skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I'm not sure if there is a way to convey how well I know that I am sometimes unable to get past the ME-ness of me. Suffice it to say that I'm nearly paralyzed with the need to reach out and make contact.
It's the way it always goes. I find out too late, or nearly so, and try like mad to turn it around. That sabotage so neatly completed and so difficult to take back. But I didn't mean it, I just needed the absence and distance to put me back in a state of unrest.
I find myself thinking it all through again and again, dismayed at how often I turned the conversation. I wonder if you recognized it, if you found me tiresome, if I'm just another failed experiment for you. I'm self-aware, painfully so, and this knowledge that I've been so thick and obvious is humbling.
It isn't that you didn't appeal, it's that I found you too appealing. I had to poke you around in my head and see how you fit there, and now I know...maybe too late...that it's not just a willingness to submit, it's an eagerness.
And I can't save myself.
I once read a story written by a lesbian about her lover's hands, and how those hands were so intimate to her since they were used to bring her to such tumultuous joy. She describes seeing her lover shake hands with others, and her jealousy over such a casual touch to an appendage that she holds in such high esteem.
I remember the first time I encountered that feeling, watching a friend hold my precious and bend his spine back until it cracked. I had to look away, it was such an offense to both him and myself. I cradled him after, pressing his spine back in place, regretting ever having allowed her to touch him.
And again today, I offered a small taste of another precious to a man who looked at him longingly. I sat stone-faced and disapproving as the man dragged him closer and flipped him over so carelessly. I cuddled him to my chest later, as I walked swiftly away from that man's dirty fingers.
Don't look so shocked...books are my only lovers these days. But every page turned, every whiff of ink and fresh paper is to me a caress from a gentle hand.
I'm a sham. A crock. A lie.
I say here that this is what I want, what I need, yet when something even remotely resembling right approaches me, I sabotage. I disappear. I dissemble. I run away.
I cringe at the thought of giving up my independence...of relying upon, of giving myself over to. Of being weak.
Instead, I embrace what is unsuitable, or unavailable, or unattainable.
Why am I so contrary?
Read this. Save me.
I've never been one for resolutions. Not in the strict sense, anyway. Last year, I decided to become vegetarian, and did...for 10 months or so. I suppose it's more of a Let's Try This Now than a resolution.
Whatever I choose, it's usually in the mind-improvement or socially-conscious category than any superficial "must lose 10 pounds by swimsuit season" type of bucket. Not that I fault those who want to lose 10 pounds, it's just not what I envision for my own personal satisfaction.
Before I babble on about irrelevant resolution-making, I'll get to the point. Today I created one of those Johari windows for myself, where colleagues and friends can select words that describe you. You can see where your perception of yourself and the way they see you overlap, or where they miss the mark altogether.
Knowledgeable. Witty. Those were the two most popular. I was pleased with intelligent and independent, confused by powerful, and almost offended by spontaneous.
But because I'm a very fair and balanced person, I had to give them all the opportunity to criticize me as well. Enter another Johari window, with negative terms. Childish? Unreliable? Foolish? How dare they? Vulgar, yes. Insensitive, at times. Overdramatic, well, yes, I suppose.
Seems I have resolutions to make after all.
I woke with a poem settling on my lips, and the heaviness of arousal sitting on my hips like a tired but welcome old gargoyle.
The poem...
In a stillness she feels the feast begin,
a dark nothingness that envelops her feet.
She sees them in her mind's eye,
small squirming sharp-toothed wormy creatures,
nibbling away at her bone and flesh.
Squinting down she watches as,
bit by bit, she is gnawed away.
Disappointed by the lack of pain,
WHY DON'T I FEEL
she remains unmoved by the threat.
A vague beat of heat as they devour her sex.
A barely-there tug at her torso.
Gentle relief there, at her tongue
WHY CAN'T I SPEAK
And then her eyes know no more.
Now, at her last refuge, in that cold place in her mind, finally it is there, that icy pain that slices and removes...
Until all is black strangeness.
