Basketball

Right now, life is watching a basketball circling the rim. If breath had fingernails, it'd be gripping your thigh.

Dunk? No dunk?

Only time knows. I'm following it. Waiting to see. Are we really that temporary? Do I need to let go?Everything is temporary, even illusory.

But I'm talking about us. We. I can tell myself that forever is relative to my finite lifespan. It doesn't change the drumming beating my insides. To deny it would be a lie. I tried that once.

Yeah. Fuck that.

I acknowledge the truth, or the beginning of what I can see of it. In one dimension I scream and claw away all of my skin. In another I'm laughing and dancing.

It hurts. Always like fire. But I have few alternatives, because burning the other way is unacceptable.

I am small without all the weight. My hands find the ribs poking close to softness on the outside. Too soft. And all the hollows between. I don't know this person. I don't know what she is or if I even like her.

"You know, I never wanted to have children. Your father tricked me. I wanted to enjoy my life."
"Get the fuck out of here."
"Get out of the way."
"Leave me alone."
"You are draining me, Chance."
"I don't want you near me."
"Don't TOUCH me!"
"I should never have had kids."
"Go get it yourself."
"Ugh. Let me do it. MOVE."
"Whatever."
"Get off of me. Just go. Go to your room."
"You are stressing me out."
"Goddammit, why? Why are you here right now?!"

I ate myself sick often as a child. Beyond childhood. Between trying to be quiet and sense her moods, I developed a passive self hatred and empathy large enough to swallow an elephant. Survival techniques to better sense her moods and navigate around them however I could.

She didn't mean to hurt or ruin me. It was her pain. Her own journey of emotional neglect and abuse that hurt so badly, it bled in to mine. Heavy inheritance to work through. I try to give myself the love and acceptance she simply could not. It feels wrong every time - like loving yourself is a selfish thing and selfishness is a dirty word. Self absorption. ICK.

But I've grown from depressive anxious to regulating these these moods on my own far better than I ever thought I could. Even played with anger which has been very useful, strangely. Mothering myself has been a exercise.

A couple of months ago, someone told me "Chance, you are not broken; your self perception is. Fix THAT. You don't need to be fixed." It has helped immensely.

But, I circle back 'round the rim now.

Because that - along with 6 months of focus - has also spun up this curiosity and awareness of all life areas. It's why I'm tormented now. Taking a hard at what I thought and felt were stable places. Unchanging anchorage.

Now I am adrift. Scared in the river again. No paddle and a branch threatening to make this a whole lot more REAL.

What about US? We are open about our situation. I can't seem to stop crying.

Fear

Feeling like it's much later than it is. 

A rhythm out of sync.

But this feeling is something with roots, beyond jet lag. It's been building, confusing me, whispering, growing agitated.

It doesn't speak my primary language but I understand. It's begging to crack through the surface into the light.

It unnerves me. I'm not sure if it's a monstrosity I should kill on sight or if it's an unknown, yearning to BE known, something I should observe and decide to nurture. It's too soon to know much of anything.

All I know is, it's part of me. 

~

A friend of ours told me last week that I write well. His word choice was more eloquent than that but suffice to say, it meant a lot coming from him. I consider him one of the most brilliant, talented human beings I've had the pleasure to know in my life - an amazing writer whether song, prose, or joke. 

Despite his own uprooted life journey in recent times, his ability to ground those that flail to get their feet back to Earth does not seem compromised while he picks up the pieces from the shipwreck he's (mostly) survived. 

My main ship still sails, but I have this impending sense of doom. It flutters its wings against my ribcage, pecking holes in all my bones. Sometimes its screaming echoes up my esophagus, threatens to escape through my own mouth. But ultimately, it circles past the larynx, into my skull, muffling my prefontal faculties in a cocoon. 

One day, the bird will make its way through and take over my body. Until it does, it will burn in me, dying and regenerating, until it has its day in the open air, feral, free, fighting or flying.

I worry about what this means. I bite my fingertips to keep the fear from seeping too far into reality, safely tucked inside where all it does is burn and feed and destroy. I figure better in me than outside to destroy what's been created. 

Dali's Persistence of Memory implants firmly within my amgydala.

There's another voice in there too. Calm. "What if the end you fear is the beginning you need?"

I hate that voice sometimes. The Pioneer. That son of a bitch.

But I'll write about it anyway. Maybe it will help me figure out how to get through whatever it is I'm going through.