What I hate most is that the echo of violence is so much more catastrophically harmful than the actual act itself.  Someone can have violence done upon them and move well beyond past it, forgive their assailant, be healed or healing, but never will they truly be rid of the echo of violence.

The echo can pop up anywhere- with a voice you hear in a corridor, the smell of cologne in an elevator, the color of some-one’s bed sheets, a playful interaction with a roommate- suddenly a simple and innocent act can feel like a kamikaze attack.  It makes this world feel so dangerous and small.  It is like a constant reminder that you’re damaged goods, that you belong in the discount bin.

I hate that I can lay in bed right now and feel his hand against my forehead as if it happened 10 seconds ago.  Its like I can feel the dull and throbbing outline of a hand-print in my face.  And it’s not like people get smacked in the face on a daily basis, it’s just that I absolutely hate the fact that I cannot own that interaction anymore.  That any hand on my face isn’t really mine, but an echo of someone else’s hand.  I feel robbed.  I feel cheated out of getting to decide how I feel about things.

The worst part of all of it is that it pulls me even deeper into myself.  It makes me want to touch people as little as possible, to pull back from other people’s touches whenever I can.  It is hard to learn to touch again, and learn how to be touched.  I’m happy to take any opportunity to relieve myself of the pressure of deciding who is an ally and who is a danger.

Everyone is a danger.  Because everyone is a potential echo.

Even the people you love the most.

Ever Virgin.

I am yours for so little.  For such a small amount, almost nothing, yours.  I cannot think of something I wouldn’t do if you asked me to.  You hold all the power and you are phenomenally dangerous to me.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to not have loved you.  And I can tell myself endlessly to cease, that time and destiny have parted us irrevocably, but it doesn’t stop me.  For a song, for a song, yours for just one song.  …this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Ever Virgin.

Possessive is the original word that I used to use to describe the chambers of my heart. I thought that by tying the sins of covet and envy into tight little balls and pushing them down deep inside of me, I could avoid feeling sinful and instead just feel possesive. It’s a good excuse to feel hurt, to create a delicious melodrama, to cry oneself to sleep- feeling possesed or possesive allows you this freedom of expression- this freedom to be wild- to cry too much or too often, to laugh like a hyenna, to say things that burn cold right into the part of someone’s heart that you know too well. It’s sort of the same thing people do when they get drunk- allow their inhibitions to come down to say the things they always wanted to say but were always afraid to. That’s how posession makes me feel. I loathe it and adore it. I used to think it was okay to put yourself in a position of loving someone a lot more than they love you. I used to want to just wrap myself around someone and take away the every burden of their heart, tend to them in every way and at every juncture- parts of me are like this still. I would happily trade the feel of one grateful hug for weeks of silent torment- but I am not sure I feel this way any more, honestly. It is so difficult, too difficult, to keep up the possesiveness and still function like a normal person. its hard because I don’t like to give up, not on anything let alone something as important as love. What they say about the cliche is true though- sometimes love just isn’t enough. Can you just stop loving someone though? Can you just turn it off? To one day say, ‘you’re my best friend and I love you’ and then turn around the next day and not love them anymore?

Parts of me are still wondering if she just doesn’t care. If she misses me at all, even a little bit. It doesn’t usually bother me- we all make choices, I’m so fond of saying, and then we have to live with those choices- but when love and regret and possession are all so close that they intertwine then how can anyone ever get anything done at all? It exhausts me, frightens and saddens me. Maybe its time to turn in. No use staying up waiting for someone who’s not going to be home any time soon, no use thinking about people in other states, no use of anything at all, really.

Ever Virgin.

The smell of warm, clean, boy wafting from my bathroom makes me cry as I sit in my little nest of blankets on the couch.

There is something wrong with me.

Ever Virgin.