Monday Thoughts #5: how strange it is to be here at all
10/06/24
“there is only a certain type of thinking that can be done through writing” - Roy Harris
and that is why I do this, also,
“to be cringe is to be free”
I wrote this on the bus home in response to Adeola’s play, VEYIL, which really moved me:
ash-cloud words, I still remember the age boys became cruel. and my face was a blood-red dartboard, rings inside rings inside rings, bobbing above the rest, smiled a bit too wide, took up too much space: tallest before them, and at first, I felt proud. but if the tallest sunflower is a woman, how she flowers to fall down.
and halfway to nowhere, stuck in-between the cracks in the floorboards, I still remember,
“I’d die if I was caught with her”.
breasts scratched onto every school table, and at night, I’d scratch my own face. only years later I’d learn that counts as self-harm, I was only trying to show everyone what was under the surface, look, look, see - I’m here, I’m here, I’m here -
“Is she terminally ill? She looks like a ghost”.
and look, I’m on tv - “it’s a creature” “it’s a trap”.
therapist said I wear these opinions like a badge - stick the pin in - always said - you want a man? you’ve got one - wore their rage and reflected it back.
and here I was I thinking words could save us
freak freak freak
don’t you dare - don’t you dare - tell me that living isn’t beauty
that I haven’t found it in rivers and birds and grass and worlds beyond this construction we’ve made to imprison ourselves, torturing each other under the guise of being human, you think apes could utter words as cruel as what has been said to me? what you now say?
I walk through the world with pride at what I have endured, and if you dare - if you dare make me feel how I did when I was fifteen again,
I will show you the weight of my twenties, all the compassion I have ever learned raining down from the dust cloud like small kisses on foreheads. I will hold you like you were never held, and whisper in your ear like your god you refuse to listen to. if there was one, God would sit beside us, not above, if there is one, god is us. we have hands of gods, each and every one of us the same, and together. I am a rock in a river, weathered and no longer bitter, I can be a wall, sometimes, if needed, but I will always return to a pair of feet, proud to walk this earth as I have always been.
I used to scratch my face until it bled and stare at paracetamol packets every night, and a calendar to count down every day at that school, tears streaming like roots reaching . Now, I fill every second with words and music and love and compassion and I know, I know when you say
‘freak’
you mean,
‘I wish, I too, were free’.
