two nayked

When you're in a wounded headspace, it can start to feel like attacks are imminent from any and all directions. You brace yourself for blows, even when you have no reason to think one is coming. You pull away from human contact, even from people you know mean you no harm. The ringing of the phone becomes something that might bite. Your spirit holds its breath as you open an e-mail or letter.
To recap the past two years, i've been vandalized, robbed, had my identity stolen, my life threatened, lived with a severely leaking ceiling while my landlord counted my money, and been in a romance which felt like getting my head kicked once a day.
I've also had one beautifully gentle romance (the end of which has so far been a cold, hard shunning...though it's telling, that even in my battered state i don't focus on the negative, as this parenthetical didn't even occur to me while writing the first draft). Plus, there are people who have been there for me, my life's been an amazing picnic compared to anyone in Rwanda, and i even sometimes still burst into joyful laughter walking down the street.
But there are times for perspectives, and times to say, "This is my wound. These are my wounds." Even before the past two years, there had been a growing many-years-accumulation soul-loneliness kind of wound in me.
It also just hit me that it was two years ago that my brother moved to CA. We'd lived together for five years, and accumulated such a deep well of shared references...humor, music, shows...a word or glance was all it took for laughter to start. It wasn't an emotion-sharing relationship, but we laughed every day. So that's been a two-year hole in my life.
And it also occurs to me...do you know how long i've been talking to you?
How long i've been reaching out into this world of faces i cannot see, hoping to touch someone?
Almost two years.
Another coincidence.
Yet not entirely.
In a small way, this blog has been another source of hurt. Though "hurt" isn't quite right. Something closer to vulnerability. I put myself out there in these posts. Nakedly. I know how most people hide and protect their innermost selves, even from those closest to them. That's not the life i want. But it's so hard to not live that way, when everyone around you is so damaged, and doesn't want other people to be really alive and beautiful, because then they might feel they should be alive and beautiful too, and THAT MIGHT HURT. I run in, and open myself wide...to being judged, to being misunderstood.
There's also the weight of knowing that anyone who gets close to me may have to deal with being written about in a naked way...even protecting certain anonymities, i've probably lost the intimacy of several who weren't ready for that.
In any forum, naked vulnerability carries a staggering weight. And this kind of nakedness, while in one way anonymous, is significantly more vulnerable in another, knowing that ANYONE can view it.
But that's what i signed up for. Willingly, joyfully. I'm all growed up, and that's why i'm here. Warts, blood, ugliness, ecstasies, failures, idiocies.
When i'm at my best, that's where i thrive.
For example, this week i wrote about how social restraints fell apart during the bubonic plague, and my mind dwelled in that reality. Today, i imagined what it would feel like to rape a woman. For a minute or less, i "lived" in that moment as much as i could.
I see human nature more clearly than most, and know that most men would become rapists very easily, if society said it was okay (which is part of America's not-so-distant racial past). Your dad, your son, your brother...very few would resist the call of societally-sanctioned rape.
So i imagined what it would feel like. I summoned an imaginary woman, and raped her. I didn't recoil at the thought, nor did i enjoy it...it just was.
Does this disgust you? Would you be equally disgusted by a woman saying she imagined being raped? If not, are you comfortable with your double standard? That's fine...there are moments like this when the bloodied, self-destructive, messianic part of me doesn't care about being misunderstood.
Anyway...
Like i said, this kind of nakedness is where i thrive, when i'm at my best.
We all have our demons. And dedications. And dreams.
Fuck the demons.
You have to walk in truth before you can walk in beauty.