we all know it’s gauche to quote yourself, but I meant it when I said it and each time I sing the words or think them to myself: my loneliness has nothing to do with you. 

whatever I’m crying about, the politics and the men and the money and the aching body and the list of tasks I can never get on top of, it’s a symptom, not a cause. 

this sickness in my chest, in my head, in the pit of my stomach, it needs something to crawl out of. it needs a shape to whittle into something sharp to twist into my body. the hideous beast that I am needs carrion to worry.

to pretend like this pain I am so often in is about something is to pretend like there is still something rational left in me. to externalize this self-indulgent suffering is to give my foolish self some respite from the feeling that this is all my fault, that I could just somehow stop.

all this selfish language pours out of me and I feel a deep shame. 

please, please take care of me. please hear this keening sound and help it find a melody. please hold me in the dark and forgive me my trespasses. please make me get my shit together, please make me get help, please make me stop this. 

I fall in love with every spark of positivity and fall apart when it falls flat. I grasp at straws and weep at the splinters they give me. I am an idiot and time falls in on itself over and over and over again. 

every mistake I’ve ever made makes me want to send four a.m. sexts to occupied acquaintances. every thing I can’t remember makes me assume a horrifying action. 

I am not a human being, I’m a pile of organs with an iphone and a pack of cigarettes. I’m a breath-hitch on an old recording. I’m a poor recollection and a half-assembled collection. A bloodstain on your alleyway couch. A partial object and a full-blame shitshow.

This list could go on forever, but it won’t buy your groceries or call your mother or remind you to participate in your communities and your friendships. I spit blood in parking lots and it leaves no mark. Every gesture I have ever made has been a cry for help and it’s too fucking loud in here for my bullshit.