On surviving my own existence. And other admissions.

Fight every urge to run away.

on running and my existence: forever

I run. To exist. I exist. To run. I am. The only time I am. Ever. Truly. Present.

Now. My will to live dominates. I embrace my existence - I cannot imagine never running again. And this drives my dedication. To life.

For once. For now. I am well.

I am not strong enough for life. I did not ask for this. Burden. To live, incessantly aware. Of everything that will be taken.

on realizing that I am not well: fall 2013

I am not well - the most terrifying yet liberating admission to make. I am not well. Something is missing in me, or there is too much of something. I want to say this isn’t me, the controlling beast, but it is so very much a part of me. The monster is my mind, my thoughts that harass me relentlessly. The torment is sometimes more than I can bear. There is only one way to escape its abuse, only one way to silence it. But I know that this is not what I really want. I don’t want to go away, I want it to go away. But I am it. We are one and the same, and there’s only one way to escape myself.

You tell yourself that things will be different. Someday. And you believe yourself for a while, but the truth always seeps back in, occupies your ambition, stalls it, corrupts it. The truth that I am not so different from the horrid person I thought I was yesterday. The chasm between what I need to make others believe I am and what I believe myself to be - forced to wade through these lies daily, and to carry them as truths while the heaviness of their deceit cripples me.

To fear yourself is a terrible thing.

a poem:

I wrestle with these thoughts.

Fight the demons.

But the struggle makes them stronger.

And wears me down,

I fear the day they win.

What happens if I stop hating myself?

The realization that I have to live with myself for the rest of my life is daunting.

a memory: I am fine.

a memory: the summer I shattered, 2014

My eyes wept. My heart became saturated with the excess tears that could not escape fast enough to pour down my cheeks. There was too much pain for my eyes to handle alone. And so my heart expanded to absorb some of the pain. This felt like death. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to breathe.

on considering both of my existences

Perhaps there is the inner me, which is not the same as the physical me. Perhaps this other me, the one that resides in a heavy fog in some recess of my being, has lived, or will live, or is living somewhere else. Right now. And this restless longing is my only possible connection with her. Am I the shadow, or the thing?

a poem:

The more I mingle, the more I lose myself.

My constant vanishes, reappearing only to leave me confused.

Uncertain.

Alone, I begin to understand myself.

Surrounded, I fade.

People think their uniqueness makes them unique and then bask in their feigned embarrassment at being weird. I hate this.

on advice to myself:

Stop looking at your life like it has purpose.

Maybe it has no purpose.

Maybe that’s actually liberating.

In the equation of equality

Boys will be boys

Means girls must be less

I get high off of making you fall.

For me.

I'm looking for home. Waiting to find myself in you.

The pieces are coming together.

But they don't go back together.

When did I break in the first place?

I relish the summation of myself.

Your conclusion of me.

You tell me.

I find myself losing myself.

When you're around.

I miss you.

But I miss me more.

An artist is just someone who listens to the voices inside.

And not always willingly.

They demand to be heard.

I am their only escape.

They devour me.

Until I release them.

And this is how I reclaim my power.

Art is about survival.

Both for them and for me.

on writing:

How would I get any work done, anything else done, if I stopped to write every time there was dialogue in my head?

Words are my cross. They ground me. They save me. I search for myself in them. It is the written words, my written words, that defend me against my thoughts. My words reassure me that my thoughts are false. My thoughts seek to destroy me. But my words, they are beautiful.

They are powerful.

They are mine.

I want to write everything. Everything I am not.

Let’s take our deficiencies and fill in the voids with words.

I am addicted to that feeling of insignificance. Walking through a still forest, trees heavy with snow, indifferent to my existence.

on teaching and my unpreparedness:

He says, “It sucks there’s people who’d miss me.”

I say, “I know. I think about that, too.”

I don’t need him to explain.We’ve never spoken of this before. But I know exactly. Profoundly. What he means.

He says, “They used to beat me when I was four.”

I say.

Nothing.

How can I say what the pit of my stomach cannot even fathom?

I guess I say I’m sorry.

With my eyes.

Words just wouldn’t do.

But his eyes never meet mine.

Whatever meagre comfort I try to offer him with my gaze will only offend the hopelessness of the moment. Which is every moment. And so he stares off at the wall. The page in front of him. Never daring to spare a glimpse. To shed a single shadow.

He says, “I remember like it was yesterday. I feel it in my chest. My heart beats so fast.”

He is calm. He has accepted.

Things I cannot accept.

What can I teach him? He who has learned far more about life than I hope I will ever have to.