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✷ I Hold You Gently Between My Teeth ✷

Shop / Socials / Sticker Club / Tattoo Flash / etc.

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I don’t know how to believe myself. To the point that an alter interrupted in therapy, sobbing and apologizing, asking our therapist if he really believed her because even the others don’t.

My therapist said something about how some–most–people just can’t accept the kind of evil that exists in the world.

And then he… quoted AHS. And said it’s like most people believe they’ll pull the curtain back and reveal it was fine all along when in reality it’s just like that “there isn’t going to be a swimming pool you stupid slut” moment. Dreams shattered. Reality sucks.

There’s not going to be any good shit happening behind the curtain (and there’s no swimming pool).

Anyway now my pretty gay therapist saying “there’s not going to be a swimming pool, you stupid slut” is bouncing around my goddamn brain every time the denial creeps up. Which I guess counts as effective therapy because it’s working. Which is dogshit because it means memories are getting filled in. Which is effective therapy 🔁 etc.

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i don't dress for men i dress for whoever finds my body rotting in the woods

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lake mungo (2008) // sharp objects (2018)

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Rainer Maria Rilke, from a poem titled "The Departure of the Prodigal Son," featured in Possibility of Being

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😵‍💫 Okay man.

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Panic attack during a CT scan

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House to myself for a week and my brain immediately pulls the walls down and I just about pass out in the living room.

Guess we’re doing this.

I have been trying to come to terms with the reality of being groomed. What it meant, what it actually was. I don’t know why admitting it is so difficult. Maybe because I want to feel like I was in control of my life and the reality is… not that.

The reality was my stepdad driving me around downtown at night and pointing out the sex workers. And telling me that would be me, if I wasn’t careful, or something like that. I was what, eleven? And he was taking me out at night to demonstrate how good I had it compared to a lot of other people.

And growing up feeling like I was destined for that life even when I couldn’t remember why. Because they told me that being trafficked was something to aspire to and enjoy, I guess.

And driving past random garages or buildings and knowing I knew what the inside looked like even if I couldn’t remember how.

And it was my stepdad’s mom trying to give me money after every family gathering and some part of me refusing it because I (the host) didn’t understand why she wanted to give it to me, and another part trying to hide the money in the bathroom, and getting in trouble when she found it because that was part of the deal.

My stepdad gave me shit for taking it because I wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know. I’m getting these little blips of conversations and moment that are all so disconnected or happened years apart, and I recognize myself in them but also don’t. Or I can go, oh that was one of those moments where the host and trauma holders both remember but had very different reactions to it at the exact same time. I can see the splits and cracks in me.

And I spent every day of my adolescence and teen years feeling so terrified and so sick and afraid and disgusting and ashamed of every breath I took with no conscious knowledge of why. “Anxiety disorder.” I spent my adult life confused about where those feelings came from since nothing had ever happened to me that I could remember. And now I’m… this was every day. Conversations like that happened every day. But the amnesia has meant that knowledge just does not agree with who the host is and trying to integrate the two sides together? Terrible. How can I have been groomed, I’m fine and normal, etc.

I know it’s also partially because this touches so close to the actual abuse and trafficking. These conversations came before and after. It’s a struggle not to throw up thinking about it that way, too.

I know this has been coalescing in the background for months and it’s nothing to be scared of now but that feeling of being yanked out of my own brain, I don’t know how to stop fighting that reflexively.

So. Drugs. I’m doing so many drugs.

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“I can’t cut any language open wide enough to give you this story.”

— Adira Bennett, excerpt from poem Because There Are Graveyards

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The Animal is Speaking

It’s always there.

In the hollow of your chest,

the shadow that flickers when no one’s looking,

the raw, wet sound of your pulse.

Small at first,

like a whisper pressed between your ribs,

but growing louder every time you swallow it down.

The animal has always been there.

Quiet.

Patient.

Waiting for you to stop lying.

Tell me, when your heart breaks,

when the whole world burns through you

like an unforgiving forest fire,

do you really believe you can grieve politely?

Do you really believe in silence?

There is no such thing as "soft."

Not here,

where survival is carved into your bones

before you can even speak its name.

Do you think your ancestors bled for you

just so you could drown in your own apology?

They were not gentle.

They were claws.

They were dirt under nails.

They were teeth grinding against the ropes of this life,

tearing loose even as they bled.

Do you ever feel it—

when they tell you to sit still,

to speak softly,

to obey?

That thing in your stomach,

the refusal that claws its way up your spine screaming:

"No. No. I wasn’t made for this.”

I don’t care how many suits you wear,

how many times you say “yes” when you long to say “no.”

The animal is not impressed.

It watches you with those dark, unblinking eyes,

waiting for the moment you break.

Because you will.

You always do.

When the world finds the edge of you

and pushes, because it always does,

when your fragile mask cracks wide open,

what do you have left

but what you’ve spent your whole life pretending doesn’t exist?

Do you think rage makes you ugly?

Do you think hunger writes you weak?

No.

Rage is your birthright.

Hunger is how you survive.

You are not made of glass.

You are flesh,

grit,

blood poured hot into the mold of a spine.

You are not afraid, all the way down.

Do you hear me?

Do you feel me crawling inside your chest?

This is not a metaphor.

This is the truth of you.

Your pain—the raw, aching wound—is not failure.

It is proof.

Proof that you have scraped your knees on the edge of existence

and stood back up,

gritting your teeth against the taste of dirt.

You cannot hide from it any longer.

The beast won’t let you.

It will drag itself from the cave of your mouth

whether you invite it or not.

So let it in.

Let it crawl up your throat

and scream.

Scream loud enough to shatter the lies.

Let them see your broken edges glint in the sun.

Let them hear your voice—

feral, cracked, unapologetic.

You owe no one softness.

You owe no one a version of you that doesn’t taste

like blood and sky.

Destroy what doesn’t fit.

Burn what holds you down.

Let them call you wild.

Let them call you mean.

They’ve never had teeth like yours.

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David Lynch's "Angriest Dog in the World".

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Sharp tongue

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quiet everyone, the silence is speaking