This Slender Slice of Silence

The spoken word must be killed. My brother hated noise of any kind. What a terrible thing, that I've come to resemble my torturer.

I can't find peace, inside of my body or out. I retreat to my room to play video games. Not exactly an adaptive coping mechanism. Existing only as rumor, emerging to eat then scurrying back to my nest. I don't know how to fix it. I honestly have a hard time describing the problem I want to fix. Is it that I'm so socially drained that I never see fit to leave my home? That my anxiety has reached a peak which leaves me to see no gain in interacting with the physical world? Or that I've become desensitized to the feelings in my body, watching them from outside myself?

I'm mad at my sister for leaving me, for doing it in a crappy way, for making out with the younglings while loudly complaining about how the sexual politics of power. I'm mad at my job for not supporting me, for being a place of pain that preaches self-care without providing structure or resources for it. I'm mad at myself. I'm mad at myself because I can't continue doing what I'm doing. I feel like I've failed at being the person I want to be. Intellectually, I know that I'm another wounded bird who deserves care. But my gut says that I should be more, that any burden too big for my shoulders is a sign I should improve.

I want to love that broken little girl inside of me. It's hard to know what she wants because she's spent so long avoiding pain instead of pursuing life. I want love and companionship and a bank account that grows and a body that can do anything. I want to feel freedom. I want a car that runs and a love that endures. To find a midpoint between stability and chaos. I want to see tomorrow as possibility instead of hardship. I want to feel sexy without always needing to prove it.

I want to feel safe. I don't right now. I want to forge a path away from addiction and fear. I want to live a manageable life where I rarely have to worry about a fight breaking out. I want enough space away from the pain of others that I can unpack my old hurts without breaking down.

I want space. Enough that I have room to contemplate, not so much that I'm lost in emptiness.

The Process

I'm addicted to feeling powerful.

I'm addicted to being the right person for the moment.

I'm addicted to learning.

I'm addicted to love.

I'm addicted to feeling helpful.

The Tao of Surviving

There are days where all I can focus on is subsistence. My life is unbearably survivable. I get home from work, I drop into low-energy mode. I'm trapped in a gravity well, sustained indefinitely in some fraction of a life.

Experience made me excellent at enduring the untenable. It's a powerful skillset, and not one I seek to lose. Violence and torture can't stop me. Being without friends won't end me. Fear becomes courage. The price of this limited immortality is living half a life, separate from the ability to enjoy purposeless moments. I avoid the bad without being able to steer towards the good.

I ache for a romantic relationship. Everything comes back to that, circles around it. Now that my apparatus for avoiding bad relationships has been refined, I can't bring myself to go on a date. I want a new kind of love, the kind that doesn't rely on caretaking, but I have no idea what that looks like. How can I seek something when I don't know what it'd look like?

The Mommy Effect

I want to make a family that will take care of me. But, in the process of putting that family together, I put myself at the head of it so no one can victimize me. I place myself in a position where I give more help than I take. There's safety in that; I don't have to admit my needs and face the possibility that they won't be met. I'm still not taken care of. I'm still satisfying unreasonable demands. But now I can blame it on others and their needs rather than the ones who made me this way.