I am not afraid to forget my name, I sit back and for the first time I see myself from a different point of view but I am not dissociating.
Where I’ve been is in my eyes, always dazzling on my retina but I can’t cry it out because when I start it feels like my organs are melting into tears and there is going to be nothing left of me but a sea of all the mean things they have done to me.
I cannot let the past go because there would be nothing left of me; so far I thought I was made of all the horrible things I had to endure in order to survive and perhaps still become a good human being but at what cost. If I needed these unspeakable things done to me in order to be this good, what would I be without them? My darkness is everything because all the beautiful monsters I feel and create with come from there but I never allowed myself to step into it, to sink, to breathe it in.
I feel the pain and each hit is like a violent lightning penetrating every hidden corner of that dark place. If I could choose I would love to die like that and what I am, what I’ve ever been doesn’t matter. It never did, and it never will. Not with you. I watch you burn my roots, and with them all the terrifying memories of abuse, of fear, of my soul shattering.
Something changed, I don’t see the world in flashes anymore; it’s a fluid fire feeding of my skin. I can feel my heart beating slower, a charcoal flickering in the wind. The darkness I love so much is pouring out and it’s this viscous and thick blackness filling the space around me, it’s not me, it’s not what I thought it was, the more it comes out the stronger I become. I am calm now, drowning, breathing in this strange smoke-like pleasure. My body is tense but my soul is flowing peacefully, in and out of my lungs, twisting around my ribs, in and out, crawling up my throat, buzzing through my tongue, bouncing off my teeth and then rolling all the way back to my stomach, in and out, rippling down the spine it stops between my legs, it’s breathing onto me now, warm and wet, hesitant; one more hit and it bites.
There are no monsters left to tame, because the monster is me and all the darkness that scared me for as long as I can remember is just the deepest point in the ocean I cried out when all the lights were gone. All I needed was to slow down the world and create a nightmare I could run through haltingly. If it was my dream and everyone else was trapped in it, I could make my own rules and be safe, like a spider. It didn’t take too long for me to become a slave myself.
And now I walk around but I’m not really there, I’m not really anywhere, I’m everything and I take all the space, and I need none of it; I sometimes have to stop and close my eyes and make sure this is my body, and I’m back, and I’m steady, and I can slow down my blood flow and I don’t need anyone’s permission to feel the pain and let it fill my veins.
And the darkness is me.
And you are pain.
