sxe-notsex

[sxe-notsex]

9. the little comforts are just that: little

I'm holding a blisterpack of meds. four weeks of seven days, twenty-eight pills with five left. I think, for a moment, that I haven't brought enough with me. I remember, then, that I'll be leaving in four days. There's not enough time left here. I'll have to leave home again and it's going to hurt just as much this time around, if not worse.

It's tempting to run away from my problems, to drop out. I'd ruin my career but there really is no point of thinking about the future if your present is actively unpicking itself at the seams.

If I do get to turn 21, I'd quite like my birthday present to be a way of being happy. If I do get to turn 21, that will be halfway through the worst year in my life.

I wish my natural response to 'are you okay?' wasn't 'yes'. I want to give myself the space to be an inconvenience towards others. I want to be a burden, just a little bit, just enough to let the people around me know that I'm really on the edge this time. I suppose what I really want is to be loved unconditionally, or to be taken care of.

[sxe-notsex]

8. i need a haircut

all it takes is one thing to tip me over (i don't wanna do this), all it takes is the future (i don't wanna do this), all it takes is my own skin beneath my fingernails (i don't wanna do this), all it takes is this and i'm sixteen again i'm a child again and there really is nothing to this all than a fast downward spiral. hitting the ground would be better at this point.

I thought there was nothing here for me but now everything is here and I don't want to tear myself three hours away. i haven't been living recently, not really, but i don't know when i died. seems to have happened after i moved away again.

nothing more to be said. there is very little of me left.

[sxe-notsex]

I don’t know what number this is it really doesn’t matter.

I think I’m going to die this year. I’m not gonna do it myself, obviously, but I feel like I’m finally snapping, and it’s only been 9 years coming. This is the worst one yet I’m not really alive, everything is just storybook tales and I’m abstracting into something unreal something made of paper something with a watercolour feel that I know but I can’t see, I never see, there is something seriously wrong with me and there are only so many times I can scream out for help why is no one listening why can I never scream loud enough

Okay, fuck, I’m not really here right now, my brain is running a hundred miles and hour and there’s nowhere to go have you ever tried building a track only a few feet before you ride it because it’s hard as fuck and I’m not doing too well. I just keep going and going all I ever do is keep going because I’m high functioning I’m high funcctioning I’m always okay enough to do things for others I’m always okay enough to pretend I am until I get to my room and I feel like I’m Not alone like I’m Dying like I need to take my skin off because maybe then I’ll clue into my body enough to save myself.

Deer in headlights with fingernail marks sown to my hooves, fuck, this is it isn’t it? It really can’t get much worse than this. There’s not a lot you can do to help yourself and even less you can do when you’re in the midst of it. Hey, I’m drowning. Let me wait a few business weeks until the lifeboat can get to me, fuck I’m never gonna get better I’m never gonna stop drowning.

Who am I writing this for? Who’s gonna see this and care who’s gonna know I’m not okay when I wear a mask like an expert and this is all I’ve ever learned. This year (academic) started off awfully and it serves to stand that it’s just going to get worse I am not here right now I am floating away I am slowly dying, one day I’m gonna leave my body forever and leave someone else to pilot this suit.

Stop being such a pussy and just ask someone for help. It’s not like it can get worse.

Nothing good is waiting for me and I wish I was a child again.

I’m sorry you had to read this but I really had no one else to turn to

[sxe-notsex]

6. I'd love to say I'm trying but I don't exactly know what I'm trying to do any more

I'm the type of person who seeks out labels as a comfort. If I know what's wrong with me, I know exactly how to treat it. So that being said, maybe this is social anxiety or some sort of avoidance disorder, but I'm desperate for an explanation because this isn't fun. I don't like playing this game.

I don't just labour over things I said wrong- now every conversation and slight misstep is killing me. It's been a long time since I had to fight off the temptation to withdraw from absolutely everything and everyone. I don't want to do this anymore, it's gone from not being cut out for extroversion, to not being cut out for friendship, to not being cut out for being a person.

I don't remember when I started hating myself again. I was supposed to start being kinder to myself. I was doing well. I know progress isn't linear but I'd at least like to make some form of progress before I die. I'm turning neurotic and paranoid, yeah it's stupid and I know not everyone's out to get me, everyone hates me; but it sure feels like that.

I think I might be dying, or deteriorating, or something, because this is only getting worse and I really don't know how to fix it, or just get better.

[sxe-notsex]

5. Catching bubbles between my teeth doesn't make them taste any less like soap

I told you I was a werewolf.

It's the first thing that slips, past fangs, from my mouth: a friend that comes with a warning label pinned to the lapel of my jacket- you don't need to know me before you know I'm a danger. I bite, and it's best you know sooner so by the time you get close enough to read my name, engraved onto the silver ornament hanging from the collar around my neck.

I told you I was a werewolf.

It always comes with an apology- by this point the 'sorry's are just as much a defining trait of me as the way my bones rearrange themselves at the slightest inconvenience. The guilt hangs heavier than the prongs on the inside of the collar to dissuade me from pulling away;

'it's not like the movies.'

sorry.

'it's not just the moon that changes me.'

sorry.

'I'm more animal than human.'

sorry.

I told you I was a werewolf.

We sat and I relayed everything I'd read from the supernatural self-help guides you can find online- everyone always offers sympathies when you talk about a disability, and I was no different as I lisped around my fangs that I can't control it, that when I am confused, tired, backed into a corner, I can't stop it rearing its head to protect me. It bites- I bite- but I never mean it.

I told you I never mean it, and all I got in return was 'there's a difference between being a werewolf and using it as an excuse to be an asshole'.

I've learnt that shame isn't just matted into my fur, it's printed onto my skin in endless spirals that I find it so easy to fall down, looking into mirrors and hoping to train myself into good behaviour, to linger longer in my human flesh with the hopes that one day I'll stop turning at all. I try, I try, but the only clicking in this pavlovian taming is the sound of my wolf's teeth snapping before I can stop them. So I muzzle myself. I stay quiet and say nothing at all, for if I am silent, than it will be neither me or the wolf speaking. I can keep up appearances.

I told you I was a werewolf.

You said it was okay. You said you understood.

So why do you keep wrapping silver rings in paper and passing them to me as gifts? I'm begging you to stop trying to kill the wolf inside me, I've already drowned it enough times and awoken with wet hair.

Maybe, just maybe if I tell you enough times that I don't mean it, that it's the way my brain is wired; maybe that will be enough.

I told you I was a werewolf.

You said it was okay. You said you understood.

And yet I can't shed my human skin anymore. I've been cooped up behind this mask of neurotypicality and flesh that the wolf is attacking me now. I'm to blame for what I can't control.

I told you I was a werewolf.

You said it was okay. You said you understood.

But nobody befriends a werewolf for who they are with their disability. It's always in spite of it, despite the fact that I am more animal than I am human.

[sxe-notsex]

4. Falling behind

It’s too late to say anything worthwhile (it’s always too late) but I have lost the ability to feel like I deserve any sort of human interaction. I am doing everything wrong, all the time. I think I’ve quite forgotten how to be human, and every word I speak is embarrassing to hear back.

[sxe-notsex]

3. past midnight, does this still count?

Standing in the middle of a shopping mall, waiting for my mum; I'm convinced I've fallen into a wormhole where everyone is a stranger that resembles people I love just slightly. There's a woman that looks like her, like my mum; and suddenly I'm completely alone- no one I know, no one that can help, no one that loves me exists here. I'm some sort of monster that's been slotted into a world that isn't mine.

There are eyes on my but the faces aren't real, nobody looks real, and fuck I'm dying I'm slipping away I'm finally cracking it and losing it and hating every moment of it- THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME.

I've slipped through the cracks and I can't claw my way back into my body. It's only a matter of time before I fall too far. It used to be harder for me to slip away like this, go on autopilot, become a robot; but one email sent me falling into catatonia. How long until I fall too far and can't come back? When I lose my mind, I don't think my body will be smart enough to find it again. I should write some letters for the people I love, just in case the anchor in my body disappears and my vessel becomes empty.

[sxe-notsex]

2. I have nothing to write, so I'll proceed to write a lot (I'm a liar)

Getting better is always a back and forth but that doesn't make it any less painful when the pendulum swings into my line of sight and I'm blind again. I don't remember what I did today, but I don't think it was much. I'm sleeping more and more, I prefer dreams to reality (it's the only time I can see anything).

Emotionally constipated, irritable brain syndrome, would get a reverse lobotomy if I had more space in my skull. Nothing coherent comes from these lips, no metaphors that fit; only rhymes that make everything I write sound like a shitty kid's storybook.

It's always 'tomorrow is another day' and never 'you'll have to go through this again'; I'm looking forward to finding a way to bury all of my feelings in a deep cold hole and cover it over, because I've been scheming on how to do that recently. I've never been much of an inventor but I have a lot of ideas, so maybe I'll will one into existence if I think enough.

Had the most lovely guy on the other side of the hotline to talk to- calmed me more than any resolution or revolution ever could, but you can't inject voices and words into your bloodstream. Still, it's just as much of a temporary high as about any drug, so I'll take human context instead, any day.

Want to write / want to draw / want to paint / want to craft / want to cry / want to love / love / love / want to want / want to feel like I haven't penned this exact part before / want / what / want to do everything in the world / want to feel everything in the world (but not sadness because I've been stuck with that for too long) / want to be able to finish what I start.

It's ADHD or it's depression or it's something fundamentally wrong with me, and I try to be good but the superficial responses of a pat on the head and 'good boy' haunts me (if I didn't believe in ghosts this wouldn't scare me, I could excuse it). It's exhausting living like this. This time it's worse, I really am slipping away, and I don't see how I'll snap back this time. I could drop out and it would be so easy. I could ruin the trajectory of my life for just one more year in my childhood home, I could find a way to survive, I really could leave all of this behind if I wanted to, beg to move in with my brother and come a tube driver or something. Become a shut-in. It's so tempting, and I've never been the type of person to get really tempted by self-destruction, not to this extent.

Fuck, I need to respond to some emails.

[sxe-notsex]

1. if I had a muse they would've died in some stupid accident a long time ago

I was told I should start journaling again, make it a daily thing maybe, but knowing me this'll be the first and the last in that attempt. I can't stick to anything, whether it's habits or emotions; so this won't make sense (it never does) and I don't think anyone will read it, anyway.

I don't like who I am right now, that's just a fact of it all; but I wish I was in pain at the very least, for all these bits I keep hacking off of myself so I can fit in the box of who I used to be. It's a really small box too, one that contortionists would struggle to twist into.

I don't know who decided to stuff a rabid badger inside the skin of something barely resembling human, but I'd like to have a word with them because I don't have a den anymore and I'm itching to bite (and I use too many 'and's in run-on sentences) and no one is in range of my jaws besides me.

This is the messiest drawing I've ever seen, the ink that's etched into my skin and the moles that I'm pretty sure aren't suspicious (if I just ignore them it doesn't matter) (nothing matters) (matter matters, I'm a materialistic type of person). I couldn't tell you how these last few months have gone, I've been running on autopilot on an endless supply of fuel- you're doing well in uni you can pretend to be happy you don't cry anymore you're doing fine there's nothing obviously wrong with you

Watching the hunger games. Gore is a comfort to me. I see it happen so I don't do it to myself. Christ, that's a bit much isn't it?, don't tell anyone that. Played skyrim today. Bad things always happen when I'm playing skyrim, but maybe if I mod it enough times I can iron out the kinks that line it up with the molecules in the air that fuck me over each time I want to play a spellcaster.

I don't think I could say anything that could make me feel better, I just have to live as this undead corpse for as long as it takes until the death catches up with my mind. I could say I miss my mum, I miss my dad, I miss being a child; but it wouldn't change the fact that this is what I am right now and if I don't fall first, eventually someone's gonna call wildlife control about a rabid animal on the loose

Journaling is supposed to help work on feelings. I already know what they are, I already know I hate living (with them). I already know everything I have to know to know that no one's coming to save me. I need to be eradicated. Or medicated. I need to be saved, need to find God, need to lose God and find some purpose for my own, need to need instead of want.

Going to a pub and getting drunk holds just the same amount of weight in my mind as every other intrusive thought I'd get sectioned for. It seems to work enough for every other depressed fucker in this hellhole, so why not me?

£50 is all that's stopping me in reality. And fuck if anyone but me knows what that means.

[sxe-notsex]

don't bother, i actually like the feeling of the splinter under my fingernail.

Growing out of the fixer-upper mindset takes longer than I last without being told I've fucked up again.

I can't bring myself to care this time, I can't bring any sort of care to the table as it stands, I've been slowly slipping into the pillow on the dining chair for a long while and each time I try to reach through the feathers and stuffing, people only touch my hand to shake on the deal that I need to get better from this illness of my personality. It's hard to hear, though, when you've stripped away so much of yourself you're no better than the furniture, and this wasn't what I agreed to when we said we'd be honest.

I didn't know why it was such a big deal, I was just there for the food (then again that's all I ever do with her, and I do wonder when she'll get tired of me eating all of her stuff. takes me back to kids parties with streamers and hats and games that were probably interesting but I was stuck at the food table because the whole socialising thing wasn't really my bag. party bags, on the other hand...)

The worst part about it is that I'm not sure I want to feel again- being a chair's easy, you don't care as much when people use you; and I'm so used to being beneath others that I think I'd be better if I actually did become a badger and live underground.

How many times do I have to say I can't control myself and still be blamed for it?

Fuck it, though, it's probably my fault- it always is, it always has been, it always will be because God built me a terrible friend and a terrible person and now he's probably gathered the angels and seraphim around to laugh at my misfortune.

Who cares? It's not a new story, no one befriends the werewolf because of who he is on full moons; they want the human. They always love him despite what he is, not as well as it. It feels a bit like everything's been full moons recently.

If I'm acting like a dog, why don't you just euthanise me like one? I'm far lamer than most of the ones that get put down, even with my human advantage. I could take care of that myself, though, let's be honest; and that's probably the way this will go eventually. Eventually I'll stop being so scared and then I'll never have to be scared of anything again.

I've fallen into habits I hated on other people and they don't look flattering on me either. What's the point in trying to change them, though? This nasty part of me (fatass at the party food table, no better a friend than a chair, werewolf- and not like the hot ones) has always been here and no matter how hard I've tried to collaborate with everyone in my fucking life and kill him, I'll never escape the fact that I'm just awful.

I can't bring myself to care much, anymore. I've been typecast as a villain for a little to long to try playing hero (that's a stupid fucking cliche metaphor, get better). Cut my losses / cut everyone off / cut it out / cutting words / a secret fourth thing I probably can't say because I told the doctor it'd been a month and I want to keep one promise.

sorry has no meaning anymore, it's been so long since I've heard it that it would probably do nothing for me. Okay, I'm lying. I've been using sorry to self-medicate for too long- maybe it'll make me less of an awful friend / maybe it'll make me act right / maybe I can change out of this awful mind and awful body / maybe I can change the way I was made / maybe God will say sorry / maybe I can stop the shouting / maybe if I say it enough times I'll hear it back / maybe I know I don't have to say it / maybe I'm just saying it because nothing else will be taken seriously / maybe / maybe / maybe

Whatever, I don't care (pretend I'm telling the truth, I don't want to be told I'm wrong again. for once I want to do the right thing).

Yours, because I can never be myself,

Jay

[sxe-notsex]

It hurts so much that I will never get my childhood back. I just want to remember

[sxe-notsex]

Not feeling much about this one

I'm not saying I manifested the apocalypse into existence, but there has to be some correlation between the world falling into apocalypse and my neurotic insistences that things were ending this year. I expected that lifespan to be a timeline for me and me alone (or I hoped so); but I have always had an obsession with zombie flicks.

I knew this was going to happen, I could see the warning signs prophesised in white pen against white page.

I've always liked horror movies that take a difference stance on things- slashers from the perspective of the killers, stuff like that. The whole 'trying to cure the zombie infection' thing has been done so many times before, though; which is why I'm disappointed in myself. I've never been a fan of following trends, but for you I'd walk towards the creepy sound in the basement instead of running first.

It was surprisingly easy for me to come to terms with the creature in my shed, but when the world goes up in flames, what shock is another fire? We used to paint each other's fingernails, and now the flesh around your cuticles is rotting and receding, and I'm not entirely sure whose blood is underneath, but it's not mine or yours.

You're nasty and vicious now, and I can't really see why we were so close- but I suppose I can't judge you. Maybe you fancy eating brains and hearts because it might give you a long-kept taste of love. Come to think of it, though; you were cruel for a long time before the bite. It's just easier to see it now- it's helpful to read a book by its cover if the book is a nasty piece of work.

Even in the apocalypse, in the collapse of the meat industries and institutional cruelty to animals, I still can't bring myself to experiment on mice like all those scientists in movies do. I'm trying to bring you back, not kill rodents.

So each vaccine I synthesise and each balm or salve I pretend to have hope in is applied directly to you. It can't get worse, I tell myself, considering you're already... y'know, dead.

Sometimes I look into your eyes, and the only emotion I see in them is my own reflected back at me. It's hard to get a good look at it, with all the snarling and the grabbing, but I'd notice if there was any of you in there, because at least you pretended to care.

I don't have hope for the world to rebuild itself, and it's quite frankly better like this; but I have hinged everything on bringing you back. Maybe if I do that, you'll like me again.

[sxe-notsex]

6 days until I can leave this place and not look back, until it gets cold and I need my family again. Never managed a relationship but I’m an expert on break-ups, but I still haven’t quite mastered the getting over it. Know I said I did but I’m still sad about it all for some reason and I don’t know why- don’t want anything to do with you and can’t stand thinking about you but I’m diseased with hope(lessness). I miss who I thought you were (and what you would be to me). Or maybe I’m just angry about how I was fooled again.

‘Don’t accept any less than you deserve’ means jack shit when you’ve got low self esteem, and it’s not like the people I sought what I deserve from did anything to change that.

I’m sorry for taking up space again. I know I’m probably more like a reoccurring skin infection than something worthy of more than skin-deep love (not that I’ve ever got that far). I know I’m a bad friend, so why do I keep trying?

It was easier when I was a kid, but then again I guess everything was. I don’t regret wishing to grow up fast- I know I really meant that I wanted to get over this (me), and that’s something that I know now might take me until death.

I’m just done with this all, and I wish my heart shared the same sentiment- then again, it never has beat in time to anything else within my body, besides maybe how I beat myself up about every little thing.

That or I just have anxiety

Jay xoxo

[sxe-notsex]

The Three Cats Sailed Away in their Big Boat (amidst the wreckage, drifting displaced steering)

I've never much minded hypocrisy- it's a whole thing, right? People can change, and it's never really linear; sometimes growing up is falling back on yourself every time you stretch too fast and the band snaps back. If you think about it, a downward spiral just looks like a circle from a bird's eye view.

This time, though, it's personal. I have seem to run out of explanations for why I wasn't good enough for you; and yet I have more piling up on the other side of the scales (I've been playing Inscryption a lot, and it feels oddly comfortable). I tried so hard not to hate you; but I've been waiting for you to reach out and apologise.

It's only okay when you do it, right? That's how this goes, right? I'll forever be in the wrong despite my intention being right, right? But your goods are valued higher (paraphased, John Stuart Mill)- it's like I've said- right and left look like up and down if you're only concerned with looking at yourself.

Mourn for the badger boy for once- say you're sorry, say you're sorry, say you're sorry- and then think so highly of yourself that you believe the white streaks in his fur are spurred on by the stress of you digging your spurs into his side. Say you're sorry and then fuck up again. Say you're sorry and let it repeat. Say you're sorry and remember you didn't even bother to tie a red-beaded bracelet on his arm yourself.

Say you're sorry and

mean it?

I could say something about the city encroaching into the forests, but I want to pick a metaphor that's easier. Vague-posting post-catharsis, sistine chapel-worthy hatred, bated-breaths breathing-bets-like-it's-second-nature. Two on one odds I'm the problem, but the odds are on my side.

Sometimes when people say that shit about one door closing and another opening I wonder if they've ever seen a building before because there really is only so many doors one house can have. Unless I'm inside the house? The metaphor kinda falls apart when you think about it too hard, and that in itself is a metaphor for you, I think.

I think a lot of things. I don't think about apologies anymore- there's no point getting one when I wouldn't even accept it. I'm not gonna be your closure (not that you'd ever dare to confront me. I've held back, but one peep from you and I'll vomit up words and whatever I had for lunch).

This shit is the perfect set for a coming-of-age flick. I'd go the whole ten-yards and throw my phone into the ocean if I didn't need it to get my work rotas.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger in the same way you'll be bedridden before your body bothers to drag the antibodies together to fix you.

I love me and my antibodies (spoiler alert, that's another metaphor. fucking full of them I am)

yours hatefully,

jay

[sxe-notsex]

I am not a girl.

I swore off that over time, making promises for every step I took in the other direction- no nail in the coffin, more a slow closing, pulling the latch down when I found that ‘he’s were, in fact, for me.

If I find myself consoled with the knowledge of my own girlhood, twisted as it was; that’s nobody’s business but my own.

I subscribe to the surety, it makes me feel safe- trans-binary boy (I’ve written this one before). And like some poor literary device, in my attempt to emancipate from what once was assumed of me; I’ve grown to represent it in its absence- I am not a Girl, but I’m so Boy that the wide hole for femininity is gaping wide than it did before

[sxe-notsex]

My hair is long enough to tie up into a ponytail

(granted a small one)

It hasn't been like that for years, since before I was a boy

I got called She today.

I wish what is wrong with me could be mine alone.

I wish I was man enough for no one to know

(ponytail or not)

I wish I could be a girl in the ways boys can be. Am I making sense?

Probably not

[sxe-notsex]

In the small hours of the night, avoiding the creaking floorboards beneath my bare feet, I am wearing a dress I brought years ago, when I was still playing girl.

This is my secret that I wrap around my spinal column and tie at my brainstem- the spirit of man engraved with girlhood. There's no doubt to me that I am a boy, but I keep these parts of me close to my chest, as they'll be dangerous until it lays flat.

Trans-binary-boy, keep it quiet; you can't act like a woman if you want against it. Don't you know? Cis-boys break gender roles but you chose zero over one, so you're allowed none of the other side. You show a photo of yourself wearing a skirt and get asked "why don't you just be a girl?".

When I came out, I didn't expect to have to emancipate my girlhood in place of patriarchal standards- I've lost enough of it from derealisation- am I not allowed to resonate with what little is left?

I'm healing my inner child in a way that's best for her, and if that means both lego ninjago sets and wearing dresses in time left to myself, than I'll bite.

I can't wait to wear a skirt like a cis-boy, when I'm man enough to know masc-femininity.

Jay