Sanity now and beyond me - Violence Undone

[khaoticbliss]

Screaming at the window
Watch me die another day
Hopeless situation
Endless price I'll have to pay

Diary of a madman
Walk the line again today
Entries of confusion
Dear diary, I'm here to stay.

Sanity now and beyond me
I will always love you.
However long I stay
I will always love you.
Whatever words I say
I will always love you.
There's no choice.

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm hopeless

Voices in the darkness
Scream away my mental health
Can I ask a question?
--Help me save me--
From myself?

Sanity now and beyond me
I will always love you.
However long I stay
I will always love you.
Whatever words I say
I will always love you.

There's no choice.


photo credit: some girl named Melissa
song credit: APC

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ January 21, 2004 10:12 PM: Message edited by: khaoticbliss ]</font>

[khaoticbliss]

Letters to the Dead
December 12, 2003

Sitting on the bed
Or lying wide awake
There's demons in my head
And it's more than I can take
I think I'm on a roll
But I think it's kinda weak
Saying all I know is
I gotta get away from me

Must exorcise these demons if I'm ever going to get anything done. In the sudden rush of alcoholic logic, my hand clasps the pen and it flies like a polarized magnet to the page. Make of this what you will, when you're sober.


* * * *

A Letter to Ariel.

Dear Ariel,
I feel a little strange turning to you for guidance. And maybe I'm insane for feeling this way, but I always sort of thought that you were looking out for me, somehow. I close my eyes and I can still feel his tears, my stomach his tissue, my sides his security blanket, his strong arms wrapped desperately about my body as he cried, thinking of you. I never stirred during these quiet moments of his agony, I left him to mourn, comforted him with my quiet acceptance. And in those times, I always thought I could sort of...feel you. It's like you were hovering close, the words you wrote on that wall, sitting undoubtedly naked on his bed with the same dreamy infatuated grin I always found lurking on my own features---it seemed they wavered and flared with new life on those dark, quiet nights. I've traced every line, every curve, every loop and swirl and pause in the etching of your name on his stomach, and felt like we had some sort of tacit agreement, you and I. That I was to look out for him while he was here, and you would take care of him when he wasn't. I always felt a little better, imagining to myself that you approved of me, that you were okay with and maybe even happy with his choice as your successor. I always sort of dreamed that you were looking after to me, because he mattered to me the way he'd only ever mattered to you before, because you knew I'd love him with all the ferocity of passion that you do.

So...maybe that's why I turn to you now for guidance. It seems I've lost him, the same way he lost you so many years ago. It all feels like some hopeless, ridiculous misunderstanding---it's like we were both so busy trying to do what we thought was best for the other that we seem to have forgotten that we are(were?) what is best for each other. I don't know how or why things got so screwed up, but I have a whole new appreciation for the taste of gunmetal, or too many chemicals. And I can't blame anyone else for this misfiring of intent--there isn't some other figure in clockwork machination toiling at crosspurposes to my desires in the name of my best interest. There isn't some college I was supposed to be attending, some dream I was supposed to be chasing that couldn't include him.

I don't know what happened, and I get the feeling that maybe...you didn't either. I know he feels an enormous amount of guilt for that...his tears spoke the language his pretty words could never say.

So please, Ariel, if you're up there....this may sound selfish, but if you've got it in you, see what you can to do intervene, maybe? I know you still appear in his dreams, when his lips taste of jamaican christmas trees and his brow creases in his sleep, I know it's you he's visiting. Please, if you can find it in your heart to help me, help him understand that the same mistakes don't have to happen again. History doesn't have to repeat itself. Help me unravel all this labyrinthe violence rattling double time against my skulll.

Help me, I'm begging you, untangle this rat's nest once and for all. If we're meant to be ---and I have to think you'd know-- then push us back together. If we're not...soothe the nightmares from our troubled brows. Help us unleash ourselves and set each other free.

I want what's best for him, and I want what's best for me. It may sound weird, me turning to you, but you're the only person I know who was good enough for him. Gods know I wasn't. You're the only other person I know who has any idea what it's like to love that amazing creature with every ounce of your being. You're the only other person I know who is as protective and possessive of him as I am. If I'm not what's right for him, then help us let go and let it slide away. Then let the sinking tide wash our history away and leave the beach pure, unmarked.

I don't want some other girl to feel the stranglehold of his lost innocence and be bewildered in the face of his tears. I don't want to add to that vice grip of his when he's scared and feeling lonely.

I love him, and because he loves you, I love you. I'm hoping maybe there's some part of you that maybe loves me too. If I'm being presumptuous, I apologize.

...I just don't know who else to turn to. There isn't anyone in the world who could possibly understand.

Anyways---thanks for listening.
-Loki.


* * * *

I've been trying to bury myself in ritual, closing up and off from the world, hoping maybe I could do a little cleansing on my own. I'm purging as much of this blackness as I can, and at this point I'm even writing letters to the dead. Tannith called me today--I'm reasonably sure I've got her worried--but I just couldn't make myself get up and go meet her. I'm in no place to deal with the public.

Reconstruction takes serious work.
No sense in going out in the rain when you know you're still sporting holes and springing leaks.


* * * *

Dear Uncle Lars -
Well it's been awhile since I've come to you. And yeah...you may as well go ahead and laugh at me now. This is, in fact, another one of my "oh fuck I broke me can you please fix it?" cries. I come to you because to this day --even as I at last gain the respect and recognition of my peers --no one has ever taken the time to be a rock for me the way you did. I remember every time you've ever put the pieces back together for me, and every time it hurt like hell. You always knew just the perfect balance of healing and education---understanding implicitly what I could and couldn't handle, and never ever cutting me any slack for pity.
If you could see me now you'd be laughing for sure.
Because yeah...I'm definitely broken again. And once again I did it to myself. But this time it's not a fight or some retarded self destructed accident. This time it's my soul, and I think it's serious. I'm having trouble just..withdrawing and walling off from it the way I used to. (The way you always told me not to unless it was a matter of survival.) I'm mopey, I'm pathetic...I'm writing really awful poetry. (Well..it's probably not all that awful. I'm still wallowing in my pool of 'I suck' ness.) I'm all...listening to depressing music and staring at the wall. I keep making efforts to put myself back together--really good ones sometimes, too --and everytime I just...let it go again. I'm too apathetic to stick it out because I'm being lazy and self indulgent.

What I really need right now is for you to look at me the way you used to, to tell me to quit being such a fucking baby and, if necessary, to kick my ass (or try to, anyway...I've gotten really fucking good.) to snap me out of it. I'm feeling like a lost child again who just wants her daddy to come make everything better. And well...we all know my thoughts on my actual daddy...so you get to deal with me instead. Aren't you thrilled?

....And can you believe that all of this is over a boy?

He's an amazing boy though, Uncle Lars, seriously. He's the only person in the whole world who ever made me feel like I was...somehow better than I was. The only person who's ever made me feel special and appreciated and interesting and worthwhile. I gave up...everything....the family the business the lifestyle--everything-- to be with him and never regretted it once. And now without him...everything just feels so fucking fake. Nothing seems to satisfy. Nothing fills the void. I'm at a loss as to what to do with myself because I don't actually want to do anything but sit here and be miserable and pathetic and...wait.

Stupid, isn't it? For the first time I almost understand the way things were between you and Aunt Kyt.

How'd you find the strength to separate? To disassociate and carry on? To break away from the chain-link pull of eternal love and pursue the things you needed to do?

I miss you so fucking bad Uncle Lars. I hope like hell you're still watching over me. Even if it is just to laugh at me and call me stupid.

Searching for a flashlight in the darkness--
Your 'daughter'
Loki.

* * * *

Running over the same old ground
What have we found? -The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

[khaoticbliss]

image credit: Tannith and her photoshop.

[khaoticbliss]

Beginning of the end.
Rewind ...several months ago.

Shirley
September 15, 2003

I'm just sitting here.

In a chair you picked out--the funny canvasy one that makes you sit all funny but feels comfy anyway--I was sitting here with my legs all sprawled out along the edges --I think it's called a butterfly chair? Is that what this is? I remember your jokes about what it should be used for and I look at the way I'm sitting and I take another drink.

So yeah. I'm sitting here, in the chair you picked out, and I'm drinking the only kind of beer you actually like, and I'm thinking about your stupid jokes and I'm writing in one of the journals you never got around to filling up with cryptic poetry and artful sketches that you only sort of got around to hiding under the bed --leaving a corner peeking out from under the dust ruffle because I was to know both that it was there and that it was hiding.

And now I'm rambling too. Brilliant start...don't you think?

So..where was I. Right. Write. Haha. I'm just sitting here, and I'm writing in one of the books you never got around to writing in, and it's open against the face of my bass and the strings are vibrating like a kicked cat because of the frenetic press of my sharpie-tipped fingers against their screaming steel surfaces.

See...I was actually trying to play something. I was just sitting here, plucking at rusty strings (well, they're not really, but it's a killer image and you always were into imagery) with broken fingers (more imagery, relax.) (hey look at me. I'm running commentary on my own schizophrenic depression. Whee!)(Shit. Where was I?) --Yeah..I was plucking at the strings, trying to staple together something harmonic in all this chaos, and I found myself staring at a wall where traces of your paint stained fingertips still ink the windowsill--a silhouette of blackness on this shadowy candle-lined cave--and as I stared and my mind meandered, rebellious fingers started plucking an altogether different rhythm from a traitorous instrument that stares so innocently deadpan up at me in its deep resonance.

"It's taken me all this time to find out..."

I'm choking on the words and drowning them in your beer (it's mostly flat now anyway. I was having a moment earlier.) and trying to bite off my own tongue for abandoning me in such reckless fashion. In my own liquor-lush husky voice I can hear your velvet whispers and why your song of all songs had to rise on my trembling throat on this night of all nights I'll never understand.

But it did.

And then to add insult to injury, your fucking cat chose that moment of all moments to jump up into my lap and purr at me in a sort of divine poetic pause.

Of course I couldn't help but pet her. I squeezed my eyes shut against the blackness of her fur and tried not to imagine sepia stained corkscrew tendrils.

Your presence here is still oppressive.
And I still have your cat.

[khaoticbliss]

half-life recovery
November 17, 2003

Man. I think I'm getting old.

I'm still not entirely recovered from all the craziness I put myself through last week. I slept like...all day Saturday, and even when I got up again I was still tired. Everybody else who was involved in the whole thing has taken frightfully ill....I'm not entirely sure why I'm still so immune all things considered, but I can't really complain. This just...isn't my year to get sick, I guess. I don't really know.

The chaos and madness that was last week was...good for me, I think. Of course going back to work today ...sucked...but whatever, you know? Sometimes you just have to be extravagant and irrational and silly. (I'll keep digging...'till I feel something..) It was a nice change from the dreary monotony that my life has become ---and yes, I'm aware of the fact that only I could consider risking life and limb on a daily basis for other people dreary and monotonous. It's like someone once said...everyday I meet people on the absolute worst day of their lives...and half the time it's my fault to begin with.

Sometimes you just have to be stupid. Reminds you that you're alive, and not a machine. Or something.

I had to bribe Shirley with treats and special attention. She's been staying just out of reach and staring at me disdainfully...I don't think she appreciates my recent absences however much she may love my brother. At least I know somebody appreciates me, right? Even if it is only because I'm a surrogate for what she really wants.

Can't blame her, though. The whole fucking world is a surrogate for what I really want.

I wish I was a video game. I could really use a reset. And if nothing else, a save point. Where like..when I fuck up royally I could just...go back to the last place I saved and try to work it out again another way. ....And I could really use one of those energy field things that restores me to perfect life and vitality with a single drink.

[khaoticbliss]

Darkness and Light.
January 20, 2004

"I'd walk on water
Just to be with you
Walk on water
Just to be with you
Split the ocean
Cross the sea
Walk on water
If you believe..."

Last night was a bad fucking night. Well it started out that way, anyway.

My self destructive tendencies almost got me in a whole lot of trouble, and probably damaged someone else pretty severely in the process. I shouldn't be allowed to get into heated arguments with people when I'm drunk. Bad things inevitably happen, because eventually my mind will sort itself out. Usually at the least opportune moment imaginable. Was I leading him on? Maybe. I thought I was just being honest. I thought I kept using the past tense, I thought it was indelibly clear that what I was talking about was something that couldn't be done anymore. Apparently I wasn't. And I can't say that his argument wasn't sound. Everything he said rang true and clear to me, and it made sense at the time. I almost went through with it. Somewhere in there it occurred to me that if I used someone who was bleeding as badly as I was just for the rush of it, the anasthesia of it, I was never going to be able to forgive myself for it. So I bailed. I backed out. I couldn't even come up with excuses. It was just...lame. And I know he hates me for it. I have to think he'd hate me more if I'd gone through with it only to come to my senses in the morning. I don't fucking know. It was a bad situation and it sucked for everyone involved and I'm sorry that it worked out the way it did. This is why I'm supposed to be antisocial. This is why I'm supposed to avoid people at all costs, especially when I'm feeling unstable. This is why I'm a fucking dumbass who shouldn't be allowed out in public.

I'm reasonably sure I'll never see him again. That's undoubtedly for the best. But enough about that.

The words that were repeating themselves through my head over and over were 'get out. get away.' So I did. I just...started walking. Left my car there. Didn't even have a jacket on me at the time. I just...shoved my hands in my pockets and started walking. There were tears streaming down my face, I think ---at any rate my vision was blurry-- and I wasn't paying any attention to where I was going. I was just trying to put as much distance between myself and what had happened as humanly possible. I probably would have walked all the way to the border if my feet hadn't betrayed me.

Instead....I walked all the way to a border of a very different kind.

I found myself face to face with what I soon figured out was the door to his apartment. The one he shares with Aries. I don't know how I knew how to get there...I knew where they lived but I'd never actually been to that complex. I don't know how I found it, but as soon as I realized where I was I knew I couldn't back down. Unstable, miserable, broken and sobbing though I was, I figured in my tangled logic that there really wasn't a better time to confront this. Better to face him honest and humbled than layered with defensive fronts designed to wound in the name of self preservation. There is no more self preservation here. I can't fucking handle this anymore.

So I knocked. Aries let me in. He looked scared ---I'm sure I looked like hell-- but he recognized me. He led me to the right room, and I stood there for a long moment just...trying to compose myself. Then I said fuck it.

I couldn't knock. So I called his name. I asked him to let me in.

....And he did.

[khaoticbliss]

Surfacing
January 21, 2004

For the first time in what seems like years, I feel like I can breathe again. It's kind of funny, though, the contrast is making me hyperventilate. The balance tipped, weight lifted, and now the pendulum is on a crash course for the other end. I feel light headed and buzzy. So buoyant, suddenly, that I feel kinda like I'm about to float away.

Crazy stuff.

I guess I should thank you, angry Jonny, for the meltdown falling out we had, because without that explosion of intensity, that proverbial straw on the camel's back that finally put me in the right frame of mind to handle this head on, I'd never have done it if I wasn't feeling so fucking fatalistic in the first place.

So thank you, wherever you are.
You saved me, in a fucked up sort of way.

....Anyway.

God I don't even know what to say here. I have a million words to use like razors, slitting my own wrists or someone else's, to bleed the pain on paper. I can vent my spleen and spit bile with the best of them. I can even, I've discovered, mope and obsess and feel sorry for myself with the best of them.

But the other side? I'm fucking speechless.
There seriously aren't words.

I have no weapons, no defenses, no coping mechanism to deal with this crazy effervescence I feel. I just...sit here staring at the page, overwhelmed by the power of what I feel.

I've always said that if you know me and you like me, you better hope I never write a song about you.

I think I have to try, though.
Because I've written a dozen songs about you.

...And I don't feel like singing any of them right now.

[khaoticbliss]

waking up
January 31, 2004

It never even occurred to me that I had stopped eating again until I got home the other day and discovered --as if seeing it for the first time--that there wasn't a scrap of food in the house. Like something out of Fight Club, the only things in my cupboard were condiments and a mostly-ravaged bar stock. It seemed absurd to me that I'd been surviving for I don't even know how long on liquor and nicotine, but then I looked down at my body --even through the clothes I'd been wearing for several days --and learned that I'm skinnier now than I've ever been since the accident. It's insane to learn these things about yourself, to realize that your emotional detachment from your body has become so severe again that you can't even tell when its screaming at you for mercy. It's like waking up from a drug haze or something. Anyway it kinda made me feel like shit, considering I think I swore to myself that I'd never do this to myself again.

So..that resulted in a four a.m. trip to the grocery store.
By that point, though, my body had all but forgotten the taste of food, so it was a strange adventure, wandering the aisles aimlessly, a blank expression on my face as I studied items at random as though I'd never seen them before.

Seventy-eight dollars later there's food in my house again. It's a sparse, sporadic collection of tastes and flavors, but it's a start, right?

I'm eating popcorn right now, in fact. That counts, right?

Yeah. Anyway. Things have been kind of quiet here these past few days. I've been working alot and talking on the phone alot. It's ...slow going in a deliciously maddening sort of way, but I'll take slow going over nonexistent any day. I haven't written much, but then I haven't done much of anything at all except show up for work every day and answer the phone when it rings and....dream. I've been bad, too, 'cause I haven't been returning any calls but his. I'm sure Tanith thinks I'm dead and I know for a fact that if I don't call my brother back soon he's going to show up on my doorstep and then kick my ass when he discovers nothing's wrong... but I can't help it. I guess I'm just afraid that if I let the real world in again this will all turn out to be some bizarre dream I'm having and the whole thing will come crashing down around me.

Christ what a strange sentiment coming from me. Nothing's wrong. How long has it been since I could honestly say something like that?

I feel too fragile for public consumption still. Give me a little time and we'll see how I'm faring then.

Meanwhile I'm reasonably sure the cat has forgiven me at last as I've taken to spending long hours on the couch just...staring out the skylight and huddling her close. I'm going to have to come out of this reverie soon and act like a normal person again.

Just.....not yet.

[khaoticbliss]

It was a difficult balancing act, juggling the mail in one hand and her keys in the other, which rattled and tinkled irritably and resolutely refused to fit smoothly in the lock. Cursing under her breath, the artist finally managed to force her way into her own shop, tossing the mail down on the counter as she went about her morning rounds.

It was more than an hour later when she realized she hadn't actually gone through the mail yet, and with coffee in one hand and legs tucked under her pretzelform, she thumbed through the automated envelopes and gossamer pages at random. Silvery brows furrowed quizzically as she came across the handwritten piece, confusion writ large in hollowed out features as she pulled it to her for a closer look. Lips pursed as she set down her coffee mug, fingers moving in slow motion to tear back the envelope, dread developing unbidden in the pit of her stomach and sinking like a deadweight.

The words weren't surprising but that didn't make them any more comforting.

'Damn.....' hollow words in an empty space, spoken to no one in particular. Technicolor widescreen digitally remastered memory sprung to life full form behind the silver screen of her eyes, remembering in every painstaking detail the last moments of her what small time they'd spent together. The moment she'd realized that she couldn't treat him the way everyone else had, and in refusing to do so he'd written her off as just like everyone else. Loki had understood him in ways he hadn't understood himself, and the same could have been said about his understanding of Loki. They'd only been around each other a handful of times but the damage was done, so to speak.

'Isn't this the part where you're supposed to leave?' he'd said, broken and miserable sprawled vulnerable on the grass. 'Er...yeah, I think so.' she'd said, just as miserable as she stood there feeling stupid on the pavement. 'So go.' His last words as she'd turned her back, tears blurring her vision as she ran--anywhere that would take her away. She'd known in that moment that she'd likely never see him again. But she hadn't thought it would come to this.

For the longest time, Loki just sat there, ignoring the sounds of the phone ringing around her. She read and re-read the obituary until she had it memorized, and then she read it again for good measure. It would be hours later when she jotted down a note, transcribing the return address onto the front of an envelope in her slanting, bolded script. The letter was dropped in a mailbox on her way to make the daily deposit even though the mailman would come directly to the door -- she hadn't wanted time to change her mind.

Sammy -

Some of the last words he ever said to me were that he would always love you. Maybe now he isn't so angry anymore.

-Loki.

<font color="#261109" size="1">[ February 08, 2004 03:01 PM: Message edited by: khaoticbliss ]</font>

[khaoticbliss]

Wanting you
February 10, 2004

Last night I did something I never thought I was going to be able to do. I walked directly into the line of an old temptation -- one I gave into as late as a few short months ago -- and then I walked away. I suppose it helped that there were extenuating factors -- other people swirling around us, other obligations to attend to, a lack of sufficient timing or exposure -- but none of that matters. What matters is that for the first time in a long time I said no to something I never thought I wouldn't want.

And I didn't even tell him about the panic from before.

I want to call Adonis. I don't really have anything new or exciting I want to say to him, I just want to hear his voice. I haven't spoken to him in a couple of days --been so busy with entertaining Faye and rediscovering the part of me that is part of her -- but I've thought about him from time to time. I wanted to introduce the two of them, formally. But it isn't time for that just yet. Right now we're still in the shaky ginger reconstruction phase. Like I was telling Tanith when I spoke to her earlier, though, maybe it's just the season or maybe it's something else, but everything feels like its on the verge of some big important change. We'll see how things go. I want to call him ...and I'm going to. But not just yet.

Faye left today. It was sad to see her go. We had a whole lot of fun in the whirlwind cavalcade of the last few days. A whole lot of fun, and a whole lot of discussion about some things that desperately needed saying. I think... I think things are going to be changing sometime soon. Something of a moving together, a converging of time and space. Because we're all of us too stubborn to not have everything we want all the time.

Tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping again for the first time since before she got here. I'm not looking forward to having that cold empty space on the mattress where another body used to be. I'm finding this irrational desire in me to have a sleeping partner -- not sexually, just...another warm body to fill up all the empty spaces, the sound of someone else's breathing near my ear when I fall asleep, when I wake up. I guess it's just the knowing that I'm not alone thing.

I know who I want that sleeping partner to be. Ever since we started talking again, I've fantasized about it. Funny that it's not the sex I've been daydreaming about, though that's ...definitely something I've missed. More than anything it's the way we used to sleep. All tangled up in one another's arms like we thought the other might disappear if we let go. The pretzelform bear hug origami knot that was our sleeping pattern. The crazy jigsaw sideways movement it took to disentangle yourself if you had to go to the bathroom or something. I miss ...his arms. His chest. His heartbeat. The raspy whisper of his voice.

..And I'm about to make myself insane thinking about it.

But for once I'm smiling.