portrait-of-a-soul

[portrait-of-a-soul]

it won’t be autumn forever

3/30/25

Tw: none

they say that people

enter our lives for seasons

why must the earth tilt?

[portrait-of-a-soul]

Penicillum

3/30/25

Tw: vague suicidal ideation

bread past its expiration date

overtaken by mold

is still considered good

by those who keep eating it

invisible to the naked eye

the spores run deep

and cutting off gray patches

will never undo the festering inside

nobody knows

the bread is killing them slowly

and the trash bin is mercy

for everyone involved

[portrait-of-a-soul]

I'm autistic

10/28/24 TW: Ableism, identity first language vs. person first language debate

I’m autistic I have autism and I say I’m autistic You’re a person and you say I shouldn’t say that I’m autistic and you say I should say I’m a person, first I’m autistic and I will explain why your “advocacy” is performative And how I’m not actually a person to you in the first place

I’m a person with autism and the lights hurt my eyes You’re a person and you laugh at me I’m a person with autism and I learn that my pain doesn’t matter I’m autistic and I learn that you’re ignorant about sensory processing differences

I’m a person with autism and I show you something I’m passionate about You’re a person and you say I’m acting childish I’m a person with autism and I learn that I shouldn’t get so excited about the things that I like I’m autistic and learn that special interests are a joyful experience that allow me to connect better with others.

I’m a person with autism and I flap my hands You’re a person and you tell me I look like an idiot I’m a person with autism and I learn I learn to keep my hands still I’m autistic and I learn it’s okay to move my body

I’m a person with autism and sometimes I talk too much You’re a person and tell me I’m annoying I’m a person with autism and I learn not to talk at all I’m autistic and learn that there are people out there who would love to hear me talk

I’m a person with autism and I have trouble making friends You’re a person and you tell me I’m not good enough I’m a person and I learn that it’s better not to have friends I’m autistic and learn that there are people out there who will love me just the way I am

I’m a person with autism and I have trouble following instructions You’re a person and you get mad at me for not listening I’m a person with autism and I learn that it’s useless to try new things I’m autistic and I learn that I am fully capable of understanding when you take the time to explain something in a different way

I'm a person with autism and trying to meet someone’s eyes is like repelling magnets You’re a person and you tell me that I’m rude when I look away I’m a person and I learn to push through the discomfort I’m autistic and learn that I’m not the only one who hurts this way

I’m a person with autism and I have trouble starting tasks You’re a person and you tell me I’m not trying hard enough I’m a person with autism and I learn that I’m lazy I’m autistic and I learn that it’s called “executive dysfunction”

I’m a person with autism and I call out bullying You’re a person and you tell me it’s not that serious I’m a person with autism and I learn that I’m too sensitive I’m autistic and I learn that it is called “having a strong sense of justice.”

I’m a person with autism and I have words to explain myself now You’re a person and you don’t like that I’m a person with autism and I learn that you’ll never listen I’m autistic and I have to carry on anyway

Why?

To guide the autistic people you leave behind

To a home you naively think you understand.

[portrait-of-a-soul]

Garden of Eden

11/25/24 TW: Fatphobia, disordered eating, food morality, religion/religious allegory (Christianity) Alternate version of this concept here

Being so close to the garden of Eden makes breaking and entering it a common fantasy of yours

Until one day, your hands are too idle

And the familiar snake of sadness whispers in your ear again.

He says that if you keep going as you are, wading through the thistles and thorns you’ve been cursed with since birth

You’re never going to be happy.

He reminds you that neither He,

Nor Adam,

Nor God’s ever-expanding world,

Will ever love you

Until you become just as consumable as the fruit you seek,

And you believe Him.

You’re tall enough to climb over the garden gate now, so you follow His advice.

When you find the trees, you eat the fruit until your stomach’s full

And your body that once ached to be a helper

Is not capable of helping anyone when you’re actively destroying it.

But a little funny, too.

Because after starving for so long,

The fruit unlocked a truth you were better off only hearing rumors about

You look in the mirror and stare at your naked body

You see how it differs from God’s

And how the nectar looks so pretty rolling down the collarbones you’ve never seen sit so daintily below your neck

And when the snake praises you over and over

And people are kinder to you than they’ve ever been before

You finally understand the difference between good and bad,

Skinny and fat,

And scripture and blasphemy.

Yet something inside you begs to argue to God that maybe he’s wrong. Maybe he made you wrong.

Maybe the fruit in the garden is everlasting. Maybe you could stay full forever like everyone else can. Maybe you don’t have to starve ever again.

But everyone knows that God doesn’t like humans made in his image

Who think they are just as all-knowing as Him

And so, He warns you that sometimes, life isn’t fair,

And that you can’t hide in the garden with everyone else forever.

One day, the trees will no longer bear fruit for you,

And when that day comes,

God will swallow you in fabric several sizes too big,

And you will be forced to wade through the thistles and thorns beneath your feet forever.

[portrait-of-a-soul]

Scripture

11/25/24 TW: Fatphobia, disordered eating, food morality, religion/religious allegory (Christianity) Alternate version of this concept here

everyone knows that God doesn’t like humans made in His image that think they are just as all-knowing as Him

just as your Mom always frowned at photos of herself And cradled your fat body, The one that proudly bloomed into one not unlike Her own, With the same amount of praise She offered Herself Which was none

once you learned of that fruit that She, your Dad, and Everyone Else in the world craved,

it was hard to watch your parents hack away at the thistle and thorns God cursed them with on their quest to obtain some forbidden fruit of their own

when compared to Most, they had been cursed from the start

you remember that at the time, it was hard for you to understand the injustice of why satiation came so easily to some people

and not to others,

And why fruit was the end-all-be-all, anyway

when God had already told everyone in the scripture that the Truth would only make them upset

you had agreed with his words back then

but preached that in addition, there are so many other immeasurable, kinder traits for someone to love about a person’s soul that we could discover if we weren’t so preoccupied with our temples, too

God took notice of your gentle words and set in stone the grotesque features of your family giving you no real explanation as to why you were punished with famine like them even though you had been the only one agreeing with Him at first

luckily for you, the snake in the dust took notice of your confused despair and hugged you through the sharp points no one else, not even God, dared to touch.

in his embrace, he told you that everything would be alright. he said that as long as you stuck with him, he would bring you scraps from the garden.

all you had to do was listen

and oh, did you listen.

you listened so closely that His voice drowned out your creator’s insistence in the back of your mind that all bodies created from his dust are holy without the fruit,

the Snake’s voice became the one encouraging you to take a bite

every time the scale creaked under your weight and your clothes stopped fitting like they used to

with His continued mercy, you sank your teeth into the skin of unripe apples day after day because it was just so easy to feel that bloom of bitterness across your tongue turn sweeter over time,

the longer your dad cut out carbs and your mom skipped meals,

the more your doctor told you you were too fat and the bigger your shirt size got each year,

the more praise your thin sister received, while all you ever got was ridicule,

and the way it’s proven to you

over and over again

even to this day,

that nobody wants you unless you’re consumable.

and you believe in it,

yet your cowardly inability to ever make a dent into the flesh like He advises you to leaves you with a rage so fierce it is almost as though you are God Himself.

it irritates you how you always hesitate before you take a real bite

why can’t you just listen and do as He says? you’ve gotten this far, why are you stopping now? why are you still so angry? Why are you still so sentimental?

what’s so hard about forsaking God’s body, your Mother’s body, the body you reside in,

when in the garden, the ground is free from thistle and thorns

unlike the tangle of plants that trap you here in purgatory?

what makes you not want to escape anymore?

don’t you want to be free? don’t you want to be loved? don’t you want to feel whole? don’t you want to eat?

your mom told you just yesterday that you’re so lucky your meds are an appetite suppressant and that she wishes she could eat the pills not meant for her so that she can lose weight like You

you’re not sure if She and the snake returning to his mantle at your ear who agrees with her actually have a point or if god is telling you through the dust on your hands that maybe it’s best to appreciate the thistles and thorns for what they are And just stop fighting long enough to look closely.

you humor him and find tiny flowers peeking through the vines

it makes you smile bitterly knowing that no one in the garden of Eden will ever appreciate them like you can

you wonder if maybe the flowers are telling you through the image of God

that its okay to set down your scripture

and write your own for a while,

even if writing alone is so, so lonely.

Coda

it's ironic though, isn't it?

how you talk a big game about ambivalence,

yet know deep down

that You can never fully trust yourself with the body

that the pain squeezing Your stomach

still feels like a forbidden fruit You can't get enough of

and not a reflection of the gluttony that aches to destroy You

when the new tome in your hands is just as heavy as you are with contradicting verses

and the sweet desire to sin threatens to sway you more than the most beautiful words You write ever can,

what are You supposed to do with that?

[portrait-of-a-soul]

Family Vlogs

11/6/22 TW: None, this one is surprisingly positive

Been thinking fondly and almost condescendingly about my dad’s sudden interest in vlogs and his desire to make his own, lately

He’s been investing in GoPro cameras and accessories, watching family vloggers, and talking nonstop about editing…

What, I thought with a smile today, watching him record his thoughts on my sister’s basketball game, does he think he’s going to become YouTube famous? Quit his job and become a family vlogger? Make content about such mundane things?

Then, he turned the camera around to me and asked me for my thoughts.

I saw myself in the viewfinder

(and I was suddenly 5, being recorded on his clunky camcorder, as I showed him a really big dandelion and blew it out)

as I rambled about how it sucked that her team lost the game. He turned the camera back to himself and gave a funny parting message

(and I thought of his goofy commentary from behind the camera of our countless VHS home videos)

and it really just hit me

that his love of vlogs isn’t a new phase.

It’s love that has evolved with the times and that his motivation for them would of course never be for clout

but a desire to capture memories and spend time with us

and leave us reminders that he will always be here for us

and that he’s always watching us grow up, videos or not.

Divider from here

[portrait-of-a-soul]

Wandering eyes

7/24/21 TW: Depression era, ND coded

My aunt says When I was little, My eyes wandered, wandered, wandered, catching on every detail She tells me how I would smile big, how I was the friendliest baby she’d ever seen

Now my body can’t seem to rest I’m a wound up toy held in place Eyes wandering, this time searching for an escape There is still wonder here, but it’s marred by fear I’m aware of every word Every mistake Every missed moment to connect My smile stretches wider and wider as I talk Agreeable things, polite things A laugh here or there A concept A person in theory A dear in headlights The friendliest baby you’ve ever seen Just another face with wandering eyes and a wondering soul

Divider found here

[portrait-of-a-soul]

Additional TWs: depression era, ND coded

Bi(r)ds

11/24/23 Tw: Blood

Doctors John and Julie Gottman, couples specialists of the Gottman Institute, invented an interesting theory of how humans connect with one another. They describe humans’ attempts to connect as “bids for connections.”

A bid for connection is “an attempt to get attention, affection, and/or acceptance."

It makes sense.

When in a logical mood, one can understand how important the call and response nature of bids are as the building blocks of trust. Humans are no different from birds singing the other half of a melody to join each other in holy bird matrimony.

But the other times, when you’re sitting alone—When there’s no other metaphorical dumbass bird to sing back to you—these constant, easy transactions you see between others blind your sight and fill you with misplaced rage.

(You see bids in the way your friends hold hands with their partners; in the way their lips curl up in amusement as they make the unspoken decision to sit even closer to one another)

You see bids when you’re out shopping alone; in the way you watch parents hold car doors open for their own parents

You see bids when children are skipping down wet sidewalks; in the way they never stray too far from their mother’s worried hand

You see bids when girls look at each other and laugh about jokes only they understand; in the way they take photos of one another to preserve their experiences onto film

(Why can’t you have that?)

(What’s wrong with you?)

Let’s go back to birds. Birds are easier than humans.

Have you ever heard of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird?

Maybe not. They’re gone now. They were left behind as humans destroyed their land.

(They don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, it seems)

But for a while, there was one left, holding out hope.

The senior scientist that recorded his last call on tape stated "He is the last male of a species singing for a female who will never come."

How awful it must have been to have kept singing and singing,

Only to be met with silence.

One can only imagine that when the scientists came by to record him,

He’d gotten his hopes up that someone would finally hear him

And do something about it

But nothing came of it

They could listen, but what could they do, really? The forest wasn’t built for him. Not anymore, at least.

(It was his problem, in the end.)

Again, the fact was, there was no one left like him. Or maybe there was?

After all, that was the hope he was clinging to as he broke the silence night after night

(You bet the other animals grumbled at his chatter)

Maybe his kin was just on the other side of the world, across oceans, across groves of forests, across crumbling civilizations

(Maybe he could find her?)

But this meant nothing to him if she was out of reach, didn’t it? If she was alive, she was impossible to find. She probably didn’t even need him. She could adapt. She could find a different singer. One that could be closer to her than the male could dream to be.

He didn’t know how to adapt.

(You wonder if his voice ever wavered)

(You know that yours has)

Enough about birds.

The term ‘bids for connection’ actually reminds most of a community event humans call auctions.

If bidding for connection could be likened to your blink-and-you’ll-miss-it attempts at dumping your thoughts in walls of text online

Then bids for connection on your end haven’t been going well for a while.

One would think from the way you’re always the one left in the empty auction hall with a fistful of dollar bills

That you’d make better choices than to raise your hand and make a pathetic offer.

But nowadays something in you smartens up the second your hand is even glanced at

You crumple the money and throw it on the floor before they get the chance to call out your bid

You reel the spark of courage back in; as you wind it back around the bobbin in your chest, it becomes dyed with blood-red shame.

It’s okay. Maybe the psychiatrists and therapists will be the ones to clinically listen to you cry and take pity on you.

They can listen, but what can they do, really? The world isn’t built for you. Not anymore, at least.

(It is your problem, in the end.)

You don’t know how to adapt.

The Gottmans describe the responses to bids for connection as “turning towards, turning against, and turning away.”

When in a neutral mood, one can recognize that just because most turn away, or in layman’s terms, ignore you, it doesn’t mean everyone will.

But when you can’t take it anymore and impulsively act on your hope, you smash your hand through the frosted pane you view the world through. Retract it. Peek through the hole you made. Snarl at your moment of weakness. Turn away. Look back. See the blood running down the glass.

(You hope that someone sees it. You fantasize of someone seeing it. Maybe they’d wonder if you’re okay. Maybe they’d come looking for you.)

(Or maybe they wouldn’t. And wouldn’t that be embarrassing.)

(You need to get a rag to clean it up.)

(You need to stomp the tape recorder into the fucking grass.)

And isn’t that just like you?

Always

Bidding

and

(hiding)

Calling

and hearing

(silence)

[portrait-of-a-soul]

About

This is just a little side-blog to put my original work (mostly poetry) in. It's typically negative, so make sure to check the tags if you choose to read anything here.

In particular, here are some tags to look out for:

#Depression era: works that were written when I was depressed and/or burnt out (extremely common occurance, lol).

#ND coded: works typically made before my diagnoses, but there will be some after as well. It's basically anything that has an autism and/or adhd vibe to it.

#Fatphobia: works that talk about fatphobia and/or body image.

#Positive: a rare happy work