Too Old

I'm way too old to keep trying to hurt myself. 

This morning my right hand is throbbing with pain where I pounded my head last night, a ritual of rage against mental challenge that is as old as I am. 

I had just come in from talking to my sister about what I wasn't doing this June — not going to a trans-spiruality workshop, not going to lectures and discussions, not going to films, not going to Pride, not going to a regional trans politics conference and so on — when I walked into the buszzsaw demanding that I fix what my father can't fix, demanding that I not fuck up, not fuck up, not fuck up.

I see now, of course, the problem.  I let myself almost feel alive for a moment, let my sister try to talk me into doing something for myself.  I was clear, of course, clear that the costs were high and the benefits low in doing anything like that, that it was more damage than gift, but I just didn't expect that lesson to be pounded into me immediately after.

I'm too old to hurt myself, too old to try and pound myself into appropriate denial and compartmentalization.  I just don't have the capacity for that anymore.

I've been struggling with this piece that continues on from the Years Of Longing piece.  It's called something like Longing Then Loss, and talks about the moment where you realize the longing had been a dead end, when you need a clear-eyed look, and you see the loss, how much you lost while longing, how much loss is what is coming for you. 

Needless to say, that's a hard piece to write. 

Too old.  I'm too old for longing, too old to get pounded into normativity, even by myself. 

I'm just too old and the choices are limited.

Eh?

OhPleaseGodHelpMeDie

OhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDie

my sister's sump pump diddn't turn on right.  she told the old man, and the old man wants to tell me he doesn't want to hear any crap, it just has to work.

he likes to pretend he is having conversations when he is just telling you what he believes.

i smile and divert and take the hits because i know it's about him, how he can't master things like he did.

but no matter how i cure it, he can't see when it's getting to be too much for me because it's his stuff.  his stuff, my bruises

and then i crack and hit myself, hard, in the head, this stupid betraying head that can't slice me fine enough, can't keep me dead enough.

OhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDie

and then i pull it together and go to offer him a solution

but he needs to go back and tell me what's wrong again, how i am wrong again

OhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDie 

my mother has spoken. she doesn't want to hear anymore about the sump pump issue. i can choke on my own pain, for all she cares. yeah, I know.  that's just the way things are, and the way things always have been.  when I get a boo-boo, i'm just not supposed to make any mess.  she has her own issues to worry about.

and i have no one to care for me, to be there.  so i chant out

OhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDie

and i mean it, i mean it.  i need to be more dead, and now

OhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDie

OhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDieOhPleaseGodHelpMeDie

OhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDieOhDearGodPleaseHelpMeDie