tigerlight

walking beside you, i am not me. i am my own shadow doing things to please you because you, unpleased, is too unbearable a thought.

not long after we met, that real me shrivelled to a pinpoint of light in the deepspace of me. i became vestigial in the presence of you because you were everywhere and filled every second. you never got to see more than a flicker of my light that came before i knew you, and that made you hungry and angry. in the wake of that, i pushed out this meek demure me in my stead, till the day you locked me in the house, jeering and thrusting in my face, at my past relationships and choices…because they didn’t contain you.

in those long hours, cornered, covered in your spit, i even tried to climb out the third story window, but i was shaking so hard.
you wouldn’t let me out, and as i lost breath i realised that my light is tiger-shaped. i could have killed you with my hands and that fury. my own physical strength and the blood at your neck made you open the door but my own phenomenal strength in those seconds scared the shit out of me. so i switched to self harm.

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the shadowy shitshow that was

but there were good times

the great manipulator said,

what about all those good times?

i’m onto him. his lies. all those stalking and harassment incidents. all his other women, locked in houses, running and hiding in the forest. better the big bad wolf than the great manipulator.

and here he is, afraid that i’ll have gone thinking forever only that he was an arsehole. and i will.

for me it was one hell of a shitshow.

the distance between now and then, as it widens, throws it all up in sharp relief, balinese shadow puppet-style.

flashbacks to a montage of coercive ridicule, physical abuse, sulking, insults and manipulation.

and the oh so so so so sorry tradgedy.

there were no good times. none. they weren’t real.

in the whole script, they were only commas, parenthesis, ellipses, clauses between each frightening episode.

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exhalted

so I am free, now, and so much has changed me.

and it’s like heavy rain on mountains for days.

at some stage all that water and mud and rock has no choice but to follow gravity down, down, to break the dam walls and flood the lowlands before it can be sorted by the sea.

turbulence before calm before clean, and sift before the sweet stuff that grows well from that bitter silt that’s left.

they tell me it’s a fertile gift.

[useful resources]