Freebasing Daydreams



I’m finally taking myself back, after so long lost in the darkness. So long in the places where little people scurry from car to car in abandoned drive-in movie theatres. Getting to know the different kinds of carpeting out there. Finally leaving the darkness behind me. Finally letting the darkness be on the other side of my back. Finally getting to a place where I can turn around and only have light in front of me. What darkness, you ask? How about the darkness of drugs, of lying, of privileged addiction and addiction to privilege, of sugar substitutes. So many nights delirious and howling, threatening empty bassinets. The lightless hell of self-monstrosity, of substance dependency, of Stevia abuse, the self-punishment of drinking Stevia straight up for a year until I blacked out and discovered I had done terrible, privileged things to my heteronormativity. Until I whited out. I AM NOT PROUD. I AM NOT PROUD. I AM NOT PROUD. God didn’t make my body just so that I could take Stevia one day and become hooked after the second try. God doesn’t give you wings only to have them only made out of only wax. Jesus will only let you fly so high, and then he will warn you. And then he will trigger you. And then it’s up to you to pull that trigger. It began, my descent, last December, and it will always began last December. Nights, long, long inescapable, inestimable nights of Stevia chased with Gardasil while camping out in dumpsters with hegemonic strangers in a car. Privileged, cis cars. Scary Stevia dealers smoking cigars in cis cars by the darkened pier. Strangers whose intersectionality threw shade on my already fragile and eco nervous system. At last, first of all, I’m trying to find my heteronormativity once again and now. I AM NOT PROUD. I AM NOT PROUD. It began last December, and it will always began last December. Finally coming into my own cisness. Learning about how every day I can patriarchy myself into actualization. It’s a privilege, this punching down against all the HPV rising up in me. Kicking Gardasil and Stevia. Kicking them, kicking them and then feeling the pain in my own legs and feet. Kicking my legs and feet out like I’m lying on my side wearing a onesie and having a nightmare on the living room floor. Degrading myself through the process of wearing overalls and taking fewer showers. Choosing to wear unflattering clothes because flattery will get you nowhere. This is work on the self, this hard work. This is work and I punch in every morning as I punch down and up. I work through the victimizing sound of other people using the phrase “trigger warning” every day. Every morning. When I hear someone say the phrase “trigger warning”, when I read the phrase “trigger warning” in a Facebook status I have to warn myself not to lose control. I have to warn myself not to try to pull some stranger’s face off. Not to endanger others. Not to engender them, either. I have to remember what happens to those I love when I have my Gardasil and Stevia fits. Trying to get this Stevia monkey off my back even as he eats bugs off of me, and I find myself screaming in the zoo. I have no idea where I am in relation to the bars on the cage. Freebasing. Mainlining. Typewriting and moonwalking, talking with lawyers in a stupor of Stevia and Splenda, HPV and papilloma; freebasing Gardasil has left me awkward, confused and ambidextrous. So many nights in utility closets huffing Meow Mix. Huffing it down, chasing the bugaboos away. Mainlining Tender Vittles on the back porch while all the clean people enjoy their Thanksgiving Christmas dinner. Rosh Hashanah. Halloween. It’s all a blur, a Gaussian blur modified by taking the opacity halfway. Spiraling, spiraling, spiraling with every secretive breath of cat food. I AM NOT PROUD AND I AM NOT ROUND.

But I’m getting there.