honesty does not have to be a knife.

thank you for reading my blog! my name is elliott and sometimes i write. insomnia and a ghost is a daily writing project that ran from july 21, 2013 to november 21, 2013. my poems i like best are tagged "finished pile"

[lovelyscentedghost]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

a short poem inspired by Portrait of a Lady on Fire

excerpt:

when you met me, i was still. not calm — clinging to the cliff behind my eyes. my mind white as saltspray, a hawk’s cry twisting wordless on the wind.

it is not about turning back. there is no back.

[lovelyscentedghost]

Hi! My name is Haley I’m 17 and I’m just going to say it you’re my favorite author! I want everyone to read your writing!! The amount of care and complex thought that goes into every word and your dedication to write a true teenage experience truly makes me so happy my heart feels like it could burst thank you!!!

<333 This honestly made my day, thank you so much for your kind words!

[lovelyscentedghost]

im really glad i found your writing

<3

[lovelyscentedghost]

i. and you stare down in- to nothing and then you stare down into what’s next ii. split open orange; this code you hold -- tentative, pulsing -- wants to live

&. relativity: this night breaking into you like shards or like song

[lovelyscentedghost]

it seems like despair and hopefulness should be incompatible but i have so much of each. i give up art, writing, speaking, thinking, a hundred times a day. and then i go back. my brain decays and i build it back, clumsy handfuls of sand, imposter syndrome of a person, blank paper caught in the updraft. there are so many things i want to experience. i tear me apart but i love the world.

[lovelyscentedghost]

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[lovelyscentedghost]

trauma doesn't often feel like trauma is 'supposed' to feel. it feels like indifferent detachment, watching from outside yourself because nothing can hurt you there. it feels normal, just how people interact, so why are you making a big deal about it?  it feels like a joke -- just how kids play, just how adults tease, just how some relationships work.

you wake from nightmares five years later and still wonder if you made it all up.

trauma can look like bad behaviour. like the stubborn refusal to get better, to stop self-destructing. trauma is putting yourself in harm’s way because you don't really mean it, or because it's funny, or because you just want to feel something, or because you just want to stop feeling. it’s wanting to destroy and reassemble yourself into another person entirely, so your real life can begin. because this isn't real. because really bad things don't happen to people like you.

trauma is the constant feeling of being an impostor. it's the drive to survive twinned with the impulse to make yourself more sick in more ways. to hurt yourself to prove how bad you feel, or to punish yourself for exaggerating. you want people to believe what you've been through, to tell you your feelings are real, that your memories really happened. but when people do take you seriously, you play it off as a joke, apologize for bringing the mood down.

you go on and on about how it wasn't that bad. you seek permission to still love the ones who hurt you, because it's the people closest to us who can hurt us most deeply.

you can feel like the people who hurt you are the only ones who really knew you. in low self esteem, you can mistake cruelty for honesty.

there will always be people who have been through worse. that doesn't make what happened to you okay.

there will always be people who don't believe you. that doesn't mean you are lying.

at some point, you have to take yourself seriously. you have to make a life you can stand to live. it's the only way to survive.

[lovelyscentedghost]

encouragements / june 6 2016

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I keep coming back to the question of emptiness. Maybe that's the problem -- that I see it as a question.

In an essay I read, "People seek pleasure and avoid pain." By this definition, I am still trying to become a person. One day I would like to experience hurt and think, "How to alleviate this," instead of, "How to prove this." I guess I mean intrinsic worth.

CA Conrad wrote, "I would never / do to you / what I have / done to myself." I feel that.

[lovelyscentedghost]

Do you think I enjoy this? Glass-voiced, cellophane-skinned, toes bloodied with eggshells. Any disagreement splits me open and I crave that closeness. I am too old to lie in the driveway or ask why you didn't text me back. Instead, I keep a notebook, pages cramped with calorie counts and job applications. I raise the curtain, lower it, watch the days slip through without me. Tell me why someone who could be anything would choose the same hunger again and again

[lovelyscentedghost]

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