WORDS FOR MYSELF
Hello there,
I don’t know who you are, the person reading this, but I need to say this to you: I’m sick. I’m sick in my head, in my spirit. So, I’ve put myself in bed to do simple things like read and write and observe the world through social media and dream about what I want for myself. I feel as though the center of my sickness is that I’ve forgotten who I am. I sense that the self who I groomed to be in this moment in time got lost and now I am here, absent of myself.
Not only do I feel absent, trapped inside an existence that feels like a vacuum refusing to treat me as a visible person, I feel that this abuse of my character in this version of the world has become systematic, as if every person I cross has been given permission to give me a specific sort of nod that says, “you are here but you do not get to participate in my life or my community”. I have only a specific allotment of people that I speak to or who speak to me through the phone. In person, I am relegated to the realm of acquaintance or stranger. I suppose I must be in Hell where people don’t have real friendships or significant relationships. I’m in a repeating Hell where the little money I make, doing the job I am allowed to do (selling paintings for poor groceries and cans of beer), is spent trying to cultivate what little human warmth can be cultivated in bars.
What happened to my life, the one I had where I was using my bachelor’s degree in music education and my master’s degree in jazz saxophone? I am traumatized by the taking away of that Sarah. I feel that she was trampled by a stampede of hungry animals who punctured her flesh repeatedly until she had no more blood or water or air to grow by. I did it to myself, I’m sure. I was not a good friend, though I wanted and tried to be that. But at the end of the day, the stories that filled my mind about people who were my colleagues, lovers, family, were overwhelmingly negative and embarrassing. I found myself traumatized by the webs they wove for me and I for them, and I put up a wall of blocks between myself and them and then I tried to run away. Was any of what I experienced true? I do not know. I felt like my physical body was being attacked, but nobody was holding any physical knife. I don’t know how I could have sustained such physical pain for so long without anybody kicking or punching me or twisting my arm or putting a pillow over my head. I do know that what I went through started as a strange physical illness that felt contagious, and that made me overly nosey about other people, and that the nosiness turned into a full-blown spiritual handicap and psychosis.
Healing from such an episode seems impossible and I feel like I am extremely close to death by exsanguination. I am surrounded by strangers that have nothing to do with my past and I don’t necessarily see myself building a future here, mostly because I can’t seem to relate to anybody on a level that leads to a healing feeling. I feel like I cannot rescue myself by plugging myself back into the world in which I once belonged, into a world where my credentials would have put me, because people I used to know look at me and I feel intense shame at how far away I have become. I am not well, I am not good, and I imagine it might be painful to lay eyes on me. I am sad for myself and I am sad for the person who has to try to deal with this energy I exude when we are interacting.
Is this depression? It sure sounds like depression. I’m sorry I’m depressed, will you forgive me?
1/16/26
ANGER
A monitoring entity censors me, making the flow of my righteousness delayed by little poltergeist-like inconveniences. The internet isn’t working with me anymore, it wants me to adhere to status quo thinking and think twice before sharing how I really feel.
I get it— my impulsive reactions to triggering and inexplicable phenomenon often make me irrational and I lash out.
I didn’t misspeak: it is the impulsive reactions that are making me irrational. I am human after all, meaning that I am also an animal that reacts to stimulus causing pain and discomfort.
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Who is this spirit, this creature that I’ve known in my body now, coming and going for nearly four years? Who is this seatless chair? I miss the wholeness of my step and how the shoe meets the ground in a rhythmic bounce that sends electricity through my world. Who is this floating ghost who meditates on the mechanics of bird food instead of seeing and hearing the tug and pull of swaying bodies of energy, beautiful in their emanating, all around? How could this spirit learn to occupy me so completely? This way of being is miserable and I feel captivated by its cold grip. The captivation is literal and not captivation as one by a lover. No, this spirit is not a lover. This spirit keeps a jail and the jail is full of spirits like me who have been caught in the undertow of its jailer’s descent into this madness that is of a perverse nature. The madness has to do with a removal of love from the internal logic of being that was organic from birth. Suddenly, instead of loving the step of my foot on the grooves of the earth, I am leaving the house with the intentions of a soul on fire with a reckless and volatile cerebral rotation around a piece of fool’s gold… the sound of a broken record.
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19205168514 - You steal my walk, my step, my very soul. When your namesake reaches out to me, it robs me of my joy, the warmth of these legs that dance, frolic, curl around what it loves. An empty, cold chair you are and you’ve realized an efficient process of how to take what you are missing. Your chest is warm whilst you do it and the puzzle piece fits, so fine, I guess I must lose. Know that it is NOT consensual. Know that I will NEVER be yours in my heart again and you ARE NOT MINE in my heart. I rebuke you, I renounce you, I demand that you find another source. Please return my legs so that I may once more treasure the days instead of spending them wondering the earth hoping to find what is lost.