at the end of the day:

a vent blog

[dumbbitcharchives]

I have to know happiness even though you know it too. Life isn’t a game and I can’t win it. And even if I could, it’s the last leg and I’m behind. The water closes over my head like the storm clouds that vignette in the inky sky and blot out the light. That’s what it feels like and so that’s how it is—these blinking seeing staring eyes drink in light desperately, sucking in black velvet torrents down to an unquenchable core where it blots it and deforms it and throws it sneering to me, scraps for the dog. I wish I could see the world without the middleman of myself; although I’m not allowed to wish for things anymore, so the chimes whisper it in that subterranean garden at the center of it all. That and: I wish you were falling, grasping at the closing clouds like they or anything could save you—adore me want me fear me. Think of me. Really mostly that.

[dumbbitcharchives]

alone for once i meet myself again. tell the cat i’m going to the store and does she want anything? and laugh into the silence. i cry ugly—can’t remember the last time i didn’t have to quiet the sobs and so i let my mouth hang open like a child’s. alone i realize the thing i’m most terrified of is my own fear.

[dumbbitcharchives]

coming home,

my plugs fit into the outlets without an adapter, the way they’re supposed to or at least the way i want them to. it’s easier than things have been in a while. and so i hope for this sweeeeeeet stagnation’s sake there isn’t actually a difference between the two:

i mean, my ephemeral mistress supposed to be and that rugged lover of mine what i want.

[dumbbitcharchives]

when she was nine my sister discovered bdsm porn because she searched "female slave" for a school research project on the slave trade, and she spent the next five to seven years convinced she would go to hell. i'm borrowing her trauma because i don't have any of my own: when i was six i sat incense-nauseous in a pew thinking the god-in-heaven of all felt a little improbable. i asked my dad how much longer and he flashed five big fingers at me as the choir droned the mystery of faith... and when my sister sobbed (about, again, going to hell) i thought well you probably won't. when my sister laughs it’s a natural wonder and a joyous booming prayer to god who loves the people he created too much to send them to hell, and when she's mad the delicate bones in her face snap and her eyes ice over until they’re awful. when she was fifteen my sister wanted to die. two years later when i reached the same age i was quietly embarrassed to be alive. there is something enormous in her that knows there's a heaven because she's been there and a hell because she's been there too. and me: i am on earth like i always have been. the lowest i've been is the 12-foot depth of the neighborhood pool and the highest is window seat on a boeing 737 still a little outdone by the shimmery white mountain which pierces the cloud blanket to drink in the sun. well actually even then—the highest i've been is on that beach in puerto rico.

[dumbbitcharchives]

be bitter. god, be poisonous. at your core, let there be rot, blackness, decay. let the shake in your voice be from simmering rage--do not, do not, you must not be about to cry. i am not big or strong enough to carry you--you will have to harden to this world of assailing winds and grow dense enough to not be blown away. can i tether you? can i--? must i? let me be angry and not pitying. grow so big i'm lost in your shadow: so big you can lift me again, hands as big as houses under my arms, til i’m up a lifetime off the ground. please.

[dumbbitcharchives]

there’s being alone and then there’s being alone in a northern winter. the black mornings, the late-coming and early-leaving sun. the cold so sharp it makes everything quiet, absorbs sound. the earth has gone into cryosleep. i think i am alone with myself.

[dumbbitcharchives]

i’m in love with struggle so i don’t mind. if i never do anything, or i guess, never get anything done in the name of doing it all the noble hard way, i, doglike, will still go about it with content sincerity. like: i will never talk to you because i’m waiting for an angel to give me the words; and once i have them and they still need to cool, they still singe my sinner hands a bit, radiate the Heat of Heaven—once i have them i need to carve them into marble with the same ardor the… (oh, pick something) the classic sculpters (sure, that works) had: create indents of soft and supple flesh out of cold rock, rake into stone a pair of lips parted around the imaginary heat of breath—but leave the empty lifeless eyes, that’s ok, the sculptors never figured that out either. i’ll dedicate my life to this and only this. i will make everything beautiful or i’ll make nothing at all.

[dumbbitcharchives]

is there a love that will disarm me? or is there a me out there love will disarm? do i find myself or the love? and is there a deadline? and what if the time runs out? and is there a way to find myself or the love or the answer, any answer, without hurting anyone? do i have to hurt people to be happy? am i a good enough person to warrant my happiness hurting people? isn't that--forgive me--that can't be right--isn't that too dear a price?

[dumbbitcharchives]

I hang on his every word. Or maybe he hangs on mine – I don’t know. Does it matter? Something tells me it matters. I want to matter to him. I want to matter to him more than anyone else, is what it really is. The mattering is implied therein. I think – I will speak for him. Forgive me – I think that we want to try each other on. A shirt at the shopping mall that feels a little wrong, a little off, but all the more tantalizing for being so. This could be you, go the whispers, and moreover, how will you live with yourself if you never know? I could wear him around for a day, a week, a month, a year. I could confirm that it’s not me, the shirt, it’s not me at all. Then I would know! Why can’t you do that? Why do you only get one shirt at a time? Maybe one shirt ever?

[dumbbitcharchives]

it's like i'm rubbing away a layer of filmy mucus and seeing clearly for the first time in ages. it's like i'm forcing myself against a whetstone, feeling the pebbled surface of it carve this bloated body into something that's almost sharp enough to feel like me again. i'm not sure who i've been.

[dumbbitcharchives]

i’m not sure how to feel. this in itself is not unusual--but i’m not even sure how to command myself to feel, what feeling to speak into existence. should i be mad? should i be mad?

i’m not sure what to do with her. i am not sure. this in itself is not unusual, because the only emotion i’ve had stronger than my hatred for her is that time i loved her. and now there is to be peace. i guess. god, you know, like--unburden yourself already. there’ll be no peace until you do. until she does, i mean. until you do.

i’m not sure how important the past is. maybe there is just the present, because reality is not comprised of patterns, necessarily--there is no promise of repetition. so the past is the past and the now is now and now is everything and tomorrow is blazing and bright and unknowable. and you like this. you love it! i think i am going to sabotage my whole life. i think i am going to ruin everything.

there is a sleeping boy in this bed. his face is vulnerable when he sleeps. and i wonder what’s lurking at his core. vulnerability, i’m going to stress, is not softness, although it’s so raw it sometimes feels like it. vulnerability, i’m going to vow, is not for me. he is probably dreaming. he is probably dreaming.

there is this: me at the center of the universe. the core of the milky way, the center into which--from which???--its tendrils meander, is made of hurt. so this hurt little creature manages to hurt everyone she loves (and hates) and still feels like the victim. you hurt me first, you know? the great fallacy of i was hurt first.

there are a couple things you can’t escape from, and they are as follows: your dad is going to die, you are going to become your mom, and you have to live with yourself for the rest of your life. you have to find a way to stand yourself. forever. god. i hope we get reborn so i can catch a fucking break. i hope my dad gets reborn and this time around the world is so gentle. although this is probably the second greatest fallacy of all, and even when you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth there are thorns. you have to plant them yourself but--you know. they’re there.

[dumbbitcharchives]

there are a lot of ways to be a passionate lover, i think. i’m talking about the grand scheme of things, about appearances--about the encyclopedia of humans that god keeps, just a short entry for everyone who ever lived, that he lets the angels read when things are slow up there. there are a lot of ways. the first way is this: i find you when i’m still a kid. we’re both kids. and i love you in that clumsy unpracticed way. we laugh a lot, figure things out--and i love you and love you and love you until i die and i realize there was never anything to figure out, that life is a roll of film unfurling and it was only ever you and me. this picture of things is colored gold. i squint into the possibility of it. gold like--oh, come on. you don’t have to take every piece of low-hanging fruit. the gist of it is i found you. i’m not letting go.

and i guess there’s also the way where life and love are one thing (the universe experiencing itself etc.), and i know this--in this version of things i’m imbued with this divine sense about How Things Are. so i go to paris and make love with men and women and the world, smoke a cigarette or twelve on a balcony, wear long black dresses with low backs--okay, this is turning into a vague collection of movie aesthetics--and most importantly disappear from my smoke world where and when i want to. if this is the Way Things Are then just living is an act of devotion. haunting. haunting. haunting. the roads we don’t take.

[dumbbitcharchives]

he took me by my little face and said you look like athena, said you’re quite simply my favorite person, said you make me believe in god. this is all well and good: the violins play, or the harps, or whatever instrument is protocol for that kind of thing. but then, you know, he reads me a destiel fanfic that he liked back when he was into supernatural, looks up a shipping compilation on youtube to really show me what we’re working with (we are working, as i suspected, with two straight white men, but it’s set to that one lord huron song), and i laugh until i forget how not to smile. and it occurs to me that for the first time--for the first time--i am not embarrassed of myself. that tight knot (the one that lives in my stomach, that periodically liquefies into hot, salty hatred before beginning the slow process of congealing back again into shame) is not there. and that’s--i mean.

i mean.

oh! here it is: i want him to know me. huh.

[dumbbitcharchives]

well, it’s happening again--and beginning to feel like my whole life will just be a series of happenings, of ebbs (the lazy trickling illusion of peace) and torrential, fatal flows that take me under for days and days and then spit me out, gasping, shivering, a curled heap on some barren unknown shore. i will never love easily.

[dumbbitcharchives]

sick to my stomach for the thousand-and-first time this week because of you. WHY, this time around, is this half sweetness and half TORTURE. i am happy. i am happy. i was happy. am i being pulled into a black hole? maybe i’m not the problem, or at least not all of it--maybe i never was! maybe it’s you--it’s you--it’s you. maybe i am nothing like i thought i was to you. maybe this whole thing is a big fucking joke, a competition you resent, and in which you’ve decided, since quitting isn’t an option, that i’m the most tolerable prize of the whole miserable bunch. and simple me--stupid me--to think you were happy, too. i am being so catastrophically serious right now: stupid me. stupid me. stupid, emotional little girl. i have invested everything i have and am and ever was with blind, breathless abandon.

tell me the fucking truth. for once. how i make your lip curl. how you stoop down to look in my eyes. how it’s karrsen fucking bryant against the world, how no one else gets it--gets you--as if you ever give them the chance. fuck me face-down into the mattress (i am at least good for this). oh, or grab me soft around the middle and push in, like you always do, and breathe things into my ear that you think i want to hear (they’re the same things any silly girl wants, so the whole practice is easy to the point of repetition). i could scream! i am nothing! i am nothing! i am--

i am going to claw bloody lines down my throat, because it feels better than the burn of trying not to cry. because i am not what you think i am. there is no wool over my eyes. i see with jewel-toned clarity every way (from fire to ice) the world could ever end. i will claw until my fingernails splinter down to the jagged bloody quick to the very center of you and take for myself whatever i find there. i refuse blind contentment, although it is shining and delicate and soft--and right there, within reach, calling with a voice like a song.

[dumbbitcharchives]

every waking moment is for you. tu penses aussi à moi? either way. i’ve been half wretched and half divine lately. i have loved so deeply it made me want to tear my heart out--so deeply you could sip it like tea and honey--so deeply i’ve been transformed, hideous, held together, born and burned and reborn between your palms. the thought of you with her is searing, an iron i can’t drop even as my hands blister (i wish i wasn’t like this. i wish i was softer, sweeter. can i ask you for something unfair?). love me anyway. love me regardless.

[dumbbitcharchives]

“i’ll see you soon:” a prayer, a promise, the last straw from which i drink you dry. with you it is skin on skin on skin--warm, in the way that summer is (if, i guess, i’m the ice cream cone melting in rivulets down a child’s chubby arm, and not, say, the flower that withers in the overabundant heat, which can’t help but strain its long slender neck still--always--towards the sun); desperate, in the way that autumn warns of winter, in the way that the leaves become more beautiful before they die--obstinately, cyclically, leaving behind rows of stripped-bare skeletons that howl at the loss (it is no less distressing for how predictable it is). and still: i love you like spring, sweet boy. you’re like spring. and i hold you in my palm and cradle you there for one single precious moment before you scatter-- a thousand soaring fractals of life and laughter-- into the wind. a prayer, then. a reprise. i’ll see you soon.