see it.
I wasn’t in the mood. He wasn’t feeling it. This possible malignancy… This possibly unexplored unreal territory, This possibly unexposed notional strife… was like a DANGER sign that was somehow misread as STILL SLIPPERY WHEN WET – an honest, if possibly fatal mistake.
It’s difficult to differentiate where I end and he begins, between what is wrong with us and what is wrong with me… but perhaps the two are not the same; perhaps we two are not as one.
Months ago… (I really should have kept track) in the moments before usual masturbatory apex, unreconciled paste spills upon perplexed fingers absent blissful climax rush; the poorly mixed paint lubricates and froths, gushing forward some 30 guesstimated seconds before still stroking right hand leads me to delayed yet not unpleasant orgasmic sensations.
What the fuck had just happened? I still don’t know for sure…. But when it didn’t happen again I imagined it a fluke… until it wasn’t.
I told him and he later experienced it fourth hand.
28 days x 6 months, minus whatever it is to make it 160 is my guess for how many times I’ve ejaculated since the beginning.
Five aberrant orgasms with no discernable pattern… but I speak to urology office shortly before the sixth occurrence.
That was a few hours ago.
In the shower, as I washed away all evidence of any malady, I imagined him leaving me after his retreat and choosing to keep my completely imagined cancer diagnosis from him so as not to blackmail him, so as not to keep him tethered to me against his will out of shame or pity, or some maligned commingling of the two.
I’ve not been diagnosed with anything, but it’s the dream image that is the first moment in which I feel actual fear in regard to my (or our possibly) undiagnosed condition.
It is in that first moment of fear that I imagine him leaving me, emotionally as well as physically, in which I am finally able to see us as two separate beings; the division of cells, the division of selves, until all are finally set free.
I wake from 6 hour slumber wordlessly, thoughtlessly (thankfully) hungry.
In such moments I’m not a person defined by starvation or it’s opposite.
In such moments I’m not a person at all.
In such moments I am simply HUNGER, with no itellection or sentiment attached.
It’s so much easier when I don’t have to suppose, reckon, consider or cogitate… but knowing this, (paradoxically) makes it that much harder to NOT think about it.
I proceed toward the kitchen; a compartment that is far too compartmentalized; a meaningful place with far too much meaning.
Aaron always says that I move with the silence of a ghost; I believe I know why this is so, yet I’ve never expressed this to him because I’ve never expressed it to myself.
Everytime I leave our bedroom I must approach that ignominious addiction; that nutritious poison which others proudly consume, while my own natural cravings are an endless source of personal shame.
“If I openly admit what I desire, then monsters might hear me and devour innocent children.”
What you could never understand is that I know this to be true…
Still, I slip out while others are sleeping or likely unobservant; when distractions (and witnesses) are unlikely to stir any sense of self awareness.
But this ghost walking shell is clumsy and trips an alarm; the theft alert klaxon of the unreached microwave.
I know I mustn’t eat now but as panic approaches I strive to curb its consequences.
Scented wax is melted to burn away the odor of consumption.
Those mouth watering aromas were long ago converted to putrescence to save the lives of terrified children… and though I know now these were lies told by a sermonizing demon father, that doesn’t actually make his words any less legitimate.
I remove layers of complication.
I scrub nauseatingly disruptive dishes, scouring them clean of repulsive remnants before placing them in the mechanical dishwasher because there can be no trace evidence left behind, even when the sins committed are not my own.
Still, my continuing hunger must be punished.
I don’t wait. I use my weakness like strength. I walk down 92 steps and over several city blocks to local grocery store, where I nearly leave empty handed.
It is not uncommon for me to leave unsatisfied several times over…but I haven’t the strength today.
I remind myself to breathe; to pay attention to how I breathe, as I negotiate with a monster’s former victim.
Get something. Anything. Just get something!
There’s no bus but I count this as blessing.
I walk several uphill blocks and I struggle in hope that exhaustion will bring me back to dumb unknowing salvation.
After stumbling up 92 steps I fumble senselessly into cramped space of torture and horror – where my lover drags me kicking and (silently) screaming back to the awareness I’ve fought so hard to bury.
As partner tries to touch me he removes still washing dishes, preparing to make another noxious concoction to stifle my progress.
What the fuck?
Righteous anger briefly explodes behind my eyes before quickly dimming upon recognition of his otherworldly normality.
My beloved is not like us and he does not see the monsters.
I think to begin the cycle again; with thoughts on emptying the trash and cleansing the filth which likely still rests on his office desk… but exhaustion overwhelms us as I slink away to bedroom where I scrawl this across notebook pages, interrupted only momentarily by my darling’s entrance; I refuse to stop writing or look love in the eye – because I have to write this out – because I’m falling apart – because he needs to be acknowledged if we are to continue.
But as I finish, I read out what I’ve written because
this madness is not all that I am
and Aaron’s love has a way of breaking me free of my ruinous captivity.
Some days his voice is so loud that I can’t hear or feel anything else without turning myself inside out.
It never lasts for more than an hour or two (often times less than that) but in that time he makes sure that I have his undivided attention.
This can be problematic and disorienting when I’m in public.
Our communication can never last for long because I don’t have the reserves. It’s too all consuming to sustain itself.
He doesn’t like to be ignored and I don’t do it on purpose but it takes a lot of energy and skills that I’ve not yet completely developed.
And paying attention to him can be dangerous, but so can ignoring him. Clearly.
Sometimes he wants me to throw all of my food away. He’s jealous, I think.
Some weekends, everything I plan on falls apart because of him.
The way that I’m falling apart, but seldom admit.
Every day that I don’t cut is a victory. I know this. But it doesn’t feel like the truth. It feels like cowardice.
If I could just cut him out of me… I’d be dead.
That’s the problem.
I think I’m beginning to hate him. Hate myself. Because he’s keeping me prisoner. I missed the party on Friday, the opera on Saturday, the walk in the park today because of his need… and my aversion.
These feel like failures or defeats, but is it a failure if it keeps you alive?
I try to talk myself through it but my feelings are complicated and often contradictory.
I don’t think anyone around me understands and why should they? It hurts being so alone though.
It’s just him and me. Like when she abandoned me. Us.
There are people that love me, which is incredible really, because there’s a big piece of myself that’s missing.
He’s completely disconnected from me and when that connection is made the spark of that moment is blinding… but nobody gets to see it but me.
Or maybe I’m wrong and people do see him, or the absence of him?
Maybe people love me because of him.
I don’t really know.
All I know is that he’s closer to me today than he usually is and I’m alone and I don’t think that’s a good idea.
I’m a prisoner of the past. A prisoner of a war waged within me.
I’ve been opened up by razors that strived to fix what was broken long ago.
I’ve been gutted.
I’ve had batteries stuffed inside me to replace what father stole, to replace the fear of wrath and the sacrifice for love with metal, plastic and electricity.
So many love my worthlessness that I’m terrified that I’m not already well for them.
I should be better, I know this despite this being irrational.
I am irrational.
My feelings and memories and fears are not rational… Yet my feelings and memories and fears are my reality.
I’m ashamed of what I eat. I’m ashamed that I must eat at all. I feel I should be able to survive without food or the punishment food invites.
Ever since hungry child’s belly drew sister’s blood and torment from angry crazy father monster.
It’s so hard to talk about this; I’ve not talked about the shame in over 30 years and this wave of uncertainty; this ocean of shame is why.
She forgave me once. When I first remembered I wept and begged; she said there was nothing I could have done but I didn’t believe her yet.
In 2009 I began to feed myself. I began to believe. The hungry child’s belly deserved food and I would give it to him. But my sickness persisted and isn’t that basically what he’d told me would happen?
I’m terrified. I’m afraid of these feelings and how much I am feeling… These feelings overwhelm me and facing them risks my survival and the hurt of all those I love.
I’m split down the middle, the hungry child who’s been punished and the righteous lover who’s fighting to save all those he loves; even himself.
How many sacrificed for my salvation? How many destroyed or maimed by my potential damnation?
The numbers weigh heavily on me until I find it hard to breathe unless I concentrate on every breath.
I struggle for oxygen, sustenance and life.
Why the struggle? Sometimes I think it’s fear of death. I don’t want to live forever; I simply don’t want to die.
And in times when the fear dissipates as it does at it’s worst, I count the people whom I love; the people that love me that would be bruised at my passing and that allows me to remain; a prisoner of their love.
But somehow hope remains a persistent bitch.
I hope to escape the past the way I escaped Michigan. I came to this island with my lover and not much else in the hopes that I could escape and conquer that which has been my prison.
Hope is painful and vindictive. Hope has left me weeping for three consecutive life sentences.
Yet hope doesn’t lay down and die when I wish that I could.
And so hope is stronger than I am. Hope can give me the peace that I crave.
I just need to survive long enough.
And if I don’t?
Well, I lasted longer than any of the others… so cut me a break.
