in and out

The rules state that pain must be internal. Like blood, milk, shit, piss, cum, tears, farts, ugly laughs, dirty sex, pubic hair… We are horrified by anything that highlights the truth of us as vulnerable, organic, meaty, stinking flesh. We love fruit when it is ripe and are revolted when it rots. We are tormented by taps that leak.

Those who expose the truth of us too freely are labelled impolite or scary or dangerous or insane. They are shunned, they are punished. If we don’t stone them to death, we laugh, we gossip or slowly, cautiously back away.

There are so many things we have all silently agreed not to talk about. Don’t talk about the things you want the most. Don’t talk about the things that really hurt. Don’t tell us how you really like to fuck. Don’t tell us how scared you really are. Don’t be too angry. Don’t be too much. Don’t.

The veneer of civilisation is thin and tenuous. We guard it out of necessity, it’s a useful structure, it’s a good thing that we’re not always raping and murdering each other. But within our constructed comfort, we become so fearful and feeble. We forget the flexible pragmatism of social structures and mistake them for inviolable law. We make Gods and use too much antibacterial hand wash and have too many four-wheel-drives in the city.

It’s claustrophobic. It’s suffocating. It makes deviants of us all and when we don’t fit in for our sex, our skin colour, our poor health, our pain… the feeling of isolation is devastating because we are social creatures who long to be loved. We fear that if we show the things we truly are, we will be shunned. But then we are alone and our loneliness accelerates our rot.

I hate it. I hate the artificial walls we thoughtlessly and religiously maintain. I grow all the more determined to smash them and this involves a process of directly observing myself and then attempting to communicate those observations. I try to catch myself when I engage in the act of self-censorship, I ask myself to be less fearful.

So tonight I’m going to attack a personal taboo that I never talk about publicly. Today I received a blow I’m struggling to cope with. The specificities of it don’t matter in this particular piece of writing, what matters is that tonight I was screaming at somebody who probably loves me more than anybody in the world because I was furious at the world and furious at him because sometimes he has been my only reason for living and today I hated him for that. For keeping me alive. For not letting me give up. For being my fucking hero.

I am not proud. I am whatever is the opposite. Ah, ashamed. I am ashamed. As I should be. My pain is not his fault. He tried to help me and I bit him.

He went to bed and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wanted to paint but could not. I wanted to leave the house but my arms were throbbing in too much pain to drive. And though I was feeling self-destructive, I wasn’t up for going walking in the night-time and inviting other people to do the job for me.

So… I have no idea why, but I filled the bathtub with my UHT, lactose free milk that for some reason I always feel a mild and undefined embarrassment for drinking. Then I sat in the bath, singlet and underpants still on and gently pressed my surgical knife into my thighs to make the most slender red lines. It wasn’t a violent act, it required barely any pressure whatsoever.

It calmed me. Just like it calmed me when I used to engage in the same activity (minus the milk) as a chronically ill teenager. It gave me that same sense of control and quiet and I was in awe of the beauty of red blood on white milk. The bathroom was perfumed by the odor of milk. I have never experienced a room full of the smell of milk before. That comforted me. I swirled the creamy liquid around and watched the water turn pink. My mind became empty, the way it used to do when I would paint. The way it did when I smashed those glasses. 

Even as I write this I am so aware of how it could scare and anger people. I am not keen to be perceived of as crazy because I do not truly believe I am. What I think I am is someone who, like many people, is experiencing a lot of pain and sadness and is trying to find a way to effectively express, communicate and manage it. I’m not advocating for self-harm but… Fuck, maybe I am. Maybe tonight I can’t think of anything wrong with the pretty and harmless marks I made on myself.

I took photos on my phone. I think that they are beautiful and I love the raw immediacy of cell phone photography. I want to post them here and am going to. Even as I know that this thing which I think of as beautiful and vulnerable will be seen as… ugly, stupid, childish, scary. Even as I fear being feared and thought of as crazy and no longer taken seriously.

That’s ok. I have to be ok with that. I want to be brave. I want to be a person who isn’t afraid of the things that most people are.

The marks on my leg sting a little but a lot less than my arms hurt every day. I guess I am a mess. I guess maybe I need help but I also feel like… this isn’t a cry for help. This is… I don’t know what this is. I’m just tired of feeling trapped. My body is a cage I cannot escape because it is a tangible, physical thing but those invisible walls we construct, I just want to burn them to the ground and then stand in the ash and embers, screaming like Xena Warrior Princess. This is how I obtain a sense of power and that’s no small thing.