hurts that it can be this easy.

Anarchy April day #6 #7 #9 #11 #13 #14

you don’t have to complain to me. i might be half-blind but even i see that your elbows are scrubbed raw from always reaching in to grab me. well, you don’t have to do that anymore, because this time i looked up and saw my own hand through the portal. it was skeletal and frail and almost certain to drop me but i took it anyway.

after rummaging through my dumpster mind and finding a dusty pringle of self-discovery, i trust myself a little more. if i could nurse myself back to health out of this episode of sinking, then maybe i could again sometime. and that gave me all the courage in the world.

i mean, before the hand, inside i was screaming. but i couldn’t open my mouth to speak without admonishing myself for being such a fool. my mother asked me what was wrong but she only asked three times. she didn’t really want to know. usually, she’d ask six or seven times and i’d shake my head no until sobs wrenched through my throat like a water fall but this time, she only asked thrice. i had been sent out to fend for myself. i might as well have been a baby put out in the woods behind the house to die.

but i got through it. and i saw a truth i had only ever considered half all my life. my mother has a life of her own, and three other kids. it was high time i grew the fuck up. and growing the fuck required me to recognize that i was still a child. i wouldn’t beat a child up for fucking up her first steps, now would i?

so why did i keep beating on myself and expecting someone to hug my fists to their chest?

i watched a video that spoke about mary magdalene and about how god really is inside you and there is no divine feminine really and you can’t learn it and the only way to truly be divine is to be your fucking self and reach inside. but when i looked, someone i didn’t even know looked back. it was a two-way mirror and i’m looking and i’m looking and i don’t know her.

i think that when i get really sad, its just me reaching for something in the material world that turns to sand slipping between my fingers and i look around to find comfort in another person but there’s no one else with me. not even me.

i would hate new york, i think i would hate the rats and the noise and the millions of people like ants in an ant farm. i think i’d be much happier in a smaller city with lesser people and noise. and admitting that to myself is like pulling out teeth. but teeth that’s been aching and hurting and shaking for six months. i think i love it here, and i think i’ll stay. but that’s a defeat. because of that spent panting after a life that isn’t mine (and i don’t even want) is wasted. because there’s a me that was made solely for this train of thought and no she doesn’t have a job to do anymore.

now i have a journal full of gratitude for things like mangoes and my barely hanging on plant and my laptop’s missing esc key and my sometimes-achy molar teeth and days when my dust allergy doesn’t rear its head. and it hurts that it can be this easy. that life can be this easy. and all those days spent in despair could have been spent in joy.

this won’t last. there’s no antidote for the hole that must be dug every month and in may i’ll find something else (or the same damn thing) to cry about and that will be that.

but right now, i got my hair done, i went thrifting, and i bought a baby monopoly game so i can play with my mom and niece and nephew after dinner when our bellies are round and teeming. there’s nothing else i could need right now.

piece inspired by several of

sonja ringo

’s escapril prompts.