book of the dead
age 20s+ please; content: trauma.
p.s. I’m fine. I’m just… no fun to talk to anymore, for anyone. They’re sick of me and I’m sick of me, too. The process of releasing that grief and letting it go back to its ancient burial hole is really excruciating for everyone, lol. It’s an exorcism basically! This blog was originally titled “exorcism” but I changed it (not only because I previously wrote a different thing also called that). okay thanks for reading this note
my computer just asked me, so quiet I almost didn’t notice, if I’d like to update and restart. well, that sounded like a good idea, so I redirected my cursor and said ok.
when I was a really little kid I was, like all children my age, nonverbal—
so I’d scream and beat my head against the wall. I was so angry and so scared, and I’d seen what screaming looked like, and words, and fists, and all different kinds of conflicts and collisions, scared of accidentally witnessing it, scared of being drawn into it, two people screaming and pulling at a tiny child’s body between them,
King Solomon’s EQ test,
I was scared of all of it, scared of witnessing it, scared of accidentally hurting someone, so I took it out against the wall so the only person who could get hurt was me.
eventually I could talk, and write and read and think, but the one thing I could not do was respond.
a system hanging, system unresponsive, maybe a kernel panic, or maybe the people around me simply no longer had administrator privileges: rights revoked
I don’t remember it, but my grandmother once explained it: my family had been terrified. “i’m so glad you’re ok,” she told me—my flat affect unflattened, my body reanimated,
and I supposed I must be,
must be back from the dead after all.
but now I was too animated
sit down, you’re disrupting class.
use your words. no, please, not like that. oh god please shut up
she’s a little monster.
for many years I believed in writer’s block,
but I was also holding my breath in my sleep,
the opposite practice of people who don’t realize at night they just, like, fart away. ahaha. because we all suffer from restraint collapse,
a relaxing of the day’s difficult structures and inexplicable architectures, or chains, pelvic floor untensed at last—everybody toots like a horn on judgment day—
but most of us already asleep when it happens.
all day long I’d be frustrated and repressed and
in my sleep I’d collapse and
initiate sex
like a mythological monster, unaware
and alive
a misunderstood parasomnia, a night terror,
reaching, grabbing, reaching, groping
a strange case of mistaken identity, anonymous
almost always never a problem because I’d dutifully warn my partners about it before even attempting to cosleep,
my darkest shame,
as if fully disclosing my full history and test results.
if you’re serious about this, I leave you the choice:
either push me off and tell me no, or just roll with it, ahaha
and thanks for your understanding.
sometimes I’d hear, in the night,
fuck off Jenny I’m trying to sleep
I have work tomorrow
(“oh shit I’m sorry,” I’d mumble, talking in my sleep, restless limbs moving away)
but typically, oh word? and they’d just
roll with it. nice.
just as agreed.
either way, no problem.
until
wide asleep, I grabbed both arms
of an innocent stranger who wasn’t you,
who hadn’t received the preliminary disclosures because we weren’t involved or cosleeping or negotiating a peace treaty
and I gasped and woke up and jumped away, startled (he’d done nothing wrong, told me I didn’t need to move across the room, oh yes I do, I gasped, both of us mortified, the poor thing had no idea, no idea what I’d nearly done)
my darkest fear come to life.
and then I turned to my computer, right in front of him, and hammered out a missive before fully shutting down
irate, scared, in grief,
and I don’t remember what it said but
I need to focus for a while and you need to stay away from me
and just to give it a more plausible cover story,
I don’t agree with your choices,
ahaha.
oh god it hurts.
didn’t they used to give women lobotomies?
why don’t they do that anymore?
how expensive could it be? all it is is a nail driven through the eye or nostril
a simple incision, just a knife, then a mallet and needle or railroad spike,
for people who are wide asleep and, awake, closed fast and locked tight.
and I’m disrupting work now,
my coworkers’ and my own,
and I’m excited to talk to my doctor about a medication to help me stop talking,
some sense of hope
that I’ll return to my old ways, jokes and double-meanings and never explaining what I meant by that and
good talk, see you later and turning away: our tasks far more pressing, GTD, hit these milestones, running out the clock, all in good time
(never did have enough respect for my mother’s limited time),
a hope I’d stop leaking,
safely boxed and stored away, to ration out in lean years,
or back in the bottle, cork the top and seal it.
bury my voice in the desert,
boxes inside boxes so no one can ever hear,
and hide my body elsewhere.
surround it with gold and gems,
a glittering ruse
for graverobbers who might inadvertently uncover
my curse.
many years from now they will weigh my heart
and the math won’t add up.
why is it so heavy
hmm
I wonder what it carried
what terrible shame could manifest such weight
unsure of which department to send me to next,
whose sins are these?
they sure weren’t mine
huh.
someone else’s problem now
pass the buck
dog food I guess.
well
I think that’s about it
I’ve said almost everything, burned it up and blew it away, spread like ashes. perhaps it lands all in one place, intact, or else reassembled like an ancient text: a game of telephone, illuminated scraps of someone else’s handwriting, a wives’ tale, take it or leave it, because oh boy I’ve got to get moving
get to work, start again, man I hope I can cover my debts, it’s back to the grind.
please pray for me
but hide in your closet
write a prayer for my journey
but in tongues—
in pictographs or in jargon they can never decode