.

daemonicism:

                    ‘ yeah. ’ more a breath than a word, as though some muted strangled version of a laugh. ‘ you’re right. we don’t. ’ something in her eyes clears and sobers when she glances up to hold his gaze, even so. ‘ but i think you reach a point where -- ... you’ve acknowledged that you’re angry, that you’re hurting, that you’re bitter, and then you have to look at the rest of your life. have to decide, okay, now what? ’

      the hitching at a corner of her mouth looks like it hurts, for a moment.

                     ‘ and i am -- ... furious. all the time. that i have to work so hard at being kind, every time, when ... nothing is going to happen to the people who put me here. but i believe ... in wanting the world to be a decent place for people who are decent. and if i’m ... gonna be angry, then i want to do something with it, something that -- matters. my -- ... lowest point was ...  i didn’t even recognize myself. i couldn’t sleep, or i slept too much, and i couldn’t get out of bed, and i couldn’t eat properly, or stand to be touched, or spend time with my friends, or take a shower. but -- ... i’m pulling myself out of that hole. and i have to believe that -- that’s not for nothing. ’

       her exhale shakes, faintly, on the way out, but her tone’s clear, and committed.

                     ‘ i don’t believe that -- bullshit about how trauma makes people warmer. sometimes it doesn’t. i don’t feel -- i’m not nice. i’m arrogant, and sarcastic, and i -- ... can be very cold, when i’m pushed to it. i don’t agree that being hurt always makes people more empathetic. a lot of the time it does the opposite. but ... that’s the value of the choice. it’s not something that passively happens to you. it’s a decision, and a constant one. and i think there’s a big difference between being nice and being kind. nice doesn’t -- ... do anything. it’s hollow, it’s ... performative. but kindness is, is revolutionary. and it’s the biggest fuck you there is, to -- ... to choose to still be good when people’ve tried to break you. and it’s the only -- kind of healing that matters. the path to it ... everyone’s got a different one. but i think that there’s a lot to be learned, from ... relearning how to love people when every cell in your body screams to do the opposite. so when i’m ... an ICC prosecutor, or ... special rapporteur to the UN on violence against women, or ... whatever it is i wind up doing that saves lives, i hope my rapist reads my name in the news and chokes on it. ’

       a grin blossoms, in spite of herself, unsteady and fragile but genuine.

                  ‘ i guess you could say that’s kinda why i’m here. to fix my shit, to -- ... get to a place where i can be good. to people, and to myself. i don’t -- ... have a case worker. i -- signed up for this shit, and ... i don’t know if it’s going to work. but i tried individual therapy, and it didn’t pan out like i’d hoped, so i’m trying something different. ’ a blink, and she shakes her head, abruptly sheepish. ‘ wow. i just spilled my manifesto all over you and haven’t even told you my name. ’ a hand extends, open-palmed but a little tremorous. ‘ zoë. ’

daemonicism:

              ‘ relax, you’re fine. i mean, i’ll be the first to admit i’m an asshole, but i’m not completely unreasonable. ’

       a half-grin and dismissive wave of her left hand chases the tail end of her words, ensuing breath pulled in through her nose and shifting the weight in her shoulders.

                 ‘ eh. the breathing stuff helps some, but it’s hardly the be-all and end-all. ’

       talking frankly -- openly, like this -- about all things therapeutic is a mite odd, but refreshing, too, in a way. ask her, it’s not talked about in the open nearly enough, and they’d all be a lot less shamed if that weren’t so. 

                 ‘ anybody thinks there’s a single quick fix to stuff’s got their head so far up their ass they forgot what sense looks like. i mean, hell, i’ve been working on my shit for ten years and i’ve still got baggage in spades. it’s like, hey, pal, you’re not the only one who wishes my traumatized ass was more palatable to be around, you let me know when you find the magic pill that’ll do that for me. ’ the faint shadow of a snort lapses through her nose on the way out. ‘ but, y’know. not that i’m bitter, or anything. ’

daemonicism:

                    ‘ -- mm. ’

       she chews the side of her tongue, a moment, considering the merits and drawbacks of ushering out an apology of her own. on the one hand there’s the recognition of her own error ; on the other there’s the ever-growing part of her that feels she shouldn’t have to apologize for defending herself against other people’s screw-ups.

                   ‘ no, it’s okay. guess i kinda jumped the gun too. ’ an attempted half-smile. she doubts he understands, in truth, in any sense other than the abstract -- his experience isn’t hers, and vice versa -- but she figures there’s some recognition due to effort, maybe. ‘ i’m sure y’know how it is. buncha mentally stable people telling me how to feel and what to do about my shit, as if it isn’t my shit, and then getting all upset and taking me to task when i’m not exactly nice about it. ’

       a half-shrug, one-shouldered.

                   ‘ i dunno. look at it in a certain light, being pissed off all the time’s worse. ’

junseok.

                    ‘ -- seems like both ways around would be alienating. if your body’s too real, it’s a barrier people can’t look past. if it’s not real enough, you pass through life without anyone really touching you where it matters, and the people who can reach you in your mind are so few and far between. i guess -- that’s why so many geniuses have been so sad. being the only one in your own head’s a terribly lonely way to be. but i guess having too many people looking at you without really seeing you would be lonely, too. ’

       i’m incisive without meaning to be, almost. seeing too much. it makes me want to reach out and squeeze junseok’s hand -- sympathy or apology or both, i’m not sure -- and it’s really only wondering if he’d let me that has me hesitate, hang back.

       i’m not sure i’d feel the contact, like this, if i did. i’m not sure he would. my skin alternates between an expansive blank -- a dull ghostly vacant nothing -- and an aching open wound, and i don’t remember what it’s like to follow and occupy the middle path.

                     ‘ it’s not. simpler. not caring -- really not caring -- would be. but i feel ... fundamentally unrooted. like this skin isn’t mine. it -- was, once, i think. but -- shit happened, and some -- god, it sounds so childish if i say some bad people took it from me. but i’ve had a hard time with touching, or being touched, since. hell, i can barely touch myself, most of the time -- i don’t mean that sexually, i mean -- on a bad day i can’t shower, not because i don’t want or need to, but because i can’t abide touching my own skin to clean it. so i am -- ... really not in any position to be casting aspersions on what other people do with their bodies. ’ my lips twitch, wry and wounded all at once. ‘ i’d still be here. if you wanted me to be. if i pulled away from people just over neglecting to wear make-up one day, or having a pimple one week, not only would i be a colossally hypocritical piece of shit, i also wouldn’t have any friends. ’

junseok.

       i listen with the same sort of closeness as i speak ; this gnawing sharpness, i think, only made its home in me the last few years, but it occurs to me distantly that it must be uncomfortable for more than just me. too much eye contact, too much fixation. i’m still and watchful for what feels like hours but is only minutes, eyes locked on junseok’s face, mind like a sponge soaking up blood.

       when i finally speak my throat feels dry and papery from disuse, though it’s not been long since my last expounding at all. ( i have the distant thought that it’s not disuse, it’s that i haven’t been drinking enough water, but i have that thought often and never really do anything about it. )

                     ‘ colorism has a similar root in the west. there’s the slavery angle, obviously, but -- as you say, there’s a work factor more broadly, too. go back as far as victorian era, it was ... fashionable to be anaemic, to be pale as bone. if you took in the sun it meant you were lower class or servant-class because you had no money, because you had to work outside -- whereas the richly inherited could stay inside their mansions all day and not lift a finger. ’

       i feel wired -- invigorated -- and tired all at once ; a familiar sensation, the one that always arises when i get to talk like this, and i wonder if it’s arrogant of me to observe i rarely find someone who’s willing to meet me halfway. most of my friends are more content to just listen to me talk and make the occasional approving noises, or lapse into a halfway-uncomfortable silence. 

       having someone reflect back to me is heady in its satisfaction even as we talk about ugly things.

                      ‘ i think a lot of cultures have their own ways of being ugly. the irony is that our fixation on beauty standards -- disparate as they may be -- might be the worst of it. i used to ... ’ a weak, self-denigrating twist of a wry smile. ‘ i used to have the wildest of imaginations, as a kid and in my early teen years, and i used to imagine not having a body at all. just being a mind. not having to think about any of that, because ... it didn’t matter. my thoughts, my voice, that’s what i wanted to be judged by. that was my true self, i thought. and i still feel disembodied, mostly. like everything from the neck down is just sort of in the way. but i still wax once a month and paint my toenails as if it’s going to make any difference. sometimes i still think it would be easier if i didn’t have to carry all this extra flesh and bone with me -- it feels like, mm, a shell, or a vessel to carry my brain in, at most -- but then i think no one would ever hug me again, and it stops being worth it. ’ a half-shrug. i realise this has gone far away from the societal and into the personal, and it makes me feel small, but i have to ask. ‘ is it easier? if you actually live inside your skin instead of feeling trapped in it. does that make any of it better? ’