going back on my word

we can mourn things / that weren't meant for us

[lvndrfctn]

.i've been trying to get this out for awhile

there is something deep inside me that calls me to write. to share my deepest vulnerabilities and experiences that maybe would have ruined some, but i did not have the luxury of giving up, but had to learn to be "resilient" when in reality i'm just the oldest child. the oldest female child; because we all know that makes a difference.

however, I feel incredibly conflicted in this feeling to write and share.

for a many reasons;

one, being that I am still, at some times, unfortunately, functioning from a mindset wherein I am critiquing my actions from what I imagine, or perceive someone's complaints about me would be. I have a few people who live in my mind and exist as these critics. however, I am intellectually aware these are the same people who have in the past, been in my corner undoubtedly more than any others. Why do these still have such a strong presence in my mind that they, in fact, keep from doing quite a lot?

two; I feel conflicted about sharing so much personal information online. I am overly aware of the surveillance state we are forced to exist within... under, we have no choice. so many companies have purchased our lives in data and we have no control over it. there is not way to supersede the online footprint we all have; there is no avoiding someone googling our name or phone number and potentially, very easily, they can find where we live and where we've lived in the past, our parents, siblings, and grandparents names etc etc. not only the (justified) political paranoia, but that anyone on the entire internet will have sensitive information about me, information i have volunteered.

[sisteroutsiders]

Audre Lorde to her students during a poetry workshop, as shown in A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1996) dir. by Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson

[sisteroutsiders]

A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1996) dir. by Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson

[lvndrfctn]

audre lorde - sister outsider

"Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy."

"In the way the body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms , so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea."

"That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling".

"And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all my life that it be lived within the knowledge that’s satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife. This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all."

"For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of."

[lvndrfctn]

Got a trout on the line, hawk, this one’s a keeper;

I cared about you For a moment I knew when I saw a photo of you at a party-- Your eyes looked sad, projection or not; i felt the same, Wondering what you must have been feeling in that moment; if it had happened that night or if your mind was lingering somewhere distant, idle on a memory of yourself or someone you loved

I will always be disappointed when someone is disappointing, and will always value my understanding of the preciousness of someone letting you know them It makes me feel sad that men don’t care enough about themselves to have comfort; even in pillows, blankets, and things of sentimental value—as if to say, if I can walk alone in this world without any of these things, I can never be known, as if no emotion can be coerced out of you if there is no evidence You struck an egregious familiarity nerve My body is so much smarter than me It will always be disorienting when you’re pulled beneath the comfort and stature of your being in everyday life; to be placed beneath yourself without your consent. To have been a traumatized person, thinking.. this feels familiar, this isn’t for me, I know, and yet I am here, stifled by it. Made idle to a past you, because you were pulled there by someone else’s perception of themselves and how they feel they need to manipulate your being down into how they want you to know they view you.. or by doing so they have been saved from being or treating those around them better. But they aren’t loving themselves Any More. This is, of course, the threat of new people, instances, situations: to have been so hurt in the past, to have healed (or always being in the process of it) and standing in it—be it flailing, misspeaking, thinking of what to do after the fact. I can say I’ve done right by myself, despite how I feel I would have liked to act; how valiantly my friends would have acted had if it been them or their reactions to it for me. Unfortunately, or not, I might always feel these small variant experiences with people deeply. I won’t say more deeply than I should, because for all I knew—they could have been a deeply, delicious, mysterious gift and I may have fumbled it by playing cool—the one I’ve been asking for. Or in any case, someone new; a life long friend or group. You never know; so when people are disappointing and place me within their perceptions of themselves, I will be always disappointed, but not in myself for having been in the situation. That is what self trust is for. Nothing has to go on, and we cannot make people become more alive than they (are despite the trope of one girl making everything better for a man, even if the darkest of places in his life.) Real men close themselves off faster than a blink of an eye—the deception of will-power. Closing them off from themselves, too.