the rest of forever

This figuring out of things this
Figuring out of how things came to be
Things came to be me how I
Became.

It is overwhelming in every single way in all
three hundred sixty degrees.

It is inwardly and outwardly and upwardly and completely bowling me over and tearing me apart

no it is never too late to learn I just wish you were around so I could show you what I’ve learned who I am who I have become.

Who I am still becoming.

I am sitting in my car and I am smoking and I am shaking and I am full of fear and full of love and they are the same thing.

They have always been the same thing.

As I am parsing all of these things as I am
As I am.
As I am uncovering all of these separate very distinct very discrete things
As I am peeling back the layers and understanding implicitly very explicit differences in things
I am filled with patience and sadness at all the time lost in between then and now.

Knowing that I have the rest of forever to be well.

Having promised you the rest of forever to heal.

I had the rest of your forever.
and you have mine.

1 june, 2022. perseverating.

text below, written longhand

i would very much like
to exorcise certain memories
i would really very much like
to delete things from my brain
to remove them from my everything
with extreme prejudice.

but would that mean
that would mean
that i did not have the lesson.

it hurts so fucking much because
because you aren’t here for me to say sorry.

and i am so sorry.

812p 22 may 2022

i hate being alone so much.
i hate it hate it hateithateithateit
quiet and alone and lonely and cold even in this heat
cold.
even in this heat the cold strangles my blood
freezing it cold solid cold
i shiver in this heat.

i could have stayed at yours but no.
i am afraid.
the rain, the dark, the aloneness.
you held me in your arms you squeezed me closer
felt the heat bloom from my body setting it afire
holding me closer.
i tangled my fingers in yours
hoping to keep some of you for me
when i go.

i sit in your kitchen, smoking
vibrating in place i cant sit still inside
i don’t know how i appear, manic, most likely
i hate coming to you, needful, needy.
i don’t think i ever feel pity from you, i don’t think
(if i begin to think i won’t let go so lets just not)

i know i am not always like this i know that
but right now i am very much like this and it is hard to be.
much less be around.

i know i am exhausting.
i am so sorry.

!

Remain relevant, and ready.
Always remain value-added.

I want the chance to be relevant to you.
I have shown you that I am ready, how ready.
And that last, yes. Value-added plus.

worrying, though
about the ratio.

i stay quiet.
not still, but silently humming
thrumming
focusing
focusing on the exclamation mark.
!
how many you use, and when.
and when.

the rain comes again
again i am in the car, windows cracked
i don’t particularly need the music to actually hear it
but I play it anyway
wondering if it’s raining where you are,
six hours ahead
your sky just as dark as mine, darker.

wanting to know what made you think of me
when ‽
you do think of me.

I want the chance to make you smile at me.
that glorious, sweet face.
I want the chance to spend time with you,
to know more of you.
I want the chance to mean something to you.

!!!!

4/9/89 11:21 pm | 757a 24 february 2022

typewritten 33 years ago. found in the attic at the last possible moment.

darkness — thick, oppressive
congealing as if blood around an open breathing wound
i
am this
the wound
ed
panic steers this two-ton beast
not i racing
racing heart racing through mazed streets
dimly lit by infrequent lights
sudden dip
plunge headlong into wooded thick
et
cricket thicket surroundsound
i turn up the radio to shut out the nature
nature of this two-ton beast of steel racing heart racing.

I wrote this 33 years ago on the way home from somewhere/something stressful. My engagement party? I was less than a month away from turning 21.

I would have stopped to pull the car over to write this; wherever my first Filofax disappeared to, deep within its pockets lies a piece of looseleaf covered in my handwriting, tense and manic and completely out of control from the feel of it. This was about 6 months before I married my first ex-husband, The Sociopath. I hadn’t yet gotten anywhere close to the diagnosis I finally have, I mean I had finally gotten away from the schizophrenia misdiagnosis and was hovering somewhere in limbo, hinting around manic depression and clinical depression, but no one understood suicidality and ADHD back then, much less accounted for the PTSD I already had and would continue to have. I’m pretty sure by this point I had been put on Prozac which only helped to launch me fully into extreme mania.

The terror that I know that I was feeling that night, it is a familiar one. The time of year, well into the beginning of spring, added to the mania I know I was experiencing. Without understanding that this is how my body acts in spring, without any tools to help mitigate what would always be outside of my control, I can feel (finally, I think) really aware of just how much I have survived, and continue to survive.

I kept going when I had no proof of better times to come. I have that proof now.

I am that proof.
My proof lives in me.

It always changes; it always shifts. It gets better and it gets worse and it gets better again. Gam zeh ya’avor / gam zu l’tovah. This too shall pass and it is all for the good. גם זה יעבור זה גם לטובה

thoughtless ever forever; hopeless.

It is need, now
it is beyond want it is need
I need to be out of my head taken
out of my HEAD
What better than weed and loud music and the dark
Especially if I can stay home and have all three at once
i need this to be louder more
More louder
glad I made it home.
more more
I need comforting I don’t think I am capable of being comforted
need to scream need to be loud and that only ever hurts
everyone do you see their faces afterwards they never quite look at you the same
need someone to hear me.
try making the music loud enough to drown out my brain
I am glad there is no one else here
Am I

this is so much.

I made it to the end of the day I made it
I made it without losing everything and then
why? I mean really
Why
thoughtless fucking fucking shit
why.

once again, and again
This, on top of everything else.
Why?
there is no why there is only keep going until you die

741a 3d february 2022

I am feeling crazy this morning.

that in itself isn’t so unusual but this is just

This is so much on top of so much on top of so much please.

I don’t want this I don’t want this it doesn’t help to say I don’t want this until I say it I don’t want this I don’t like this I don’t want this none of it thank you please stop

stop.

1142p 11th december 2021

this late at night
at this time of year
there are some very dark stretches of route nine heading north to home
so dark that i could turn off my headlights

and disappear

there are very few other cars
no lights
i could drift into nothingness
brightness

then black.
Nothing.

the road ahead opens its maw
promising to swallow me whole.
it could be done.
Over.

this void within my chest swells
my brain reels

this is a thing I know, now, filed away.