Have you ever felt that you've taken a wrong turn. I can hear the world calling me and I can see the answer it needs me to give but I can't becuase I'm stuck. I have become what I despise. I have become the opposite of myself, my negative image. I stay within - afraid to go outside. Afraid to be with others. Afraid to be alone. I am a ghost yet still living. I am a shape. I used to be human. I used to have a purpose but now I have none.
My dreams are dead. My dreams are gone. My sleep is empty. Devoid. Null. What ever I was I no longer am.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Thoughts on "belonging"
Belonging, Destiny and Difference
When I think about belonging somewhere two things come to mind. That I'm supposed to be somewhere else - that my destiny is elsewhere. And second that I am so different and so alone that I don't belong here. It's the ultimate question "why I am here?" "Why don't I fit?" "Where should I be and who should I be with?"
There's a story from the Old Testament about a woman called Ruth. She married an Israelite but was from another nation. Her husband dies before they have any children and her mother-in-law asked her leave. But Ruth replies: "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17 NIV) This is how we are supposed to assimilate - to make ourselves belong where we are different.
But it is our sense of belonging forms a part of our identity. Along with our memories and our dreams it helps constitute a sense of Self - it establishes our story. It answers all the questions: "Where do you come from?"; "What do you do?"; "What's your name?"; "Do you drink coffee?"; "Do you believe in... ?"
I've never belonged. I've always been the shoe that didn't fit. The clown at the funeral. The sober one at the party. I've always felt the pressure to belong but I've never really wanted to - my alterity makes me ... disturbing to 'normal' people. Out here there are no rules or at least the rules the others live by don't apply. I didn't experience empathy from other people until my twenties. even among my "friends" & girlfriends, nobody wanted to understand me or why I did was not the same. I felt isolated and nobody could understand what made me feel this way. I looked the same. I spoke the same language. But I would not be Ruth among the Israelites - their god is not mine, our language is theirs and not mine, their music, their sports, their history, their ambitions, their politics - none of them mine.
It took me a long time, a very long time to consider that I might be in a position of power that by being an Outsider I have choices that no one else would have to make. I would have to ask myself questions that no-one else has to ask.
It's these things, these questions that make us feel we belong. It's what we take for granted. What we expect, assume and demand
When I think about belonging somewhere two things come to mind. That I'm supposed to be somewhere else - that my destiny is elsewhere. And second that I am so different and so alone that I don't belong here. It's the ultimate question "why I am here?" "Why don't I fit?" "Where should I be and who should I be with?"
There's a story from the Old Testament about a woman called Ruth. She married an Israelite but was from another nation. Her husband dies before they have any children and her mother-in-law asked her leave. But Ruth replies: "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17 NIV) This is how we are supposed to assimilate - to make ourselves belong where we are different.
But it is our sense of belonging forms a part of our identity. Along with our memories and our dreams it helps constitute a sense of Self - it establishes our story. It answers all the questions: "Where do you come from?"; "What do you do?"; "What's your name?"; "Do you drink coffee?"; "Do you believe in... ?"
I've never belonged. I've always been the shoe that didn't fit. The clown at the funeral. The sober one at the party. I've always felt the pressure to belong but I've never really wanted to - my alterity makes me ... disturbing to 'normal' people. Out here there are no rules or at least the rules the others live by don't apply. I didn't experience empathy from other people until my twenties. even among my "friends" & girlfriends, nobody wanted to understand me or why I did was not the same. I felt isolated and nobody could understand what made me feel this way. I looked the same. I spoke the same language. But I would not be Ruth among the Israelites - their god is not mine, our language is theirs and not mine, their music, their sports, their history, their ambitions, their politics - none of them mine.
It took me a long time, a very long time to consider that I might be in a position of power that by being an Outsider I have choices that no one else would have to make. I would have to ask myself questions that no-one else has to ask.
It's these things, these questions that make us feel we belong. It's what we take for granted. What we expect, assume and demand
anesthetic
You were my anesthetic,
I numbed the world with you.
I tasted nothing from your lips,
feel nothing form your hands.
Felt nothing.
I vaccinated myself with you -
broke myself upon you.
You were my substitute for lust,
my inoculation against love.
When I close my eyes I still see your face
even when I sleep the emptiness stinks of you
but there's nothing interesting about you
nothing beautiful,
nothing.
In my dreams I watch you cross the darkness,
dragging your fingers like hypodermic needles on my skin,
crawling like a spider on my body,
using your teeth on my lips.
my sleep is stained with you
it stinks of your cologne,
of your breathe,
of your jealousy
and it bores me.
The familiarity bores.
I feel nothing when I dream of you. Nothing when I think of you.
Nothing ...
not even contempt.
I numbed the world with you.
I tasted nothing from your lips,
feel nothing form your hands.
Felt nothing.
I vaccinated myself with you -
broke myself upon you.
You were my substitute for lust,
my inoculation against love.
When I close my eyes I still see your face
even when I sleep the emptiness stinks of you
but there's nothing interesting about you
nothing beautiful,
nothing.
In my dreams I watch you cross the darkness,
dragging your fingers like hypodermic needles on my skin,
crawling like a spider on my body,
using your teeth on my lips.
my sleep is stained with you
it stinks of your cologne,
of your breathe,
of your jealousy
and it bores me.
The familiarity bores.
I feel nothing when I dream of you. Nothing when I think of you.
Nothing ...
not even contempt.
For the Length of a Kiss (monologue)
I have the same dream every night. When there was no moon and no stars. When her hair brushed gently on my chest. Our lips touching, her nails digging into my skin. The sound of our breathing drowned by the song of the wind in the trees and the feeling of the hard ground beneath us.
I can still taste her on his lips when I wake, but she is gone. I have forgotten her voice, I can't see her face. I spend my day waiting for the dreams to come, for the darkness where I belong to her. Where my lips are hers to kiss, my skin hers to taste, my hands to hold. I have the same dream every night. But with each dream something is lost to the darkness, her name, her eyes, the shape of her body, her perfume. Slowly she disappears.
I hold her against the darkness for the length of a kiss. I wake with her on my lips, but she is gone.
I can still taste her on his lips when I wake, but she is gone. I have forgotten her voice, I can't see her face. I spend my day waiting for the dreams to come, for the darkness where I belong to her. Where my lips are hers to kiss, my skin hers to taste, my hands to hold. I have the same dream every night. But with each dream something is lost to the darkness, her name, her eyes, the shape of her body, her perfume. Slowly she disappears.
I hold her against the darkness for the length of a kiss. I wake with her on my lips, but she is gone.
nothing makes sense
Nothing makes sense anymore.
My work ... has no reason to go on.
My days are endless and pointless.
I fall through them, I fall through the minutes and the hours,
without sleeping but never awake.
She is in someone else's arms and I could write the saddest words
but I cannot write and I cannot feel sad tonight.
I wander in the darkness, I wander alone -
always alone. I don't want to be here.
I don't want to be alone ... but I am.
I am, and that is all. I exist. Meaningless.
Sleepless. Thoughtless. Without passion.
Without love. My time is not my own
it belongs to the darkness and I am just renting it,
every second costs me a piece of my soul -
every hour of waking, every hour of not dreaming,
every moment of darkness, of pointlessness,
of bitterness, of loneliness, of pain,
makes no sense to me.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
She is someone else's tonight
she was never mine.
I used to love her - perhaps she loved me,
perhaps not. It does not matter. It is
meaningless. It was meaningless. Love is meaningless.
I fell in love. I fell for her. I fell into her arms.
I fell through her. I fell from her.
I fell. Falling, always falling.
And always we are broken from the fall.
But falling makes no sense at all.
She is gone and I am alone.
She has fallen away and I have fallen down.
The darkness comes and I lie broken -
I lie to myself saying that there is hope,
pretending that she will come to save me
but she wont. She never comes.
My hope is meaningless, my
hope will crush me. It will kill me
because it does not make sense.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
My work ... has no reason to go on.
My days are endless and pointless.
I fall through them, I fall through the minutes and the hours,
without sleeping but never awake.
She is in someone else's arms and I could write the saddest words
but I cannot write and I cannot feel sad tonight.
I wander in the darkness, I wander alone -
always alone. I don't want to be here.
I don't want to be alone ... but I am.
I am, and that is all. I exist. Meaningless.
Sleepless. Thoughtless. Without passion.
Without love. My time is not my own
it belongs to the darkness and I am just renting it,
every second costs me a piece of my soul -
every hour of waking, every hour of not dreaming,
every moment of darkness, of pointlessness,
of bitterness, of loneliness, of pain,
makes no sense to me.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
She is someone else's tonight
she was never mine.
I used to love her - perhaps she loved me,
perhaps not. It does not matter. It is
meaningless. It was meaningless. Love is meaningless.
I fell in love. I fell for her. I fell into her arms.
I fell through her. I fell from her.
I fell. Falling, always falling.
And always we are broken from the fall.
But falling makes no sense at all.
She is gone and I am alone.
She has fallen away and I have fallen down.
The darkness comes and I lie broken -
I lie to myself saying that there is hope,
pretending that she will come to save me
but she wont. She never comes.
My hope is meaningless, my
hope will crush me. It will kill me
because it does not make sense.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
I want to forget
I want to forget
I want to fall
to sleep
never wake again
I want to stay there
there, in the dark
Where I can still see
a face,
a hand
Where I can almost taste ...
No
No, I want to forget
I want to fall
to sleep
never wake again
I want to stay there
there, in the dark
where there's nothing
to keep me in
to keep me up
to keep me out
I want to forget
I want to fall
to sleep
never wake again
I want to stay there...
there...
there, in the dark
I want to fall
to sleep
never wake again
I want to stay there
there, in the dark
Where I can still see
a face,
a hand
Where I can almost taste ...
No
No, I want to forget
I want to fall
to sleep
never wake again
I want to stay there
there, in the dark
where there's nothing
to keep me in
to keep me up
to keep me out
I want to forget
I want to fall
to sleep
never wake again
I want to stay there...
there...
there, in the dark
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