To the place where lullabies contain death-notes
Where our screams are songs
Bleeding wounds heal
And our nightmares are dreams
1001
*Read trigger warning in full.
This writing piece discusses: suicide, rape, sexual assault, death, murder, systemic oppression, depression and anxiety symbolism and analogies. Read if you’re comfortable. If not, take care of your needs. This was written for my own release. Yours is allowed to be away from this post. Take care. You are awesome and amazingly lovely.
I keep seeing this number
Then I remember
That there is a lot
Out of my control.
If I try to force everything
And I mean everything
Into under my wing
It will fly out
From under me
And I may never see
Any of it again.
My floors are crumbling,
The glass of my windows
Are shattering
In time to the water
Bursting from the pipes.
I see flames flaring to life
At each corner
Of this space
I’ve tried to keep safe.
I cannot force the door
to stay upright.
I cannot put the water
Back where it came from.
I cannot remove
What is keeping the people
I love and care about
From reaching back out to me.
I cannot fix the system
That continually makes it
Near impossible
For me to live
A liveable life
That is worthy of me.
I cannot control
Who raped me,
Assaulted me,
Had beaten me,
Nearly killed me.
I cannot control
Who I like,
Who I love,
Who I fall in love with,
What they go through,
And if
Or when
They come back to me.
I cannot control
The amount of death
I was born out of
Nor the amount of death
I was born into
Then followed me
As my shadows.
I cannot control
that my mom died
In front of me,
Along with
The person I was
For her.
I cannot control
That that my dad
Was never really okay,
And never for the help he needed.
I was never meant to be
The sacrificial lamb
To keep him from
Terrorizing my extended family.
And I cannot change
What he’s done,
What my family never did
To protect me,
Or the consequences
Coming for all of them.
I cannot control
That I have been alone
For so long,
Too many times in my life.
That it has eroded my sanity,
Made me suicidal,
Making me want,
Then attempt,
To kill myself.
I cannot control
That I’ve had to be the one
To keep myself from
Ever completing an attempt
And kept myself alive,
When doctors, therapists,
Hospitals, family,
Friends, and so many others
Failed to be there for me.
I don’t think we ever have control
That’s what people don’t want to admit.
It’s affirming that not having control
Doesn’t automatically mean
Things will hurt us
I believe I most struggle with.
I may not be able
To control everything
That happens to me,
What people do
Or don’t do.
I may not always
Be able to control
What I do
One hundred percent
Of the time.
And it may be okay,
That those things are true.
Living your best life
Is overated.
Living a life
That is peaceful,
Where my needs are met,
And I am comfortable,
Can do fun things if I want to,
That’s for me.
It took seven tries
And six deaths
For me to be here.
I died one thousand times
And came back to life
One thousand more
To be the person I am now
Writing this.
There were many days
Of my not thinking
I would be here
And that people wouldn’t care
If I was gone.
I write this knowing that isn’t true.
Some take longer to tell you,
Some have a journey to take
Before they are ready to face
The infinity that is you
But it doesn’t make what they say
Any less genuine.
It doesn’t make what they feel towards you
Any less real and true
I will take care of myself.
I will be kind to myself.
I will be gentle with myself.
I will do what I can little by little.
Whatever I cannot control,
I will let those things sort themselves out.
And the people in my life,
Those I like,
Those I love,
The one I may have
Or will
Fall in love with,
Those I care for most deeply,
I trust they will find their way home.
First to themselves.
Then to me.
And by then,
My new home
Will be in much better shape
For new comfort and contentment.
His Hands Around My Throat: The Reasoning Behind My Detrimental Procrastination Habit
I go to the doctor but don’t take the prescribed pills when alone.
I make progress in therapy then become stagnant until the next session.
My dishes pile up in the sink for a century before I think to actually do anything about it.
And my job-hunting falls flat until I am reminded of how broke, hungry, and barely out of homelessness I fee.
I have this thing in my head that doesn’t take the final measure in achieving a goal or completing a routine. My brain makes the final step much bigger than it really is. I will wait and wait until the last possible minute to do anything about it. The anxiety and stress that has collectively built up inside of me is what drives me to complete that step, not my actually wanting to attain the desired outcome of doing the thing. Toxic positivity and productivity circles would call me lazy. Capitalist-enthusiasts would tell me to work harder and think like a boss.
But all I can think about is how my dad broke me.
The closer I got to being eighteen years old, a realization was growing stronger inside of me. I learned brutally over the years that my dad will want me dead and in the ground one minute and then alive, by his at all times side, the next. I know that shouldn’t be said with a normal face but I am able to accomplish this feat. That’s how normalized this was in my household growing up. No matter who I told, most people told me to be a good girl, shut up, and bend my ass over for him. I did that until I couldn’t anymore. And that gradually became more obvious with each moment of my life being taken and obliterated by him in his complex sadism.
I live with the memory of him nearly succeeding in murdering me with each moment I live beyond that event. It sometimes feels like I am still fighting to free myself of his vice grip around my throat. I spent the better part of the next 24 hours fighting the ghosts of his hands still choking me as I fled to safety, dealt with crooked cops, and heralded my moving out of that damned house for good. Once I moved into the dorm room, with the help from then friends and their acquaintances, I was once again alone. I didn’t think about money, getting a job, worried about COVID-19, or even cared to eat a meal. My body was ready to give out. I didn’t want to be murdered by my dad. However, what he did, what I went through the past three months alone, made me wish I was dead, and that I could have done the job myself.
I was barely alive. And if I could not take my own life in that moment, the most I would settle for is sleeping on a sticky dorm mattress with a light blanket and orange Halloween pillow with a scratch black cat stitched to the front.
This critical event in my recent timeline created my procrastination habit based out of terror. I am afraid that anything that causes or potentially causes me pain will brutally destroy me if confronted directly. I left the cyst on the left side of my face for weeks before finally going to the hospital emergency room right outside of my apartment building. The monitors have yet to be replaced for my desktop computer station. And I have bills that need to be financed by my own means now that the financial assistance used to get me this far is now unable to carry me any further in terms of security.
When my father charged after me and began choking me with a vengeance, I felt my inner child die momentarily. I realized with a start, “My father is truly a monster, and after tonight, there is no coming back”. I had thought that if my own dad wanted me dead, then it would not matter if I let things hurt me no matter the intensity of the pain. Avoiding anything that made me relive that treacherous time in my life was safer than facing the agony of the now. My CPTSD overestimates the discomfort of possible solutions to problems and my ability in handling issues that require immediate resolution longer than necessary. Yes, I go to therapy. Every week. I never miss a session. I journal. I read literature. I do research. I dance. And I sing. Taking walks is something that helps me get out of my head, but unfortunately, it is a challenge while living in a city with weirdos and people who want to harass you for something. In essence, I have done things to change the way my brain thinks. Still, I feel the same hands that held mine so many times putting pressure on my neck in blind rage. I see his eyes, almost black in the night, having no emotion for his child. At times, he is as real to me as the white walls surrounded me.
I have to teach myself the desire to confront issues, heal pain, and resolve conflict. Otherwise, I view everything as a possible death sentence.
Lush, Cum, and Letters Poem No. 1 (Blog Post Form)
Thank you for reading. I hope this affirms your lived experience and future moments of pleasure.
Lush, Cum, and Letters Poem No. 1
Gyration To The Point of Dissociative Degradation: An Analysis of Porn Addiction, Black Femininity, Violence Targeting Black Transgender Humans, And Internal Integration In The Wake Of Deeply Entrenched Generational Sexual Violence
A penis, belonging to a cisgender man, is penetrating an assumed to be cisgender woman’s vagina.
The only thing I liked, was that it was sketched instead of colored.
It made me curious to look at the artists work on their main Instagram page. Most would probably view it as my sexually exploring typical cis-heteronormative content and not think much of it (until they realized I was a black woman doing it without permission). My old churches, I don’t want to even think of how they would have reacted, and my biological family is a complete non-starter. However, they probably would just say I am too obsessed with men and should be focused in school, their typical response. What was strange is that I didn’t really view all of that content out of curiosity, because I had an idea of what it looked like given the porn I’ve consumed, and erotic art explored in the past year of my being in university as a seasoned sophomore. However, the true reason why I was swiping up and down, left to right on those pictures was one that I am terrified to even write out, but here I go.
Everything in me wanted to force some sort of arousal out of my body. And the fact that there was nothing more than a neutral half-spark that died too quickly was honestly frustrating to the point of almost hating myself.
Was I supposed to have reacted a certain way? Shocked? Horny? Happy? Satisfied? Did there something not connect correctly in my brain that deals with my attraction, if any at all, to symbols universally known in the mature world of intimate interactions? Because, no matter how hard I tried looking at it from all angles, nothing in could understand the appeal of what graced my timeline. I felt shame in its most contradicting crossroads. Parts of me were soaked in the slut-shaming of my youth, originating from my parents, my extended family, and the kids at school who all expected me to be pious and sexually active all while sexualizing as well as preying on me constantly. Then there were other parts that screamed in disgust at me for not having an overexcited appetite for male gonads like some of the Black women I grew up gaining wisdom and love from, no matter how misguided or twisted it was. This is a snapshot of the thoughts swarming in my mind at the time and even now.
‘Why aren’t you horny?’
What the fuck is wrong with your body?’
It’s because of porn.’
‘Or because you’re fat and have stretch marks.’
‘Or because of your ugly brown skin and hair, which are probably reasons why you haven’t gotten laid by a dude ever.’
‘I mean, come on. You’re twenty and have only had one boyfriend, and he abandoned you after treating you like a prostitute that wouldn’t give the goods. What does that say about your sex life?’
‘Your trauma makes you a burden. The abuse you’ve been put through has made you too fucked to be fucked. I mean, if a man doesn’t want your body, to do nasty things to it, then what is your worth? Because Christian or not, you’re worthless. That’s why all of those people, even those who claimed to love you, destroyed then threw your worthless self away.’
I kept consuming this erotic content at maybe 11 in the morning or noon because that was where my mind was subconsciously taking me. Even though this is my writing out my innermost thoughts, these ideas and beliefs have been unconsciously guiding my actions since I was a little girl. Because of how adultification bias, sexual violence, and other types of micro and macro oppressional systems targeted and traumatized me as a black girl, along with the personal abuses suffered at school, home, and church, my body was always to be used for someone else’s purposes. To be shamed, to be gazed at like a bitch in heat, to be the subject of one’s pornographic, perverted fantasies, to be yelled at or beaten, the punching bag for everyone else’s high, uncontrolled rage or desire.
Being a black woman, or a femme-identifying black person, rage is never without the sexual, and the sexual is never without the rage.
Our bodies were claimed as property of others before we were born, and therefore everything we do is seen through the eyes of a perverse slave-master who wants to enact his demonic pleasures without judiciary consequence.
He grabs their waists with one hand with the whip in another. There are cracks of it slamming on our backs while he rips our clothes into shreds as he prepares to penetrate from behind. He forces his way in, and with every thrust and shove into our bodies our faces are streamed in tears, anxious sweat, and the burning need for it all to be over so that this monstrosity of an event can be pushed back into the corners of their minds. But as he ejaculates in satisfaction into the broken vessel of a dehumanized human being, the person doesn’t know time from stillness, day from night, and their body is never going to be a safe place for them again. Their humiliation is the slave master’s power, their pain is his pleasure, and their being bent over with no way out is his ultimate form of pornography.
I do not see this in history books. I see this is nearly one-hundred percent of porn videos made free online, prompting me to be too turned off to even find something enjoyable out of fear of them and resentment of my own black body. I hear it with comment from catcalling men when going out in short-shorts waiting to cross the street. I sensed it from all the black women who judged me for being myself, because being black and female means you are a whore, a liar, a thief, and criminal upon conception. I felt it from all the black men who have been voyeurs of me, five, ten, twenty, thirty, and even forty years older than me, because they want to be like the white man so badly they will sexually prey on little black girls, teen black girls, and young black women in college because they are so stuck in their quest to reclaim a manhood taken by our common oppressor that is cis-hetero male white supremacy. They modeled it from their dads or their moms, and believe that sex and relationships are built upon secrecy, perversion, pedophilia, incest, and misusing the good nature of a child to their advantage.
White people taught us the dance of deadly oppression, but we as the black community forced each other into a marathon of it, as if it were the only way of existing, living in subtle insanity that is.
I was consuming this content because of my wanting to have some control over my body. Because I was never given space to explore my sexuality like other kids, because of my being oppressed as a black girl, because of the language dealt to me based on how people viewed and identified me, with the major help of Judeo-Christian religion, my body was never safe. I had thought that my destroying and abusing my body was better than others doing that to me, given that I was in control. And the sad truth is that it took a pandemic for me to realize that I was never in control, not even my abusers.
It was my trauma that was keeping a tight restrain on my life.
Trauma kept me from living in the present. Trauma kept me reliving every moment of past torture, isolation, and violence. Trauma made me constantly remember the soothing words of my abusers. Trauma stilled me into submission of my dad, my family, ex-friends, my ex-boyfriend and anyone else who had contributed to the mountain of culminated abuse I still am reeling from today. Trauma is what stopped me from receiving love from the right people, from trusting healthy sources of healing, and reaching out to my support system when frozen in the darkness of my hidden madness. Trauma viciously guided me back to empty porn and erotica because it felt better to feel nothing in my mind, experience empty gyrations, barely buzzing stimulation on my clitoris squeezed between the folds of the vagina, hidden in fat of my thighs, then be intimate with deep pains of a youth snatched and torn apart before my eyes. Trauma was my slave master, and if it was not for my writing this now, I would be in bed, suicidal and believing all the lies it has been telling me for half of life. I do not write this for glory. I do not write this to be remembered as a hero, or a token of the any movement, be it for black people, womxn, queer or the working class. I do not write this for my biological family to accept me, and that is something I will long for no matter how secure I will ever become. And moreover, I do not write this to compete for likes and comments on social media, not even for friends or love interests to take notice of me.
I write this for one reason only, and that is to save my life. Once, and for all. Today, and everyday after today.
I write this to be free of the expectations of my old life. No longer being bound to a contract demanding that I am overly feminine, act like a white girl one moment and a sassy black woman the next, give pieces of my youth as payment for my existence, and have my sexuality be the food the oppressors taste daily as the disgusting systemic gluttons they have made themselves to be. I write this so that I may be the human who lives, not the human who merely survives, not the person who dies from suicide with unfinished essays and unlived lives within a life given up after so much fighting. I write so that I am a free womxn, a free being, a liberated entity of being, the goddess with an edge that I have come to realize that I am. And before I can live as that powerful deity, I must live in whole in my body, know she is sacred and that she deserved to be safe, complete, as well as protected with a fierceness that is proactive towards a better future, not reactionary based on past trauma. I write, so that I can, so that I may, so that I will, realize all these things. .
I live with mental health disorders, and my mind is not broken. I am a trauma, child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual violence survivor, and that means I have strength and resilience because I learned that early on as a child, conditioned into survival, but I am growing into a state of purposeful living, not a generational, reactionary state of instability. I have known what it means for a man, a woman, and people of any age to put their hands on me, and that does not mean my body is for sale, nor does it mean that I will not do my best to care for her like my own child because she simply is endowed with that basic right. Abusers and their actions do not erase the valid need for my basic human rights to be respected and paid in full. So that is why I am reconnecting with my inner child, listening to her needs, validate her presence, and stand by her the way she needed to be all these years. This is the reason why I dance on the turf near my building, to know that my body can be in balance, be safe, and breathe easy without fear ruling her. Why I placed boundaries with some of my relatives, even blocked them on social media for now, and left behind my old life as well as the old me. The past version of me was a performance under intense pressure, done so well because the real me would be met with violence and abandonment. She had to go, so that the person writing this can blossom the way she was always meant to be, and should have had their space to be her authentic self since being a child.
My past, what I have been through, and my mental health disorders, not to mention this pandemic, has caused me to feel suicidal on many occasions. And I still say today, that I will continue on, and in my darkest moments I will push through to the other side, with the will of my strength deep within me and the support of those who care for me and love me. Having written that terrifies me, and it also sets me free from any shame and stigma I deal with. When shame and stigma are not a priority, healing takes their place.
I do not need a picture of a penis penetrating a vagina to validate me as a womxn, mxn, as a black womxn, as a human period. Unless it truly is used for my unique pleasuring self-care, it is completely not of use to me, and that is more than okay. I mean I am questioning/queer, so this time is about figuring out what makes me feel good, be it sexual, sensual, or in general. At the moment, it seems that establishing healthy autonomy outside of the oppressive norms of this world, pleasure centered on womxn’s enjoyment, and respect for diverse bodies, sexualities, and genders as well as other intersecting communities, cuddling with stuffed animals for nurturing my inner child, a kind, cute guy, plus discovering new and forgotten things about myself outside of my trauma is what makes up my sexual orientation. Oh, and the spectacular world of sapphics, including studs, are an added bonus.
It is a lot I know, but I am my own universe unto myself, and all I am going to do is continue expanding.
Random
I am water
I am sand
I am love
I am backwards
Forwards
Up
Then down
I am beautiful
“Turning 22 in 2022”, Essay One: Media’s Pacification Of the Masses and Outgrowing Coping Mechanisms
Yara Shahidi turned 22 the other day. She is a beloved actress, activist, and starlit treasure of the Black community. She has a beautiful mom who doesn’t look like she hasn’t aged in decades, a father who is seemingly loving and is actually there for his family, siblings, and they all look attractive with clear skin that reaks of good money. She is a Harvard student and future alumni. She has a long-built career that includes “Black-ish” and “Grown-ish” as the main character of the main characters. She was wished ‘Happy Birthday’ by strangers on the internet who will more than likely never know her in person. But that’s okay, because between her features being pretty enough for the Black masses and mixed in a way that this not too Black for white executives and Afro-humans who do not like any person or object more melanated than Zoe Saldana, her being an out-of-reach figure who isn’t actually a part of our community is excusable. She gives them what we wish was our Afro-American, lived experience. Therefore, we worship someone who isn’t real. And we’re okay with it.
I turned 22 years old in December of 2021. I was physically alone for most of the day. I was verbally harassed on the way home by a big-bellied Black man smoking a joint and probably had not washed himself before having the audacity to be a incel with idiotic audacity. He misgendered me and called after me like a lazy pig of a nigga. He let the pretty white girl and white couple who looked like they had money walk past before being verbally violent to me. I live alone in the city. I have no money currently. I do not have a full-time job that pays an attractive salary with benefits. My mattress is on the floor. I wish I had a box spring. My chosen family spread across the country and different time zones. I have enough trauma that would make me equal to a nintety-four-year-old non-binary grandmother living on a prairie.
But I am real. I am me. And that is more than enough.
I talked to my beloved mentor and super close friend, both of them being my family, on zoom and through text between that day in addition the rest of the week. I gave that dirty jackass of a nigga a middle finger and kept it moving. I was having lovely conversations with people who gave me my pizza, my ice cream, my smoothie with chocolate shavings, and my seasoned fries across the three places I visited. I enjoyed getting a new big cup with a straw and other things from Family Dollar. As someone who had to depend on other people for furniture, housing, and dishware, it is one of the most deeply held things in my heart regarding buying and owning my own of anything. I bought a bowl on or after my birthday that I had my eye on for a couple of weeks. The cup I bought had become so cracked I could not use it anymore. I still enjoyed having it so much because it was mine. And I bought it with money that was mine, however little the amount it was.
One of the worse parts of growing up as a trauma and abuse survivor is realizing that the things used for coping during the warzone periods of your life will not work now that you are in a stage of rebuilding. Peacetime doesn’t automatically mean you are at peace. Serenity is a state of being that must be cultivated with brutal efforts often gone unseen by the masses. I used “Grown-ish” to cope with not having many real friends, a nonexistent love life, and being trapped in the never-ending cycle of violence and torrid isolation that defined most of life save for a few months ago. Seeing the characters wear beautiful clothing, go out to parties, and live their best lives was my means of escapism. When problems were solved in under twenty-two minutes I could pretend that that was applicable to my own life. I often imagined myself as Zoey, a person who could be talentless, tasteless, selfish, conceited, ignorant of the world, rude, and still be physically attractive, have money, and be beloved by everyone around her. There was a time I wanted a Hotep like Aaron. I used to want to be blessed with vapid wisdom by someone like Luca while the smell of his blunt wafted through the room. I even wished to be in hand-clapping sync with Sky and Jazz. The lonely, sad, and beaten-down child within me wanted to be in their circle so badly.
Now, I wish the show had been canceled before it even began.
My story, my life is real. Unfortunately, Hulu, ABC, and Disney would not want to produce it in its raw form. Pacification of the population is the ultimate goal of amalgamated corporations swollen with densely constructed monopolies and money that most people will never see. To distract people from the degenerative state of our economy, political system, governments destroying whatever little chances we have at material wealth, they create shows like this to latch onto the very fantasy that they never want to be our reality. We are currently living in a recession at the top of the new decade, during an endemic. I live in the Midwestern United States, in one of the poorest cities of the country. I describe myself as Afro-American/Jamaican/Indigenous, am pretty sure my ancestors are descended from Ghana in West Africa, and I also posses White Irish ancestry. The problem is that I am melaninated enough to be treated with racist sentiment. I am also queer, transgender, non-binary, and get misgendered as a Black woman on a regular basis. Add being disabled, neurodivergent, and the child of an immigrant and we have a sixteen servings of intersectional identities that can be used as flaccid justification for oppression against me. I experienced homeless and extreme poverty. I worked until exhaustion to ensure I had ways to stay off the streets. I am still looking for a stable job and income because I have no parents or blood family to support me.
I may still be struggling, but I have suffered too much of the real world for this show to be my blissful escape anymore. And that’s okay. I know I am a real person living in the real world. I know that I can find the smallest pieces of light in the bleakest of dark periods. Creating my pockets of joy that turn into mountains is not new for me. Unlike the people I watch on a screen, who have fortunes, fame, and glass mirror cages that keep them from seeing the cracks in their mirages, sitting with truth is not something I shy from. Truth lives in me. Truth is me.
No show, movie, or celebrity can compare to that.
My Nights Now
I’m sleeping, or at least I’m feeling myself fall asleep.
My head is clear on this warm, clear night, and the trees are whistling “goodnight” softly with their multicolored leaves for the summer. Crickets chirp previously on the grass floor adjacent to my black brick apartment building. And it reminds me of a home that for the first I don’t mind missing. A small smile graces my lips as I picture a sweet woman coming in to say goodnight to the child I was once was, proceeding to turn on three fans to help circulate the air, close the blinds so no one can see me (but I’d open them after she was gone), and lovingly talk sweet nothings to me before bed. Mama did have a way of making bedtime a special adventure before bed.
The smile on my face deepens in a lazy haze as I sense a familiar presence wrap around my exposed waist. The bony, semi-muscular arms settle just below my torpedos and pull me closer to someone who makes my body instantly relax beyond reason. A muffled voice asks something, I say yes, and then those hands begin tenderly stroking the softness of my belly. My unmarked flesh, lightning streaks of stretch marks, and the undersides of my breasts receive gentle touches that lull me further into slumber.
In my mind, the events of the day seem to threaten the peace I feel on the inside of my body. Crossing streets made of hot asphault that turned into dumb weights attached to my calves. My heart tightned at the thought of that catcaller whistling and screaming after my passing ass when crossing the street in front of his blue chevy truck. The woman who refused to respect my pronouns and gender me correctly, because she thinks my simply stating who I am and setting that standard of respect is against her “freedom of speech” honestly made me think some dark thoughts about her. The gears in my head were working overtime as anger, frustration, and anxiety rolled into my C-PTSD, causing my stomach to tie into an unbreakable knot. Reality, what was happening now, was becoming lost to me.
It was all slipping through my fingers so fast.
When my black cat Lucifer came up and began tickling my nose, I took that sensation as a means for climbing out of the rabbit hole. I focused intently on my cat’s slim tail running under my nostrils like the mustache it was trying to be. I then thought of my black bunny Judas Isariot sleeping the night away in their little nest of a bed. It brought a smile to my face thinking about the way their tiny nose would scrunch up at random moments making them the cutest thing on the fucking planet. The light pink of Judas’ little sniffer caused me to remininsce about that nice senior man walking past me on the sidewalk on the way to wherever life was taking me at that time of the day. He wore brown pants with suspenders laying on a cleanly pressed sky blue and white long-sleeved dressshirt. Walking much slower than me, he did not seem to be in a hurry. He only took in each moment as it came and seemed more grateful than the average person for it. I had smiled and waved at him, and he did it back, and man was it nice to know there are still kind souls out here who just can be decent to other folks.
I made it a game, to see how many good things right now could make me recall the small yet beautiful things of earlier. That little plant I have at the corner of the windsow sill behind my partner reminded me of the green of the countless trees I passed while walking down Evenant Avenue and then up Leeson Road, simply taking in all of the sights and sounds that graced past me in each moment. The birds that flew over my head as I walked besides houses older than me, my parents, and grandparents combined, the drivers who had a billion and one things to do but had to beep their way through the cluster fuck of traffic that happened around 5 pm each evening, and there was no forgetting the laughable amount of trash that I came across in the street, making me wish that there were more trash cans placed at various points on the sidewalks.
None of those things were perfect, but they were able to help me become grounded in the present moment again. They all showed me living a real life outside of my bedroom. There were assholes I faced with a middle finger and kept myself moving onward. Fellow passerbys being kind and compassionate, even if it was just a one-time hello being said, warmed my heart closer to peacefulness. Instead of reaching for the top of the rabbit hole, I helped the top come down to my level, feeling the knot unravel into a flow that wrapped compassionately around my whole self.
The bliss settled me into a calming blackness as I pressed a soft kiss to my joyfriend’s calloused palm and joined hands with sleep.
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Overflow
I feel the sadness
Choking my body
And it sliding up
Through my nostrils,
Down my throat
And towards my belly button
Mixing with the water
That makes up most of me.
Fighting is all I know.
Resisting is my nature.
But Lord God!
I feel myself weakening
More and more
As I wait to be rescued
From something
No one sees
Is killing me.
Does anyone care
That I’m dying
Right in front of them?
After all the waiting,
I do the one thing
That I swore
I’d never do.
Surrender
To the overflow.
At first it hurts.
You know,
Like a
Motherfucking bitch.
The overflow tightens
Its hold on me,
Force feeding me
Depression,
Anxiety,
And rolling waves
Of PTSD.
I remember
Every time
I was gaslit
By someone
I poured
My heart out to.
I recall
The fear
The anger
The exhausting annoyance
That came from
Each time
A perverted asshole
Insistently
Sexually harassed me
With his words
His mouth
And his voice
Reeking of privilege
He knows he can abuse
Against me.
The skin of my face
Would burn
In memory
Of every time
Someone refused
To gender me correctly
And be a decent person
Because transphobia
Is synonymous
To free speech
And “being themselves”,
Because their refusal
To see and respect me
As anything
Other than a “female”
Not even a girl or woman
Honors some god-given truth
Protects feminism
The “natural family”.
But in reality,
It only protected
Bullshit,
Bigoted bitches, and
Cunts who can’t
Come correct.
I remembered,
I recalled,
The memories
Replayed
Until my heart stopped.
The overflow
Consumed me
Until there was nothing
Of the old me left.
Whatever I fought against
Was always a part of me.
It was just now joined
To my everything
Without any fight.
Now the real healing
Is about to commence.
Nightmares are Dreams 