Pixies and Posies Part Two

I’ve spent years being convinced that I was dying of some disease. Unsure of which, exactly, but certain that it was inside of me, working working, somehow.

It’s as though no one cared enough to pay attention to who I was, who I am, and instead just shoved me into every corner that everybody else was in. No wonder and raved and raged.

I feel deeply uncared for. unrespected. Parent, friends, teachers, relatives never cultivated what they saw in me. They never saw me, they saw the figure of what I should be, not what I was. Nobody cared who I was, and so I couldn’t care who I was. I’ve never know who I’ve been. All along I’ve been lost and flailing inside my own skin, inside my head no anchors to keep me in some kind of place of self recognition.

I lost any spark of life, the seed of wonder and possibility gone dormant so quickly. Exhausted and beyond, I began to die, right from the beginning.

I’ve been on the threshold of death for many years, time on the edge barely balancing. Fading away before I had the chance of solidity. My body became turmoil, unable to deal with the constant sensation of falling, falling apart, of pushing everything I’d ever felt down and down again, swallowing my words and my tears, brutalizing my heart and having all of my silenced pain embodied.

I feel sick all of the time. I don’t know what it feels like to Not be tired. My body has tried so hard to help me survive, to keep it all contained so I could go on living in the world, so I could look people in the eye and walk out of my room, sit in badly ventilated rooms full of manipulative and pained children. My body did what it could to protect me.

We all have so many smaller deaths that steal pieces of our hearts/souls whatever you consider the core part of your wise and strong self to be. Mine just piled up so much that my mind and body started to believe it. Disease seemed ever present and inevitable. I was just waiting to die. If a disease didn’t get me, then I’d be murdered, or there’d be a war and I’d be tortured horribly until I died the most painful death imaginable, or some strange end of the world apocalyptic happening would occur. ( It’s completely embarrassing to admit that I was, and still am to an extent, obsessed with these thoughts, this implicit knowledge, because it sounds ridiculous). But all I knew and understood was death, since I’ve spent my whole life barely existing.

When I quit my job in October, I knew I was dying. I knew it in my deepest heart. Preparing for death is frightening and simple. If I was going to die, why bother having a job, I wouldn’t need money. I went to sleep each night knowing that I probably wouldn’t wake up, and each morning when I did I was shocked and began the waiting over again. I walked throuigh my days with death wrapped kindly around me, her hands in my hair and her breath softly purring along my neck. I didn’t have relationships with people, I drank tea or gin with a spectre. I couldn’t do anything with my time, because it all seemed too pointless, if I was going to be gone at any time.

Barely alive. I’ve been. Silenced and still. So of course I became an actor, wanted to be a singer, onstage, seen. Prove my existence and worth. I somehow maintained a thread of fervor through it all, a sense of something pulling me along under the waves, a drifting. To be heard To be heard. I don’t know how to talk anymore, my tongue is so thick and heavy from disuse.

Tidiness has never been me. I live for some sense of chaos, threads of slight organization thrown in just so I know that I can find my way out of the labyrinth. I think I’m done talking about death for at least an hour or two.