small exhaustions

survival, cadavers, and a list of everything i'm tired of

THINGS I AM TIRED OF:

- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde— not that impressive. Sure, the theoretical science involved is fascinating, but I know a hundred men who turn wretched and cruel while under the influence. Hyde’s not special. It’s not hard to be a violent drunk.

- “Freak”/”Outcast” male characters— so you move a lot. So a few kids in middle school were mean to you. Their mouthiness about how much they don’t fit in is exactly what makes them identifiable as someone who has never truly been outcasted; outcasts figure out that even in a place where they should belong by all means, they’ll still feel like the black sheep. It’s inescapable. You only belong to yourself, and even then it’s a bit touch and go— the rest of us know this. The rest of us, the ones who grew up being told we were too loud or mouthy or bossy or the hundred other ways we got told that our opinions and ideas don’t matter. The rest of us have learned to shut our mouths and carry that weight.

- Being called nice-sweet-cute-frail-delicate-naive-helpless-etc— back in greener days, I got called a whole menagerie of animals. I was a lion cub and a fawn and a horse and a mouse and a wolf pup. I didn’t understand yet that this was a form of taxidermy— not until it was too late and they took my insides and stitched me up with dental floss. Then I got a little older and the names changed to things with heavier connotations; nymph, doll, kitten, honey, sweetheart that insidious fucking sweetheart. They all meant the same thing. I was something to be stuffed and mounted and then played with. Little thing, mundane creature. I was put on strings and forced to dance. I am stuck in a virgin suicide— I am the pure and innocent, and any profane behavior or outbursts only cement my position as such. I got a double dose of the feminine narrative along with my Santa Claus-sized sack of medication. As it turns out, you can be a hundred things and none of them will be something people take seriously.

- Love— I’m over it. You know, my mother told me when I was about 13 that one day, I’d need to let somebody love me. Despite love being one of the more unavoidable parts of life (much like death, time, and certain laws of physics, love is everywhere, given or received), I have not managed to let someone love me. This is a shame to everyone but myself. I don’t want it. I’ve gotten plenty of love declarations— enough poems to make a book, songs, long monologues, letters describing traits I supposedly have and why the described traits make me so endearing— but it becomes intolerable after a time. Love is a blind eye and I’m purebred smoke and mirrors. In its gaze, I become fixed in an anachronism, forced to only be seen how the lover wants to see me. I am not a static being. It’s a prison. Maybe one day when I’m less fucked in the head, I’ll be ready for it and the lover will be ready to see, but that’s not going to be for a while, so for now? I’m tired of it.

- Weapons— every single thing I do and say is held against me in a court that has nothing to do with law. I go to the store and that becomes a weapon to use against me at a later date. I forget the date of a meeting and that becomes a weapon to use against me at a later date. My disability, my uterus, my neurodivergency, my lack of empathy, my age, me not being able to get a job (see: disability)— all of them are weapons held against my throat. A day or so ago, I was told by my mother that I’m not allowed to touch the money in my bank account despite being a legal adult because I haven’t moved out yet (see: disability, inability to get a job). Everything I do is a reason to deny me the respect and decency that everyone should get. It’s a bit funny— so many people complain about me never telling anyone anything, but how could I? Could you hand someone a gun filled with bullets that have your name carved into them?

- “Unhealthy coping mechanisms”— I already know my shit is fucked. I don’t need a TikTok or a Twitter thread to tell me my behavior is self-destructive and toxic and problematic and all the other words of the day. I shouldn’t take so many painkillers. I shouldn’t put whiskey in my tea any time I need to get something done. I shouldn’t lock people out, especially when they have good intentions. No to the prescription sleeping pills and the shaking hands and the fingernails that break from a malnutrition that I didn’t choose. It lacks context, though. The name of the game isn’t flourishing or “living my best life”— it’s survival, because all those good intentions just end up paving my road to hell. If I lose momentum, then all this grief and rage is going to catch up, and it’s not going to leave me alive. My type of sadness holds no prisoners.

- Being “talented”— wait, you say. How is this an issue? Is this going to be some sort of gifted kid spiel about how everyone called you smart, and now you don’t know how to take notes so you fail classes? No, actually, it’s not. It’s about me never having to face the consequences of my actions because I’ve got a lifetime award in weaseling my way out of everything. I was only about a fourth of the way through all my classes two weeks ago— otherwise known as horrifically behind— but I got bored of being in high school and I finished my senior year in two weeks, over a month earlier than graduation and a week earlier than I told my counselor I’d be done. I have almost straight As, on top of that. The problem with this is that I am never going to learn. I am never going to figure out how to exist in an environment that I can’t shape to my liking through loopholes and ambiguity and escape-hatch sized cracks. Also, I’m never going to figure out how to meet a deadline. I’m aware that this is a deeply privileged thing to say, but that’s exactly what I’m afraid of— it makes me entitled and difficult to adapt. Those are not beneficial things when your goal is survival. Semi-delusional confidence is not sustainable.

- High school— fuck that shit, man. I’m done— I’m free as a bird, and thank God I’m never going to have to do it again. Cheers.

- Morality— it’s dull, it’s trite, it’s ineffective, and it denies the essential grotesques like bodily fluids, sex, decay, rage, and all the passion that’s implied in those things. Our modern concept of edginess is stupid, too, because it’s never actually radical or divisive by the time it gets popular enough to be considered edgy. It happened to cannibalism, but that was always the most boring reprehensible act, in my opinion— if you spend time around someone, you inevitably end up eating a bit of their dead biological matter. Cannibalism is unavoidable. Necrophilia is the same story, but the next step up. We fuck our dead all the time with our eulogies and biographies and our In Memoriams. I would let someone fuck my corpse, though. Only if it was someone who loved me very much, I think— someone who loves me so much they can’t bear to part with me. I would want them to hate it. I would want it to make them so sick they throw up afterwards, because that’s how you know it’s love— that’s how you know they’re not doing it for pleasure or kicks or because my body is available and there’s nobody to stop them this time. That’s how you can tell the horror is for love.

- People— see: “freak”/”outcast” male characters, being called nice-sweet-cute-frail-delicate-naive-helpless-etc, love, weapons, high school, and morality.

- Dissections— emotional and metaphorical, mostly, but physical sometimes, too. After a while, it gets exhausting to constantly be performing open heart surgery on yourself and how you feel and what you enjoy. Eventually, we’re going to take something apart that can’t be put back together again, and then we’ll be fucked. Definitions cauterize and cage sentiment. Maybe some people wouldn’t feel so cut up all the time if they just put down the scalpel and let themselves exist without constant scrutiny. It’s not like I’m anti-introspection— I’m anti-unnecessary introspection. All meaningful and essential knowledge will come to you when the time is right and the situation calls for it, but nitpicking your behavior will only bring you the crippling self-consciousness and sadness that comes from the type of dissatisfaction that’s near impossible to dislodge. Give up on trying to piece together constellations and just enjoy the sky. While you’re at it, pull the stick out of your ass. Improvement and being a good person are myths— the only thing that we have are the means we use to achieve an end that will never come, and whatever harm we can prevent.

- Worship— I’ve only been kissed on the mouth four times in my entire life, which is vastly disproportionate to the amount of people I’ve fucked. They all talk a big talk about “worship” and occupy their mouths with other, more important things, like the rest of my body and the sound of their voices. It’s strangely isolating to get “worshiped”— it comes right back around to nobody taking me seriously. As it turns out, you can get all the compliments in the world and it doesn’t stop the impenetrable barrier of a lack of understanding. And it’s not on me, this time— I communicated, but nobody ever listened to me. (See: “I was something to be stuffed and mounted and then played with”.)

- Needles— can’t do needles. Fuck needles. I’m breaking the wrist of anyone who tries to put one in me; I’ve done it before and I’ll gladly do it again. You know, I think I’d be a good magician, in this way— by focusing your attention on my card trick, you don’t notice the sleight of hand happening to make it work. I say needle and you see the silver, but not the hand holding it. (He said it wouldn’t hurt. He held the needle and he told me it wouldn’t hurt when it went in. Come on, doll. Come here, sweetheart. You know, the safety of anachronism died when I did. It never ends for me. I still feel it sinking into my elbow in the cloudburst of half-sleep, half-awake. Just as often, I feel the fear come creeping in. These are the days I wear long sleeves.)

- Space and time— I imagine it like a graph with an x and y axis, then compress it into a thicker density. It becomes a new Big Bang. All time is now. Physicality is just the beginning, and hardly an indicator of a person’s size. I compress myself into a one-dimensional dot, waiting for when it’s safe for me to explode. I dissolve the dichotomies. I don’t bother separating things. I don’t attempt mitosis just to change my mind. It’s a tactile and delicate thing, this balance, and I leave it in honey for seven years to keep it safe, to preserve it. All the while, the sun weighing down on us. All the while, the open fields and the straining horse pulling through the grass. Here comes the summer with the heavy light and the incubated roadkill on the side of the highway and the misted, shifting heat— you’re eight years old. You’re floating on your back in a pool. You’re 4’5 and 65 pounds soaking wet. You’re so big that you’re every water source on the planet, every molecule of your being touching all the other molecules and rippling out in a chain effect. The sun. The sun. All the while, you’re just a baby in a pool with bat guano and the occasional leaf sitting respited on the tiled bottom, letting the light mirages keep you from flying away to Heaven. All the while, the vultures circle above you, waiting for carrion, swooping towards an eternal ending. Once. Twice. Again. Again.