Perhaps the one thing

Perhaps the one thing I would like you to know is how mentally busy all of this makes me. How overburdened my thoughtspace is, with the compounding excess of things I should not need to consider, crowding in over the top of all the ordinary things I need to think about. It is so taxing to have such essential facets of my life relentlessly unresolved. And not just my thoughts, either, but my feelings too. My feelings are woefully entangled in these great unsolved mysteries. And the heart wants what it wants, all the feeble desires of a thwarted life, all the tantalising promises of improved circumstances, and the brutal counterpoint of the real difficulties I encounter day by day. (This is not what I thought it would be, any of it). And there’s a workload to all of this, a cost of thought and strategising and difficult decisions that never seems to lessen, no matter what footholds I manage to clamber onto, even briefly. And with it, self doubt. The grind of not-knowing, of having no certainty, of constantly guessing at the meaning of so many things, of reaching for confirmation and finding only speculation, always. And it would be one thing if it only concerned my own little bin-fire of incompletions and failures. But it goes further than that. It touches the lives of other people, and then rebounds back onto me with redoubled vigor. And I ache with the absence of people I value, people who may, for all I know, have decided I am too much. Too much confusion, too much crazy, too much effort. And even the having of this mental load adds to that, as if my right to clarity and communication and transparency of intention is somehow muddied by the process of daring to claim it, even in my own mind. “Stress” doesn’t adequately describe this overload. Neither does “burnt out” capture the depth of my weariness. I am tired. I am tired of the conscious load of always reaching for anything worth having, only to have it denied. I am tired of absence, and failure, and mixed fucking messages, and wanting. I am tired of acting like the unbearable burden of this on me is OK. That I am OK. I am tired of the constancy of having to question even the easiest of apparent facts just so I can find the shape of my own sanity in such a distorted mirror. I am tired of having my crazy wrung out of me like it’s its own commodity. And I am tired of the effort of believing you ever cared, most especially when that belief is still, even now, something I cling to. And I am exhausted by the mental load of knowing how utterly pathetic I am to have that need, as if there was anything different I could do about it. And even that is a burden: trying to understand what, if anything, I can do to change it. Because this overload, this constant hum of mental turmoil, is not my natural state. It is something I have acquired as a result of being confronted with the baffling inconsistencies of fractured cause-and-effect that now govern my life. It is a response within me to something outside my locus of control. (Or is it? Have I missed something obvious?). And it shouldn’t be such a grinding source of disempowerment. But if you knew, if you only knew, the fullness of the burden on my life, the delays and denials and disruptions and disappointments and disconnections, you might marvel at how unfathomable it is. And you might understand, in a way I cannot, how much of an effort this is to me to even comprehend it. 

On (dis)trust

It can hardly be wondered now

vigil / vigilant

 

this restless sliver

of night is a blade I hold

even as it cuts

distanced / silenced

 

    I dreamed about you, again. 

    I asked you how long it has been since I've seen you, and you laughed. 

    So I asked, how long has it been since we've spoken to each other?

    How long has it been since we've had a meaningful conversation? 

    You didn't answer. 

I require you to know this

At some point, I am going to need to reconcile the enormous lie that you have enacted upon me. Unless or until that happens, my sense of betrayal remains absolute. My feelings of loss and my anger at your reckless disregard of me, of my needs, of my fundamental rights, are a constant corrosive force in my life. This is what you have done, with your skillful, self-serving expediency, and I require you to know this. It must be very clear by now that I hold a set of expectations that have been engineered in service of your enormous lie, and your failure to deliver against core aspects of those expectations produces a constant, bitter fuel for my grievance. I want you to understand that this is a source of deep suffering to me, and also that it shapes my experience, but it does not define it. There are many types of pain, and this is pain that I live with, moment upon moment, day upon day, and it will not be eased until that which has been left carelessly unresolved is carefully resolved. I want you to know that this has become the reality of my life, and I am deeply unhappy with it, and in the midst of this agonising disempowerment I am still able to attain clarity about it and to articulate it even while it silences me in multiple ways. I have lost so much, and it seems like I lose even more with each day and week that passes. Will I die still waiting for every resolution promised? 

There has got to be a better way to do this

There has got to be a better way to do this ...[whatever]. I mean, if it's not bad enough that I've done it once and forgotten how to do it, I now need to do it again, which requires a whole new bout of remembering. Everything, it seems, demands some fresh hell of mental tasking, casting about for the gauzy remainders of whatever it was I knew the last time I managed to get the damn thing done. One might imagine that the act of repetition would reshape those elusive, but necessary, mundanities into a firmer cognitive agility, but even my most confident attempts are thwarted. It does seem as if the most simple tasks are made difficult, Always, by the simplest things: a login, apparently expired. A password, apparently forgotten. A field on a page, inexplicably not functioning. A stupifying wait for an unhelpful call-centre operator. A thing, misplaced. It might pass as disorganisation or personal ineffectiveness to unkind observers, or those who are not acquainted with my intellectual capabilities. Those who know me know otherwise. It is not insurmountable, but it is tiresome, and tiring. 

(Just between you and me, I suspect a handicap, rather than a disability). 

III.

 

        How tired we feel, my heart and I !

        We seem of no use in the world ; 

        Our fancies hang grey and uncurled

        About men's eyes indifferently ; 

        Our voice which thrilled you so, will let

        You sleep ; our tears are only wet : 

        What do we here, my heart and I ? 

                ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

II.

 

        You see we're tired, my heart and I. 

        We dealt with books, we trusted men,

        And in our own blood drenched the pen,

        As if such colours could not fly.

        We walked too straight for fortune's end,

        We loved too true to keep a friend ; 

        At last we're tired, my heart and I. 

                ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

So why not this?

there is no reason this action will yield any benefit - 

there is no logic which explains its sense - 

no method to justify the madness of the act - 

but this ---

something must change - 

something must give - 

some sharp corner must be rounded - 

some new scrutiny brought to bear - 

(my silence does not grant consent) --- 

(it never did) --- 

-----

so why not this? 

why not an action, taken once 

and then undone, now done again? - 

why not an action that serves no purpose 

but this ---

to underline the empty space where

what should be is not

what should have been 

has not been? --- 

__________

there is no reason this action will yield any benefit - 

there is no logic which explains its sense --- 

no method justifies the madness of all that -

and this --- 

its own absurb illogical folly - 

imagines its own eloquence - 

speaking its own plain truth - 

to those who would not could not did not 

(will not ?) - 

listen --- 

-----

therefore --- 

this mute, implausible action 

voices the only reply possible

to an impossible situation ---

the impossible reply ---

_________

and in this perfect expression 

of this imperfect circumstance

it becomes ---  

reasonable - 

beneficial - 

logical - 

sensible - 

methodical -

and justified --- 

---

so why not this? 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:  unusual action, entirely justified

here

...

this night

there is no sleep...

Affliction

How can this be? 

Shame. (Yours, not mine).

Why you thought I would play your stupid games when I don’t even have enough money to buy food, I’ll never know. 

This may or may not be true

... but it’s overwhelmingly how I’m feeling. 

Please

I'm stuck

If I could...

I would tell you

I don't know what I'm doing

but I don't even know how to do that

speak

speak

#this

 this bitter love / this twisted knife / 

 this idle dream / this lying strife / 

Ever more - - -

  fragments - - -

The Problem Is

the problem with

being a dreamer

is that you're

Always

asleep & awake

awake & asleep

at the same

Time