Always A Part

Less than a week and distance will no longer be relevant. And while I have been, overall, too clawed into the sadness of my history to write coherently I am feeling stronger right now. I have to keep my thoughts pulled back, that is the secret.

We spoke today about the changing meanings of our relationship. In my mind it seems like some sort of living thing that we create. It is so strange to me to have created something so entirely good and hopeful. When I try to describe it I get frustrated because they are the wrong words, over and over and never adequate. I guess I do not have the experience to even really try.

There are some small seeds in me still with the sadness that tell me that if I really cared for you I’d want you to be free of what I often feel is my inescapable past, capacities that I worry I can never regain. I grow afraid that the hideous and broken down thing that I am is hidden behind a shellac I meticulously built so I could chase my compulsions and gather around me soothing decorations and containers. So you just don't see it. Maybe can't recognize something so horrible. The specter of the revulsion dipped in fear in my mother’s eyes when she regards me chases me forever. The more greatness and goodness I see in you the stronger the guilt about my duplicity. I know these feelings are not real. But something being real or not has not got enough to do with me.

These are just controllable pieces. Usually controllable. I write about them because these are also the places that, when something is difficult, spread over me entirely.

dead fingers

One thing is sometimes I need to shut everything out. I don’t do a good job of keeping unimportant people at a distance and all of their demands pile up until I just close entirely down.

I don’t like not sleeping well of course. But when I am tired there is safety in it. When I am well rested and very relaxed I sometimes get vivid and uncomfortable physical sensations. The feeling of some sort of inanimate and cold object, like a dead human hand, being pushed inside of me. It doesn’t hurt so much as burn, but more importantly, leaves me feeling inexplicably devastated and alarmed. So the calm is broken. I tell myself it is not important, there is nothing really happening but when it happens it seems the realest thing of all.

It doesn't bleed into the other parts of my life but stays contained, anchoring my other secret world through shame and grief. I don't talk about it because I don't want it to define me.