I hide, and perhaps the truth (of my shell being no more than the mimicry of a casing) is more glaring to some than others. You can tell anything about me. I have no mystery; all you have to do is ask and listen with all of your senses. Taste with your eyes, smell with your fingertips, hear with your tongue, feel with your nose, and see with your ears. Take note of the things left unanswered, and trust in the things that are said. You can learn everything I know about myself, about you, about the world, if you just ask; that is the entire cover. You cannot blame me for your not knowing if you do not ask. I am hidden flimsily behind the questions. You only ever have to ask.  

My friend says I wear my heart, my mind, my thoughts, all that I am, on my body. My friend says it does not always shine in my eyes, but the skin of my flesh belies my essence. She can tell when I am hurt, angry, happy, or delirious, all from the droop of my shoulders. It is not even a challenge because she is fluent in me. She tells me that I am hungry, before the sound of my belly announces it, tells me that she learned from asking me questions about my own self. 

I cannot wait for the questions with this ache. I cannot wait for you to know me, to learn the flimsiness of my cover. It is hard to translate this state, but I will put it plainly: I do not know how to turn the other cheek. I do not know how to repeat a suffering or revisit a pain. I am made of putty, every thing that has ever touched me has left a mark, some I can decorate, and others that are too wide, too stinging, to turn into beautiful things. I never stay long enough for a thing to slap me twice, and if ever it manages to evade the barriers to do it again, I experience repulsion, of it, of myself, from it. 

I am being repelled again.

Once upon a time I was religious, and I learned that the bible wanted me to be one to turn the other cheek. Instead, I turn my back.

What does that tell you? Do you want to know? Would you ask? Were you doing more than listening with your ears? 

I love him,  even with who he is. I do not know if this is entirely biological, but I love him. Maybe it’s the familiarity, or the fact that he has known me the second longest. Whatever it is, it is the same reason he can cut me down. I remember what he said to me on the 17th of March 2023 at 9:54am, and do you know, it does not make me cry anymore, and the sting is gone, but sometimes I am upset in March and I check the date to see if it’s the 17th. I forgive him for what his anger made him say, what his frustration at my curiosity led to. Still, I feel it in my skin when he says something with the same thread running through it. I feel the sting, and repulsion. Disgust. My mouth turns downwards and I pull away for fear of striking back, because wonder of all wonders! Disgust in my hands is worse than anger, worse than a quick explosion; it is more deliberate, more cutting. 

Anything that makes me feel small is unwelcome. Anyone. I am many things but I am not small. I am disgusted by it. Call it pride, call it brevity, call it anything you like. I do not care. I am not small. That is important to me. I know that, and I do not shy away from my hugeness, my expansiveness. I contain multitudes; in fact, I am multitudes. 

When you cut me, I bleed. I bleed and bleed and it swells and if ever there is any blood that has a spirit and takes a form, that occupies the room it is spilled in, it is mine. You can almost taste it in the air, and you can hear it whisper, ‘I  was cut there.’

And I was cut there. And there. And there. Many places. 

I don’t think they knew me that well. I didn’t need them to share themself in the exact same ways I did, be that with me, with other people. I have never needed any of that. I was unsure of what it was that I wanted, and insanity of all insanities, it did not dawn to me until right here right now at 4:16PM under this leaky shed that I just wanted them to be honest.

I know that it is analytical and strange of me, but I wanted to know what they were like without a template to show up as, a mold to fill, with no model to perform as. I wanted raw. I wanted them to tell the truth of their being, wanted to reveal myself at the same time as them, skip the performance. I am easy to impress, I didn't want them to waste too much time trying; I wasn’t going to work at being any more impressive than I am. I know my salt. I know what I am made of.

Then again, I knew from the first time they got a taste of my mouth, how they sank their dentition into the flesh of my lips, that silence would suffocate them somehow. From the first kiss, I knew it. Call me a psychic, a cynic, a soothsayer, tell me I am plucking meaning from somewhere it is absent. I assure you that it is none of those things. It was evident. Silence would pressure them more than pressure would. Ease would stress them more than labour did. 

I don’t know if the audience mattered to them more than the performance itself did, if they would have stopped if I stopped looking, or if it would have just made them work harder to get me to keep looking. I think it would have been the latter. What does that say? Of me? Of them? Of me that I think that of them? 

Is it right that I chose to grieve the fondness that I owned for them instead of remaining there? Was I well, choosing grief over connection at 14? 16? Continuing the biannual choice of a sharp sorrow over unsatisfactory presence? Was the presence that lacking?

Yes, it was. It was painful and piercing and suffocating, constricting. Sorrow is temporary, more so than the impact of all that tightness would ever be. 

Isolation. 

My mother called me the other day on her way back from church to ask when we could go on a date. Last week, as she drove me to work, she said she wanted us to bond, and we had an argument over prayer as our bonding activity. I asked why we couldn't just paint each other’s toe nails or something. Make a meal together. Watch a movie. She asked for 10 minutes. To pray. I shrugged. Either way we chose to bond, one of us would have been at a disadvantage, uninterested in what the other wanted to do. Might as well be me. 

I know why she asked, it is because she thinks I will leave, untie the bond, get lost. Of all her children, I am the most asocial, the least tethered. Not only am I asocial, I am also the most uninterested in the performance of affection, because I rarely ever do anything I don’t want to do; I tell it to her, my love. I feed her, I make her life easier, I listen to her woes and experience anger on her behalf, joy, pride, kiss her forehead and hold her sons. However, when all the children are home, I do not come down to open the gate, or stay up till she is home. I am used to the late nights, and someone else can do it now—that was my entire childhood and I want to take a break now, every chance I get. I try to watch her soaps with her, but she falls asleep, and I don’t know the beginning, and cannot complete them anyway; I don’t watch anything in school, so I leave. 

There is a running joke she tells, about me being selfish with myself. 

I laugh, but only so I am not left out when everyone agrees. It is true. I don’t give myself to just anyone, not even if we are tied by blood.  

I wake in my room, go about my day, and return to my room. It is the space; the walls are green and I feel free with the huge windows and the unobstructed path, but it is also really not. It is the presence. It is the quiet, the freedom to exist as I am and the absence of demand. Controlled stimulation, audience, presence. Nobody I do not invite can come in, the door is locked, but by me. I hold the key. I am safe from intrusion. You can blame this on all my childhood violations, criticism, ostracism, the early weight of responsibility, whatever. 

I will go on that date with her. I will stand beside her and offer the praises I know from a far away time to a god I do not believe in. I will sit in the living room, even if it’s just 5 more minutes than I already do. She just lost her mother. My mother just lost her mother and these are her straws to grasp at. There is, of course, also her worry that I will kill myself soon and she will grieve two of her mothers in one lifetime. I don’t like how much truth is in that worry. I can be a straw to grasp right now, I can take it.  

Last week my mother  heard me doing my affirmations in the kitchen. I was talking to myself about how I could never be convinced that my essence is ugly or unlovable or unholdable. I started crying, because well, that kinda happens when you lose your self and then your grandmother and your puppy die two days after each other and home is a touchy place and you listen to Noah Kahan. When you mix all of those things together, you will cry, of course. You are made of the same flesh and blood as everyone else. 

She thought a relationship ended. And her tiny frame pulled my significantly larger one into a hug. I sobbed more. She could not think of anything to comfort me with, but she prayed. It was nice. Knowing that my distress was palpable enough for her to call the one thing she trusts in above herself. She says I don’t tell her anything, mostly because it’s evident that I don’t need her. Or anyone, really. I don’t like the desperation of need when it emanates from me, but it is welcome from others. I am always so sorry that I need anything. Maybe it’s not that I don’t need, but that I work so hard not to. 

She still makes commentary about how I will find better. A better husband or whatever. I nod and say Amen because it comforts her to think she is helping me, reassuring me. I let her think she is a straw I am grasping on to. I love her, she can have anything she wants from me, as long as it is not my life, or my joy. 

My mother is not wrong. The selfish with myself thing. I think about it now, as I think about my friends. Love. Myself. 

I am quite prone to isolation. Honestly. I am scared of the outside world. I am scared of contact. I am scared of noise. I am scared I will receive too much stimuli. I am scared of everything but not in the way that means I will shrink. I am scared that it will push me to shriek. I can’t scream, so I shriek. I am scared that to surmount the stimuli I will grow bigger, like I have seen myself do when my mother yells at me, when she is critical in a way that feels like it is to cut me down. I am scared I will over-correct. 

I don’t like too-tight grips, unless they come in hugs. I don’t like too tight bites, even. Pinches. I need to not feel trapped, or like I cannot move. Everything that touches me has to be gentle, but firm. I mean everything. Down to love. To words. To feelings about me. To physical contact. Everything. Do not touch me if you are incapable. There is a desperation in tightness that I don’t like when it has to do with me. 

Romantically, I do not like suffocation aimed at me. Save your time, it will never take root in me. We are incompatible. Bring gentle. Curious. Solid and firm and consistent will always have me. Always. It is want, in the stead of need. 

Everytime I hear that I am needed for prolonged periods, I fear. And listen, it’s not for stuff like basic help. Not for stuff like emergencies that happen in bursts, quick flashes that fizzle into nothing. Always needing me is scary. Because it will fizzle out, and now you never learned to enjoy my presence without a crisis. You don’t know how to engage with me. I cannot be like a blood transfusion or a nebuliser, forgotten until you need me again, to the point where every time you look at me & are not in crisis,  all you can see is a reminder of the past void. Keep it from me. I want to be like vitamins. Regular. Routine. I always want to be an addition. Fill the void as it exists another way. Please. You are whole. I need you to know that. I cannot fix you. I have no will to. My offering is love, through my essence and all that belongs to it; not myself. My essence gives you love but of itself it is not a possession. You can have what it offers you, unless it is itself. If you loved me, you would stop me from losing my container for your pleasure. I would stop you. I would tell you to keep your self. If it ever looks like I am giving you everything, please send me back to myself. I would send you back, because I love you. 

Does it make me a bad lover? I don’t know. 

Obsession is scary, to me. The ‘I cannot breathe without you cannot live without you’  beat. Not enough hope. Too much desperation, not enough realism. You can breathe without me. You should. You should manage a life that does not have me in it; we are not conjoined. I am and you are. You should hope that we are spared the anguish of separation. That we are spared the pain of a life without each other. 

I know many spirits that can take an obsession. I am not one. Too much responsibility and I begin to slouch and waste. 

My mother is desperate for a tethering right now, and it will fizzle, but I will give it to her still, at least until she has the security of her footing again. What was that thing I said? A quick flash. 

You cannot blame me for giving it to her. She is my mother. She will remember she is whole again soon, that I am, too, because this is our song and dance. Till then we wait, we’ll see if she still knows how to interact with me when propelled by want over need. 

Sometimes I worry that for all of my expression I am illegible and I mean nothing. I worry that I am a document spiral bound in the wrong order, done just right so that when you think you know where it is headed, it regresses and shifts, morphs to teach you another thing. I worry that I will always be a mystery even when I speak, even when I am completely bared like this. I worry that holding myself the way I do, as tightly to my chest as I do will mean that I will veto everyone out of access until I myself am unworthy. I worry that the closest anyone will ever feel to me is when I am a straw to grasp on, and I worry that I will hate that I cannot be recognised as a place for joys. 

Right beside the worry is anger. I am just so angry. I am so angry and foolish and in need of soothing. I ache. I am sore.