The colors I bleed

IT’S IN MY VEINS

as my painted nails curl into my palm

head bowed in shame

with eyes of glowing thunder

the depths of my heart

splayed on the table like rotten meat

CAN YOU FUCKING IMAGINE?

my gut searches for a target for the rage

my heart knows nobody but me deserves it

so I sit alone, hurting nobody but myself

thankful for at least that

at least nobody is suffering by my hands

at least i can pretend so

for those who see something in me

there is no protection

only the me

overchill to compensate for the violence

anti-competitive to compensate with adrenaline

but these don’t counter the cruelty in my heart

there is no counter for cruelty of the heart

even when it manifests as self-care

Raised Online

I'm pretty tired of hearing about 'Millennials' and how this ~facinating~ generation is \insert_generic_critique\. There are so many opinions out there about me, about my peers, while not even really listening to what we are saying.

the violence in my blood

[This post was never finished and from some time ago. After rereading it so many times, I know it serves the purpose it was intended to.]

i am beginning to understand something about myself. something that is in my blood. something that was passed down to me through stories, genes and social conditioning in general. It was the reason i played a lot of competitively physical sports growing up. It was the reason i began, an continue to, have an unhealthy relationship with substances. It has defined my dysphoria with masculinity. It is still a part of me. It is something that I will never quite get rid of, but hopefully I can learn to live with it better.

Imagine the classic scene of the person strapped down to a chair in some evil lair. Their eye's clamped open forcing them to see what it in front of them, a wall of screens. Images flicker between split second static transitions. short videos and images reflect of the pupils of the person, as they can't help but bear witness to this barbarism.

I close my eyes sometimes, and see those screens, flashing violence and pain. Some days, I can turn this down until I go the whole day without seeing it. Other days are not so nice. The static fills my brain until the only thing left are the images, the thoughts, the feelings. Violent Painful Rage. It lives in my heart and occupies a space in my thoughts that I have tried, and failed, to quiet.

I first tried to indulge these instincts with sports, and with fighting. As a child me and my brother fought a lot. I  played soccer all year round for 6 years, and another 5 years of soccer alternated with tennis, then lacrosse. When I was able to, I played football and wrestled, the most violent sports I could find. I would lose myself in moments that felt like life or death. Regularly going up against people a foot taller than me, and much heavier. The euphoria of the fight still haunts me, I know no bliss more pure, more intense, than reversing a headlock in the 5th minute of a match against someone 3 years older and 40 pounds heavier than you. Just writing this, my palms are sweating and my heart is beginning to beat faster.

ultimately, this didn't actually help satiate my urges. Sure, during the seasons I was playing the sports I was usually too tired to feel angry, or do much of anything else to be honest. During the off seasons, or during my dreams, or in painful moments, those images still came to me. Even stronger now that they tasted the sweet nectar of rage. These moments were especially profound when I remembered back on the events my freshman year of high school. Where I was publicly humiliated for getting caught smoking weed. That's a story for another time, but it certainly didn't help me feel like the community I lived in wanted me there.

I dropped sports, suddenly and without much remorse. Not only was it not good for my mental health individually, but the culture of the teams I was on were pretty disgusting. I never paid it much mind, as I never was close to the kids on the teams who were loud, well-liked, and horrible human beings.

Next I tried to silence these instincts with drugs. First weed, then alcohol, then cigarettes, then harder stuff. They would work, but never quite like I wanted.

[To be continued when something new works]

The Male Feminist

"Empathy is not particularly elusive. It only requires an earnest quest to understand and act on that understanding. The problems women face in this world require the engagement of all the world’s people.“It’s very important for everyone to be a feminist.” "

   source

I really appreciate the simplicity of this call to arms. In this moment in time, violence against women is on the minds of most Americans. For some of us, it has been on our minds for years, or longer. There is a certain amount of truth to be said of the soundbite above, and it is enticing to those who don't know how to move forward in chaos of the national media circus. But in reality, this is not much different from saying that the only thing needed to counteract privilege is to become aware of it, and while that is definitely the first step along the way, it is easy to overlook the depth and seriousness of the issue when everybody is telling you there is an easy solution. It is easy to say that you're not of those kinds of people, but really changing who you are comes as a result of dedication and discipline. 

a new direction

I've been going about this all wrong. Its easy to get caught up in the appearance of, the show of, the communication of identity. Swept up in what I thought a gender-queer person was 'supposed' to look like.

Aesthetic principles have ruled my life. I like to think that I resist power, something I a have resisted because of my privilege. I could always tell that I was treated differently than other people. I used to dream about how when everybody else turned around they lost their human form. They would melt away into dripping sludge golem. Then, as I slept each night they would meet and discuss the roles they would play for me the next day; a math teacher, ice cream salesperson, my mother, my dad, and not but certainly not least my brother. He was the architect. My brother has always been to me the personification of /systematic/. When I first pondered on my own privilege as a male-presenting, white, well-educated human being I had the most incredible flashback. I was sitting at the counter of my house, except I was looking down on myself as my family came in one by one and upon leaving my field of vision transformed back into their 'true' selves, communicating on another level literally behind my back. Since then, I have been quick to incorporate it into my  conscious self, to be mindful of the connection I have to this idea. I have spent a long time realizing that I have done a lot better.
 That fear lives as deep inside me as my comparatively old hallucinations; an experience always brought on by fever or induced ~sickness~.  Exploding in scale, like a balloon, the pressure of the air fighting me back for each square inch, my chest seizes and I can't breathe.  The next thing I know, all the air has been let out. The air wins out, cramming my whole expanded self back into my self for just an instant before taking its sweet revenge. There is no baseline to return to any more, other than brief moments of lucidity, just a continuous cycling battle of pressure, sucking the life out of me.
That's why NOLS was such a life changing experience. I started to see the power of life; something that was not an artefact of humanity, but of all life. Still, in the human world, our social environment, defines a large part of who we are. Humanity, in many ways, has become obligately  social. It is incredible how strong an evolutionary force the company of others has become.

Anyways... Gender is more than appearance. Gender is about social interactions, and in our society people take their cues from appearance much of the time. I have always tried to downplay the importance of my appearance. I know this is a point of privilege, but it is not necessarily bad, I must own my privilege by giving it up, but I think that all people should be able and free to dress however they want, and I want to dress like me. Poorly fitting clothes, typically male, but not exclusively. I want to express my non-conformity through nail polish and eye-liner and lipstick and my hair style. If I were a female-bodied person, I would be a tom-boy. That is just me. Deal with it. 

Is this how I get better?

It is 9:30 in the morning. I have already had more depressive, masochistic, suicidal, and pessimistic thoughts than I could bear, at least on most days. But there is something about today...
Each time my stomach started to turn due to the self-hatred of my current thought, I stopped it. I stopped everything really. I stood in place, looked around myself, actively remembered why I am here, what I am doing, the goals I have, people that matter to me.
It seems to be working pretty well. At the very least this technique will get me through the week. I might end up drinking myself 6 feet under then though, I don't know yet, I guess we will just have to see.

War Memories I'll Never Have

I really wanted to be a soldier.
I will never become a soldier.

Growing up I heard story after story after story about the brave souls who gave their lives for the freedom of others. That was pretty much all my grandfather talked about, oh and how he used to be poor. He was the last of the men in my family history to go to war for this country, a tradition that started 150 years ago. Stories of war heroes so firmly engrained in my mind, scenes from war movies play through my mind's eye as I laid awake at night. Only, it is me, I am taking cover as bullets fly over my head. Advancing up hills and through bushes, we charge toward the enemy position. Planes flying overhead dropping napalm and shells on nearby objectives. It all feels so real. The smell of the gunpowder, the rumble of the explosions, the deafening sting of gunshots, the pain, the blood, the screams, the death. All of seems so real to me, even at an early age I knew it. I knew an experience of war.

At first I thought this meant I should join the military, that I was destined to fight. But I realized that I didn't need to, that the war memories I'll never have taught me enough to mourn the tragedies of war, to mourn the sacrifice of my ancestors, and to hold them up proudly such that future generations well not need to.

I have always been a soldier.
I am just now finding my own orders to follow.