conversations with ghosts on molly

when the pill has been swallowed and there is no going back i begin to panic. calm down. molly is a needle inflating my skin when i am already a thin wrapper over longing. eyes leaking, veins swelling, the come up has me choking. when it hits i curl in on myself, rocking on heels, focused on the intake of breath. the music is dense and muffled. you catch me as my knees give way, capsule around me, elbows blocking the feral crowd. i am doing everything i can not to spiral. you place your palm on my shoulder. when i pull away you retract your hand to blistered flesh. i am praying you do not speak to me, because the sound of you would swallow me.



horseshoe theory. from this vantage point i can understand what it feels like to be avoidant. love as distillate terror, a hand on a stove. eyes shut, ears plugged, i am trying to stanch the flow of thought. the storm in my head: every time i have hurt someone. all the missed calls from my parents. isolating myself from friends and unravelling when they do not reach out. staring out the bus on shrooms and understanding dazai, thinking: everyone is so ugly at the core. the acrid guilt of exposing my abuser. how it felt as they vomited at my feet, collapsed in my arms, bled out before me. how i carried them back to the car when i was the one being hurt. the feeling of setting myself on fire, believing i was the monster. the destructive heat of empathy. i want to think about myself for once.



hurt people hurt people. unfolding on the grass, i am coming down, and i am disgusted by this saying and the misplaced shame it draws. sadistic people hurt people, i correct. sadists take their lessons from past abusers. masochists learn to get high off enabling them. i am tired of being wrung out. you sink to my side. i tell you i am not an empathetic person. that i've learned to distrust the feeling, the way it has proven deadly. maybe that's why i fight this drug: it upends everything i have tried to bury. i explain that for three years my only defense was rage. that the most dangerous part of abuse is the softness they show after. the risk of relapse. for months all i did was forcibly commit the nightmare to memory: the slow horror, the threats of violence, their hatred at the end of it all, staring at images of gore and willing myself to believe it happened. years later, the apology letter in my inbox, smothering my attempts at villainization. how i would have forgiven them even with a knife pressed against my neck. i have since learned coldness as survival.



you disagree. you say that despite my best efforts i am not so easily hardened. that i have shed tears for you when you could not muster them for yourself. i tell you that you have saved me numerous times, swallowed my pointed barbs, held my hair as i dry heaved, coaxed laughter from a scratchy throat. i had no choice but to cry when i saw you hurt. you ask if i've known unconditional love. i say you make me believe it is possible. before you i had only known inconsistency: the pain of being ripped from a pedestal, the heat of short lived obsession. before you i couldn't even remember how to hold someone's hand. i was clumsy with it at the beginning, folding fingers into yours awkwardly and stumbling over my desire. you knew i was just scared. you want to see all of me: skinonskinonskin. i ask if you are okay with my damage. the plain truth is i was lost from the first time i woke in cold sweat and a stillborn scream wrapped around bad memories and you spent an hour just wiping me clean. you make me forget my heaviness. i would do anything for you, would let you ruin me, would set myself ablaze again. the difference is maybe you would do the same for me.



i ask when i will meet you. i am curious about the shape of you. every time i think we have crossed paths you move just beyond my grasp. i picture you as soft and untethered, light and intense, but maybe you will surprise me. love is open minded. you say we have already met, in fragments of self care and careful making and patient friends and every attempt at desire. you say the rest will come in time. i reach out towards you. the edges of you are fading. come soon. 

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