assault

trigger warning

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago or so, I saw a stream of images that were unbelievably violent. Disgusting. Art school concept horror shock value gore. After watching the images rotate three, four, five times, I realized that it was me.

…well. Whatever was left of me, at least.

I tried to dismiss it, but I spun straight into a raw panic attack. The style that had the instant potential to be a Big One- hyperventilation, a loss of vision and hearing, pounding pulse, pinhole narrow throat that cannot swallow. So afraid that I start to drool into my hands.

But I caught it and killed it. Honestly, with lies, the kinds of lies you sometimes have to speak to keep from getting caught in the maelstrom.

This isn’t real, I’m not really seeing this. This isn’t real, this never happened. This isn’t real, I don’t believe it.

About a week after I saw this mess, I went to meditation and it was more of the same. Old things, things I thought I’d finally gotten rid of, smeared all over the beach house in a way they’ve not been in almost a year. In a way I was sure I’d finally defeated. Absolutely vile, graphic in a way that feels excessive, violence to surreal, cartoonish levels. Putrid.

“What is this?” I shouted at my friends, who stood solemnly in the frame of the doorway. “I don’t fucking want to look at this shit anymore! Why do I have to keep seeing this?”

But I know why. I know why.

I haven’t had any sort of sexual contact with anyone in over two years, and I haven’t had a good, satisfying intimate interaction with a living person in almost five.

FIVE. YEARS.

And to be honest, mostly I am okay with that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing that for myself, so long as it’s a choice and not a wound.

But it’s also not entirely true either. The previous post is a story about spending the night with someone I have loved for centuries, after all.

Part of the reason that I don’t seek out relationships with living people is because I have such secure, loving relationships with the dead. It is pretty ideal for me, if I’m being honest- they are only a shout of their name from coming to me. Sometimes that’s all I need. I cry out and they answer, and I instantly feel better.

When I try to apologize they say, “You’re never alone,” and they mean it. But I also still have my space, my time, my silence.

Even if it’s all a fantasy, a delusion, a sickness… is there anything wrong with it if it keeps me alive? And more than that- can it be wrong if it brings me comfort and joy?

How could I let someone “real” into this world? Can my life be full and empty at the same time? Is it wrong to be so fulfilled by doing so little? Is my kind of love enough?

Is any of this the same as having “real life” love? Can I accept real life love when I can barely sustain friendships without trying to sabotage or abandon them? Is opening up my entire heart and soul to someone really something that I want for myself? Is my solitude a product of grace or fear?

Every single person I have ever given my trust to in my life has betrayed me. Every single person I have offered something precious to has used it as a tool to violate me. It is hard to continue to give anything to people when it has only meant it will be a weapon held to your throat. Or. Worse.

Have you ever heard yourself choke on your own blood? Have you ever had to watch yourself gurgle for air from a face that barely exists?

And she’s still with him. Even right now. He’s the reason no one trusts her, me, her/me. I can’t understand any of this, and it’s me. For fuck’s sake, what am I supposed to do with that?

This week is the first time I have had more than two days off, totally alone. There is a lot I have to face. I am a little concerned at where I really am mentally and emotionally once my work persona melts away.

Last night, I had a dream that a pack of wild dogs were threatening me, but I wouldn’t back down.

One of them ran at me, then past me, leaping onto a recliner just behind me. As I walked carefully by it to get out of the room, terrified of being bitten, the dog flipped onto its back and gave me a big doggy smile.

Okay. I’m trying. I get it.

I’ll get there.

the basement in the basement

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

I keep thinking about the nightmare that led me to the secret room. 

I was in the house that I have dreamt about since I was a teenager, that I have come to believe is a metaphor for my mind/soul. It is sprawling and disorienting- staircases that go nowhere, endless closed doors in long, ominous hallways. Rooms with no ceiling, rooms with live trees inside, rooms soaked in fetid water.

In this nightmare, I walked down to the basement, and in the corner was a rough wooden door, so small I had to duck to cross the threshold. In the tiny, filthy, cement-walled room was an old metal cot that was just rusty springs with a fairly large steamer trunk next to it. 

When I stepped forward and my foot accidentally brushed the edge of the trunk, I suddenly realized I was barefoot. I could feel the electricity of the worn leather rocket through my toes, and my whole body recoiled from the trunk as if it was a threat. 

There was a tiny window positioned near the ceiling that was covered in a layer of grime and filth that made it almost opaque. The slimmest slice of sun crept across the gritty cement floor, and seeing the dim light made me feel instantly, strangely trapped.

On the opposite wall, there was another door- smaller, rougher. Behind it, there was a set of about a dozen uneven cement steps, very steep and sharp, thick with the smell of mildew and rot. They felt wet on my bare feet, and the moment I got to the bottom, my heart leapt in panic. 

This was a bad place. This was evil.

At that very moment, I spun around to see the door slamming shut, the entire door vibrating on its frame from the force. I ran to the door and desperately tried to wrench it open, screaming at the top of my lungs. 

it was coming, it was coming, this is where it came to hurt me, it was coming now, there was no escape, there was never any escape

“Daddy!” I wailed as the doorknob came off in my hand. I thrust my arm through the hole and clawed desperately at the air, knowing that no one could hear me this far away. No one was coming. I was all alone.

When I woke up in terror, still in the Grey Space between worlds, I slipped into meditation.

Show me this place, I whispered. I wasn’t awake enough to question how I knew this place was real, or what caused me to ask to have it revealed. Many strange things happen in the Grey Space, and I trust I am safe enough to chase shadows. 

Most of the time, anyway.

The room began to clarify again inside my mind, this time with that surreal reality that only meditation landscapes can conjure. I saw that the floor under the rusty cot was spattered with blood, and my stomach twisted. 

This is why I’d come back, I could see now. I needed to know it all if I was going to ever move on, if I was ever going to heal.

I opened the trunk…

and I was inside.

It was startling, borderline horrifying, to see a form of myself inside that trunk, though seeing strange nonsensical nightmare images in meditation was now par for the course at this point. It was much more disturbing when I saw the state of her, crammed like a corpse inside this trunk. 

She was naked, emaciated, filthy, her hair hanging in matted clumps on her head. Her entire body was riddled with bruises, caked in blood. When I reached out to touch her, she started to scream.

“Please, please,” she begged, sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh please, I’ll behave, I’ll be quiet, I’ll be good, I’ll do anything, please…”

I tried to gently shush her, but she began to shake uncontrollably, curling her knees tighter against her chest. Her thighs were shiny and tight with dried blood, the edges of it flaking off like old paint. I felt a terror unfolding inside of me, unable to understand or process what I was seeing. The part of me that was rational tried to dismiss it. Another nightmare, another delusion. 

But.

I called for my ancient and limited time lover, unsure of what else I should do. When he showed up, he never said a word. He pulled a shining white sheet from out of nowhere, quietly reaching into the trunk to wrap the sheet around her (me?). 

He lifted her into his arms and cradled her like a baby, gently shushing her sobs, and she shuddered silently into his embrace. He looked at me with dark, pained contemplation, and suddenly, we were back in the field that had become the safest place for my soul. A place that I still use when I don’t know where else to go.

After that, everything started to change. My marriage began to unravel as I dug deep to fix myself, to heal the girl in the trunk. Whether it was real or just a metaphor, I knew it was shown to me for a significant reason. It made me realize how ravaged, how ugly, how broken I really was.

Finding her was the beginning of my new life, but I think that in a lot of ways, I abandoned really dealing with that once my relationship with someone else in real life started to bloom. He helped me to reclaim a part of myself that I thought was dead, but he was also a temporary vacation from true growth and change. I once called him a lighthouse for a lost soul, because he brought me back to shore in so many ways. He resurrected me.

But that wasn’t a healthy relationship either.

And now, here I am.

Dealing with the beach house is one thing. You cannot imagine how many times I have stood at the side of that bed and watched myself be ruined, something that a human being wouldn’t even have survived. Something I don’t think that part of me did survive. Something so violent, so ugly that I wouldn’t even wish for anyone else to even see it with their own eyes. It is beyond foul. It has broken so many people forced to witness the carnage.

But these days, I can’t stop thinking about the girl in the trunk in the basement with a basement. 

Is she the reason I still can’t connect with others? I have been thinking so much about my issues with intimacy, my inability to be vulnerable, my reaction of revulsion to kindness or empathy towards me. I even recoil from platonic friendships. 

The best relationship I’ve ever had was with someone I knew I’d never be with, that had no future. Only then was I even remotely open and honest about who I really am. People that try to love me learn so little about me. 

Is there any hope for me opening my heart to anyone, truly? After so many times of trying to be vulnerable, to allow intimacy, only to have it violently violated… how many times do I allow that? What is it about me that encourages such disregard of my vulnerability?

Something about me is broken. Can it be healed?

9/20/2010

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

[transcribed from the original entry]

I went to see Alex (not his real name) last night, and I was nervous as soon as I set foot on the sand. The entire house was washed out and grey while the landscape around it was still full color. It was instantly eerie. Wrong.

Alex stepped into the doorway from the bedroom that led out onto the sand, leaning heavily against it. He was also entirely grey, and as I approached him, I realized that his form was actually made of ash.

I rushed to his side and laid a hand on his cheek. His cheekbone crumbled under my palm, raining ash onto the ground, and I pulled my hand back in horror.

Despite my disgust, I leaned closer to peer at his eyes. They were matte, no pupils, blank as a statue. “Alex?”

“Krissy…” he breathed, reaching blindly for my hands. His fingers broke off against mine, his hands crumbling to the wrist. “Oh, Krissy. You came.”

“Alex, what is going on here? What are you doing?” I reached out to touch him and then recoiled over and over, remembering his fragility.

“I can’t… I’m just trying to…” The more he tried to form words, the more his mouth crumbled. His lips would fall off in clumps and then reform as he struggled to speak. Eventually he just gave up, slumping chin on chest.

“Let me help,” I said, putting my hands on his chest, my palms pressing against his ashen sternum. A white light slowly began to grow, filling his torso with more solidity. His skin began to gain color as the light traveled through his chest into his arms, up his throat. He was slowly becoming whole again.

He threw my arms off, and instantly the light began to fade. His solidity vanished with it, turning him back to ash.

“No,” he mumbled, and when he shook his head, half of his face came off with it. He lifted an arm to keep me back and it broke at the elbow, exploding into a cloud on the sand. “This is my battle. This is for me to figure out.”

“Have you seen yourself?” I challenged. “You need help.” 

He tried to speak, but the entire right side of his body collapsed in an ashen avalanche. In terror, I called out for Jim.

“No!” Alex tried to shout, but he was now falling apart so rapidly he was hardly even a human form any longer.

Jim showed up instantly, and when he saw Alex as a huge pile of ash in front of the open patio doors, his eyes grew huge. 

I reached out for Jim’s hand, and we knelt in front of what remained of Alex, focusing our energy on him until he regained form. The color spread out from his renewed form into the house, bringing it back to life as well.

I was concerned we’d have to fight a fully healed and bitterly furious Alex, but he was suddenly unconscious. It was strange to see him like this, in an almost fairytale-like slumber, his features serene and soft. It had been so long since I’d seen him so vulnerable.

“Alex?” I said gently, squeezing his shoulder. “Hey. Wake up.” I gently tapped his cheek with my fingers.

He didn’t respond.

I shook his shoulder until his head rattled slightly. “Alex. Hey.” I slapped his cheek. 

Nothing.

I looked up to express concern to Jim, but he was peering into the bedroom.

“Did you hear that?” he asked in a thin voice, his eyes dark, his entire body on alert. “What the fuck was that?”

He stepped through the doors and my stomach sank. I hadn’t been inside in a long time, and I wasn’t particularly interested in finding out what might be making noise within.

Or to be more honest, what I already knew was there.

And indeed, each room was playing a neverending loop of all the worst things Alex had ever done to me in that house. And the worst of the worst was- as always- in the bedroom.

What was happening in that room was so grotesque it was a caricature, something so appalling and vile that it was impossible to believe. And especially impossible for me, when I was adamant that it was fine, and not traumatic at all.

Without being unnecessarily triggering, or the least amount I can be while still getting my point across- there was a slightly red tinge to the lighting in the room because of the blood sprayed up the aquarium.

It was all you could smell- wet copper, and the sharpness of adrenaline and terror. The energy felt wet with violence.

Jim was staring at this looping  “mirage” with a face I had never seen before and couldn’t interpret. 

He leaned down to examine it further, stunned, as if he couldn’t fully comprehend what he was seeing. As he got to eye level, the onyx-eyed, filth-fanged version of “Alex” looked up at him and laid one long, skeletal finger against his mouth.

Shhh.

Jim staggered backwards and grabbed my hand as if he needed it to keep from falling, and pulled me back to the beach. Running.

We got to escape.

She didn’t.

Outside by the surf, Alex was awake. He was sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees, watching the waves.

When he saw us approach, his face crumpled.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have helped me, Krissy,” he mewled, and I winced at his weak, flimsy tone.

“You needed help, Alex.” I stooped down next to him, searching his face, but he couldn’t meet my eyes.

He glanced briefly at the house. You could hear screaming even from this distance. 

“Have you been in there? I don’t deserve your help.” He was on the verge of tears again, his voice shimmering with sobs. “Look at what I’ve done!”

“This isn’t helping you though,” I said firmly. “This isn’t supposed to be punishment. This is about you getting better.”

Now he actually began to cry, burying his face in his hands and weeping. “You have to hate me, Krissy. You have to. You should be looking at me the way that he is.”

I glanced up at Jim. His face was hard with fury, his eyes locked on the horizon, angrier than I’ve ever seen him. His tongue was pressed into the corner of his jaw, one heel bouncing violently into the sand. His arms were crossed so tightly against his chest that it would have ached.

Jim flicked his gaze at me briefly, then went back to scouring the waves in the distance. “It seems like everything here is okay now.” His eyes bounced back to me again, burning with desperation. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? I want to talk to you.”

His eyes went back to the ocean and Alex said, “Jim-”

Jim held up a hand with a hard, single shake of his head, and disappeared.