dragonsbl00d

[dragonsbl00d]

I am a writer. The second I stepped out of infantile amnesia and embraced my offical, conscious mind, I started considering myself a writer. The next thing I remember considering myself as was a total loser, especially once I entered my hometown’s school system. I had wanted to go to Co-op since I received an NHPS flier in fifth grade, and when I was finally done with middle school and could apply to enter for 9th grade, I didn’t get in. Clearly, that was a mistake on the universe’s part, because by the end of my freshman year, I was sat in a dimly lit woodshop-classroom-turned-study-hall in a moldy wing of an ancient high school, playing crazy eights with my fellow students. They were an unsavory version of The Breakfast Club, comprised of a heroin addict, a neo-nazi, a chemically dependent woman of the night, and a rapist. I may have jumped to conclusions, but I’m pretty sure that’s not where my life path was supposed to take me. A few days later, I received a text from my mother letting me know that I had won the registration lottery and could enter Co-op for my sophomore year. Being able to transfer felt like what I’ll bet Anakin Skywalker felt after winning the podrace and being freed from slavery. Now, three years later, in my senior year, I feel more like Padme. I conveniently explained why in my college essay, which I will share the opening paragraphs of with you now:

I have the same scars as Padme Amidala.You know, in Attack of the Clones, when she was trying to escape the Nexu in the Petranaki arena, but it managed to claw her back pretty badly? Yeah, I’ve got those same marks.

Padme earned her scars at a very significant time in her life. She had just become the senator of Naboo and suffered several assassination attempts because of it. I earned my scars at a very significant time in my life as well. It was right at the end of my freshman year, just after I’d had my first run-ins with death and loss and existential crises.

Several of my closest friends, the most important people in my life at the time, took their own lives after a long battle with depression and anxiety. The combination of depression and anxiety I began to struggle with as a result was crippling. Not that I didn’t have an anxiety disorder before hand, but I no longer had my source of comfort, consolation, happiness, inspiration and light, and I was left more defenseless than usual.

Anyway, to sidetrack a bit, I think it’s fair enough for me to give some context to my whiney “finding my place in Connecticut school systems” story before I go further. A lot of my friends, like Jazmine for instance, are constantly saying that I am incapable of being serious. About anything. And that made me think about the reputation I built in my circle of friends. I’m the snarky one. I’m the sarcastic one. I’m the one that makes jokes in every circumstance, whether it’s to lighten the mood or to be insensitive. And I’ve realized that’s a defense mechanism and not how I necessarily always view the world. My other defense mechanism, when I’m separated from my friends, is to be as silent as I possibly can, so I don’t draw any attention to myself. This quiet-as-a-mouse defense is something I’ve had pretty much my entire life. So, despite everyone telling me that I should do a… “funny” (i.e. impersonal and superficial) capstone, I’ve decided to try and say something important for once in my life, like the things I think about when I’m pretending to be mute and trying to avoid eye contact with my teachers. Therefore, my capstone is about my voice. It’s not about finding or discovering my voice and it’s not about developing my voice, it’s about the fact that I have a voice, despite my anxieties and introversion and reservedness… and superficial jokes.

I started off with the beginning paragraphs of what was once my “college essay” that is now nothing like what I sent to that one college I applied to before deciding to take a gap year. I have now devolved my happy-ending, picture perfect vignette back into how I usually tell stories… by jumping from one point to the next and pretending it all circles back to one cohesive point even though it rarely ever does. The only literary device in this is really just a ton of exposition.

My decision making became cloudy. (Or, maybe it was already cloudy, since I was only 14 years old and was still using emoticons as punctuation, but I digress.)  So, to fill the new hole in my life, I fell into a toxic relationship, becoming fast friends with the human equivalent of cyanide. This resulted in emotional and physical abuse I was forced to juggle during the academic year. This stupid twelfth grader’s toxicity became entirely consuming and it took a long time for me to pull myself out of it. (And when I say a long time I mean it took me until October of 2014 to completely remove this guy from my life.)

So, in my freshman year, when I was fourteen years old, the eighteen year old in my study hall got mad at me for “being a tease” by repeatedly telling him no, so he walked to my house when he knew my mom wouldn’t be home and he raped me, and then he left. In response, I pretended like it never happened. I mean, I didn’t even admit what happened to myself, let alone tell someone else about it. I suppressed this for two whole years, until I was surrounded by so many amazing friends that I only have in my life because I decided to go to Co-op, and I started to open up to them, and they helped me build up the confidence to start really getting into advocating for social change and women and against rape culture. But it meant so much to me that my friends and even some of my teachers were there for and supportive of me that I started focusing on them a bit and how much they mean to me, so I wrote this next piece about them. This is called “Astronomy” because all of my titles are cop-out titles.

They are the sun. They are bright and beautiful and larger than life. Their heads are huge and full of gas, but Earth and all of the other planets in the galaxy revolve around them. When they get burnt out, they explode into a fiery, destructive mess and collapse in on themselves, leaving a black hole in their wake. Their light shines so bright that it reflects off all of the moons.

They are the moon. They’re a large piece of Earth that had broken off many, many years ago but is still caught in its orbit. The oceans’ waves are contingent upon their moods. Their terrain is rough and parts of them are even sunken in. Other parts are scarred by the footprints of humanity after they treaded on and scuffed them like doormats. They shine even in the darkest of nights, but there is always a part of them that remains dark and cold. You feel weightless in their presence.

They are the Earth. They carry the weight of all humanity in their minds and their hearts. They build mountains for every little thing they’re passionate about, and fill rivers, lakes, and oceans with the salty water of their tears to wash away the ash if their joy crumbles down around them. Their tectonic plates grind violently together, wrecking buildings and lives with no warning, sometimes for no reason at all. They could drown millions of people with just one of their tsunamis. Their cores pump blood as hot as molten lava throughout their every vein, right into their souls.

They are the planet I call home and the star my life revolves around and the satellite my tides are influenced by, and they’re just kids my age.

Humans are made of the same materials as the stars and the seas are made of, and this rule does not exempt my friends, me, or anyone. But the stars and the seas and they run infinite, whereas the rest of humanity could never.

So yeah that was kinda just about the people that mean a lot to me and my mostly unconditional love for them whether they’re sad or mad or happy and excited. Also, I focus heavily on dialogue in most of my writing so I tried to step away from that and focus on things like imagery and analogies. Oh, and two of my other major personal and writing influences are my mother and Mr. Brenner because they’re always honest with me about my writing and I look up to them intellectually so they mean a lot to me and impact my life decisions as well. As far as influences specific to this capstone, I owe it all to anyone that disapproves of people wearing their personal experiences on their sleeves, because after suffering in silence for years in fear of the consequences rape victims face in this culture, I can tell them, with confidence, to shove it.

So, with that, I wrote a children’s book in Mrs. Katz’s class in my sophomore year that I ended up turning into a “children’s” book recently, where the main character is modelled after me, and I focused on trying to show the faults in my own logic, as well as the faults in the people around me’s logic. I affectionately named this one, “Tiberius the Lion”.

Tiberius was a lion. Not that he ever called himself that or anything, since the politically correct term is panthera leo, but fine, Tiberius was a lion.

"Go outside and play with the other cubs!" his mother would say every morning when she came to pry him out of bed to prevent him from sleeping until the late afternoon.

In response, Tiberius would simply roll over and sigh deeply, explaining lazily, “Mom, what’s the point of going through all these motions in life if we’re all just going to die anyway? I’d much rather stay here in the shade and at least find some enjoyment in this hellhole, thanks.”

But his mother, fearing her son was depressed, forced him to go outside and play with the other cubs anyway. The young lions became increasingly uncomfortable around him, as all he seemed to do was stare at his reflection in the waterhole trying to decide if his fur was golden like his mother’s or just a dull tawny like his father’s. They began to avoid him at all costs.

"Tiberius is so weird," they’d whisper as he sauntered by them, dressed in all black, his face lacking emotion and his eyes vacant of any joy.

"I heard he’s gone vegetarian," they claimed when he stopped helping them hunt, and instead spent his time skateboarding.

Finally, Tiberius decided that everyone else was the problem and that he was doing absolutely nothing wrong and that everyone was just against him for no reason, so he remained  in his den, sprawled out on a nice cool rock for quite a few days, until his mother began to nag him to do something with his life. At that, Tiberius rolled his eyes, grunted, and stomped outside reluctantly, muttering various insults under his breath.

With a quick flash of his middle finger and an annoyed “screw you guys,” Tiberius walked right by the other lion cubs and headed out to explore the savannah alone.

Along the way, Tiberius caught sight of a cheetah crouched in the grass, getting ready to pounce on a grazing zebra. Without much of a thought, Tiberius let out a mighty, deep roar. He made a mental note to become the lead singer of a death metal band as the cheetah hightailed it out of there.

To his surprise, the zebra didn’t run at the sound of his roar. Tiberius approached him.

“Yoooo, little homie, peace and love, man, I ain’t lookin’ for trouble,” said the zebra slowly, the whites of his eyes red from… “allergies”.

“Nah, I don’t eat zebra, don’t worry. Scout’s honor.” Tiberius gave his most sincere smile.

“Radical, man,” the zebra folded his lips into a grin and nodded his head. “Name’s Zed, man.”

“Aye, I’m Tiberius. I really like your mohawk, bro, do you think you could give me one?”

“Of course, little dude, step into my office.” Zed waved vaguely to nowhere in particular.

Tiberius’s mother, who’d been out hunting antelope, saw the two together and immediately ran home to her husband to alert him that his son was making friends with prey instead of sinking his teeth into their jugulars like a proper young boy.

"What’s this I hear about you hanging out with zebras?" his dad asked one night after dinner.

"They’re cool, dad. One gave me this punk rock mohawk.” He shook his trimmed mane.

"Why won’t you hang out with the other lions?”

Tiberius rolled his eyes. “They’re lame.”

“How do you know?”

“They don’t like me, all they do is tell me I’m weird and stuff.”

“You’re a lion, aren’t you?”

“Duh, Sherlock.”

“A king of the jungle. The most courageous cat of all.” continued his father, getting slightly irritated with his son.

“Um. Yeah.”

“So, you need to have more pride in yourself. Lions have mighty roars for a reason, you should go show them what you’re made of. They’ll really appreciate you then. Once you establish your dominance as a true lion, they’ll be like putty in your paws.”

Tiberius sat up straighter and cleared his throat, taking what his father said into consideration for just one second. “Get out of my room, Dad.”

His father stood up and fiercely smacked Tiberius upside the head with his powerful paw. “Don’t talk to a lion like that,” he said, while stomping away. Right before he left, he turned and added, “See? Like that.”

The next day, Tiberius decided to take his father’s advice. He went down to the tree where the other cubs were playing and shook out his mohawked mane.

“Hey, Tiberius,” the crowd sighed and nodded in his general direction.

“Where’ve you been these past couple weeks?” one cub asked.

Tiberius let out a casual roar as he yawned, “I’ve been busy, scaring cheetahs and stuff.”

“Ew, what the hell, Tiberius, you’re so weird, go away,” an older cub said, and the rest of the group rolled their eyes in agreement.

Tiberius, taken aback by how his peers did not immediately bow down to his clear superiority, said defensively, “Shut the fuck up, Nero. Why don’t you go take care of your flea problem?” and stormed away angrily.

So yeah, I went and turned a children’s book into a hyperbolic mockery of the existential angst I had in junior year, because what I’ve found in my other introverted friends is that we’re quiet because we’re filled with anger and anxiety, not because we don’t have interesting personalities or things to say. I didn’t explore it in Tiberius because children’s books don’t really have deep, insightful character explorations, but there is a lot of soul searching involved in the forming and dismantling of defense mechanisms. Anyway, back to my college essay:

The toxic relationship became entirely consuming and it took a long time for me to pull myself out of it.

But I did pull myself out of it. Back in October, I worked up the courage to stop allowing him to affect me emotionally and told him, using my favorite inappropriate-for-school words, to…  “go away”. I then began to focus on finally allowing myself to grow as a human being as a result of the inner turmoil he had spent three years drowning me in.

Where Padme’s scars are fictional and the makeup that created her injuries was wiped off before the next movie, mine aren’t and mine won’t. Her scars “didn’t define her character” and her character died. My scars define my character and I will not go down without a fight. My scars are my survival story and I’m allowed to be proud of them.

The last paragraph was just all lies about how the next “obstacle” I would “set my mind to” would be college but that has no relevance so I cut it out for this.

But in conclusion, I think maybe our present is defined by our past. But that doesn’t mean anything to the future, and no matter how difficult life becomes, or how many obstacles are put in our paths, we should never give up, especially if we had tripped over them. Those who are still suffering from their past in silence shouldn’t be made to feel like they have to keep their experiences bottled up. I learned the hard way that shaming people for being open about their personal experiences is absolutely soul crushing and I’ve decided it’s time to make people realize that silence is not the way to fight injustice. I didn’t fight with my fists when I was raped, but I am going to fight with my words, and encourage others to as well, for the rest of my life.

[dragonsbl00d]

Roses are (often) red, white, or pink

Photoshopped black

Violets are b(well, violet)lue

Saying “fuck you” is the extent of my emotional range

In first grade I choked a kid

when I lost a game of tag

Anyway... dtf?

[dragonsbl00d]

Tiberius the Lion

Tiberius was a lion. Not that he ever called himself that or anything, since the politically correct term is panthera leo, but fine, Tiberius was a lion.

"Go down to the waterhole and play with the others!" his mother would say every morning when she came to pry him out of bed to prevent him from sleeping until the late afternoon.

In response, Tiberius would simply roll over and sigh deeply, explaining lazily, “Mom, what’s the point of going through all these motions in life if we’re all just going to die anyway? I’d much rather stay here in the shade and at least find some enjoyment in this hellhole, thanks.”

But his mother, fearing her son was depressed, forced him to go outside and play with the other cubs anyway. The young lions became increasingly uncomfortable around him, as all he seemed to do was stare at his reflection in the waterhole trying to decide if his fur was golden like his father’s or just a dull tawny like his mother’s. They began to avoid him at all costs.

"Tiberius is so weird," they’d whisper as he sauntered by them, dressed in all black, his face lacking emotion and his eyes vacant of any joy.

"I heard he’s gone vegetarian," they claimed when he stopped helping them hunt, and instead spent his time skateboarding.

One day, instead of facing his responsibilities, Tiberius decided that everyone else was the problem and that he was doing absolutely nothing wrong and that everyone was just against him for no reason, so he remained in his den, sprawled out on a nice cool rock for quite a few days, until his mother began to nag him to do something with his life. At that, Tiberius rolled his eyes, grunted, and stomped outside reluctantly, muttering various insults under his breath.

With a quick flash of his middle finger and an annoyed “screw you guys,” Tiberius walked right by the other lion cubs and headed out to explore the savannah alone.

Along the way, Tiberius caught sight of a cheetah crouched in the grass, getting ready to pounce on a grazing zebra. Without much of a thought, Tiberius let out a mighty, deep roar. He made a mental note to become the lead singer of a death metal band as the cheetah hightailed it out of there.

To Tiberius’s surprise, the zebra didn’t run at the sound of his roar. He decided to approach him.

“Yoooo, little homie, peace and love, man, I ain’t lookin’ for trouble,” said the zebra slowly, the whites of his eyes red from… “allergies”.

“Nah, I don’t eat zebra, don’t worry. Scout’s honor.” Tiberius gave his most sincere smile.

“Radical, man,” the zebra folded his lips into a grin and nodded his head. “My name’s Zed, man.”

“Aye, I’m Tiberius. I really like your mohawk, bro, do you think you could give me one?”

“Of course, little dude, step into my office.” Zed waved vaguely to nowhere in particular.

His mother, who’d been out hunting antelope, saw the two together and immediately ran home to her husband to alert him that his son was making friends with prey instead of sinking his teeth into their jugulars like a proper young boy.

"Son, what’s this I hear about you hanging out with zebras?" his dad asked him one night after dinner.

"They’re cool, dad. They gave me this punk rock mohawk.” He shook his trimmed mane.

"Why won’t you hang out with the other lions?”

Tiberius rolled his eyes, “They’re lame.”

“How do you know?”

“They don’t like me, all they do is tell me I’m weird and stuff.”

“You’re a lion, aren’t you?”

“Duh, Sherlock.”

“A king of the jungle, the most courageous cat of all, don’t you know?” continued his father, getting slightly irritated with his son.

“Um. Yeah.”

“So, you need to have more pride in yourself. Lions have mighty roars for a reason, you should go show them what you’re made of. They’ll really appreciate you then.”

Tiberius sat up straighter and cleared his throat, taking what his father said into consideration for just one second. “Get out of my room, Dad.”

His father stood up and fiercely smacked Tiberius upside the head with his powerful paw. “Don’t talk to a lion like that.” he said, while stomping out.

The next day, Tiberius decided to take his father’s advice. He went down to the tree where the other cubs were playing and shook out his mohawked mane.

“Hey, Tiberius,” the crowd sighed and nodded in his general direction.

“Where’ve you been these past couple weeks?” one cub asked.

Tiberius let out a casual roar as he yawned, “I’ve been busy, scaring cheetahs and stuff.”

“Ew, what the hell, Tiberius, you’re so weird, go away,” an older cub said, and the rest of the group rolled their eyes in agreement.

Tiberius, taken aback by how his peers did not immediately bow down to his clear superiority, said defensively, “Shut the fuck up, Nero, why don’t you go take care of your flea problem,” and stormed away angrily.

[dragonsbl00d]

I liked the way you walked,

And how you slurred your talk

I liked the way you’d pick your fights,

Just to ruin another’s night

I liked the way you’d laugh, not cry,

When you remembered you were gonna die

You loved your friends, if no one else

And I loved you, instead of myself

[dragonsbl00d]

I am a disease. 

I am the venom that drips from a taipan’s fangs,

 and I am the grey mist that encircles the shadow in your nightmare. 

I am a woman.

I strip away your masculinity with my emotions 

like a lion scratches bark off a tree with her claws. 

Fear me, for I might make your warrior heart 

too human for you to bear 

if you approach me with anything less than disdain.

Hunt me like Perseus hunted Medusa, 

but soon you’ll wish it were a gorgon you were after,

 because where her eyes will turn you into masculine stone, 

mine will melt your soul like flames melt wax.

The hourglass figure you love so much is exactly that, 

a timekeeper 

counting down the seconds until your hour of dominance is up.

[dragonsbl00d]

When I was a child

I visited my grandmother

And a bird fell out of the tree in her yard

But when I had went over to see if it had hurt its wing

I realized

There were two birds, not one

And they were fucking

[dragonsbl00d]

Lobotomy

When you were seventeen, you were so broken that when you scraped your leg at the skate park that day, the sight of your blood scared you so much you cried in my arms for an hour. You were a teenage boy inconsolably weeping over a skinned knee.

When you were sixteen, you filled your heart with vodka and your mind with whiskey. You had been drowning for so long you weren’t even interested in the surface anymore. You were my sweet sun from the beaches of California, but you asked me, the New England girl who’d only ever seen the ocean that sank the Titanic, to be your lifeguard.

When you were fifteen, you were so confident in yourself that whenever the blades tore deep into your paled skin, you wouldn’t bat an eye. You’d promise me that it would heal up fast, no problem at all. Every cut scarred so horribly that you were no longer able to tell the difference between the ones you gave yourself and the ones everyone else gave you.

When you were fourteen, you slept anywhere and everywhere except in your own room. Your parents didn’t care if it was illegal to lock you out, and you didn’t want to be around them in the first place, so you slept on all of our friend’s floors, or in your backyard, if they were mad. You told me it was kinda fun.

When you were thirteen, you dropped your necklace in the gap between your front porch and its stairs, where the wood had rotted away and all the bugs you hated most had moved into. You loved that necklace as if it were your soul, but you couldn’t bring yourself to plunge your hand into the unknown. I watched your anxiety seep into your veins and make your eyes well up, and before I could let my own insectophobia get the best of me, I bit my cheek and retrieved it for you. I’d never seen someone so grateful.

When you were twelve, you were so baffled by me letting you take the last chocolate milk at lunch that you wrote me an angry letter listing all of the reasons why I shouldn’t be nice to you because you didn’t deserve it. That was the first time I disobeyed someone’s command.

When you were eleven, you were so happy that it broke your parents’ hearts, so they moved you across the country to where the wind blew cold so your soul would turn to ice. You loved the change of seasons. You loved how the leaves would turn the colors of your hair and how the snow would fall so heavy it would cancel school.

When you were ten, you loved the world and all of the living things in it so deeply that you even stopped seeing all of the evils humanity brought to your own home.

When you were nine, no matter how hard he hit you, you would shrug it off like a good strong boy.

When you were eight, you wouldn’t listen to your teachers and you had to sit out during recess almost every day.

When you were seven, you stopped believing in a benevolent creator. You were a tiny, little, outspoken atheist that liked to wear Hawaiian shirts with sweatpants.

When you were six, you always had a pack of those candy cigarettes the ice cream truck sold, and you were always swearing.

When you were five, that was the first time he showed you what color your blood was, and how it can pool up under your skin and cover your body with different sized spots like you were some sad version of a dalmatian.