blackouts
on navigating intimacy after violence
[Content warning for sexual assault and self-harm]
Waking up with mouths all over where you don’t want them is always jarring. At night he whispered the ways he thought of playing tricks on me. Kept alive & lucid — feral — by demented need I tasted so sweet and admired him so much and the bed was so warm and ever so slightly wet and his hands were everywhere – even when I slept, when I had no clue, there they were, deep inside me; a king exploring his private grounds in as much depth as ever he liked.
How long did that last? – It was only when he got bold that I found out, once he stopped caring. The brutality – bloody gums, broken teeth, bite marks – came around then too, once he knew he hated me but I loved him. It was worth keeping me for the amusement of watching someone twist the knife you gifted them into their own neck, all doe-eyed and stupid, for something as pathetic as approval.
I thought if I put out cigarettes on my arms he’d like it; that he could snort up the pus and eat the scabs. He ripped my hair out and ate it once and I think he wanted to eat me so I wouldn’t go too far away. Leashed up to his ankles & covered in bruises. I never strayed – (no one wanted me anyway) — I didn’t eat for months, dropped to six stone: “you need to eat, you need to eat” he said, hand around my throat fist in my mouth – “You’re getting skinnier than me.”
for years after — every time someone tried to care for me I thought it was a threat / — it was always competition, never ever care. His goal was to cum all over a body that had been battered & mine was to stay sexy. He still looks ravenous & I still feel dirty so it’s tough to tell who won that one — /
Eventually it ended / I was declawed; exposed, & tender from depravity. Remember when you - when you - when you - when – it got worse & worse until it was dead and done – someone else here now – then spectre; haunting – he oozed from lovers lips, he lingered in the corners of the ceiling, cackling, and when I closed my eyes I saw his dirty fingernails scraping at my insides and leaving me infected; me, his useless fucking bitch — digging out my rot & swallowing the dirt, baring his yellow teeth. I felt sick and I couldn’t sit still and every time someone touched me I flinched
Eventually it ended. I was free to roam, and where did I go but deep within my own caverns. Desire became disgust, revolting; romance was horror, malignant, a cluster of contaminated needles hurtling towards me & spurting with disease. I saw spiders everywhere – soft hands were tarantulas all over me; a lover’s pubic hair a bouquet of discarded insect legs — I’d get so drunk I’d throw up on the floor, get back on top, leave before the lights came up & leave no trace. I was not in the business of being seen. I became best friends with wandering foxes of barren late-night streets, dirty & craving & sly. I fell in love — (from afar) — with strangers lit up by their bedroom lights.
My life’s work became constructing an identity from parts tarnished by unwanted semen. I? (you? they?) become something of an unfettered, unstable beast; a rickety structure easily dismantled by something as soft as a breeze…Embarrassing really. For sometime touch felt acidic. So you stop touch. You wrap your flimsy, frail, fragile skin with brick and bound it together with chains. No way in / no way out; once love’s been corrupted with well, whatever you’d name it, something different to what I would, I’m sure, it is better to be safe: high alert, realistic(paranoid?realistic?) – it’s bitter/lethal/terrifying & bloody; cloaked in annihilation; something I have experienced and wanted to die from; sometimes I do still wish. So often I’d like to be dead
one night I lay in the road and stared at the moon and counted on both hands the things good about me I left/came back/left/came back/left/came back/left again, left again never to return – threw my phone into the ocean and started eating my fingers cus I ran out of nails when I realised you were still winning I was revived by spite - No. You wanted me bolted to the floor / I stretched out my hands and touched; –
[ come to in a friend’s bed and she’s cleaned the make up from your eyes and thrown you a jumper to stop you shivering; a cup of tea on the bedside table and your favourite breakfast; speak about art, speak about love, speak about corruption, speak about rape; share vegan recipes / pints of lager / baked cookies / each other’s clothes; listen listen listen when all I do is talk talk talk until I’m not scared anymore, until I reach out and put my head on her shoulder. when I go crazy I am soothed instead of banished to the cold; plasters are put on blisters & burn marks — no more prodding until burst & collapse. my freshly peeled skin reveals tenacity – (perhaps power, strength?) – in small gestures is everything I need – love everywhere — creeping down the walls like moss; splintering off all over, inescapable, all-consuming, as overwhelming as – ]
–; Slowly the nausea goes and I can concentrate – slowly. Sometimes I lose touch of my body but it’s okay it’s not all like this. How soft it feels to have fingerprints on skin; to watch someone undress; to laugh at the awkwardness of bodies. Slowly I think not everyone must be parasitic; nesting in my sickness. Renewal in the wake of every gentle act; electric; kiss me here, there – wherever, whatever – slowly I understand colours; I see the sky. The mirror reflects a person, not a thing. A person, not an intangible horror, not the repugnant emblem of some dreadful memory; not a beaten/battered/broken creature trembling under some beautiful stranger’s warm eye. Slowly I’m full of feeling; I’m getting hurt I’m moving on; experiencing, learning – replacing terror with amiable curiosity; shame with free-spirited love — teach, persist, care, & ache, etc – it can be good – it can knock you sick with joy – I’m learning, evil is rarer than you think, I say, evil is rarer than you think and I am not scared, I am not scared, I am not scared, I am not scared, I am not
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