I'm trying to remember that writing is always here. When I haven't got a person, I have these words. I have the ability to organize it all in tidy lines with perfect leading. I can edit my thoughts before they collide with the world. And even then, it seems sometimes that I don't quite get it right. I guess that just means I need more practice.
But it also means that I can't let people hold every word I write against me. Or every word I say. I'm not a perfect person and I'm definitely not a perfect writer. But god help me, it sure is therapeutic. Jason Isbell recently said something about writing songs because he wants people to feel less alone. I write because I want to feel less alone. Maybe I'll get out of myself one day.
I always worry that I talk too much. So sometimes I don't talk at all. In my younger years I was described as shy. I figure no one has to read any of this. They aren't captive or forced. Read what you will, go find a different thing when it no longer suits you. My whole life in a nutshell. I never felt there was room for all my words. And no one seems to ever make the room for me. But I can't expect anyone else to do that, huh?
A Facebook group I'm in has a daily question that for me is really a writing prompt. I don't know who comes up with these, but for fuck's sake, it hits real hard sometimes. Today's was your deepest trauma. Where the fuck do I even start?
I'm already all tore up emotionally right now. A good friend appears to be tired of my shit and so that's just adding to the below. Because I really need my friends right now. And I recognize that I have pushed people away so hard instead of letting them in. The harder things get, the harder I shove. And that whole situation just makes me feel justified and safer doing what I always do. I reached out in a really vulnerable way and I feel again like they got in just enough for it to hurt me when they shut down. Just about the time I was softening and getting comfortable. It's sharp. And just adding to my sense of suffocating loneliness because I've finally had the nerve to feel something. And it is a lot. A lot a lot. I don't blame a soul for running the other way. I'm intense. I'm a lot. But it is who I am. I have tried so long to stop being sorry for it.
I think it's this. Letting down the walls. Being vulnerable. It's really fucking hard for me. I'm still not certain where that came from. I think it's bad formative relationships with women. My mother was always cruel without meaning it. She would say about my hair "We all have to have something to keep us humble" and recently told me that my early artistic endeavors were "not as good as the other kids your age." We spent our whole lives thinking she was depressed and had anxiety and so all the "spells" she had were just part of her mental illness. We'd be in the car driving and she would look over with that blankness behind her eyes and ask "Where are we going?"
Well, turns out she wasn't having anxiety attacks. She had a fucking tumor in her pre-frontal cortex that was giving her seizures for like fifty years. And no one ever thought to check. Because she's a woman and she must just be hysterical. What's wild is that maybe because she had less of that thing that people say makes us human, she is the most artistic person I've ever known. She's got so much talent that it just oozes right out of her. When she recently complimented my painting, I cried. And I'm crying again.
My sister was truly fucked up from a young age. She was cruel and violent as a child and then I outgrew her and she got better at using words. I remember the day she threatened to beat me up and I just walked over and stood real close, looking down and said "Oh, yeah?" She didn't beat me up again. She did black my eye shortly before that. Badly enough that I have scar tissue under that eye. Over a chair. Slammed my head against the edge of a console stereo. She started drinking at about 16. Arrested development and all that. I think the most recent truly terrible thing she said to me was "One day, he's going to find out who you really are and he'll leave you." I haven't spoken much to her since then. I guess it's kind of prophetic.
But she's had a string of awful things. I'll never forget the one time I ever attacked anyone. It was her. She knows exactly how to turn all my pain into daggers. She was standing in the dining room at Nanny's house, I was standing at the fridge, getting water, probably. She was mad at me and I cannot tell you what the fight was. I can't tell you what the fight was about most of the time. She stood there, our bodies perpendicular and said "No wonder Jay killed himself." It couldn't have been a year after he died. A year after my almost 22-year-old self found his body, blue lips and a rope around his neck. A year after my young self slid to the dusty floor, rocking and chanting "no baby no baby no baby no" until my brain and my eyes connected, tears running down my face. A year after I spent my 22nd birthday writing his eulogy. I write a mean goddamn eulogy. Be like Jay, touch everyone you meet and love everyone you touch. A year after I couldn't eat for a week or sleep in my bed for three months. A year after trying to get the pocket of his favorite blue shirt sewn up because he'd want it. For what I still don't know. That shirt still hangs in my closet. I feel like I ought to let him go, but I really don't know how to do that.
That was after her trying to fuck him and his being the good man. He had those moments of purity and faith through the bullshit ones. The time he told me he really didn't remember much from that first summer together. I guess I have a taste for people who break my heart for sport. All of the love I had for him, and it was formidable, shot straight to rage in that moment. I don't remember how I ended up with her pinned to the floor on her back. But her body never moved position beyond laying down like a paper doll, so I can only image that I just launched my larger, stronger frame at her. I didn't hit her. I just pinned her. And that's about the time I came to my senses. I told her I was going to let her up, but only if she was done. She said she was. As I stood, she grabbed a handful of hair. Fighting like a goddamn coward. I just put her back down again, pinned the same way. I never wanted to hurt her. I wanted her to stop hurting me. I guess that's a lot of my life.
And then I have a whole episode of acting just like her. And two things: yikes, I hate myself for behaving that way, but also insight into who she targets. I'm a safe place. And that's why she lashes out at me like that. Especially if I set a boundary or push back.
The difference is that I realized real fast that I had fucked up. And I explored why. And I apologized. With deep sincerity. I feel sorry, but it's not something I do just to ease my own mind. I think of all the apologies I never got. That I deeply needed. I don't want to do that to people.
Letting people in just gives them weapons. And so I don't. I'm a coward. I'm terrified of people because they destroy me like a house of cards. And any hint of being vulnerable always gets me that. Gets me that mule kick to the chest. That blind love and rage. I see how people can claim they kill someone in the heat of passion. I've never so much as struck someone that way, but I also don't remember how my sister ended up on the floor under me. I hope to god she got carpet burns though.
My darling grandmother always said "Go along to get along" and damn if I'm not a lot like that. I hate that about myself. All that submissive bullshit so I don't have to fight. I'm so goddamn tired of fighting. "My mama spent every day alone in a house with noise and names. She got so tired of putting out fires she just laid down in the flames." I feel that lyric in my bones.
I know it's not anyone else. This is my shit. I'm trying so hard to do better. I think I just always pick people who are as hurt as me to be my people. And that's gotta be unhealthy. I just don't feel like I can really relate to well-adjusted. And I can't open up to someone who feels like they don't hurt in there too. But I won't ever get better if I can't look it in the face. And as tough and strong and resilient as I am, this shit ain't easy.
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