Hermetic Life

All I can think about right now is how tired I feel. I feel a weight pressing on my shoulders, pushing my head forward and down, my eyelids desperately try to close. Sometimes I let them close, for a second or two on the highway or at work. Then I jolt myself awake, and repeat the process until I get to my destination. I had a rough night last night. Curly Sue has scale rot, almost each injection site has white and black scales peeled away to expose the epidermis. This is a result of poor practice and maintenance on my part as a reptile owner. I have everything that she needs to thrive, but one day of no power in the dead of winter was enough to kill her. I feel like I am in a haze of bad decisions and choices and procrastination, and it has lead to the death of my oldest pet, whom I thought I loved. Would someone who loves someone else leave them to rot? Keep you in a glass cage and barely look at you, if only to stab you and give you water and clean your refuse? I think not. Then, how could a parent who loves their child leave them alone with a known pedophile and alcoholic? I am beating a very dead horse here. Why can’t I just let things go like others? How do I make space for all my sins in my heart while still accepting the good things life has to offer? Wouldn’t it be easier to die?

I notice that I get into a spiraling pattern when things start to go awry. My brain starts asking questions, to which there are no real answers. I pick and pick and pick until I start to bleed, but I don’t care if it hurts. I want to have control (Radiohead et al.) It’s my brain’s way of trying to deal with a problem. My brain tries to get rid of the pain, and when it doesn’t go away, the next step is obviously to kill myself. Can’t be in pain if there’s no pain to be in! It’s a defense mechanism gone wrong. Now that I notice the pattern, all I need to do is speak softly to my brain, give it a healthy snack, and wait for it to quiet down. The length of this process varies depending on the severity of the pain. For emails not being read or being misinterpreted, I drink water and stretch. For the news of war and bombings, I drink water and curl into the fetal position and donate to any of the causes for refugees and go to a protest and wait for the fear, panic, dread, horror, emotional feeling to pass. For friends that I need to reach out to, I procrastinate until so much time has passed that the guilt of not reaching out eats me until I send a message or call. The next steps for me are learning how to use this anger as a tool, so guide my choices and directions towards my end goal. Hermetic life in the mountains. I’m getting closer to it by the day.

Edit: Curly Sue is making a recovery! I gotta stop mourning things that aren't dead yet.

Ritual

There is comfort in ritual. 

My introduction to formal rigamarole was church. File in, adults get coffee and an old book, kids try to stay quiet. On a stage there are people with instruments, singing worship songs to these beings called ‘god,’ sometimes god’s son, Jesus, and sometimes a ghost with a bunch of holes in it. Then someone in robes speaks about this god, reading from an even older book. Sometimes we eat bites of bread and sip grape juice, pretending that it is the body and the blood of the son of this god. As a kid, I didn’t think to question the peculiarity of engaging in cannibalism with all my friends and family. It’s kinda metal, now that I think about it. 

We moved churches three separate times, each with their own set of rituals. More or less the same as the previous church, with their own flavor. I had an epiphany when I left for college; I can make my own rituals! I studied up on witchcraft, thoroughly enjoyed my world religions classes, and asked people what they believed. I landed a spot in the Secular Humanist Alliance on campus, and we held an interfaith panel that I found diverting. With all this shared faith within me, I decided to make my own rituals, prayers, and holy days. I love using the earth’s natural phenomena as a basis for my rituals, as well as numerology, astrology, sex, colors, candles, scents, plants, and animals. I can play with Baphomet as much as I want! I love their symbolism, and they are a great energy to work with. I do yoga every morning and stare at their face on my altar as the sun shines on the brass statue. They fill me with desire.

Performance

I let people see what they want to see. God knows I can’t control what other people think, try as I might. I have been thinking about this blog, and how I choose to share information about myself. I’m talking to a digital wall, so to speak. It’s nice to bounce ideas off of nobody, it’s another way I can talk to myself without being deemed insane. 

My father once told me, 

“It’s okay to talk to yourself. It’s okay to answer, too; but it’s not okay when you ask yourself to repeat what you said ‘cause you weren’t listening.” 

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity lately. How much of it is chosen and how much is inherited. I carry pieces of people I’ve loved, feared, admired, and resented. Sometimes I catch myself saying something and realize it’s not even mine. It’s a borrowed phrase, a hand-me-down thought from someone else, sometimes people I don’t even know. I feel like I’ve always tried to see the good in everyone, with some exceptions. This lead me to a few relationships of differing intensities that I should have thought twice about. I am a part of a super secret club that I can’t tell you about, and one of the things we try to do in this club is let go of control. We also say, progress not perfection. I’m still trying to figure myself out! I’m a growing boy (25) and I am on a journey of self discovery. I can pick away at my brain and body until I find something, but it may be just what I thought it was. Bones and blood.

Curious Escape

I somehow turned my yearning for death into an appreciation of life. I didn’t really want to die, I just wanted to know what would happen. I wanted to escape this plane. Would I meet a god? Would I feel my soul? Would I turn into a ghost so I could haunt people? That one seemed very appealing to me. But, I’m glad my pitiful attempts landed me in the arms of loved ones instead of the cold damp earth. Today, I look at each and every thing in front of me and I contemplate its existence. Was it made by humans? Did it form through a naturally occurring phenomenon? How did it get those colors? Why does this feel so nice? Does it taste good? How does it smell? When was it created? Who was involved in its creation? Did it happen on its own? 

I stare and touch and taste and smell and listen all the time, to an intense degree. Too much of one thing and my system shuts down. That’s where the death thoughts started, I think. When the world was too much, I wanted to get away from it. I feel like curiosity saved me, the hunger to understand - colors, smells, textures - a form of resistance to despair. There is no way to leave this earth and this body, unless I am abducted by aliens (wouldn’t that be lucky?) I like using the earth to connect to something much bigger than myself. Something that is tangible, beautiful, terrifying, gruesome, and loving. I think of god (as I understand god) as this force of energy that I can use as a gateway, a tool, to spirituality. The earth is my temple without walls. My purpose is to just be. My relationship with my body is complicated to say the least, but we’re working on it, together.

Edit: I spoke this piece at a queer open mic and even though I was shaking like a rabbit in a room full of rottweilers, I felt happy to bear a part of myself to other queers who just get it. 

Rambles I

Selfishness runs in my family. A healthy history of alcoholics left me nearly no choice. I have done my best to be a helper, a giver, a people pleaser. The funny thing about people pleasing, is that it’s also a selfish act. I want you to feel good, only in that way will I ever feel good. Trying to mitigate discomfort robs people of the dignity to feel it. Instead of being my true self, weird, overly friendly, sarcastic, I become someone else. Someone easily digestible. Fuck that! I don’t want to be friends with the normies! I want to attract people that like my weirdness, who want to love and be loved, who get my odd bits of humor. My circle is ever growing, and I am happy with the plants growing wild around me. One of the biggest challenges I face in maintaining my authenticity in social situations is my need to blend in AND stand out. I will take any opportunity to dress up in my fantasy attire (which I have many pieces for) These clothes also offer me a type of freedom, an expression of self I can cultivate. 

‘What’s your gender?’ 

‘Pirate.’ 

I feel like I need to write every Thursday, I mean I write about my day every night before I sleep or turn over and over until the light shines through my curtains. I used to write three pages, as per the instruction of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I never finished the book. I started writing and never picked it back up. I should. I should do a lot of things. The list of things is ever growing. ‘One day,’ I tell myself, ‘I will get to that.’ I kind of like that tomorrow isn’t promised. I feel that I am no longer angry with death, it could happen to me or anyone I love at any time. It has no bias. There is a phrase I have seen copied and pasted on social media with various cute animal and artistic backgrounds: “Maybe you don’t exist in the future you’re so worried about.”

Love & Violence I

Loving everyone from a young age has its challenges. I was baptized as a baby in an open and affirming church, where many members were of the queer persuasion. As a curious child I asked my mother, “Can boys and boys get married and can girls and girls get married?” to which my mother responded, “yes they can.” What a novel idea to a five year old! (This was ten years before same-sex marriage would become a legal right in every state.) As a lover boy, I wanted to show my affection with touch. Sadly I had to learn early that I couldn’t hug everyone, I couldn’t kiss everyone, and I couldn’t tell everyone that I loved them. As I entered the public school system, I had to get creative with how I could physically touch someone. I turned to violence. Hitting, kicking, biting, screaming, throwing things…my parents kept a suspension letter from elementary schools after one of my more ferocious outbursts. The poor teacher who witnessed it recounted, “student showed no remorse.” It’s true that I didn’t. There was a fun aspect to overpowering someone, even if it landed me in detention. Oh no, being alone where I can read and draw! Tragic! I will certainly learn my lesson and not develop a kink for violence later!

I have this thing where I can visualize a feeling so intensely that I can’t help but wear it on my face. This can make it hard to concentrate at work, especially after a particularly rousing sexual excursion from the previous night or days gone by. I feel it in my cock, rising through my stomach, flushing my cheeks until I break out into a smile. Sometimes a small moan. I have to be careful at work, the dead silence and clattering of keys leads my mind to wander and the fantasies flood in. Fingers exploring skin, teeth finding new ways to tear at flesh, nails leaving beautiful crimson trails as they scrape along someone's back. Feeling their hand around my throat, closing my airways, so close to stifling my breath I can only gasp for air as I am fucked deeply, passionately. I love allowing my life to be in someone else’s hands. For a while there I could barely trust myself with my own life. This lead to darker fantasies…watching my intestines leave the vivisection of my stomach as my own blade drips with fresh blood. My severed head resting with a face of bliss after decapitation at the moment of climax. My hands and ankles, bound and purple from red ropes as my body is stretched to the ceiling, stripes of bruises from whips and bite marks dappling my freckled back.

All of this intensity, and I’ve kept it mostly to myself. As my anxiety turns into excitement and arousal, it’s becoming harder and harder to pretend I am a being of innocence and purity. Fuck that! I’m a whore and I’m tired of hiding and pretending to be demure! I still have to overcome the embarrassment of asking for a fuck, or a cuddle, or a kiss. Sometimes my raised-by-the-bible brain gets the better of me (nasty foul whore! repent or you will be condemned to eternal hellfire! gays and sluts are evil! etc.) and I hesitate, or choose not to engage to suspend pre-perceived rejection. I am lucky, though. I usually get what I need with patience and planning. Maybe a bit of magic, too.