I was twenty-two
the first time I tried
to kill myself.
I threw
as many chemicals
into my body
as I could.
Alcohol, weed,
cough medicine.
As much as I could get.
Why?
It was very simple. Hate.
I hated what I was.
Who I was.
A blasted beast of flesh,
bloated with
bestial malcontentment.
There was a swimming sense in my vision, white-hot with sadness. I felt it in me, like nails driven through my skull. Heart pounding, sweat-drenched, eyes wide. I paced across my room and upstairs and down and cried on the floor and prayed, prayed to the Goddess I had lost touch with. When I fell asleep I didn’t know if I was going to wake up again.
To hate oneself
is an odd journey.
The beginning,
unknowable.
The end,
unseen.
You must simply
float
inside the feeling.
Resist the bubble
it surrounds you with.
Take solace
in the moments
where the shield cracks,
the membrane bursts,
and joy can flood
your hollow home.
Finding sunshine
hidden away
in malodorous
hidden caches
tucked away
in moments
you don’t quite grasp
the import of
until weeks later.
In that sleep I dreamed. It was terrifying and sluicing, going from point to point to image to shape to thing to drastic terrified filthy beast that was me en-suite, enchanted, enshrined by death to be nothing and everything and I felt my insides tear in my sleep. When I woke up I could barely walk and my skin was pale-white-blue and I was shivering and shaky. And I went to work because I didn’t know what else to do. I had almost died and I didn’t and I didn’t care because what else can you do?
Finding the light
is hard
but possible.
It takes many days
many weeks,
many months,
many years,
but the hole is
escapable.
You need to run
and jump
and fight
and scar
and heal
and eventually
earn the right
To breathe.
To find the pain
inside of you,
to determine
what it was that caused the pain.
And the next day happened. And the next day and then I got treated for my illness, the lymes disease that was killing me and causing so much terrible fucking grief and hallucinations and pain and hatred. And it made things a little better. An inch better. And I realized what I had to do—take that inch. Take it and rip it and don’t let it fucking go because I need every goddamn inch. And I took more and more and more and I got sober and I stopped drinking and I learned control and love and self.
Healing starts
Slow. Desperate.
You take out the venom
sip it back down
to digest it
for strength.
And you look in the mirror one day
after a thousand ten mile walks
and the stowing of poison
and the slipping smiles
of a hundred ghosts
you can grin
at what you see.
And then I took estrogen. Sub-lingual, under-tongue, habeas corpus of the old self, suspended under glass and shot with a gun I made myself with my own splinters of joy and reinforced on lonely nights spent shaky and depressed. And slowly the holes in the self grew more and more, ripped apart, spurting sinew and blood like a cosmic sandbag. He’s dead and I killed him, easily, happily, buried the man I was with ease and grace to become who I was meant to be, the women that was hidden in me from when I was ten and put on one of my sisters bras and felt right and good but everyone made fun of me so I took it off and stowed it all away in my heart until I knew how to unveil it.
What do I see now?
Scars.
I see
wrists I held
sharpened blades to.
I see
a neck
I wrapped
rope around
and tied tight.
I see eyes
Who stared off of a cliff
And saw the bottom
And wanted
To see
How it tasted.
I see
Someone
Who destroyed
A thing
That was going
To kill me.
Now I wake up. I feel groggy and off because my metabolism is so high I need to chug a Gatorade as soon as my eyes open. Six hours of sleep is enough for me, apparently. I do my yoga and try to practice an art and do some crafts, then get out and go to work. On Saturdays my morning is different because I light incense and open the windows and take off all my clothes and stare in the small hand mirror I use for makeup and pray to my Goddess and her disciples, and while I do that I draw the syringe back to extract .1ml of estradiol enanthanate suspended in oil and then I stab the needle into my upper thigh and I thank my Goddess and plunge it down and feel a little pinch
That death,
Eternal
And inconsequential,
Is not something
I pursue
Anymore.
I write this,
Seeing red nail polish
Black eyeliner
And rainbow thigh highs.
I see
Living
As myself
With no regard
For the foolish whims
Of others.
I pulled myself
Out of a black pit
And drew myself
Into a rainbow apocrypha,
A self of color
That shimmers
In the sunlight.
Defiant to the thing
I once was,
Twisting in the shadows
Smoking another joint.
And then I saw myself in the mirror seven months in. And I started crying becuase the body I saw was one that meant something to me, was one that didn’t make me feel like cutting into it, that didn’t make me feel like driving off a a cliff. A body that could dance in a way that meant something. And then I cried again, because it took so long, and because my life, the real one, the true one, has finally begun.
I’m happy.
For the first time
In sixteen years
I can see my self
As myself.
I lounge
Draped in blue-pink-white
My tits
On full display
For the world to see,
Me,
My self,
Myself,
And I.