♥

this is not a safe space.

[qanoor]

a beautiful thing

dear miel:

i am still softly weak from your eyes looking into mine, how i moved from the persnickety artistry of keeping my legs apart just so, with the slip and the ruffles just so – to an abandon i had not ever experienced before. i could have fainted from how weak and ecstatic you made me with your devouring. i am used to neuropathy and i am used to the perseverated orgasm. but you made my entire body shudder, tingle, divine itself humming, nerves afire, a cold sweat i wanted, a descendancy i craved. this subspace of my own volition. and when i needed to stop when i needed to eat something i was still shaking from how much i craved you, your tongue and your mouth, your hair clenched in my hands, your hands carving themselves into my belly. and i am still full of that wanting ache. i don’t know if it was another kind of orgasm or a somewhat hunger-informed mix of pain and pleasure, but it was ecstatic and i didn’t need to come the usual way to beg you and need you and feel you electric in my body. 

just thinking about my hands traversing your thighs your belly your breasts your hands your neck your cheeks your hair your legs everything. makes me surge warm and aching, in my cunt and in my legs, in my breath in my hips. i could touch you and touch you and touch you. i do touch you and touch you and touch you. but – i can’t find enough words for this. i can’t! i didn’t think this was possible for me. i didn’t. there were glimmers in the past few years, perhaps a glimmer with karl as well, or some times when sam fucked me, or the possibility of being brown and queer together with jahnavi, and memories… – and i want this with other people too, i want this with sophie (again?) – but with you the dream is real & i am not ashamed anymore & i want to cry with the weight and heat of it & i am astonished by my own desire to fuck you and fuck you and fuck you & how is it that you are bringing new meanings to me every time? how is it.

[qanoor]

i'm rereading posts and i think i have to stop now. this crushes me so much to read,

how could i have made it all go so wrong

miel i just wish you were still mine i wish i wasn't another asshole who fucked you over i wish --

i regret it so much

[qanoor]

i was talking to s. and at first the subliminal wrongness & also an appreciation for -- and then annoyance -- how dare you bring up consent -- but how much is this my own -- to have a guy -- who i can assume as violative -- the ordinary interaction which doesn't make sense -- really, over screenshots of a text conversation? -- but then i apologized, anyway, amidst defensiveness --

i do and don't want to make sense. dovetailing back and forth between him trying & my curtness then my apology then my -- i want to scream at you why won't you fucking love me why won't you fucking be here -- still how it smarts, all these years and when it comes down to it you're like stone -- maybe that's just it -- but what do i engender in you?

eventually to actually be able to bring it up -- what you shared with me once -- was that a moment of defensiveness for him? "mostly consensually" but how much t.'s horror reverberates in my brain -- how much i wanted to prepare -- but in the end he was just vulnerable, too. to be years into -- to not trust when you were in this country, and i wasted it -- and now to be -- no, not that.

could you really fall in love with me? to actually -- i feel like i said something important, but did i just slam it all down with no tact? i'm not sure. it's in this moment of -- i can understand, i hope i can understand -- how you internalized the monster, too. (is it easy to think, oh but it's worse what you did, or is it that there really is a relationality there?) in this moment, just for a moment, this is where i can fall in love with you -- i could, i did, almost say it --

[qanoor]

how tragic to be ______

i don't know how to do any of this.

the microwave with some white smear, the only respite being that it's not meat or fish, because we don't eat meat (or fish, anymore) at home. somehow -- the start and stop buttons forever getting dirty, too -- the halfhearted wipe -- just staring -- or wondering as i get some water if the fan's air is radioactive, even though that's been disproved -- i think

all the crevices in this decaying apartment. almost 8 years. i can't do this anymore i can't do this anymore i can't do this anymore

i am so alone & there is no respite

[qanoor]

there are these moments when i feel sudden sparks of hope and connection -- even a fire that has been dulled over so extremely. & it terrifies me because i have learned to be terrified. i want to do so many things, i’ve wanted to at any rate. and to suddenly feel like there’s organizing happening that maybe i could have some part in. that i could be in any spaces at all. or with the litmag group this year too. that there’s any real space i could be in. it’s a lot to consider, and it’s usually shattered just as soon as it’s hoped for.

i know too much about all the terrible things that can and do happen all the time. i know too much about being disposed of -- myself & others. witnessing people i love shatter so deep i can’t find them anymore. witnessing my own shattering. there’s no emerging from it, really. not really, not ever. so having hope is terrifying, it has to be.

this is quite trite. a little vague. and i’m sure likeable enough. but what’s interwoven is more complicated. and i don’t want to be in spaces that have no room for my rage. which is everywhere all at once. so it’s... i don’t know if my life in grad school is just an endless performance that i don’t really have agency in? but maybe some moments are there. i am trying to live for those moments, and i am also jaded by such pronouncements

[qanoor]

i still love you like a goddamn disaster

i still commit to it forever

i still miss you & that’s all, dried roses & i take you down, i unwrap myself and still call you beloved. it couldn’t be otherwise

and i wish it meant something

[qanoor]

on casually sexualized conversations with men: for me, this can both feel like a relief/freeing (because it's so hard to even get to sexuality, never mind consistently, with queer people) (and there's something honest about it in a way i really do like) AND it also feels objectifying, exhausting, entitled, etc. it's very much this complicated duality/multiplicity

i often wish i could tell off these men more, and sometimes i have, but when there's some kind of sustained relationship it's harder to do so. too often i default to "nice sexy girl" because it feels like that's the only way i can keep getting attention, and the only way they'll want me for more than sex too, which is really sad.

and like i know with jay it is more than sex because it has always been, because we share this traumatized passionate formative past of our teenage relationship. but it's still hard.

and sometimes i just talk to guys about my various problems and sexuality issues in this honest way, but what they really want is something to get off to, and sometimes they'll just fixate on the things that do get them off and i just take that anyway, because what else is there?

queer entanglement is so hard & i can feel like i have to be so fucking careful among most queer people here and it's exhausting. i just really want more queer girls to love me! lol. and like actually want me. queer people who i'm also attracted to! ahh!

[qanoor]

does anyone want to connect on instagram? i’m trying to use it more. i have 2 private accounts: one that’s a bit more official, and one that’s more personal. message me here if you’re interested & we can exchange usernames!

[qanoor]

i ruin myself with missing you but i commit to it forever

[qanoor]

i don’t really like posts encouraging radical softness because i have too many hard edges, too many things to feel guilty about, and i have learned to cultivate sweetness, niceness, and kindness as superficial masks required for survival under white/western neoliberalism

actual kindness? is much harder, and something i try, but cannot always have

i also feel annoyed by the cutesy ways people interact and type and such -- different and similar among POC and white people in the west, sometimes more similar than anyone wants to admit -- these things i tried to do too, still do in various ways, but it didn’t matter because i was never going to be part of whatever fucking social justice niche

and i have both stopped trying and also keep trying, and it’s a fucking curse

and sometimes i really wish i could be soft, and sometimes i even am. a soft cat, and this is never really ok either

[qanoor]

can i ever love someone without hurting them to the point of traumatizing them?

defensiveness / hopelessness / utter confusion / unknowing / wishing i knew what i looked and sounded like when i lash out / wishing someone would do the same to me / mental illness + lashing out + all the ways i feel so deeply, irrevocably hurt / dismantling the systemic vs. interpersonal violence/hurt false binary / weaponizing social justice rhetoric / using my pain and fear to fuel my rage / what the fuck is healing / am i worse than other people will i ever be able to escape this defensive need to compare / hurt people hurt people / what kind of accountability in this punitive landscape / constant fear and paranoia about disposability politics / equalizing / despair

of course my politics, my writing, everything that is worth anything, and also that which is not worth anything, come from this intensely personal place of wanting / giving up / still trying

[qanoor]

fuck i hate it when even “better” discourse around intrusive thoughts/impulses/attractions/etc still tells people that we need to “reduce” our intrusive thoughts/etc otherwise they will grow and become worse / we would be more likely to act on them

NO. that is *not* true. that is a really violent and puritanical assumption and it does not conform to actual lived experience. there is no simple fucking formula to intrusive thoughts, and certainly not one that is based in moralistic fear.

ugh i hate seeing this shit and the worst part is that this is relatively “better” discourse compared to all the outright antis out there

[qanoor]

borderline personality disorder really is the state of emotionally being on fire all the fucking time

[qanoor]

i just wrote this to a close friend and i thought it would be apt to share here as well:

and sometimes i just really, really wish it was possible to say to people, “yeah, so i get really upset and i scream and lash out sometimes, or often, depending, and i have a lot of mental illness and trauma problems, and it’s not quiet, it’s messy and loud and difficult. and i struggle extremely with household chores and i’m fucking crazy and i don’t trust people and i hate most people’s social-justice-american accents and i have a lot of diaspora feelings but not the relateable kind. and i don’t relate to all your popculture references.” and, like, not have people run away………..

[qanoor]

another night and i am sitting on my bed in this room i desperately need to sort out and i am breaking, again. what else is new?

i don’t know what to do with myself. i need to clean my room and i still can’t. this has been going on for weeks, months. i need to do so many things. i need to get up and go to the bathroom. my lips feel dry but i want to rinse my mouth before applying chapstick. i need to get water. i want someone interesting and fashionable to want me and fuck me, but fashionably.

i don’t feel able to watch tv just yet, and what’s the point anyway... i was reading sick by porochista khakpour a lot today and i love it, but i don’t feel able to return to it just yet. i feel so stuck in my thoughts, my loops, everything. how will i adjust to the diurnal hours of the summer program i’m leaving for this saturday? it will be so difficult. what will my roommate be like? will there be AC in my room? ugh. travelling is always such a nightmare. what if the program turns out to just be an exhausting mess? i don’t know why i do this to myself.

i just want someone to hold it all, all of me. and i know this is too much to ask of any one person. and i do keep asking it of specific people too much over and over. and i am trying to figure out ways to get beyond this, always always. but i still feel so stuck. 

[qanoor]

i think about how ariel had that dream about me that they now probably really do see as an omen, as foreshadowing, or whatever -- how i was a screaming mess that became a threatening fearsome black cloud of a thing -- and how ariel was so much like, oh you’ve never been like that, it was completely unlike you --

but it’s not completely unlike me. i told them this & they said i’d just never been like that with them -- and it’s true but -- i don’t know. i keep wanting to know, is that how i come across when i’m having my lashing-out breakdowns? i wish i could know. 

[qanoor]

you’re screaming and cursing and angry and hurting me and then smiling and crying apologizing

Epilogue by The Antlers

This song always makes me feel so many things. I relate to it from both sides so, so much. I’m the “you” and I’m the “me” and how could I ever separate these things? And is it ever possible to write beautiful things from the perspective of the perpetrator as well as the survivor? At what point do I become irredeemable?

I keep trying to understand, keep trying to change, keep trying to survive, and at some point I just always come back to how fucking unbearable it all is — I can’t separate myself from trauma and the process of reenacting trauma and just generally being traumatising as well as traumatised — I can’t figure out how to be anything other than seething on some level — I settle into softness only to make it seem like an illusion — is my tenderness anything real? how do I ever repair the mindfuck I perpetuate?

[qanoor]

I don’t think I can ever explain just how much Raine truly *made* me. you have to understand, I was a blundering girl and she showed me a world that I fell headfirst into. I was already stumbling across it, of course, but then she challenged me then she said she fancied me when I lamented my plight. and I leaked all over her like a teeming plant. she told me all the things that had to be known and the articles on fwd/forward and everywhere else and learning about fat politics and everything, everything. and she could say it so eloquently, she could explain and say things in a way that I could only reach for with salivating longing.

who was I before her? surely nothing at all, surely everything all at once yet something that needed to be assimilated. I don’t know whether to call her an instrument of my assimilation or an elementary call, a storied deconstruction of convocation.

I wish she would have hurt me with the depth of her rage that she kept trying to hold back, change, reform. I wish she would have done that instead. there is something so much more relieving, so much more clear and real, about being called a fucking bitch and being threatened with violence, or maybe actually being hit. it’s so much easier.