Undecided Basket Case

  I feel sick today. I hate labels. But I know I’m demisexual. Every encounter that’s ever happened without love makes me want to puke and scrub my skin, like I’ve been violated by the oil of someone. And it’s this awful tangle in my head because sometimes I say I want it because I’m screaming to be normal. It’s so childish. Who cares. Let it go. And I cry and I cry and I cry.   You don’t have to.  He said that to me once.  You don’t have to.  Rape in a way feels cleaner, because it wasn’t my choice.  I don’t know if no longer caring for an imagined audience is a good or bad thing. I don’t know if I’ll survive the next bits. I want to bring such sweetness to another person. People have read to me before. I want to read to them, with a head in my lap and a hand in their hair. I want to climb trees and sit in a deluge, soaked in a summer rain. Like it’s not been said before. Like it hasn’t been done before. Fuck sex. It’s feral, and not in an all consuming an...

  There’s a rage within me. Isn’t it funny the power we hold when decisions narrow? I’ve always been good in a corner. Maybe this all happened because for a moment I was less desperate, though the end result is not so. It’s ugly and clawing, like the spasming of a felled doe. I’d much rather be the one to shoot the arrow. There’s this tar stuck to my kindness. Kindness survives. Even when teeth are bared and knuckles white. An anguish tainted fealty. Loyalty to something that may continue on when I have not felt it so easy.  In friendship there’s safety, in softness a place to land and grow. I still value these things. But I’d like to be so viscerally angry that my eyes set ablaze. That my heart becomes fire rather than this sputtering dying thing. I don’t think survival has to be pretty. But to be warm, to dream. Rather than to sleep.  Thanks Shakes. I think I smoke to not only remember the dead but to die. I realised that looking at my knife. He said he learnt to enjoy ...

My favorite word: visceral  Old women are beautiful. I’m in the emergency department today. Ironically, not an emergency. I’m one of those bane on the system types, but my gp told me to come in so here I sit. The seats are blue and grey. It feels like they always are but I can’t remember the amount of times I’ve been in one of these. An old lady is telling her loved one that her friend fell, she says not to worry. She glances at her friend and says: it was quite a way to make a statement. She laughs, not strained, but free. Not callous, just gentle in the only joy that can be found when acceptance is well and truly past. They gossip after the phone call is done. Talking about daughters and mother hens. There’s a beauty in that I think. I’ve watched people assume that the elderly are resigned. Like it’s sad. But I watch her laugh and natter and I don’t see it anywhere. I love aging. I feel more solid every year. Not compacted to the point of unchanging, or drowning an inner child, j...

This blog represents a yearning for connection and curiosity. There is a contradiction within me, a deep desire for that connection but a repeated pattern of reaching for it from those that cannot meet those desires. This is not the separation from personal responsibility, but an acknowledgement of a pattern.  For context, my personal relationships have changed recently, and in a way I'm proud of the depth of pain I feel. The first friend that I truly loved that I lost; I couldn't engage with that emotion without a buffer of anger. When she reached out to reconnect I couldn't resolve my anger because I'd processed nothing, just stagnated in my hurt. I had reached a point where I no longer forgave. It's a good defense mechanism, and my life and relationships had been spaces of unconditional forgiveness, regardless of the cruelty I experienced. Like a swinging pendulum, I'd gone from one extreme to another. As I'm aging I feel closer to balance. I hope and see...

You know that video in Baby Reindeer? Telling all that shame and pain to a crowd and still existing thereafter? It appeals to me, like muck sticking to bones. I think Donny was right. You become a sticking plaster for others pain. That’s what happened with my step-father. It started when I was six, what’s still there muddling about in the brain, the hugs and the holding and the pressing of my body into his naked one of a morning. I don’t know the depths, I don’t remember anymore, I just remember that feeling and wanting to run. I think it was far more like I was a ragdoll, or a puppy, with a rapid heartbeat and accepting eyes. There’ll be days where I think it was okay, that that was something that just existed and maybe it’s me being prudish and it was all platonic, or maybe what came after tainted all that came before, but the not knowing leaves me like a pendulum on a string pressing send at one peak and blocking calls on the other. When they announced the divorce and...