wontyoubemypanacea

[wontyoubemypanacea]

Friday, January 17th

God fucking forgive me for being lonely. God fucking forbid I pursue connection with someone who reaches out to me. Smite me where I stand when he rests his forehead on my knee and I bloom, mortified, dumbfounded by the reminder that I am human and crave the touch of others no matter how long I deprive myself or how hard it is to come by. I'm not in love with him, so I am evil when I let it happen. I am evil when I don't. For as long as I am what I am and I feel what I feel, I am evil no matter what I do.

God help me when I stand rooted to the spot, unable to look at the person who just gave me a pat on the back or a high five or somehow decided to rest their head on my shoulder. There is nothing I can do but side-eye and grimace and tolerate as windflowers germinate and burst through my skin at the touch. They tangle and coil under the layers I dress myself in and peek up out from under my collar and cuffs, fertilized by fear and uncertainty and guilty pleasure that only seems to feel guilty to me.

I'm not really a hugging guy. I don't want you to have to dig through all the weeds in my garden. I won't sit on your bed, but I'll sit on your floor. It's been overgrown for a while. This is my stop. I haven't felt the sun in a long, long time.

[wontyoubemypanacea]

Monday, February 26th

it is loud and it is crowded and it is hell

but he is the calm

floats above it all and drifts between us

blanketing the room with a divine kindness

and the occasional drunken smile

his eyes are still dark around the edges

smudges of some heavenly design

done away with at the end of everything

the last vestiges of the last time

my life will ever touch his and vice versa

[wontyoubemypanacea]

Saturday, January 13th

just outside the gates of heaven

is a 6-piece jazz band

and dreamy little clown

who welcomes everyone inside.

with a tip of his hat and

a musical shuffle of his shoes,

he greets every individual

with a little jig and an infectious smile.

i will lean against the gatepost

and nod along to his funny melody,

and savor the knowing smile we share

when someone nervously hurries by.

[wontyoubemypanacea]

November 22nd, 2023

you will learn to stack boxes.

you will stack box after box until you vomit, craning your neck ever upwards to that vanishing point in the sky and you still may never get back to that place. in fact, it’s more than likely that you’ll remain where you are until you are left a stranger on the outside looking in. a solitary tower swaying in the blue breeze.

you will learn to stack boxes.

you will add a box every time you lament the way you are. a box for every act that doesn’t land. a box every time you miss the gloves you want to wear, and though you are certain you will never see them again, you avoid buying another pair because they were expensive. you'll be not-quite-certain you’ll eventually get them back anyway.

you will learn to stack boxes.

one day you will quit stacking boxes and buy a new pair of gloves, and demolish your tower. one day you will get a job that will pay you to stack boxes and stack them for all the world to see. one day you will find you’ve made it back to that place, and he’s nowhere to be found.

[wontyoubemypanacea]

December 18th, 2022

By the time I'm done cleaning my room, another milestone will have been completed in the journey towards becoming a visitor in the house I've lived in all my life.

I am cleaning it for a couple of reasons. The two reasons I tell my family are that it just needs to be done (because it does. it has been an unnavigable mess for over a year.) and that I want something to do over winter break. (I don't. I don't want to do anything except spend time with my family.)

The secret third reason, the one that I think they also know but we just don't talk about, is that I don't know when I will next be staying here long term. If all goes according to plan, I'm going to be in DC for the summer doing costuming work. I'll come home sometimes, probably for weekends, full weeks if I can get the time off arranged, but nothing more than a few weeks at a time, like breaks during the school year. I don't know if I will ever live here for longer than the month of winter break again.

I am all over this house. I am in pictures on the hallway near the kitchen, and on the shelves in my Dad's office. My old art from highschool is hanging on the basement door. The antique cabinet whose finish I destroyed with a pair of craft scissors when I was very young is still sitting in the dining room holding the little blue pottery castle I made in elementary school.

However, the most potent collection of me that exists in this house is my room. It doesn't look like it right now- it is a deconstruction of who I once was, missing all the pieces I really loved and took to college with me, the things lost in indecision literally strewn across the floor due to my poor time management, when I spent all night packing the night before I left for college, putting it off until the very last minute because I didn't want to go and leave it all behind again.

When I go back to school this time, I want my room back home to be a better representation of me. I want it to be me while I'm not here, for my family to be able to glance at it occasionally and see me in it, laying out outfits for an outing with my old highschool friends or re-reading my Professor Elemental comics or figuring out how to work my ancient CD player. I want to replace the wall space that once held all my posters and gifted art with my own art, even the stuff I don't really like, just to fill the empty space. I don't want it to seem like it does now, like no one lives here and no one has for a long time. I want my mom to be able to make it across the room to my laundry hamper, look inside and be surprised when there's nothing in it.

It is not going to be easy. A combination of sentimentality, a compulsive hatred of wastefulness and a desperate need for permanence makes it difficult for me to downsize and throw things away, which I know I will need to do to get things clean. My mom has suggested I start with easy stuff first- gift bags and boxes, stuff that isn't actually stuff, that I should have gotten rid of around the time I recieved their contents but didn't. That will be easy- though I do hate to waste a good, quality shoebox, I don't have any connection to these items. I will go through, looking sentimentally through all the reciepts at the bottoms and remembering what was in them once, and then they will go downstairs to join the collection of plastic grocery bags we keep to recycle.

Once that is sorted, I will start going through the bags of items I was going to bring to college but couldn't decide on, condensing those and then deciding: if I'm not taking them to college, and I'm not using them here, do I really need them? I will go around my room sorting category-by-category with this rationale. Books that don't live on my shelf at home or the one at college shall be judged into categories of "I am actually going to read this" or "I said I was going to read this but that was wishful thinking" and then sorted into piles and dealt with accordingly. Then, there will come clothing: "Does this fit the version of myself that I want to be?" which will usually be followed up by "Does it really make me happy, or does it just look cool in theory?" Clothing will be the hardest, preceded only by the books (of which I have collected far too many) but I think it is the most necessary, as making room in my dressers for things other than clothes will help get the clutter off of the floor and into storage.

It is going to be a long and emotionally draining process. It won't be helped by the fact that I will have to do it in shifts while bogged down with allergy medication the whole time. The room is incredibly dusty and my dust allergy is bad enough that even while on medication, I can't be moving stuff around in my room for more than an hour or two before my nose becomes a faucet and I can't breathe. It's not exactly like I can open up the windows and get some fresh air in the middle of December, either.

I've got a month to do it. There are a couple of other things I need to do over this break- we're visiting my great aunt latee today (I'm writing this at 3:41 AM after crying about everything) and going up to visit my aunt, uncle and their kids on Christmas day. I have a doctor's appointment on the 22nd, and I also have an unfortunately time-consuming Secret Santa gift I have to get done before the 22nd as well. I also want to mend those pants while I am here and Mom is around to provide guidance. I think I can mostly work around and incorporate those things into a schedule of cleaning my room a little bit each day. I'm going to start on the bags tomorrow once we get back from my great aunt's, and also finish writing and print my list of concerns before my doctor's appointment before I forget to do that.

I started off writing this note sobbing and upset about the concept of cleaning my room and what that meant. I am leaving it significantly calmer and more grounded, with a game plan of what I want to do. THIS is what I mean when I say that writing is (usually) the most effective tool for me to rationalize my thoughts. I can take all the thoughts ricocheting around my brain causing confusion and distress and then pin them down one by one in a straight line, eliminating the false conclusions the distress was leading me to and letting me come up with what I actually feel and how I want to deal with things. If anyone ever asks for an example, this is what I'm showing them.

[wontyoubemypanacea]

November 7th, 2022

I do wonder how much of them- how much of everyone, is scripted like I am. There are certain things that just come out of me because I know it’s what I am supposed to say. Usually, it’s moments I would otherwise be incredibly uncomfortable in- when someone is sick, when they’re upset, when they’re grieving. Words just just spill from my mouth- I’m so sorry, that's awful. You don’t deserve that. That is so much for one person to deal with. If you need someone, I’m here. Have you eaten today? Are you properly hydrated? Getting some rest? Let me know if there’s anything I can do.

It can’t be terribly comforting for anyone to hear me spit out these phrases time and time again like a robot. There are times I notice them being a robot too- when I tell them I’m having a bad day and they immediately jump into asking whether I’m practicing self-care, or when I tell them something means a lot to me and they reply that it means a lot to them that it means a lot to me, and we just get stuck in an endless loop.

I don’t necessarily dislike it- I’d be a hypocrite to dislike it, since they’re presumably doing exactly what I’m doing. I do feel bad when I get a robot response when I’m the first person to reach out, though. I know it’s probably because they’re busy at work and don’t have time to really respond, or maybe they just don’t have any really interesting thoughts about what I have to tell them, but it still feels like making a phone call and being met with an answering machine. (I have to remind myself that I’m certain they feel a similar way when I’m an answering machine, though.)

I prefer to let them reach out to me first. That’s my comfort zone- I let other people decide they want to pursue me, because I’m familiar with the feeling of being pursued and not wanting it, and I don’t ever want to make them feel that way, in case I don’t catch the social cues telling me that they want me to leave them alone. (Or at least, that’s what I tell myself. Maybe it’s actually because I don’t know how to reach out at all, at least not in a way that feels natural. Maybe that’s why I get the robot response every time.)

At the same time though, I fear that because I never reach out, I will seem disinterested. I see people on social media conducting “social experiments” by stopping being the first one to text and seeing how long it takes for the other person to finally reach out first- the concept that some people do that without warning makes me so anxious I feel ill. At this point, we text at least once or twice a day. On days when we haven’t spoken to each other, I get more anxious the darker it gets- do they expect me to reach out? If they haven’t reached out yet, that probably means they’re busy- if I reach out, will I be bothering them? But if I don’t, will one day turn into one week into a month into never talking to each other again?

The one exception to my aversion to being the first person to text is when I’ve made something for them. If I’ve written a poem or a love letter or drawn something I think they’ll like, I have no issue with texting first because then I have a reason. Then, if they ask me “Why are you bothering me?” (which I know they won’t, but what if they did?) I’ll be able to hold up my reason and be vindicated. “FOR THIS!” Of course, there are other reasons I make them art. It’s a guarantee that we will have something to talk about. Additionally, though I know they don’t enjoy accepting gifts, they seem to have enjoyed the art I’ve made in the past. It seems like it is generally a safe bet in terms of ways I can get the “I NEED TO MAKE SOMETHING FOR YOU” gift-giving love language out of my system with a limited method of communication like texting.

I’ve noticed I do that a lot with people I like. Generally, if I want to get in contact with someone I admire, like a clown, an artist or someone like them, I’ll reach out with art first. A gift to silently express that admiration without words, because if I used my words I’d sound like an utter weirdo. (If I could snatch the goofy sentimental letter I wrote to Circus Hollywood last summer out of their hands and burn it, I would. WHY did I think that was a good idea?) Art bridges the language gap, and also the charisma gap, that exists between a lot of the people I admire and I. In my eyes, they are far enough above me at this point that I can’t give them much, but at least I can give them that.

[wontyoubemypanacea]

“I would be very happy. and that’s what matters more, I think.”

I wish they didn’t have to see me picking up the pieces. All the trial and error of putting them back together, the mortification of not knowing what it even was before it broke, of having to learn all these things that I should definitely know by now.

I wish kids were taught consent early. That I didn’t feel five different sets of hands on me, scrabbling and squeezing and demanding, whenever I even think about the ways I wish I could love them. I wish they didn’t have to be as gentle as they do to keep me from dropping the pieces again, to keep those hands from yanking me back down to the floor. The bar is in hell and still I am frantically apologizing for my life.