Lately I’ve been feeling like one of those little Tool creatures who occasionally crawls out of the cracks to absorb sunlight and feed off emotional energy from the people around me, just anticipating the drumming crescendo of opportunity…the moment or sign where I know it’s time to burst out in full amplitude of “fuck it” and glory to be a part of the world again. I keep thinking it’s going to be this or that, then I groundhog back into darkness, whether it’s finally getting my ex’s cat humanely adopted or having enough of a spine to ask my friend to move out of my apartment, or even graduating from one of the most traumatic academic institutions I’ll ever regret setting foot in (another VERY long post on that later). I keep thinking it’s going to be losing twenty pounds, no, thirty pounds, no, forty pounds, maybe when I finally go skydiving with my dad or get that Audre Lorde tattoo I’ve been saving up for. I just don’t know.
Something is slicked over my skin like a membrane I can’t dig out of and part of me knows it’s the stupid fucking internet games my ex and I are playing through Reddit, the slight jabs like the one I’m taking right now where we’ll post indirect shit towards each other and I wonder how much of our life investments we’re doing for self improvement or just to spite one another. I know despite his proclaimed Tinder exploits I still have no sexual or romantic interest in anyone, and it’s frustratingly instinctive…I wish I could say I felt some intentionality but it’s gut reflex of disgust at the thought. My only masturbation has been to a select few scenes between Owen Gray and Vex with this deep storyline in my head of what their emotional connections might feel like in that moment. And even then, I think a lot of that is projected because Owen reminds me of him. It’s fucking gross. It’s all so fucking gross. My blog is turning into a pining, melodramatic Livejournal and I wonder how different I really am from my high school yearbook page which predominantly featured sappy punk quotes and photos of the three guys I dated at the time. Fifteen years but some things never change.
I remember Piph telling us in our Business of Blogging class something along the lines (and I apologize if I’m butchering this) not to overexplain an absence from blogging or a future hiatus because it might turn readers away or signal a lack of commitment. But this blog hasn’t really been stable or committed in any single way to begin with and neither has my image in the blogging community. I’ve typically taken the attitude of “born to lose,” (I know that’s a ‘Souls Johnny Cash cover) which hasn’t earned me the popularity card, and sure it might sound gloatingly self-absorbed to take up entire entries just talking about my mental health instead of what I’m jerking off to but that’s just where I am. Sort of “take me or leave me,” and as someone with BPD who relies so much on acceptance, maybe typing “take it or leave it” in the safety of my own blog isn’t the most daring thing to do.
Maybe all of this is, and it’s all pretty self-effacing pandering, a pindrop of comparative “fuck it” crescendo. I don’t want to get tied down or attach any specific meaning to this blog. I don’t want to associate it with schoolwork because my days at Widener are HOPEFULLY over, and I don’t want to align it with obligation because I don’t get paid and although it’s a point of contention for some people, I don’t ever want to. It earns me the privilege of writing this way, and I recognize that privilege, but it also sticks me in this sludge of feeling as though I need to play catch up with an old friend after we haven’t seen each other in a while and really, I just want to enjoy their company instead of rehashing my shitstorm of life events.
I want to blog but between school ending, kidney infections, fucked up company ethics and fascist brutality, I don't know where to begin.
— Avery (@ThePalimpsex) August 22, 2017
So how can I be present on a blog without glossing over personal life crises, accomplishments, ongoing sociopolitical turmoil, and where they all intersect? I haven’t the slightest. I’ve been avoiding addressing most of it on social media. Which is largely contributing to the problem as well, because silence is violence and it won’t protect me. But what do I say that won’t undercut the very cause of my words, the very futility and entrenched power structures of the language itself? I know the point is to keep trying even if I fail, to be ready to make mistakes and learn, to not make fucking excuses and to do the goddamned work. And yet I don’t know. I know to exist in the discomfort. And yet I don’t fucking know. Maybe if I could get out of my own head for two fucking goddamned seconds and stop being so fixated on failed relationships I could be a part of the world again? Or maybe I always already am? I really just don’t fucking know. It all sort of seems hopeless right now, the world around me and inside me, and I don’t really know how to exist for as ridiculous as that sounds. But I wanted to post today to say that I do. I’m still here. Trying and surviving in some protean form, some days better than others. I hope you are too. Yes, even you.