[DISCLAIMER: This passage contains references and implications of the following: physical/emotional abuse, gruesome imagery, abandonment.
There may be other triggers depending on the reader. Reader's discretion advised.]
I have left a thousand people behind but I have never abandoned them. I have cut people from my life but would never hurt them. I burned both ends of the match. Left with ashes on either end realizing that there is nothing as sturdy as that which remains. Walking on shaky legs with a heart of arrows and bleeding to my sleeve, I will venture farther than you bargained for and I will not be alone. Running solo in an imaginary race-your bets will all be lost for there is no winning here. There are many falls and ways to step up again but there is no ocean at the end of this river other than that which you will there to be. There is also no dream to reach. Upon achieving it you murder it then hide the body and ask "where" to which the only honesty can be "here". Look at your bloody palms! See mine? We don't bleed the same but we share a closet and some of us share the yard but there are bones and they will haunt us. They will follow us until we join their muddy caves in which we transform yet some carry shovels and dig-dig-dig their way out! Above the ground to walk amongst us. Time and time again in my dreams I join and dig just to join again. Again and again then one more time I die just to figure out how to live again because sometimes you must perish to understand how to survive and you must go just a little mad to grasp your sanity.
Forget the land. There are no deserts, rainforests, jungles, savannahs, mountains. There are no tectonic plates to birth earthquakes, no volcanoes or even beaches because there is also no water. Forget all the water, no rivers or oceans, ponds or lakes. So of course, there are no mammals, reptiles, bugs, or even bacteria. There are no places for no things or creatures. Imagine instead your consciousness. What does that look like? Let me tell you mine. Walk into my silly little head for a moment. In me there is water. In me there is the river which is my life, my essence, myself. In me there is a current that overtakes me and I must learn that I must lay down in it. Onto the rocky bottom of this stream-of-self which can swallow me whole and spit me out as an afterthought in a moment unnoticed. And I have to learn to become it-myself. I must lay in it, myself, and allow the water to run over me and under me. To move me. And I must master the art of letting it to the point of a masterpiece where I become part of the current and slow it down when I want it to settle then excite it once more. I must feel the slippery saltwater pass through my hair, between my fingers, over my breasts and past my legs. I taste it and breathe it in. I get high off the feeling of it filling my lungs. And once it washes out the oxygen I feel it in my head like a blow to the head-and it heals me. To be so truly one with yourself, to hurt and then heal yourself, and to make home in all the ins and outs of your being. That is consciousness which grounds you to the Earth you place yourself in.
You think you have to reach all these high hopes that people condition you to want-train you like a dog and beat you like a mutt when you stumble. You believe the lies of "i love you' from plastic faces and aching hearts; you don't see that the broken pieces have been pushed around in them to their tongues and hands. You feel their boots on your back keeping you down while they spoon sugar to your bleeding mouth. They stuff your eyes with flowers and shove the thorns into your ears! These vampires don't know what they're doing!
Because it was done to them too.
You try to speak but they have gagged you so you scream and they mute you. They don't understand how you came to be where you are. They feel a need to keep you too close to venture far because they could never do the things they see you walking to and when you run they fear you and discover hate not for you but for the fraction of them that they see in you whom would never be able to take a step onto the path you have forged so they keep you too close. And you were so close. They pull you back down by the neck, their claws draw blood and spread them over your cheeks as they pull your skin into a smile and laugh. And they only catch your tears when it waters their own plants. They only tolerate it, for a little while, when it involves another smelling your roses. But there shou;d not be conditions set for them to respect and sympathize. There should not be the numbing of yourself to serve their own self-preservation.
I am always playing the defense. There are footsteps disturbing the waves of my river. They kick my head and stand on my chest. I am learning to bite their ankles. Little nicks until I can throw them under and let my current wash them away from my hair which they pull so violently. I finally found my fangs but have to shelter them in my thirsting lips. You wouldn't know the difference between my blood and the water though. I blood is clear. You just don't look for it-ignorance is your bliss and leverage is your cane. There is no leverage in the knowledge of your blade's work. Not for you. There are footprints behind me, forged in the mud of my river. I cannot wash them out-they are fossils now. But you will not track in new ones. You think you sparkle as the pearl inside the clam to aim to break me into but I am much more than a mere shell of a dead thing. I am the abandoned ship who has sunk to the ocean floor of your conscience! I am the serpent that rules the river leading to imaginary oceans keeping all the other bits of me alive and protected from vultures like you!
They leave you in solitude when you need to be held and grip you far too tightly when you need space. And when you beg them to stop, when you beg them to let you go and lay this chapter down to rest, they tear out your heart and shove it back turned downward and twisted up! Then they ask why you cry. And all you can do is blame yourself just to keep the peace enough to move on another way.