Anxiety
Fuck. I’m not really ready to talk about this one, but I should anyway.
I said in the To Be…What?’s write up that I wrote it, Joy, and one of tomorrow’s poems simultaneously and that they were the first three I wrote intentionally using the number sequence I built this little project around, but they weren’t the first poems written. That dubious honor goes to Anxiety here.
When I started I was just trying to work through some of my trauma in a safe space. I mean that poetically and literally. I wrote it at my then-new girlfriend’s house, on a Wednesday in late March or early April.
When I hit line 13 or so I noticed all but one line in someway used numbers from this sequence, and it inspired me to do it intentionally. Being me I still decided to rewriting a large portion of it; to build it even more inherently around the sequence. Once they’re all posted and I do my explainer post I should breakdown how extra I went on this one.
I’ve written a few times on my site about my experiences with BPD, especially in conjunction with my autism, ADHD and trans-ness. So, It think it goes without saying it was a major influence on this piece.
The reason I’m not exactly ready to talk about it is how that feeling of safety has been pulled away, again. In the same pattern I was terrified by and trying to exorcise from my skull in this work. I don’t think I’m still with that girlfriend. I hold out hope, but it’s a twisted wire coiled through my heart.
I blame myself, not for that relationships failure, well yes for that too, but my particular brain demon lives for the assumption that I am personally responsible for every negative thing that happens to me. That people who care about me wouldn’t treat me these ways unless I’d done something to deserve it.
So after being held at arm’s reach for a month.
After a reconciliation.
After being lied to about something so minor I don’t even really care that it was a lie.
After being ghosted and left on ‘delivered’ for days.
After being told by metamours my acts alone were the unconscionable ones.
After no break up text or call, but a sudden quiet removal of social connections…
I still feel entirely responsible. I don’t know what we are now. Nor what to do with her things.
I do know if she offered to take me back, I’d agree, unconditionally and in a heartbeat.
I can’t decide if it’s because she’s that important to me, if I’m just that traumatized by abandonment, or the really scary answer… if I’d do it because she’s so important to me I’d bear the responsibility of fault, when I know full well she understood how damaging the things she was doing to me would be.
Sounds pretty pathetic doesn’t it? In my defense (well, actually her defense) I crossed a big boundary. Yeah, it was in response to her crossing a bunch of boundaries for me over the course of months, but eye-for-an-eye has never been a sound strategy. Especially when I understand why all those things happened. No, the context doesn’t alleviate the harm done to me or her, but I can try to use that context and our intent to inform how I look at things now.
I can set the vitriol with which metas spoke to me aside. I get that they only got half the story. They were defending their partner. Their points were also salient, if un-self-aware enough to miss that the same points were applicable to them as well.
Well that was longer than I meant it to be, oops, probably going to have to tag this one as an essay too. And yeah, the next bit is a copy paste, you try finding another way of saying all this after your brain is fried from writing alllllll the above!
Thank you so much for reading. There will be one more poem posting later today so keep an eye out for the last one.
Thank you as always to my supporters here, Patreon, on Ko-fi, Twitch, and discord.
Extra Special thank you to April, Fragile Paper, Manfred, Pinball Witch, Pimento, and Yalc. I literally could not do this without you. I’d also like to shout out a bunch of awesome folks in trans authorial BlueSky spaces who’ve shared my work. I honestly don’t know how to explain how much that has meant to me this year.
I love you all, and if you are at Denver Pride today (June 28) or tomorrow, keep an eye-out for a weird futch goblin with a paint respirator and a witch-hat. And since I’m sure many of you are just as anxious as me, please feel free to come up and say hi!
