anywhere i can find to put words

1.
call: i am opening, opening, opening, opening
response: i am opening to myself
call: i am opening, opening, opening, opening
response: i am opening to myself as i am

every wrinkle, every crack. every scab rearing up into an older scab. every new bruise, every thirty-two year gone scar. that scar snaking up the back of my right hand: from my cat. the seven inch scar inside my right calf: from a cousin’s swing set. that ripple down the tender side of my right elbow: from my own ragged fingernail on a bad night. only love breaks the skin. the cancer scar across my throat: it looks great, she tells me, you look good, he tells me, but, then, again what do they even know?

this too i will forgive
this too i will love
who i was
as i am
as i will be

every song in my head, even the terrible ones. especially the terrible ones. every thing i love about myself, every thing i do not love about myself, every thing about me that i wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. everything and then. everything, then?


2.
here is the path to the heart of it, the core of it, the all the way way deep down. a circuit twisted snug into another circuit, a circuit patched into the holy fucking mystery of what is not even there. that's the thing about a labyrinth. you circle around the center of the thing for round after round, you circle up, you circle in, you draw yourself in tight and hold, hold, what is the answer? what is my answer? what am i praying for? why did i do this? why did i come here? what did i put so much work into, walking around and around and around? did i get my answer? did i get an answer? or did i forget the question? maybe there wasn't a question in the first place. we all want answers. of course we do. everyone wants an answer, unless it's the answer we don't want. are we willing to take the risk, make the offering of asking a question? any question? are we willing to stare down the grinding abyss of one fucking question? what will i ask?


3.
[ redacted ]

we are
not ready
not ready
not in the least

(back into the under again, back into the inbetween)


4.
then there's the category of that which i can only forgive. this too i will forgive. the jealous micromanaging. this too i will forgive. the terrified placeholders. this too i will forgive. those times i bled out giving answers for questions i hadn't even been allowed to formulate. this too i will love. gave myself up. gave myself away. sold myself empty. that's the thing about being asked a lot of questions. it’s a form of torture. it’s giving yourself up to someone else’s insatiable hungers. you don't know what you're answering to. you don't know the questioner's larger agenda, the purpose of the interrogation. a lot of the time rushing around to secure the security of every response serves as a distraction from questioning the motivation of being questioned like this, scrutinized, tricked into giving up what matters to you most: you're not going to realize the ways in which you are being manipulated. as an abuse survivor, i know. i know every question can be a limb snapping snare that might not trigger, sometimes, for decades. when you least expect it. once you’ve finally started to relax. as someone conditioned to take abuse, i couldn't always, i can't always see it coming, but in hindsight, i know exactly. exactly. i know exactly which questions were intended to take me down.

or i don't
and i really
really
don't.

ETA: 2000th livejournal entry.

1.
You know there are some children who aren't really children at all, they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them. Victor and me, we were children of flame and ash.

2.
How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?