prayer of the afflicted//here i stand before you naked, awaiting my judgment

Okay, I’m here today. I think I’ve come to understand why I think these writings might serve a worthwhile purpose, and therefore even more honesty and vulnerability is required of me. I hope the day was gentle with you, let us begin.

In high school I read a Kurt Vonnegut noveI, the story within I do not recall at all. I think it featured three siblings but that’s all I can really remember about it except for one line and the context surrounding it. One of the siblings had died, and the owner of a toy store (?) was talking about his particular sensibilities. He said, “do they know what they killed?”

I barely remember the room I was in when I read it, I couldn’t tell you the season, or the name of the teacher, if there even was one who’s room I was hanging out in, but that line, I may never forget. To say it struck a chord would be a criminal understatement. I thought of my parents, and my teachers, and my bullies. I felt I was already doomed, and looking back at my life, I wondered if they knew what they killed.

Some time later, or perhaps before, I’d gone with my friends to see the latest avengers movie. I know nowadays we sneer at them but as a real comic book nerd they were quite wonderful to me, I reveled in taking the opportunity to explain to my friends the histories of all the characters and their interactions, the easter eggs within, the differences in the comics, so on and so forth. There was a line in the film that struck

so much of a chord within me that I wasn’t doing my usual explanatory rambling on the drive home, I felt a bit sad.

The giant evil robot had said “…I was meant to be beautiful[…] Instead they’ll look up in horror because of you.”

Once more I thought of my family, the place I grew up, the teachers that beat me for being left handed, so on and so forth.

There aren’t many pictures of me from when I was younger. At some point there was a good amount. My father was always very enthusiastic about technology, and at the time these digital picture frames were quite popular, they’d display a slideshow of various photos. Now that I look back on them, they’re very cute and clever aren’t they? Anyways, I deleted every picture of myself from the digital frames, and the computers, and the iphone 4s. I’ve always felt incredibly ugly, and I hated being confronted with images of my ugliness. On the rare occasion that a photo is recovered, and I see an image of myself from childhood, it’s a painful experience, because that sentiment comes rushing back to me. I was meant to be beautiful, I was incredibly sensitive, I wept for days when a trap caught a mouse in our home. I stood outside spraying away all the air freshener so the animals could enjoy the scent too. My father punished me for that as well. I was at one point this precious thing, and now, an amalgam of monstrosities.

It’s hard to describe, and talk about. I’m always me, I’m always aware, I’m just not always in control. Different mannerisms, speech patterns, behaviors, and proclivities. I am always me, I just happen to be many. My newest therapist assures me that this is completely normal, and that the mono- personality single voice in your head idea of being is and has always been incorrect, and is rooted in weird religious shit, as everything else is surely. She’s got me reading a book about internal family systems, the book says that trauma does this to people, they split themselves into many parts, that each serve a function, and that no matter how vile the parts may behave, they are there for very good reasons, more often offering some sort of protection. I wish someone told me this before, I’ve felt so crazy for so long. Being able to sit there, at a round table, and have true conversations with everyone else that lives in your head and sometimes handles your life for you isn’t normal is it!? surely not!

“You can’t really tell yourself a joke and have it be that funny because you already know the punch line when you think

of the joke right?”

“right”

“but that’s the thing with the voices I speak to is that, they can surprise me, it’s not just me! i don’t know what they’re going to say or do next.”

Is the way I’d try to describe the experience to whoever I felt comfortable enough to share this with.

My friend Estelle listened without judgment as I explained to her that it wasn’t me being such a piece of shit and doing all these bad things it was in fact [redacted]

Oh. I’m not supposed to talk about that.

Sometimes when I start, memories get wiped, or I fall asleep where I stand, or I feel like I’m physically being pulled into the far corners of my mind, and it’s hard for me to speak. Fear grips me, I get cold and sweaty, this was the experience two weeks ago in therapy. I had to turn the lights on, I was so afraid.

I always say to people who spend enough time with me to be around when I stream, that when the camera goes on, it’s not exactly all me, I couldn’t sit there and come up with all these things, as soon as the camera is on, a switch flips. When I’m in an event where I need to be particularly charming and charismatic, a different switch. When I need to suffer a brutal situation, another. When I need to be cold and objective, clean up the messes everyone’s made, plan properly, get away with murder, win any argument, punish and condition my lovers, be extremely competent, enter Caliban.

It’s beyond exhausting, deep down, I can still feel that kid who cried for the mouse and wanted the woodland creatures to enjoy the linen fresh fragrance of febreeze. I wish I could say that’s who I am, because I admire it so much. At the same time, I can’t cast away or abandon everyone else who is with me, who survives for me. I would like to make peace, I would like to become gestalt. It’s difficult to do so when sometimes the behavior is that of complete alienation and lack of empathy for the people I hold dearest.

When his sun shines on you, you really feel it, and when it doesn’t, you really really feel it too.

First in my heart, I’m sorry you had to suffer my phantoms and afflictions.

One of them tells me she feels I was never cold to her, I can’t believe it. She doesn’t understand all the moments I looked upon her with complete disdain, or worse yet, utter indifference.

And when people insist they knew me under different names, or that I had such a distinct personality, and question why I’m treating them so differently, what am I to say?

Estelle tells me that we were once sitting at a barnes and noble cafe, she was on the phone with a friend who was expressing suicidal ideations. She says I grabbed the phone and yelled at him to just do it. I can’t recall if she said I threw a slur in there or not.

I look at her in horror, there’s simply no way on this earth that I would ever say or do that to anyone. In fact, I have zero memory whatsoever of the event, I’d bet everything, my life, I’d swear to gods above and below, on my sister’s life that I did not do that.

But I look at her face, and in her eyes, and I know she’s not lying to me.

Can you imagine the exhaustion of trying to keep it all together?

It’s hard to believe that there’s lots of people walking around who are the same way, what a terrifying prospect.

Yesterday I asked one of those who has my attention for now, “so how’s it feel to be a psychopath?”

She stopped.

“how do you know i’m a psychopath”

I tell her the way she talks about being able to glean intimate details about an individual’s personality based on their gait and posture is a thing a lot of psycho killers would say when they described how they picked their victims.

The story was to be that I just had to do research on them for an essay of some sort.

Behind my eyes Caliban smirks.

Fucking edgelord.

Still my punishment elud-

Ah, my break is over, I have to go make yeast donuts.

post script.

the sleeper has come to banish me. we will speak again upon my return.