screaming into the void

I just realized what the last ten years of my life have felt like. They felt like I clawed my way out of hell only to find myself on a deserted island. I can see ships and planes going past, but nobody has stopped to check out the distress signals I've sent up. Yeah, I made it out and I'm alive, but I'm still fucking stuck and can't figure out how to get out of this new shitty situation. I tried building a crude raft but I couldn't make it past the breakers before it all fell apart and I got pushed back ashore.

I think a lot of the struggle I've been having the last couple months is that I want something I know I can't have, but the part of me that is still hopes is looking for any possible sign of proof that I'm wrong. And like, obviously it's not going to be there but it still finds things and latches on until it's proven wrong. So I'm constantly in this cycle of elation and sorrow that I cannot seem to stop.

It's a cycle I've been repeating most of my life and this time around I've managed to prevent myself from doing the biggest and most destructive/painful things, but I haven't been able to stop the smaller things that also add to it all. Therapy taught me how to deal with the big things, but the smaller ones are far more complicated because they're intertwined with normal things that are just part and parcel of interpersonal relationships.

A lifetime of words bitten back, bound by the dust of teeth I ground to keep them in. Bitterness sliding down my throat, thick and viscid, darkening the parts of me that wanted to shine. Years spent desperately wiping the stain from the light, hoping to be seen. The light is strong, but the cloth runs black and no amount of effort can make it clean again. How much longer can the cycle continue before the sludge hardens and the light is extinguished for good?

I've had a void inside of me for a very long time. If left unchecked, it can easily consume me and send me spiraling into dark, terrible places that I never want to visit but have been regularly forced into due to poor brain chemistry. It's been doing this as long as I can remember and it's only within the last few years that I learned ways to keep it in check to prevent myself from being consumed. But even if it isn't actively destructive, it's still a source of pain. It still burns and even a small boil over can be deeply painful.

It didn't start this way though. It started as just a desire. A core desire for something that I've long known I needed in order to be the ideal version of myself. But as the years went on without any way to fulfill that desire, I tried other things to see if I could feed it. All it did was consume them while growing more voracious. Not only could I not find other ways to fill it, everything I tried made it worse. Until eventually it grew so large it broke me.

It took a long time to rebuild after that. Often because what I'd built was weak and easily destroyed the next time it spilled out. It wasn't until I started therapy that I finally learned how to build up in ways that could withstand it and then eventually contain it. But containment doesn't mean it's gone. It just means I've learned to live with it. I've found ways to live knowing it is unlikely to ever be quelled, but those ways will never be that idealized version I dreamt of as a teenager. I don't think that person or even a version of them will ever exist. Because I've learned to live with that void, but it cost me the ability to imagine a life without it.

I know how to be honest with my pain or anger. I do not know how to be honest with my happiness or joy. I can talk at length about the ways I hurt, but I struggle to do the same with the things that bring me pleasure. I do not have words for happy times because I so rarely had them. And those I did have were diminished by the depression I lived under for so long.

I never wanted to write about pain or anger or the darkness that hung over my life. I wanted to write love songs and celebrate the beauty of life. But I never had a life I wanted to celebrate, so the happy words felt ashen and hollow in my mouth. Even the happiest things I wrote were tinged with melancholy.

I hope to, one day. But I don't know how. Not yet. For now, I have a life that I can accept. That I can make peace with. It is not happy and joyous like I dreamed, but I'm here and it is no longer a constant struggle. There are more good days than bad, though more days that just are than good or bad combined. But one day, hopefully, I'll learn those happy words and write something beautiful.

I'm getting better about allowing myself to be me, which usually means being fairly weird and a bit awkward. I'm slowly learning to accept and own that because it is just a part of who I am. But there are still things I struggle with, largely centered around attraction, sex, and sexuality. Those are aspects of myself I have rarely ever been able to explore or express, for a variety of reasons. So when I try to push past my discomfort and unease about expressing those things, I end up feeling very self-conscious. It also feels as though I'm not allowed to or that I am being judged for it or that I have somehow done it wrong in a way that is creepy.

And I hate that. It's a natural and normal thing and I should be able to express it without making myself feel terrible. I don't know how to get there though. Hopefully the stuff I'm working on in therapy will help me get there. I just want to be comfortable with who I am. With all that I am. Because I've been uncomfortable in this world longer than I can remember.

I want to be seen the way I see the world

I want to be loved the way I love the world

I do not want my pain and horror overlooked

They are a part of me as they are a part of the world

They diminish neither and help to define both

Denying them blinds you to the totality

They exist even when overlooked

How can I be seen as I am

How can I be loved as I am

If parts of me must be overlooked to see my beauty

I can see the world as it is

I can love the world as it is

The world is beautiful even when these things exist within it

I want to be seen the way I see the world

I want to be loved the way I love the world

Because I am beautiful even when these things exist within me

They are not obstacles for someone to overcome

They are my reality and they help to define me

I will no longer hide them for the comfort of others

Because if they cannot see my pain and horror

Then they do not deserve to see my beauty

Even if that means I cannot be seen

Even if that means I cannot be loved

One of the funniest things I have ever heard in my life happened when I was 17 or 18. Me, my dad, and one of my best friends went to a drag race event up in Portland. One of the races that day ended up being really close, like a couple hundredths of a second difference. Which is very close at an amateur event like we were at.

I don't know if it was the announcer's first day or what, but their commentary on that race has lived rent free in my head ever since. They were getting super excited and really into calling the commentary, to the point that their mind must've blanked because they yelled into the mic:

"It's so close! It's like a drag race!"

After looking at my friend to confirm that we had both just heard that, we lost our shit. I still laugh about it at least once a month.

It genuinely sucks that being fat means that a large percentage of people wouldn't even entertain the idea of dating me. Because they have preconceived notions about my character, my personality, and my lifestyle based upon my size. But my size tells them nothing about me except how big I am. They cannot determine my loyalty, my honesty, my ingenuity, my intelligence, my drive, my anything, just by looking at me. And because of their prejudicial projections, they will never get to know how amazing I truly am.

Unfortunately, missing out on that does not have any impact on them or their lives. But it does on my life. Not individually, but when viewed as a whole, each individual choice compounds. To the point that it becomes far more difficult for me to meet people who want to get to know who I am and see if we're compatible enough to date, because the majority of people I meet have decided they would rather not as soon as they see me. And that fucking hurts. It is painful having this understanding because I know I can't change it. It's just a shitty fact that I have to accept.

I've spent my entire life trying to find the words that would make someone love me the way I have loved so many others. Not immediately and not romantically, but enough to see me and want to see more. I've tried a million words, strung together in countless ways. I've written about pain, love, loneliness. I've tried being funny, sad, angry, sexy. No matter what I tried, it never worked. But here I am trying a million and one, hoping for a different outcome. Because I can't figure out why the others failed. If it's so easy for me to love others, why is it so hard for them to love me? Am I really that ugly? Or that off-putting? Am I all of the terrible things people said? I don't think I am, but the fact remains. I am alone and a million and two words haven't been enough to change that.

Despite how we talk about romantic feelings, love is not an advanced form of like. You can love someone and not like them. Love is a vastly complicated and deep feeling that can be contradictory or painful at times. It is a powerful and enduring bond that links a piece of you to another. "Like" is often a smaller, more straightforward feeling that typically denotes that something gives us pleasure to some degree. Love can follow like, as liking someone gives you the opportunity to grow to love them. But like does not blossom into love. 

If love was a flower, the seed and stem would not be like, even though that is how we often look at it. Like would be the soil where a seed of love can be planted. Making sure the soil is filled with nutrients (like) makes it easier for the seed to blossom and helps keep the flower healthy. But, a flower can still grow in harsh or difficult soil. It just won't be nearly as healthy and may struggle to survive.

I hope everyone I call hon understands that I mean it in the gay way, not the patronizing way.

Everything I’ve ever created was a cry for attention.  Sometimes it was for help. Other times it was to notice my pain. Or my rage; My joy; My sadness; My fear. Occasionally I cried out into the void, Hoping something would hear me. But most of the time,  All I wanted was for people to see... me. I wanted them to notice. I needed to be seen. But so few ever did. Most saw words, Or shapes, All positioned prettily. Telling everything, But never being seen.  A few saw shadows. Ghosts of who I was, Projected across the wall. Giving suggestions of myself And all I felt.

I started a new med recently for add and I’ve consistently created art this week. It feels so fucking good. I haven’t done this in YEARS and the last time I did, I was struggling to do it. This time, I’m looking forward to it each day. I started work on a sculpture in a spumoni dish from the Spaghetti Factory (I stole it from there during my sister’s rehearsal dinner lol). I sculpted a cliff into the bowl and built the armature for a dragon that will be sleeping on top of the cliff and curling around the outside edge of the dish. Once I get the dragon sculpted, I’m going to try and cast it in resin to make it stronger/nicer.  The other thing I’m working on is painting a blank resin figure from the incredible MissMonster (Melita Cirphy). It’s a unique design of her own called a Lugnuff and I’m doing it in the most outlandish fluorescent colors (I splurged and got myself a set from Liquitex). It’s looking really good so far and I’m pushing my skills further than I have in a loooooong time.

Fuck, man. It feels good to be making art again.

Tonight, I played a little game I just made up called "Can I Finish Work Before the Edibles Kick In!"

The answer is yes!

I want affection. I want cuddling or being close to someone. But there’s nobody I can ask. And there hasn’t been for a very long time. 

It hurts. Especially when it’s late and I smoked too much. Everything is intense right now and I don’t want to be alone. 

When I was like 14 or 15, my family went camping and there was a bend in the river that created a big, slow, pond-like area that had a big log chained across it to make a swimming area. When we went swimming, I climbed up on it and teased my dad, even throwing an “old man” in there. He decided to show off in front of my mom and got a little cocky, saying something like “Don’t blink, it won’t take long.” When he climbed up there I planted my feet and let him charge at me. He grabbed my arms and tried to push, but I didn’t budge and his eyes went wide when he realized it wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought. He dug in and I got a hand under his armpit, tossing him off the log. My mom fell out of her chair laughing and my dad climbed back up for a rematch.

He tried three more times. I’m still undefeated.