It’s not last summer yet

streams of consciousness, or a babbling brook

I paused the film I was desperately trying to engage with to start writing. I haven’t followed the gnawing urge in a long time, I never thought I’d actually give in and try again. This won’t likely be anything polished, or anything beyond a stream of consciousness, even though I feel as I’ve lost a lot of that along the way. I was about to say but not up until writing this, but that felt trite; I’ve been losing so much of myself for as long as I’ve had myself, I suppose. Couldn’t quite nail the timing on that.

I feel alive and not at the same time. That was a slip of sorts. What I meant to say was,

I feel wide awake and completely asleep at the same time.

When I spoke with my therapist today, and by spoke I mean cried the entire 55 minute session, all I could feel was shame as a reaction to everything I lamented about. There are possibly many more things I need to write about on this topic of shame and how it’s the thread that ties all of me together, if only for my own sanity.

I swear I write so feverishly and instantaneously these days, but I wouldn’t let anyone see the majority of those words. I journal on large sketchpads I tape to the walls of my bedroom; anyone who enters this room can read my deepest (and most manic) of secrets, my anamorphic emotions. But no one ever reads the writing on the walls. Isn’t that haunting, more than the words merely existing there in the first place?

When I screamed, it echoed destructively in my head until I collapsed. If I fell down and no one heard it - why do they see the cracks across my porcelain body?

When I was a little kid, my neighbors and I would rally together in someone’s house to play hide-and-seek, well into our tweenage years. We were playing at my parents house the first time it happened; I panicked to find a place to hide before time was up and anxiety crept in. Hushes from hiding friends. (We’ll circle back but remember that episode of Portlandia with the hide-and-seek league playing in the public library?) I climbed up the countertop and on top of the fridge, sitting stooped below the ceiling with legs crossed beneath me as I tried new methods to condense myself into another shape. Smaller, maybe more convenient. Better at keeping my mouth shut. I was one of the last to be discovered, and my friends erupted with laughter at how obvious it was for me to be found, and “what a great hiding spot!”, but no one simply bothered to look up. That became my go-to hiding place whenever we started another game. My best working charm. Back then, it was easier to disappear, easier to hide in plain sight.

I have stood directly in front of you begging for slaughter, but I wasn’t good enough to be killed.

I think if I had followed through with a few of those pleasedonteverhavethemagain plans, it wouldn’t have been earned. Even to this day. It wouldn’t have been selfish, however. Selfless, almost, considering I gave up before I even had a legacy to leave behind. I’ve always feared a fate like Emily Dickinson, to have my greatest works discovered just after my death and I couldn’t reap the glory of- no, not fame or riches, but the glory of having lived something worth more than oxygen and a steady blood flow.

My pulse needed, or needs, to be heard like thunder. A resounding revelry. As if the world would stop turning without knowing what I had inside of me to give.

But I haven’t given enough. Haven’t given enough of myself yet to deserve myself. I stood in front of all of you with my guts crawling to the floor, my insides becoming outside, but I was intangible, still speaking in tongues I thought you all understood, but you didn’t. You couldn’t hear a word I tried to say and it wasn’t your fault, I promise, it wasn’t my fault, I promise. It wasn’t yours.

In that episode of Portlandia where there is an adult hide-and-seek league, a woman at the library pokes fun at Fred Armisen’s character for his hipster eccentricities. I laugh to recall the scene, but my stomach aches to feel the sting of being humbled.

“It’s kind of a house but it’s kind of falling apart?”
”Yes, ma’am.”
“I think that describes your life right now, honey.”

Sturdy, yet unsteady. Today I told my therapist my life has fallen apart. “In shambles” were my words. He didn’t argue, nor agree. He listens when sometimes I have to list every single unbearable feeling or task or obstacle I have to handle as part of being an adult (another thing I expressed personal failure in to him). Releasing the thoughts slightly shift the weight that I still end up carrying. All of that to say I don’t feel that things are in their right places yet, and this isn’t actually getting to the point.

What I mean to say is that I feel a type of emptiness in myself now, after I’ve scraped out every wound, scooped out the black bile from where muscle meets bone. I’ve emptied out so much of me that was dead and rotten, that these gaping holes are still healing wounds, making room for, I don’t know, happiness? Or maybe just not the dark oozing decay that occupied my being for so long? Anything else, please.

I am my own home and it has fallen apart, due to structural instability and mandatory renovations. Much of what I excavated out were the parts I thought essential to my being, elements I believed were keeping me alive. Emptiness may actually be unfamiliar, in this context or perspective…in the light of this moment that grazes across the walls of my bedroom I have not left for five days.

I smirk at the refractions
And as the sun sets
they fade into shadow.

Two years ago, my Saturn returned. That means something to a lot of people, presumably the moon, too. I didn’t know it was happening at the time. Two years ago, I went to the movie theater, alone per usual, took an edible…per usual, and left the theater with hot hands and my legs demanding movement. I paced around old cobblestone side streets in the light Spring rain. Reeling from the film and without anyone to talk to about it, I spoke to myself. I paced like that for an hour or so, recording the conversation I had with myself about how I had something to say. I’ve felt that feeling a lot, but this was a sense of self importance after the lowest of blows I was and am still recovering from. This was a phase of my evolution, considering the season I was in and the cosmic-managed matters. Two years ago, I punched through a picture frame and l punched repeatedly into the wall until the red I saw in my eyes was escaping from my knuckles and sticking to the beige paint.

I never listened back to the words I said. That wasn’t the point at all. If you’ve gotten this far and thought the point would, well, have a sharper one, get in line for an apology letter. I’ve got plenty overdue. You will never get one, but know I’ll be writing them until my hands stiffen and crumble into dust. The point was that I had not only something to say, but significance and substance to pour into the gashes and stitch them back together.

I can’t die yet, I still have things to say!
Scream them into your open mouth,
Scream them until my voice is one I recognize.

Scream and yell until my throat runs raw, until I am standing in front of myself. Until I like what I see, until I can no longer be hidden from my own sight. Until I see the sounds.