From the height of my balcony, the world seems smaller, easier to tame. Easier to love. Sunlight lay across my knees. I feel like an episode of my life, one that keeps repeating. One I can not bear to hear myself type alive and put on an imaginary shelf. ‘This past doesn’t need to be reused in the future,’ I repeat like a mantra, biting my lips and fingers and thoughts. No blood comes out, only hurt. I am not even brave enough to bite hard.
I sit there quietly, late into the night. I’m feeling everything, everywhere. My intensity is both a blessing and a curse. It brings with it a great responsibility, and an even greater need for transparency. Not for the faint of heart. I love with both my hands and all of my fingers. When I hurt, I hurt in every colour, from every angle and in every light. Other feelings are bland, beige, tasteless. Mine grow into a thick, coarse darkness that I have to kick until it bleeds daylight all over again.
Fiery, roaring, breath-snatching, red hot soul. Bubbles deep in your stomach and your head spinning and your heart pounding kind of soul. I feel and I feel and I feel, like I am banging at the bars of a cage. There is too much me in me, until a rage spread thin, like apathy, takes over. I lie down by the window, exhausted at best, empty at worst. I still feel myself, but at a lower volume. I find comfort in knowing that the opposite of coherent is interesting—just enough to get back on my feet. I suppose that’s the best I can be right now.
They tell me to let it all out on paper, as if I should want to preserve it. My only salvation has always been writing, and they know it. My soul stops bleeding into my mind for a few blessed hours. From messy and fragmented, I go back to proudly touch my gentleness, just enough to know it’s still there. My own enthusiasm when it comes to it inspires and humbles me, and the promise of being myself makes me want to go hard again. I fall in love with my aliveness and the way it makes and breaks me at the same time. But how can I write this time when everything I write is a form of love?
When they grab me by the shirt to remind me who I am, I push the words back into their not-now cages. ‘I don’t want to write‘ really means ‘I don’t want to love’. Not now.
I need more distance before I can let myself feel; before I can feel. Then I can decide what to do with us, with what’s left of us. I speak gently to myself now, for I have no more strength to cut myself open. I speak in the same voice that would promise me to stay up another night with you if you asked. Instead, my voice tells me stories. It tells me my stories. I didn’t ask, but I listen. I sound delirious, quick, and incoherent. Fear takes away all the commas and full stops I need to make sense of myself, and all I can do is wait it out.
In moments like this, I wish I could tie a knot at the end of my rope and swing from it already. I wish I could feel safe and seen when my mind starts to devour itself. I wish I could run my own fingers through the knots of my soul. I wish I could, when I spread my heart like butter on toast, not hope someone else will come along and snatch it off my plate. I wish I could learn to love the skies I’m under. I wish I were the storm I’m hiding from. I wish I could feel and write and live without fear.
It’s easy to believe in yourself when you’re lying because you’re talking about someone else. But no matter what you see, I still go to sleep with my truths on my mind. I’m still not going to write them down. I don’t know if I will, even when it’s all over. People always tell me I’m too much, and I don’t want to add to that just yet. ‘I’m sorry for the burden,’ I tell the girl who doesn’t always know how to be kind to herself while blooming. I am the only one who knows that her silence isn’t detachment. I wish I could forgive her.
‘Wild one with your screaming soul, I can feel you loving from here.’
Anca Dunavete 