swallow-the-anxiety

[swallow-the-anxiety]

His hands didn’t shake as he plunged the knife deep into the chest cavity of the body underneath him. His eyes didn’t waver and his heart didn’t skip a beat. This was nothing new to him, he had done it a thousand times before and would do it a thousand more before it was all over. It was what heaven would be like, he imagined. The feeling of warm blood that gushed forth onto his bare arms and legs sent him spinning every single time without failure. They always screamed, some shrieked, some cried… But they all screamed at one point. It always made him nervous when he brought them home to play with them, his grandmother’s harsh punishments still rang true to him, even in the many years it had been. That house still held terrible memories and silence, she always said, was the best sound. Even the memory of her couldn’t ruin this, it was delicious, the way the blood tasted on his tongue and the feeling of metal tearing through sinew and muscle to slam unwillingly against bone. The only thing, Francis thought, that would be better that watching the light leave their eyes, knowing that he was the one that stole it away, would be to share it with him. Oh him. Francis could barely handle the image of them both, entwined, writhing and bleeding, and he fell to his knees, his head tilted up towards the ceiling. He was the perfect man, the way he smiled and how he praised him in his work… He admired his strength, his convictions…And those hands… They were skilled in what they did, even when it felt animalistic and there was no sense to be found in their actions. Francis stood, licking the corner of his lip, just below the scar that ran there, and hissed softly.

Once again Francis found his fingertips fondling just below his hips and his eyes fixated on an exquisitely folded letter that laid upon his bed. He had read it a thousand times but there were no new wrinkles or creases, it was the one thing he had that he would die to protect. It was the first time they had actually spoken to one another… It was when Francis had admitted his affections for Dr. Lecter, when he told him of how he had watched him on the television and it was that letter that Dr. Lecter told Francis that he admired him in return, his ‘sweet, shy boy’. Those words, he kept coming back to, over and over again. The praise he gave him was irreplaceable. And as he fell backwards into the mess on the floor, his fingertips tightened their hold on his length. He would have given anything for it to have been him. Frances was sure that the doctor’s hands would have been much more skilled than his own. A body that was well spent and blood that stained the floors in blotchy red puddles, those were the arms that cradled him as he did everything in his power to keep those words on the tip of his tongue.

[swallow-the-anxiety]

The truth changes depending on the eye of the beholder. For example, the truth in your eyes is certainly slightly different that the truth in someone else’s eyes

[swallow-the-anxiety]

Love to those of you who will go to sleep alone tonight. Love to those of you who will never know what it's like to have a loving family. Love to those who know how it feels to be hated because you love. Love to those of you without homes, to those with broken homes. Love to those who struggle to make it day to day. Love to those who rise above their circumstances but are never recognized for it. Love to all you little ones who never had a chance to be anything but broken. Love to those who fell by the hands of monsters hidden in plain sight. Love to those who destroy those monsters.

This great wild world is riddled through with us. The broken, unwanted, and cast aside. But you are not alone. You are not invisible. You are not unloved. There is comfort to be found in your broken, strange, and soulful ways.

I will be your family. I will tell you that you've done well. That you are worth love. That you deserve a moment of peace every now and then. I will be your family. I make no demands of you, I ask for no surface show of loyalty. All I need is for you to be good to one another. Be good to yourselves.

<3

[swallow-the-anxiety]

Goodbye, boy filled with broken promises and sorrows over all you've lost. Goodbye to your empty heart and faltering step. Goodbye to a boy who loved someone who had not earned your love for a very long time. Goodbye to the tears that fell for every scar, for every memory of the day you nearly died. Go and haunt someone else now, fall away from the light I am walking in. Goodbye, you. I don't think I will miss you much at all.

[swallow-the-anxiety]

His feet pounded on the ground sending waves of muddy water trailing behind him. There was no real threat that he feared, no physical, substantial being that was chasing him. It was something unseen by the rest of the world. He feared it as much as a tangible beast chasing him and his feet could move no faster than in those moments. He had to escape it.

All around him he could feel the ground shaking, trembling under the monster's might and sending a flurry of wildlife running towards safer ground. Could they see it or did they just sense its looming presence? The light was dimming on the horizon and the rain was falling steadily, obscuring any visible escape route. If he stayed in the woods he would never escape but if he left them he would be a glowing target for that creature to latch onto. It was always in the woods where he first saw them, towering, lumbering, and shifting black masses that didn't even move the leaves as they tore through the dense forest. Nothing moved, nothing broke and nothing noted its weight except for the ground that it walked on. They were guardians, protectors of some secret hidden land of magenta toned skies and milky white flowers. None were permitted to enter and even fewer were allowed to glimpse the entrance to this utopia. To smell that wafting sweetness and be bathed in its shimmering light was to forfeit your very existence to those guardians in that lurked in the dark.

He turned his head quickly, almost losing his balance, and saw its silky black tendrils snaking their way through the branches. They were searching for him. Even if he hid, even if he climbed awkwardly up the bare tree trunks, they would find him. There was not a single hollow tree or muddy hill that the beast could not reach. His heart was pounding in his throat, forcing his vision to pulse and throb between lucidity and blurs of fallen trees. He kept running. Branches blocked his way with tangled snares of vines and thorns that grabbed at his bare arms, shredding the delicate flesh that hung to the his bones. There was no time for his gasps of pain or his urge to stop and tend to the bleeding wounds. If he stopped, he would be caught, if he got caught, he would die and he had already spent the better part of his lifetime trying avoid just that.

Before long he came to a small creek that divided the musty forest floor into sections. The water ran fast, being fuelled by the downpour and made the idea of crossing it a treacherous one, but there was little else he could do. He recalled the faint glimpse of light he saw earlier that evening, peeking through the blackberry brambles, illuminating everything around it with a power that seemed disproportionate with its small size. There was a noise, like the fluttering of soft, dusty wings and a low droning buzz, it made him want to sleep right then and there, under the leafy canopy; and he might of if there hadnt come a monumentally loud thundering only a moment later. Sleep would have been lovely after such a long walk, but the second his eyes tore away from the veritable paradise ahead of him and focused on /it/, an overwhelming sense of dread filled him from head to toe. He had to run. He imagined it was much like how rabbits felt when they were being chased by a half-starved wolf who hadnt had a filling meal since the spring before. It was like prey being chased by a predator. Before it even moved, before it showed its towering size, he knew that he had found something very important. Why else would it have been hidden away so carefully? Why else would it be protected by something so monstrous and merciless?

As his feet slid into the icy cold water, the current lapping at his sides like an overzealous pet, all thought left him. The sun was starting to rise and the rain still hadnt let up. All he could feel was fear and cold. Another half a mile, perhaps, and he would be out of the woods and just maybe someone would drive down that one lane dirt road and see him in his distressed state. Maybe he could be rescued. Step after drudging step he moved across the stream, focusing only on his goal ahead, and before he could reach ahead of him to grab a low hanging vine and pull himself from the freezing water, he felt something akin to rough gauze and molasses curl its way around his throat and lift him into the air, sucking the very life out of his body before he could even process that he had been caught.

[swallow-the-anxiety]

and when im lying in my bed, i think about life and i think about death. and neither one particularly appeals to me.

amidst the blooming flowers

of the morning

sat a boy with star struck eyes

something glimmered in his palm

a feeble glow

of something bigger than his world

he lifted it to the grey skies above

and up it rose

to scatter the clouds with rain

[swallow-the-anxiety]

There was little he could do. He would never be that person, or any other. He was doomed to an existence of being only himself. And sometimes that just wasn’t good enough… He couldn’t escape any of it…. So he stared out at the blank pavement ahead of him, only riddled with the scarce weed or plant that was struggling to keep its head above rolling black stone. He shook. The heat was tepid and sticky as he sang, forcing his breath past his lips and causing his lungs to struggle to regain themselves. His head spun and he kept singing. They weren’t his words… they were someone else’s. Someone else’s voice and ideas and pain… but he wasn’t good enough to put his own into words… or speak them past his lips. He wasn’t strong enough to admit that he didn’t want to be himself anymore.. He wanted to be someone who knew what was stable and what was not, enough to compare the two things in real perspective. He wanted to be someone correct and desirable…. No, as he closed his eyes and wrapped his arms tightly around his torso, he imagined himself someplace else… that the sprawling black before him was filled with writing bodies, their dirty hands outstretched towards him. He imagined that his heart ached just enough so that his brain could explain the hurt he felt… that they were all there, thrashing and squirming in response to what he knew was so real…Things they wished they could put into words… His voice trembled and his head felt light… he hadn’t sung with such passion in so long… he forgot how much it hurt his head. “Sono toki made boku wo matte ite keredo ima wa ano oka ni wa mou.…” He slipped from the great concrete block that he had so often before pretended was someplace other than an abandoned parking lot and sat. The whole world before him stood still. Not a bird, not a bug… nothing moved. The power lines tore holes through the sky above him and for a moment, all seemed to stop. He imagined standing there, singing like that, for the rest of his life… never moving, never swaying from what he felt so deeply… the smell of rot caught him and he shut his eyes. What if he were to stand there, slowly decaying… whispering out things he wished were his own? It wouldn’t do to dwell on things you couldn’t change, he remembered….it wouldn’t do at all.

[swallow-the-anxiety]

and when im lying in my bed, i think about life and i think about death. and neither one particularly appeals to me.

amidst the blooming flowers

of the morning

sat a boy with star struck eyes

something glimmered in his palm

a feeble glow

of something bigger than his world

he lifted it to the grey skies above

and up it rose

to scatter the clouds with rain

[swallow-the-anxiety]

when you stop needing the world to pat you on the back and revel in awe at every piece you do, that is when you first realize your true worth as an artist. when you can say 'its good because i know it is' and not 'its good because they say it is', that is when you can finally say you are a true artist.

[swallow-the-anxiety]

There is something to be said about the people who have scars. About the people who have been hurt, who have cried and who have felt their hearts crumble in someone elses hands.

They are wise beyond their years because they have seen the cruelty that can become others. They have known the darkest and murkiest corners of love that leaves them bleeding in their bedrooms, crying into their blankets. They have secrets and confessions that weigh down their shoulders and make them look so so tired, like they hadnt slept in years. And maybe they hadnt, but they are not faulted or flawed, they are not weak or unwanted.

They hold beauty in the light streaks in their irises. They keep ethereal splendor under the skin of their fingertips that everyone seems to pass by without thought. They are more human than those blessed souls who have never seen the deep, merciless darkness that comes only during the nights when you have never felt more alone in the world. They know what the price of love and sacrifice is, what it costs to give someone every shred of their souls only to be told that it was never enough. They are more human than the quiet and smiling people who have never once before looked in a mirror and saw not a perfectly average and comfortable body, but a monstrous heap of flesh and fat and hair. They see how pain and suffering can shape what your eyes tell your head and what your head enforces upon your heart.

But what is left to be said about these people, with broken hearts and trampled spirits, is not that I feel sorry for all the hurt they have weathered or that I wish things were better for them. It is left to be said that I find you beautiful. That there is no tragedy that can befall your flesh or your soul that will ever take away something that I know is there, a fire, a light, a subtle glimmer that says “I have hurt, I have lost and loved and seen no reason to go on, but I am here and I can breathe and move and create and with that breath and power that is uniquely mine, I can exist, like the stars have existed for so many thousands of years before me and I can howl into the wind that I am still here, I am still here.”

[swallow-the-anxiety]

I wont be posting any excerpts, sadly, but I can at least share my protagonist with you. His name is November Ashby. He has messy, curly black hair and is awkwardly thin. He speaks quickly but often stumbles on his words and is terribly socially inept. He has two sisters, his mother died when he was 14. He enjoys plants, books on obscure topics and hard wood floors. He does not know how to dance. His eyes have been likened to a stormy sea in colour, but he thinks they look more like frostbitten and half rotten blueberries. He is quick to embarrass and is often hiding his blushing face behind a book or lamp or some other object larger than his face.

[swallow-the-anxiety]

Can I retrace my steps? Walk backwards through the years to the one I used to be? Blow the dust from the antiquated memories? I can't see clearly through the fog of time, but I'm starting to make out the shapes. Squinting through a daze of days that passed me by. I'm a sucker for a stroll down memory lane and I've been sitting idle, its time to stretch these legs. I'm brushing cobwebs from the corners of my mind. I'm reading the hidden text between my own lines. I'm uncovering. I'm sifting through. Digging up relics of the past. I'm ignoring my own advice: I'm looking back

[swallow-the-anxiety]

My sweet, quiet friend, I must ask a terrible question of you. Please forgive me for this.

Have you known how it feels to have your world held under the waves of the ocean, gasping for air but never able to surface? Do you know how it hurts your lungs, how it breaks your heart? The only colour you can see above being the deepest greens and icy cold blues. My sweet, quiet friend, have you ever loved someone who could give you the very ocean in the depths of their eyes only to be pulled in and forced into the undertow? If you have, my friend, then I am sorry for asking those questions.

We, the drowned, our hearts broken and eyes still struggling to adjust in the inky darkness, know how it feels to own the oceans, to be consumed by the waves. We know how it feels to love someone who is no more tameable than the very waters we sink in.

My sweet, quiet friend, I must ask you just one more terrible question. Please forgive me.

Have you ever loved someone who, so like the ocean, took your heart in their hands and held it under the waves just to watch the beautiful colours it made?

I loved someone once whose eyes were the very depths of that ocean, stormy and blue-green, turbulent and raging, but the salt on his lips and the wounds they pressed them to were too enticing for me to see the danger that lay ahead. Before I could realise, my sweet, quiet friend, I had been pulled under, held tight ,and drowned in the ocean in his eyes.

I have never died a quieter death than there in his arms.

[swallow-the-anxiety]

There are times when you are sad, when your head is too heavy, when you cant will your heart to keep beating. There are times that silly words, full of hope for the future and memories of warm summers full of nighttime walks and days at the beach, will help you. They ease the burden of your thoughts and worries, they quell the burning pain in your soul and they give your heart a reason to keep up that quiet rumbling beat. But there are also times, when you are distant and cold, that no words, no matter how fondly spoken or from whose lips they fall, will not ease the raging hurricane inside of you. Do not feel bad for those times, do not let the guilt eat away at what little solace you can find, do not let the world tell you that it means nothing, that you are over-thinking, that your pain and aching is naught but an over exaggerated plea for petty attention. Your thoughts, those weighty feelings of melancholy and loneliness, the burning in your chest and the ache in your head, those things are real, they are tangible and you are not weak for feeling them, they are not false for being stubborn against attempts to rid yourself of them. Take your time, sit in a dark room with sad music, sit with a blanket wrapped around your body and cry until you can no longer find a single, painful thing to purge from your body. Take your time, and the antidote for those poisons will come to you.