Recharge

Reverse

Replenish the life lived out too soon in frantic imaginings, in anxious anticipations, lives spent on what-ifs, fantasy phantasms dancing along intrusive thought trains-no track in sight

Where did it begin!

How to find present mindfulness of a projected existence?

Personas twisting to fit the never-ending-trending of whatever passes for authenticity in this passing momentous motion FORWARD!

TO THE FUTURE!

Uncovering the REAL reality!!

Revelling in the destruction, desecration dutiful in its all-encompassing resolve, ruling over the few places we thought:

Maybe we could be safe?

Safe to pause

To breathe in through the nose,

out through the mouth,

but breathing becomes the next arena of innovation, reconstruct this living organ I drown within. Please explain to me in your new fangled fables of fabricated facts, use the words I don’t know, defined hastily-opportunities snatched forth-NEW AND IMPROVED!

EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANT!!

I will believe you, fall to my feet, stretch out my debt stained credit card, paint rubbing off from its frequent use-no flyer miles for me-no recipts please!

IdontwanttoknowthecostcausethenImightnotbuyit!

But how can I not buy it, when I NEED IT NOW!

And happy waits a tap/swipe/insert away....

I WILL BE HAPPY!

I can’t stop myself, these hands you trained to grab, take, want more complete their task given subconsciously understood as livingthegoodlife

And I-not only those hands-yearn for this enigmatic end of desire and desperation...

Want to RUN AWAY STOP Cry these suppressed tears from an instant satisfactory self-made authenticity

Waitingfortheothershoetodrop

Hoping praying wishing for permission to trust myself (?) again

(tofigureoutwhothatis)

Peeling layers of thick skin, social norms, cishetero-centric society’s deranged missrepresentation of a lifewelllived! IDEAL! A DEAL! They say...

GET IT WHILE YOU CAN!

Fingers dressing me in a depressive episode that reruns til it reboots to your version of reality....Anxiously anticipating your every evolution, empty emotions I must express to “function”, windup doll woundup, taunt strings strangling a scream I wish I could set loose upon this godforsaken excuse for modern society.

Modern enough to paint addiction as a crime

Modern enough to paint children as terrorists and casualties

There is nothing “casual” about someone’s child in the ground.

There is nothing “criminal” about chemical dependency.

Modern enough to ring-me-up for the bright colours you paint me in and LOVE my curves, and praise my confidence for saying “NO” for asking for human decency (whenhumansarebarelydecenttobeginwith)

for asking to be listened to, for asking to exist-without my existence being policed in its practice...

Please don’t tell me this is my reality.

Don’t say “This is it.”

“C’est La Vie” does not make up for decades of dissasociation, dissonant cognizance, depression, dresses drunk fondled in the dark.

Powerless pleas for paradise lost in bottles beds and backseats

ifItoldyouilovedyouwouldyouevenbelieveme?

Maybe you could give me a moment.

It’s been far too long since I last sorted through my thoughts.

If I had a moment maybe-

Maybe what??

Maybe I could remember my way back to that room when I was a preteen and woke up to you.

Maybe I could go back to the couch when the dishwasher flooded the floor.

Maybe I could confirm this nagging feeling I have that something was wrong in the way you treated me.

And then what??

Is it really worth the truth?

Will it set me free?

Sometimes I wish it was just me.

That you could live

with a nostalgia less stained in the sour taste of foulplay and eclipsed memories

If that was all it took to save you...

...

But isn’t that too sad? The self-harm of wishing to take other’s pain away by inflicting it on yourself?

Isn’t it shameful-in a way-to assume that I would understand another’s pain, when I have barely cracked the surface of their selves, their experience.

To assume that is what they want.

That they could be happy if only I suffered, a little more...

Also too hopeful in its simplicity to solve the tangled pain held within each other with more pain?

Wishful thinking that my sacrifice-if I could even(would even)offer it forth-would wipe clean the slate?

Selfish to wish for an end to the complications of healing and self-acceptance...

My desire for ease and peace manifests masquerading as your saviour, selfless protector

becausethetruthisIamafraid

Afraid of your pain, I never learned how to sit with another’s scars, without trying to fix the unfixable, in harmful and often unwanted ways.

I want to be there for you.

A shoulder to cry on...to hold you through your waves of emotion, yet a childhood of buried trauma threatens to burst forth.

I am trying.

But maybe I need to try harder to just stay in a moment with you

Maybe my rush to SOLVE SAVE STOP is a defense mechanism I need to unlearn so that I can truly help you the way that you want, in the way that you need me to.

Maybe then we could make a moment together,

a safe space,

a thoughtful place,

Maybe then we wouldn’t sacrifice ourselves to save each other,

Maybe then we could just save ourselves together instead.