Re: DELL Computer grave

You ever get an email from Gabrielle when you really need an email from Gabrielle?

He is lucky to have you, Gabrielle. I never liked any girl he ever dated before you. But you, you are dynamic and vibrant and real. These things you don't like about yourself; your talking and loudness, that is the brilliance inside you trying to be heard. I felt insecure about the same things for many years, and still do on the odd occasion, as you saw. I need to be heard more than anything in the world. People become exhausted of listening to me. So I try to choose my words carefully, make them incisive and precise. I need to be understood like I need to eat, drink, sleep, breathe, love. So, I say, to you as much as to myself, you must not feel ashamed for being who you are. You will glow the most when you are radiating outpouring emitting untempered crashing waves of Gabrielle.

I lie in my new bed in my mom's new townhouse with her boyfriend and his daughter. They have a cat who cries these awful nearly human cries every 30 minutes - he is 21 and wants to die but Mom's boyfriend is struggling to let go. Returning to New York is awful and needed and terrifying in a million ways.

I never wanted to come here. I have been running away from this very life circumstance for a long time. I saw someone go through it and said that must not be me. He once said to me: I was unhappy before college, I was happy in college, I'm unhappy after college. It must have been college that temporarily, fleetingly, made me happy and I don't know if I'll be happy again.

That won't be me. That won't be me. But I'm not doing great right now. Europe pulled me like a rubber band and I've snapped. I have never been prone to panic attacks but I've been having them - frequently, unexplainably. Driving to my aunt and uncle's house today I had tightness in my chest and I felt like I couldn't breathe. I parked outside their house and sobbed. I called my mom and she came to the car to stroke my hair.

Coming back here always summons to mind my assault and overall misery growing up. I feel a certain queasy triumph knowing who I am now but it gnaws at me, always.

My existence now confuses me. I have these two selves, these two people I've been to the world and they can't seem to meet in the middle. Me before college, twisted and contorted as if I'm playing hide and seek and I'm hiding, in some cupboard so I won't be found, holding my breath so no one hears me. Me in college, running and dancing and laughing and holding hands and being loved, really loved, being known, really known, me creating, me becoming a person I love and respect and want to protect.

In Europe, I don't know who I was, I was going crazy. I was talking to myself. I was getting carried away having arguments with made up people in my head. I was crying in public, crying every day, crying like I used to cry, when I didn't feel safe. And I didn't feel safe. The terror was back, the isolation, I began hiding from the world, I began reading because I didn't feel comfortable in my reality. I woke up in the middle of the night to find that I'd been sitting up, asleep, picking at my skin. (What does this represent, metaphorically? Some kind of poison in my body I must open my self up to get out?) Just the fear of being touched or grabbed by another strange man makes me want to cry. Why do they think it's okay to do that? (I can't tell if my reaction to this is appropriate or if I need to go to therapy.) (Is this too dark? I keep editing my emails to make them less dark. I never know how dark information is appropriate to share. I have a deep well of darkness with me that some people find terrifying. I don't think you are scared of it though.)

But I'm home and I'm healing. I'm trying to heal. I think I'm going to visit the grave of my friend who died last year this Saturday. I think this will help and hurt? I don't know how it will feel to experience the physical reality of it, and to go with my friends who knew him. My friends who were there the last time I saw him, who took the last picture of us together that he never sent me, that's still sitting, somewhere, on a dead boy's phone. And I have plans to go to a lesbian bar that evening with my friend McKenna from school. Once again am I insane? I have no idea! No precedent for this! Is it possible to go to a friend's grave in the morning and dance at the gay bar in the evening? I know Matt would want me to dance at the gay bar. I know Matt wishes he could be dancing at the gay bar right now. Matt is dancing at the gay bar right now. (See also: Gay Bar by Rosie Tucker)

Do I sound like I'm coming unwound? I am unwound. I am dismembered, disembodied, uprooted, unarmed, more prolific than ever. Everything within me that has been quiet pushed down with my swallows has risen to the surface and is glaring me in the face, touching my eyeballs, scratching at me. I have to look at the pain that I have silenced. I once confessed to Zach a thought that I'd feared my whole life, that I've never been happy, that I'm incapable of being happy, that me when I'm happy is just a gas that floats over my life and when it's gone, I'm back to the only reality I know, sadness. But I've known another reality now, and it felt real too. I know it is real, and it is just the darkness in me saying that, convincing me to sit with it in the cave and let our blood run red. I used to have a friend, who wanted to be more than my friend, they wanted to use me to hold over their open wounds, and they offered themself in exchange, with no conditions allowed. Once I told them: I think I've been sad all along. And they said. I knew it.

But I am not sad all along, I'm just bipolar II and it isn't active if I take care of my basic needs and have safety and security. So it was dormant and now it's not dormant but I will handle it and then it will be again. When I'm actively bipolar I also get really codependent so I have to remember not to do that. It's because I'm constantly trauma bonding.

I am aware this is email is far from sterile. What can I say, I'm an artist before anything.

I am experiencing a lot of shame and guilt. I don't always look at this side of myself. But this is a part of who I am.

Sidebar: I read a book that said there are three types of people. Bears, fish and birds. Bears love one person more than anything and they make that their world and their priority. They are warm and cozy and love is the center of them. Fish love the world more than they love any particular person and they prioritize generalized wellbeing. They are slippery and they move in fluid herds. Birds fly over everything and they see the world like this, at a distance, always beautiful, from afar. They are the artists and they love the art more than they can love any one person. Perhaps they just love the idea. They are ultimately singular.

1. 2. 3. Bird. Bear. Fish. Self. Sex. Society.

Which is your priority?

Here are some snippets I wrote upon returning to my childhood home:

this house is doubled over in grief.

my father with his dark room and closed curtains and slightly parted door

the pizza box on the floor and the torn up pads streaked with blood

the dog shit on the porch

the piss-stained paper towels taped all over the mudroom floor

when i let her outside she’s shaking

her skins hangs loose from her bones

dark spots and open sores

the photos everywhere of families and better times

my mother wearing white and short sleeves

my father was young and small and blonde and smiling

and looked like me

the grass finally allowed to grow now that he’s stopped with the incessant mowing

the garden exploding like it’s meant to

my father hugs me and cries a little

my father is sad and gray and kinder than ever

I feel constantly torn between needing to be an artist and needing to be a good person.

Things are complicated. I must not disappear. I must not run away and hide. This is my reality.
Writing is like climbing to the surface of something.

Thinking a lot about the Judaic God.

Reading obsessively. Recs include On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Either/Or. They are musts. Have I already sent you these? Jeez!

I guess I am alone and I became alone to find myself. I have turned into a sea storm.

Writing this email has been very cathartic for me.

How are you? Are you peaceful in the currents of your soul? Are you twisting, raining, raging... Describe the seas of your moon planets.... 

How is Zachlet?

Is California still the Garden of Earthly Delights?

Much love. Much gratitude.