jurif

[jurif]

the grey

You are the grey and the grey is you and it is choking choking choking. It creeps into your esophagus and keeps going down and down until it’s at the base of your lungs, the very very bottom, because you are it and it is transforming you. It is not your fault that you were born this way. Repeat to yourself it is not your fault that you were born this way and it is not your fault that you are the grey.

You were born in a city only visible in the smog through the fluorescents. When you step outside to have a cigarette, the little-grey, as you call it, all you can see in front of you is your work boots, the slippery tar-black pavement, and bright, bright, pink-purple-orange yellow light. The billboards are calling to you. Buy this shampoo, 25% off, leaves your hair silky smooth with a smiling money-back guarantee. But you won’t buy the shampoo because you’re too busy inhaling. Everybody around you, everyone in the factories, in the streets and the offices and the parks, they’re all inhaling and they’re all poor, and the grey is making it so, because the longer you breathe it in the less time you have to make money. Well, that’s what they say, anyway.

They say that your mother died of cancer, but what they really mean is that she died of the grey. The grey is what creates the cells, you see, and you know this because you are it, and you were taught this in school. Kid-friendly corpses. You drew them in chalk. The grey’s bad for you, they said, and then the bell rang and you went out to breathe it in all over again. Your mother died as she lived, working, and when the time came to bury her you couldn’t pay the plot fee, so you burned her bones, and that made the grey stronger. But that was fine, you supposed, because it’s already inside you.

There is money everywhere you look. Please don’t be mistaken. The money is there, it’s just not yours. It’s not anyone’s, really, but you’d be remiss to take it without asking the nice man with the red tie. It’s piling in the streets, you just can’t see it. You can’t see much of anything if it doesn’t wear a luminescent halo. Angels live in street lamps. Everything is green. People stay in their cars, for the most part. They’re avoiding the grey. Sixty, seventy miles per hour, every morning, afternoon, night, a thousand times over. You are it, it is being fed. Not a second goes by that it’s not inside you. In fact you think it’s beginning to unfurl. Your chest has been heavy and you’re coughing red. Your boss denies you sick leave, and when you leave his office, there is a neon blue carbon emissions poster in the hallway. SAVE THE WORLD, it screams at you. REDUCE. REUSE. RECYCLE.

Later that day you start to feel faint and nearly take your hand out in the power plant. They slap a bandage over your skin and ask you to stay because, well, there’s still an hour left of your shift. Is it really worth losing a twelfth of your wage?

You want a cigarette, and to scream.

An hour later you’re trudging home through the grey, and you can’t see, and neither can anyone else on the street but that’s fine, you’re all used to the collective blindness as much as you’re used to the masks. You ignore the homeless man begging for scraps on the street because you’ve worked hard to get to your position—a rented one-bedroom apartment. You know it's not much, and you know you're clinging to it by the skin of your teeth, but at least you have it, and having is a step or three below owning.

You stand in your wearing-down kitchenette and poke holes through the plastic film glued to a cardboard box filled with chicken-slash-rat-meat. You look out of the window. It's dusk, but you can hardly tell anymore. There's a sliver of orange peeking through the smog, and the clouds just roll on by, uncaring. You'll use the microwave for this, you think. The oven is too much hassle, and you're tired, and you haven't cleaned it in a while. After you scrape your feast into a chipped bowl you discard the packaging. The cardboard rots along with your leftovers from Tuesday.

You think about your mother as you eat. You're sitting despondently in front of the TV, watching reruns of shows aired before the grey took over. You think about her and the women that came before, your grandmother, your great grandmother, each of them living the same life, each of them dying the same way. There used to be a dream of some sort, you know, something about the nuclear family. You were taught this at school, too. The men worked, the women stayed at home, raised the children. Maybe a century ago it would have been an absolute truth, but to you it seemed like nothing more than a pipe dream. The nuclear family has been usurped by the nuclear power plant. Now, we all work.

Everything about this place is overstimulating. Traffic, advertisements, footsteps, advertisements, traffic, shootings, shootings, TV, advertisements. All of it wrapped in a sickly, overly bright film, cloying like white chocolate. Everything is grey until it isn't—if you want to forget about the dullness for a moment, just look up.

The next day, you buy the shampoo. 25% off.

[jurif]

while i'm at it i think personality is little more than a farce it's a coat you slip on to keep yourself alive in the snow and hang up when you're home away from prying eyes. i believe in the terrible nothing of existence yet also the terrible everything. i live in fear of god's watchful eye yet in my mind i am the only god there could be. my boots are wolfskin and my scarf is tangled lies and they protect me until they can't anymore

[jurif]

how to get over being raped no glue no borax. how to get over being assaulted no glue no borax. how to get over being molested no glue no borax. how to reckon with being born into a loveless marriage sewn from the pain of a god-fearing country. how to come to terms with never being anything but an object for somebody else's amusement. how to swallow the knowledge that you are a woman cursed with a father who hates women. how to embrace your broken silhouette without brokenness becoming all you are. how to live happily. how to trust those who are worthy. how to let go. how to let go. how to let go.

[jurif]

how to communicate with your girlfriend when you're suffering from an undiagnosed personality disorder

be nice

you can ask for alone time whenever you want

be honest

remember that niceness and honesty are not mutually exclusive

believe she loves you (?)

(you don't know how to do that. but at the very least have faith in her being an honest person.)

your ego is not as important as it feels

tone shifting in a conversation is not a confirmation of your greatest fears

relax

you're not in trouble

your mind does not dictate reality and you'll never actually know what the truth is

never. never never never.

[jurif]

what does it take for you to love me? what does it take for me to be complete? it could be anything, anything. it could be the needle in my thigh and the crack in my throat, it could be my blue walls and blue sheets and lips tinged with the kind of pink you can only get from biting. it could be the swollen fat of my chest constricting against my ribs and the air whistling out of me like a deflating balloon and it is, in all honesty, probably likely definitely, all of these things at once and more, and i don't like to take this business all too seriously but when i look in the mirror it's your image that stares back, not mine.

you told me, once, that i used to look dead behind the eyes, and i suppose you attributed this to the length of my hair. today i put a cigarette out on my arm, dotted it twice to feel out the pain just before i held it there, cradling it to my tender baby bird flesh, and the burn filled me. today i laughed. today i cried. today i sat alone in my bathroom and stared at the floor with the ash still clinging to my smooth skin. when i stood up the mirror faced me bolder than brass and my eyes had been set alight with butane and there was nothing left to be bound.

healthy. never mind normal. you wanted my mind in another body, or perhaps you never wanted my mind at all. but i've given up trying to please you. even as i strike a match to my chest, my blood pumps red and sweet and sings the softest melody.

[jurif]

and in come the questions: what do i call you? how do i refer to you? what are your pronouns? and i want to scream—don't ask, don't ask, it's not for me to decide but for you to know. you have to know. please know what i am when you look at me. please know better than i do. i am a baby developing in the womb of her mother's soft flesh and the world is going to swallow me whole, one day, and i am a sailor's daughter-son, and i am the earth, and i am the sea, and i am the grass you stand on. look at me. the divine light. i cannot decide for myself.

lump in my throat when i say the word woman like an apple seed. i don't think i am, you see. but man i can't be either. and it's not a case of prejudice, and it's not pride, i'm just confused-confused-confused, because when you're so sure for so long the fall down below hurts like a motherfucker, doesn't it? hit the ground and broke my legs instead of running so instead i crawl. and i crawl. i wash my face and grow my hair and shave my legs and wait for the perfect solution. i must forsake what never served me. but what does, i ask. what does?

[jurif]

lump in my throat when i say the word woman like an apple seed. i don't think i am, you see. but man i can't be either. and it's not a case of prejudice, and it's not pride, i'm just confused-confused-confused, because when you're so sure for so long the fall down below hurts like a motherfucker, doesn't it? hit the ground and broke my legs instead of running so instead i crawl. and i crawl. i wash my face and grow my hair and shave my legs and wait for the perfect solution. i must forsake what never served me. but what does, i ask. what does?

[jurif]

age

when i was a girl i'd share my grandmother's bed

and she'd trace my arm with her fingertips til i slept

i had come to expect it, the softness of her hands

when i grew older, she'd do the same

but the time that passed between us had been too great

and she could no longer find it in herself to be so gentle

though she tried, her nails raked my skin tender

i lay there in quiet, disappointed silence

and now we may never share a bed again

my fingers circle my arm alone, now, goosebumps rising in their wake

and i long for that half-pain reminder of her presence

[jurif]

"I was raped three months ago," I say, and the words don't sound right coming out of my mouth. "Last October."

I was raped three months ago. Last October. I've repeated this to myself countless times, but never once in a police station. I've told my mother, and my sister, and my friends, and twenty or so people I either hardly know or talk to once every three weeks. I've told a nice woman named Lucky while one of the first people I've ever loved sat on a sofa to my right, encouraging me. She emailed me a safety guide for domestic abuse after. "It's generic," she'd said, "We're working on creating a new one. But you might find some of the information helpful."

My ex knows. I made it public, and her best friend saw, and she called her, and she reached out. We talked, that was fine. I think at some point the conversation fizzled and when we got to the topic of a guy she'd recently hooked up with I ended it.

I was raped three months ago. Last October.

Not even a day after ending a relationship that'd been my sole purpose for almost two years of my life. Not even twenty-four hours. He got me drunk and he raped me. End of story. Except it's not, it didn't stop there, nothing ever truly stops—he convinced me it was a good idea to stay at his place, and I did, for the next two weeks. And then he did it again. By that point I had half-convinced myself that I wanted it. I stayed for two weeks, my friends started to get suspicious about it. I mothered him, and he raped me. Equal transaction.

The first time he stuck his fingers in me. Wouldn't pull them out until I was almost crying, telling him how much it hurt. The second, he choked me. Bent me over his knee. For that, at least, he asked permission. I was drunk then, too. I nodded along. I thought I wanted it. I thought I had to want it, because being in a relationship from seventeen to going-on-nineteen where your body never feels quite right leaves scars. I was telling myself it was good for me, that someone could want all this, this shell of fat and flesh stretched thin over stiff bones, that they'd jump so fast at the chance to have me.

He thought I looked good. Good enough to rape, at least.

I couldn't bring myself to call it that at first. In the beginning, when I was picking it all apart, dissecting it with the person I'd experienced the nightmare with, it was taking advantage. After a week or two I hesitantly claimed it as sexual assault, and only then did I speak out. I wanted to warn people, I think, because this guy has a habit of worming himself into people's lives where he's not welcome. After that it was rape. The name's stuck. I can't call it anything else.

It's hard to quantify. Hard to manage. I didn't get attacked on the street. I was never held at gunpoint. I thought, at the time, that I wanted it, and that it was normal, which is my biggest hangup, still. There's no one thing I can point to and cry rape, I have to look at the big-fucking-picture.

It was in the way he apologised before getting drunk for what he might do. It was in the fact he passed me around to strangers when I was so blacked out I could only sit and stare at the wall, unthinking, unblinking. It was in the way he knew I was too drunk to the point where he got me water to sober me up, which it barely did, and took me back to his place to have sex with me anyway.

It was the way I considered him a friend before this. The way he sucked hickeys onto my neck and counted them in front of people I'd never met in my life. The way I tried to pull him off me by the hair because it hurt. And it kept hurting for days after.

He gave me a UTI. Tried to shift the blame in some moronic way I can't even give a full explanation to. The first time I'd ever had sex with somebody, real sex, not a thankfully successful handjob while watching Harry Potter—and I was in constant discomfort after, my neck aching, my insides leaking. I can remember the smell of ammonia. How my boxers looked like I'd wet myself.

Was this what my body had been made for? Was this what I had to look forward to, the growing pains of becoming an adult, the neverending, ever-present reminder that someone was here, that I'm claimed, that I was never worth the consideration of being treated gently? I remember walking around his room naked, feeling his eyes on me. Attention.

He made me cry because he'd liked me since before we properly met and that was my problem to deal with, apparently. Kept pushing for me to give him more despite my constant hesitation, my insistence that I didn't want to hurt him, didn't want to give him the wrong idea. When I told him I didn't want whatever this was, I wasn't fucking ready, he said it was fine, really, it could take me all the time in the world, days or weeks or months. But it'd happen again. Underlying, it was in his tone, that it'd happen again—that he'd have me, again, and he'd hurt me, again, and oh, wow, I know your secret now! I know what you're into, you wanna get slapped around. You like it. You like it!

I couldn't tell him, no, I didn't. I never said he could choke me and I only let him bend me over because I was out of my mind on that fucking Bailey's he insisted on drinking straight. When he had me in his bed I was putting on a show, for me or for him, I have no idea, but it was like an out of body experience: oh, he's doing this, I better react like that, I guess this is happening now, sure, what's going on, is he trying to make me come? I don't want to come. I don't want him to make me come. Stop it. Stop it.

Sometimes I can see him when I look out of my window. I'm living with six other people; one of them has taken his side, the other mine. I love her. I've never had a friend in my life which I could honestly say I loved. But I do love her. And he hurt her, too, in other ways. Thankfully less graphic, less humiliating ways. But I don't think having her with me is enough, even if she can ease my mind for a little while. I try not to ask too much of her. She's hurting for reasons far beyond mine. We joke about wanting to kill ourselves, ha-ha, only three months into uni and we just couldn't hack it. We joke about wanting to drop out but it stopped being funny after the first time. I'm always tired, always going through the motions, and I've been considering the idea of writing a beautiful, poignant note, telling my family how much I love them, telling my ex how sorry I am, telling my friend not to mourn me too long. I'd leave it in an envelope and keep my door unlocked and go out to drown myself in the river.

I won't. But I'm not as afraid of the idea as I used to be. I never knew how harsh the world I was born into actually is. I'm being drip-fed the truth every day, now. Like a hamster right before you force it back on its wheel.

I was raped three months ago. Last October. I see my rapist in the courtyard of our accommodation some days. I walk past him. He doesn't have the courage to look at me.

Three months ago. Last October.

One day, I'm going to kill him.

[jurif]

One massive, legitimate way to improve as a writer or artist or in any creative endeavor really, is to become absolutely obsessed with something and to allow yourself to be weird about it. Genuinely mean this btw.

[jurif]

I am going to take a deep breath and just remind you:

Writing is messy, even for the best authors. It's supposed to feel a little uncomfortable, exhilarating, freeing, natural, and terrifying.

It's supposed to inspire you and feel like a too-heavy backpack.

Sometimes, you're going to love being a writer and sometimes, you'll feel so disconnected, you'll wonder if you were ever a writer to begin with.

Give yourself room to make mistakes and hate your work and return to it with renewed confidence that yes, you will get 1% better next time.

It's what we're all going through. Let's speed up the growing process a little by accepting the entirety of it.

[jurif]

it’s both comforting and heartbreaking that over time you will slowly forget the little details of someone you once loved so deeply until their memory is just a hazy blur like a dream you once had and can’t quite remember anymore

[jurif]

Mary Oliver, from “Hum Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

[jurif]

quick what is everyone doing right now

[jurif]

Something that's been knocking around in my head for a while: I think a lot of new writers get thrown off by their assumption that writing will be anything like reading. Reading is a dreamy, passive experience--scenes, dialogue, and description flow over you as you are taken under the writer's spell. Writing, on the other hand (with the exception, sometimes, of the first draft), is the laborious, almost mechanical-like task of putting narrative elements together so that the reader can lose themselves in your story. In short, reading and writing are very different experiences, and the assumption that they will be, or even should be, the same, is cause for much angst among new and experienced writers alike. It's a frustrating thing, because a love of reading is usually what gets people interested in writing in the first place. I've been writing for several decades and I still feel confounded by this clash--it's part of why I don't read much when I'm deep into my writing, and vice versa. And when I am writing, I constantly have to remind myself: Writing is not watching a magic show. Writing is figuring out how to smuggle the rabbit into the hat.

[jurif]

Sacred Heart of Jesus

Artist unidentified

Probably Fallon, North Dakota

c. 1900

Paint on wood

65 (diam.) x 4 in.

American Folk Art Museum purchase, 1992.30.1

[jurif]

I want my stories to be boring. I want to write characters going through their mundane routines, all those motions we go through in our day-to-day - so much that they've become invisible, and so much it's easy for us to forget to do those same motions. For my characters to be human, they must be boring. They must have those uninteresting qualities that say so much about them whether they realize it or not. I think there is something beautifully human in the mundane and I want to capture that by letting my stories focus on how slow life is.