sometimes you think about how you can feel your pulse through your hips. you know cognitively that your femoral artery runs through your thigh - but how often does one reach for the legs when reaching for the heart?
when you were younger you used to picture the worst of you being bottled behind a stone-and-iron door. almost like something from a tv show or a book. it would slip mist over any gap you left open, pushing you towards an opening like a grave. you would check, obsessively, none of it had escaped. come back at night to shore up the walls. know it was only a matter of time before you turned your head and that thing would come out instead.
how ugly to ooze through your life, a mucus trail of depression. your anxiety seeping, spraypaint through styrofoam, melting your relationships. whenever you try to scoop up the pieces of your life, you find they turn into gelatin.
it is easier to coax yourself into a tight container. stretch the canvas over a different frame. force your body into a sculpture by a different artist. like this, you are funny and lighthearted. like this, your anger can be defanged.
like this, the panic attacks only belong to the night. they belong to that same animal handler you raised so long ago - her tired feet pacing your horrible little menagerie of ever-growing danger zones. you don't look the mirror in the eyes anymore - you see that ghost you captured so long ago; and she is hungry.
oh, you're tender in the daylight. it's all hard-won.
one day you will run out of things to feed the beast. one day it will scratch itself free. and oh god, what you'll lose, once it finally starts to run.
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
