a brain cell with no brain cells of its own

rumors, lists, and musings. this page is a thought-baby, a mirror to my mouth checking for the breath of someone with no lungs. my name is raiin and I will be documenting my thoughts here - a lot through creative flash fictions. although this started as a course project, i think that i might stick with it. the pieces posted are ones that i have written in the past, and explore different needs (or experiences of needs), and the pursuit to process the wants of those needs. some things make sense, and some things might not (to you). interact as you like!

[parceltongue]

signing off now - shoot me a call if you have something for me.

see ya!

*smooches*

[parceltongue]

untitled

I was born in Nigeria – specifically, in Akure, Ondo State.  I grew up there for four years, before we moved to Ife.  In Akure, my brother was born.  I prayed for him every night, because everyone I knew at the time had younger siblings, and I wanted one too.  That was a. significant thing, I think.  It is definitely something I will unpack in therapy.  In Akure, I went to Complete Child Development Center, and I went to Sunday school and I dissociated a lot.  I had a friend across the street named Jessica, and she had an older sister and a younger brother.  I had a friend next to us, and I think his name is Olu or Ayo.  In Akure, we apparently used to not have a car, and when visitors would come I would sit in their car because it was cool.  And then we had a car.  It was called Seyi’s car.  Then apparently, because we did not have AC, I had a new reason to sit in visitors’ cars (because they had AC).  The background in a lot of my baby and early pictures, were in Akure.  The orange frog that lived in the bathroom was in Akure.  In Akure, I read the Queens Primer and taught my brother the alphabet and watched him get circumcised.  I was bullied ins school, and I did not understand ow to associate with my peers.  I was sick that one time.  My dad had a job in Ilesha, and then Ife, and he would be gone a lot.

We moved to Ife when I was four.  I remember, because I turned five there.  I grew up here in Ife.  I went to Hope for the Living and Divine Nursery and Primary School and (maybe some others?) and Sunshine Nursery and Primary School and Obafemi Awolowo University Secondary School.  My parents were lecturers at Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital.  This is also where they went to school.  I met Tomi Sijuwade here.  I was bullied ins chool.  I saw my mom cry. I remember my brother’s daycare.  I remember Superstory and NTA.  I remember Covenant church and Sunday school and camp.  I remember my mom going to Lago for school.  I remember when the started taking turns to come to America. I remember cultural dance club and debate team and charcoal on Fridays and agriculture and CRK and lesson teachers and “bagan gbagan gbagan gbagan ____ lesson!!!”  I remember cultural day and the tailor and househelp and Aunty Morayo and phase 3 and phase 2 and Iya Rasaki and interhouse sports and calisthenics and exams and new stationary and DSTV.  I remember realizing my body and pain and Iya Seyi and snakes and nightmares.  I remember computer and the bunny game and solitaire and purble place and the others.  I remember Baba-T and Isaac Oladele and piano teacher and.  And the Oni and school excursions and being so so so very sad and dissociative.  I remember wanting so bad to come here.

We moved here, to Pennsylvania.  We flew in though Lagos to Atlanta.  Daddy D icked us from the airport and we stayed with them in Alabama till we went to Maryland.  The cousins were in Maryland.  I grew up in Maryland.  There was the big house and the red room and lights and space and the basement and tv and pool and table tennis and the treadmill.  There were all the rooms and the bathrooms and the lawn and basketball net.

Pennsylvania was West Reading Elementary Center and Wyomissing Area Junior Senior High School and The King’s Academy and Glad Tidings.  And Vacation Bible School and puberty and hating life and being so alone, oh so alone. And stealing and eating disorders and no sleep and Kayla and Julian and Beth and Anneken and Alex and john and feeling so alone and betrayal and Ms stella and dreamweaver and princessblackbarbieclique and punishment and humiliation and ostracization and being bullied and being fat ad running around the yard and taxi and Sams club and waking u in the morning for sit-ups and SATs and ACTs and being a sheep and cow and oxen in a buggy.  It is Penn Avenue and VF Outlet and Berkshire Mall and Hawthorne Court and Prime Pain Specialists.  It is Mara and Skye and library club and the library and Laura Ingalls Wilder.  My mom lived in Philly more than Reading, and then in Hershey. And my dad commuted to/in Hershey as well and there was the  court case and the stairs and the pink carpet.  It was depression and humiliation and senior year and knowing that my life is being ruined/wasted. It was Albright College after Washington College.  It was Yasmine and Yata and Trinity and Roessner and decorating and zion and Sharyce and Sufjan Stevens ad being so so sos os os sos os sos osso very very much alone.  I thought I was sincerely going to die.  I died here.

Washington College showed me myself.

New York gave me a breather.  But I was going to die.  They bullied me.  I could have bee happy here  I was sad, tired, recovering. I was betrayed.  I had betrayed. I ran.

I am in LA.

[parceltongue]

live footage of me setting up this page and making up these posts 😂

this is so fun!

[flowerytale]

Susan Sontag, from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980

[satanasaeternus]

"Sleepwalker" - Lenia Platania

[parceltongue]

dream and dream and dream and dream again

A nightmare I always had as a child – it was a recurring dream that scared me to bits – was of the devil, and the devil taking a hold of me and my family (most likely influenced by my petty, religious, cult-y upbringing). In the dream, I think I would wake up. The setting is the house that we lived in at the time, so you know that it felt so very very real. (Years later, I will have a dream that’s sorta set in that house, where I have a dick and this woman is sucking my dick. I don’t think we were supposed to be together – it felt forbidden, sort of like with Isaac or Piano Teacher or Baba-T or Kayode. I don’t know if sex will never feel like rebellion to me. Or living. I just want it to be sex – just a part of my living. But yeah, she sucked my dick and it felt good, but I remember being kinda scared. That someone would walk in, or that she would hurt me, or that I would hurt her). In this nightmare, I look out of my room to the corridor, and the devil, or someone that I interpret(ed) as the devil is sitting in the kitchen (which I can see from my room in the house’s layout) on the apótí (a stool that we had then – I once stood on this apótí and rocked back and forth until I fell into the nearby pot where my aunt was cooking a cake. I still have a scar from then. The apótí was the center of the kitchen for the longest time – we did everything on there, and with it. My first house chore involved me sitting on this stool. This devil is beckoning me to him, and I feel very drawn to him. I am scared by the fact that I cannot control my body and am being physically magnetized to him, no matter how much I try to turn or run away. I don’t know what he wants from me. I am part-way to the kitchen when I turn my head and see my parents and brother in the other room. There are three beds set up, one after the other, right next to each other. Each bed has a bronze-like bed frame and white sheets. My parents and brother aren’t lying on the beds. They are sitting up in the bed, and their eyes are vacant. I think their pupils were extra TINY (like little dots) or nonexistent, because it was mostly the whites of their eyes. I yelled to them, with no response. If they could hear me, they didn’t show it. They stared straight ahead and paid no mind as I was dragged by invisible sources towards the kitchen. It tried doing something that my mom and Nollywood movies had taught me to do in those situations (something that I find myself doing, still, in some of my anxiety dreams/nightmares), and I kept calling “the blood of Jesus,” saying it over and over until I hoped to feel a difference, or until everything and everyone went back to normal. I don’t know if the devil creature wanted to turn me into my family, or kill me, or make me his own, but I was so frightened when I was younger. I didn’t really have a place to channel this fear. I always slept with the blanket over my head, covering every bit of myself that was exposed to air, and tucking the blanket all around me 360 to protect me from the darkness and negative space. Sometimes, I would wake up to my mom whipping me because she was scared I would suffocate myself. I still sleep like this, but not as much from anxiety, I guess. (It’s a lie: wrapping myself up like this makes me feel safer). I don’t know (remember) how many times this dream recurred, but it is one of the first things I think of when prompted to think of a dream I have had. This dream was in my nightmares when I was 5! That was nearly 20 years ago, and it still lingers in my mind. It’s funny because part of the reason I knew (thought) the devil wanted me is because, as I looked at my (basically dead) family, I felt no remorse. More relief and guilt that relief was going to be the last thing I felt before I was consumed. I don’t feel regret about it, but five-year-old me was a bit scared about the depths of feeling that I could possibly feel (or maybe not feel). I was staring my own self in the face, and I knew that I could be capable of this. And I wasn’t confused about that.

[parceltongue]

i had a whole writeup but i lost it!! i don't think i had it saved

[parceltongue]

what are my creative writing goals for the future?

honestly? i dont know, but i definitely need

[bookcub]

Guys, I just concluded an essay about Bartleby the Scrivner with the line, “that being said, I would actually prefer not to.” 

[parceltongue]

@ my last post:

😭😭 imma leave it up tho

[parceltongue]

reflections

As a friend of a friend of the family’s, I was closer to her than you would think. Even with our distant relationship, every Friday evening I would bring her and her brothers my homemade ginger spice biscuits. It wasn’t long before I was christened Ginger, which I did not exactly find humorous. I only let the name stick because she seemed to find the whole situation amusing. She was pretty, and she clicked when she was amused. Undaunted by her frigid air, I would sit by her as she went by her scholarly duties. She always had a busy life. Sometimes, she would sit by the fireplace, legs tucked underneath her skirt and hand folded in her lap, reading book, her lips faintly forming the words that reflected in her eyes though the light of the warm fire. I would sit and serenade her, telling whimsical tales of days past and dreams of the future. Funny, she would never admit to her plans for the future - always replying to my inquiries with a monotone voice. “I prefer not to think of such things.” And every Friday evening, I would be shut down and forced to drop the subject. It wasn’t long before we were engaged. I had asked her brothers for her hand, and they readily gave her to me. She was mine now. But not without resistance. Imagine my surprise when, as a reply to my proposal, she said, “I would prefer not to.” Stuttering in unbalanced confusion, I managed to choke out a “Why?” She simply looked through me with those cold, unfeeling eyes, hands folded in her lap, and muttered, her voice barely above a whisper, “I would prefer not to.” In this way, she refused me over and over again, even as I pleaded with her. At that point, I knew that we were engaged but we were not destined to be wed. She would not be moved. She would prefer not to. I watched her walk away from me, a picture of regal beauty, as a lady should be, the image of her eyes burnt forever in my mind. I would never see her again.

[parceltongue]

no place like home

I want to write about I want to write about I want to write (home) about I want to write about I wanted to write about? I’d like to write about I wish to write about What is there to write about? I keep making excuses about I thought they kept making excuses about I know they keep making excuses about him and I hate them for it. I want to write about home and about the feeling of loss except loss means having something before and I don’t know if there has ever been a feeling about a thing that may not have ever been there, or fully formed to be a digestible thing of representation. I want to write about books and things and tales and tails and triggers. I don’t really want to write about any of these things, but I do want to write about what I want what do I want to write about I want to write about success and how that feels like daycare and if being a child is humane. If existing is humane. If having a conscious brain, or being led to think you have/are a conscious brain (when you do/are not), is humane. I don’t want to ask what humane means because what is the basis of the concept of humane-ness (and, I guess, by extension, humanity). Although I do not much like writing about humanity because it feels like writing as if I am beginning to preach, and I do not want to preach. I want to kill. I want to write about Villainelle and about how I want to be able to be that fearless and strong to defend myself, and utterly devastating. I want to write about being utterly devastating. I want to be utterly devastating. I want to always be a question hypothesis with an unfalsifiable claim. I want to kill and lick and speak and suck and spite and spit and fuck and lie and scream and DANCe I want to fuck the world like Villainelle and have the whole world watch me do it. But I don’t want to be seen unless its on my own terms. But I want to be wanted by all. I want to be able to have what I want. I want to sink my teeth into what makes me vulnerable and get lost. I want to rock and comfort myself, but I can’t bear to be in my comforter’s body. I want to be both, but only want to experience the consolation. And there is no one to take my place.

[parceltongue]

what did i discover about my writing?

i think that i discovered that i have the words to tell, and they don't just have to stay in my head. i learned that i have so much depth, and that i will not drown, no matter how much the wave may seem to overwhelm me. i understand myself in a more intimate way, and cannot wait to explore some more of my depths.

[janicerodriguez-deactivated2025]

Don Walker's Sandwich Center, Aurora, Illinois, December 2021

Shot on Cinestill 800T

there's no place like home ❤️

[parceltongue]

responses

imma have to try to not respond to every question. some of these make me feel that y'all never read the piece :(

[parceltongue]

if i had a clone...

I don’t remember the first time I thought about sex. I don’t know if that is a truth or a lie. I may remember, but I don’t know if I do. I [think I] remember one of the first times I fantasized about things that involved bodies touching. Is it possible to be possessed by the spirit of a sex worker? A nymphomaniac? Both? I have never really resonated with the title of nymphomaniac, but I do consider myself to be a sex worker. And I don’t think that has much to do with my trauma. I think maybe my trauma has something to do with the fact that I think about sex all the time. I haven’t fucked a lot of people outside my head. I would fuck myself if I was another body. I don’t know how to summarize/describe/categorize my life and the interactions that I have had with people who want something from me, so far, as anything other than a transaction that I pay with entertainment. I feel like a show that I never prepped for, before the opening night. Now, I’m many years into the production of the show, and am getting the hang of it. But is this the show I would have picked? Would I even want to be in show business? I could not tell you (that might be a lie). Maybe I could tell you but maybe not right now (that may be another lie). I don’t know what to tell you because it’s all true, but none of it is real. The things that I consider real seem to be out of my reach, or anyone else’s. I desire to break it all down and start from scratch but break what down and start where, with what? Like, what is start and what is is and what is done and what is did? Aren’t they all the same in the grand scheme of things? I don’t remember the first time I was told that I don’t have to be something just because I want to. But does that mean I shouldn’t (or don’t have to) do or listen to that just because I was told to? But then how do I learn and grow and develop as a person? Or is this not something that people do? I was always under the impression that these are things that people must do. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want anything except for the things that are kept from me. Does this make the things that I want mine or someone else’s? I don’t know. Don’t ask me, my license has been expired for almost three years now. But I still think about fucking my self in the bed of my truck

[luciusswimminglessons]

Why do I think that Jaskier fucking his clone is gonna be the new hot trend in witcher fanfiction