Endings

The ending of something sometimes feels like a flimsy, blister bandaid ripping off a stab wound. It’s somewhat embarrassing when you discover how raw, oozing, and serious the wound is, but you can admit to yourself that it feels good to feel the elements breathe on it. *I had a friend in high school that liked to eat scabs off of the knees and elbows of people she liked, only when the scabs were crumby, and ready to come off. She went on to be a healer. Do you want me to put you in touch? * Then there’s devastation, a tire over chest feeling, that leaves your heart inverted for a while, like it’s temporarily displaced, and out of order, but since the devastation was so shocking you don’t realize that your heart is flat and facing the opposite direction.

This kind of devastation can be harmful, this kind of hurt can hurt people by accident. It’s numb, it doesn’t know. With this wreckage in your chest, you find yourself inexplicably tired throughout an other wise productive and fruitful day only to begin to realize your heart touched none of it and it’ll take way more pausing and connecting  for it to come home. Until it does, all your faculties are a little slower, your radar for people’s intentions is fuzzier and world news doesn’t get processed and suddenly there’s a penis hitting the back of your throat while you are wondering if you should have bought the coffee table on Etsy.

My hearts way of grieving and opening is moving, dancing, hosting, chit chatting. It has a  frenetic way of keeping my head above my emotions and writing about such feelings doesn’t seem particularly satiating. It feels like explaining to the DMV when your license is getting renewed that your eyes are both green and blue and you don’t know what to write down because you fear authority and they write down something for you and whatever it is feels wrong. And then you drive home and think “I don’t even know the color of my own eyes.” And you pretend that you’re older and more jaded than you actually are. That is a very good exercise actually. When feeling like you’re out of your heart pretend to be wildly bleak, a Harry Dean Stanton Saddy, a Clint Eastwood self-important dick, Girl Interrupted level dark, and monologue to yourself. It helps it all feel smaller, sillier.

When you’re in heart ache you’re both freed and frozen, you’re new, but also not a cute baby. You’re a thirty one year old adult woman who goes to the hardware store alone and whistles as you browse. How can you suddenly be new? You have seen some shit, and done some weird shit, lady.  But you are, you’re new. You’re as precious as a toddler every day you’re alive even when you look like shit and are staring off at the flea market, where precious you is buying yourself a lil ragged 1970s t shirt, you plan on sleeping in. Aw.

My friends and I get a kick out of people crossing their eyes in slap sticky porn. Not the faintly crossing kind, like the cartoonish version. I imagine the appeal is humiliation or making someone go out of control, look “silly”, look mind fucked, but crossing your eyes takes actual concentration. Rolling back your eyes is a natural impulse, and I’m sure there could be a degree of crossing in there, but the levels I’m talking require focus and is impressive as hell. There have been plenty of times during sex, where I have been focused on looking unfocused, looking dissolved, or bemused (at the very, very least) but  I was too focused  on how it was all looking and not letting the experience lead me. Much like the creative process, if I get swooped up in how it’s looking from the surveillance camera over there, I’m never going to sink in.

And so, I’ve allowed myself to fall off from here, and internet engagement, and shining in a public way. My creativity is being expressed other places right now, though none of them have an audience. So one may ask, am I being creative at all? Am I even having an orgasm if my eyes aren’t crossed? Please, think about this instead: you are precious.