08/09/2020
i wish i were in 1947. in love. walking on the gravel sidewalk through the rain. this song playing as we pass by an old jazz-bar that is warm with laughing people. hand in hand. safe. we dance together to the music and he makes fun of how stupid I look but I know he loves me anyway.
23/09/2020
Been kinda depressed these last few days (nothing new ahah) anyways i got stuck into my book again today. there’s a lot of rain, the sky is white with weeping clouds. i feel this almost constant sense of guilt when im not working on music, but today i am sitting on the couch, listening to music from the 50s, across from me my mum is sleeping peacefully on the couch, and I realised it’s okay to take days to myself. to exist in another world for a bit.
02/10/2020
i really love and hate the summer. everything reminds me of him. how it felt when we pushed our bed under the window, just close enough to see the stars when we laid on our backs, his hand bound tightly to mine. he never did learn how to loosen his grip. it smells of the time we got lost with my mum on a main road in the woods. we wound our windows down and sat on the sills, holding hands on top of the car as pine trees blurred behind him. it’s been 3 fucking years and i can’t go outside at 3am because it smells exactly like the night he strangled me. it’s gotten easier and ive forgiven him, but wish forgetting was just as easy. i wish i could stand at the window of my old bedroom and not see him trying to jump from the second story. i wish i didn’t smell the liquor in his breath when he told me to look into his eyes. I wish I didn’t see him smashing his head on a curb until he bled every time my train passes ____________.
08/17/2021
it gets hard having the mum I do sometimes, tonight not for reasons usual, but because i often see her as my child. tonight i cleaned the makeup from her face because she wouldn’t do it herself. i got the face towel as hot as i could hold, the same way my grandad used to when i was a kid, and to mum when she was a kid. held it over her face and wiped away foundation from her temples, to her cheeks then chin, rinse and repeat. the same way grandad used to. i put toothpaste on her tooth brush, wet it and handed it to her. told her how when I don’t feel good that things as simple as brushing my teeth and washing my face makes me feel like I am doing something good for myself, and I hoped she knew I was asking her to do the same. I love my mum the way a parent loves their teenage child. I love my mum the same way my dad loves me. Her surgery is next month, and I’ll be there to cook for her, sit by her bed and feed her. Walk her to the makeshift toilet and get rid of her waste afterwards, then I’ll walk her back to bed again. I’ll choose her favourite show, make sure it is on full screen and ask her if she wants a glass of water; I know she’ll say no, she doesn’t drink water, and then I’ll get her a glass anyways. I will brush her hair and hold a hot cloth to her face, just like grandad did. 10/4/2021
always before bed I’ll sit here spiralling. it’s not crazy or anything. I’m not hyperventilating. It’s just dull, an ache and nausea. I need to remember to breathe deeply. To not listen to each heart beat. How long will it feel like something is missing you know? I just want to feel like I’m not running out of time. Steady breaths. I hate having butterflies in my stomach. Maggots. Infested in rot. They climb up through my arteries. There is a daisy field of them in my chest. the centre of each flower a dollop of hope held crest to petals of maggots. I’m sick of picking those petals off. Love me, love me not. No one else will do it for me though because for some reason I can’t let people in close enough to smell the decay. Jed and I talked about trust issues in the car, I always thought they meant not trusting people with my secrets; but I’ve always been such an open book spilling my pages to anyone I made eye contact. I learned for me trust issues mean not trusting anyone actually likes me. I know there are people that love me but, do they like me? And why does it never last with anyone. And if it never lasts witg anyone am I the problem? Lots of traumatised brain speech happening here. I just wish I didn’t feel empty and I don’t know why I do and I want to understand it so I can love myself. That’s all I really want
09/03/2022
in many ways i feel over the discussion of the self and how one loves and does or doesn’t eat. i wonder if a vase sits on the desk in a hitmans office and what flowers she enjoys the most. if you do not break the cycle, it will repeat tomorrow. i like forget me nots. and those little daisy’s that everyone has to remind me is a weed. sometimes i want to rip the projection of a changing self off of my walls and the tattoos from my skin as i don’t know what it’ll take for me to change. when my lover talks of a future, which is ever more than my palatable early death, i feel sad and have to explain why suddenly im so tired and i have to steady my breaths under my covers. sometimes i feel like ive already died. and im in that part of the afterlife when people feel okay with the fact that i am gone. they visit me for a memory and then leave me to decay in my bed. i am addicted to how maggots taste, their sweet and salted flavours disguising themselves in marketing schemes like 2 for 1 or $5 for 3. I cannot remember the last time an impact was made on my way of thinking, that carved this headstone that crushes my skull into something inspiring or thought provoking. I simply reject anything good for me. cringe at their chisels and paintbrushes because i am already gone.
14/03/2022
they were smaller when i was 13. a glooming curiosity, I think they appeared at 12. The cells did not die but mutated and spawned in new ways. Perhaps younger, when I discovered gore. I knew of death at too early an age. Not the kind where your body explodes into gold rings and you spawn again to the next level, no. I learned the intricacies of suicide by hanging or gunshot, I learned of beheading and animal torture. I couldn’t have been older than 7. The way the body convulses upon the first few swings, neck contorted at that weird angle. The hands are tense and fingers are somewhat spread. Often they’ll jerk about for a long time, like a fish out of water, only now gasping for air. I hate myself often but cannot fathom why no one cares for me right. Because while I feel I deserve to die, when no one understands how much I ache I feel as though I am deserving of care. I often feel like I’m drowning. I feel unworthy of my life, for it’ll be that of the homeless sleeping outside a mattress shop, a damn waste. I do not choose happiness. I do not choose to wake up when my alarm goes off. Some days I don’t even choose to set the alarm, and some days I take sleeping pills the second I wake up. I simply do not wish to live. What a privileged ghost I am, to have the choice, to look life in her golden eyes and turn her away. So, don’t waste your time on me folks. For I will not ever care about you enough to save myself from dying.
16/06/2022
I felt happy today in a way that felt bare. A lot of my happiness feels like cheap paint over a decaying home, it soon chips off and reveals the rot. It isn’t a feeling of peace, but an ad break from the real show. The feeling I felt today was different, I felt beautifully alone. I left noahs house feeling warm and loved, and on my 4:3 0am venture home I did not question the validity of my lovedness, or wallow in the all consuming bigger picture of my supposed 80 years on this earth. I put my favourite song on repeat and felt like I was in a different dimension, truly. I haven’t known this feeling since I was a child without worry but it greeted me like an old friend with an older soul. And I didn’t even need drugs.
09/09/2022
I feel particularly empty tonight, ive been tied back up in this feeling again. I wish in some ways I was more like the brother I stopped talking to, he just doesn’t care about things. I mourn for my mother’s inner child daily. I think of her no older than 5, her bright curiosities, how she’d smile and her parents. Her first crushes and days she adored in her youth. Her first heartbreak, when she was first diagnosed with bipolar, her abusive partners. Raising 4 kids while falling into lows. Being at a job she hates. I can tell how insecure she is and it kills me because I don’t know if she’ll ever find someone to love her as I would if she were my daughter. She tells me how unfair life has been to her, how she cries alone. It makes me want to die. My dad is also deeply insecure and has fallen into toxic communities for a safe space. The only thing he has ever wanted is a family, when his parents were alive they battled in court to not have him, he was handed to his alcoholic dad, bullied relentlessly and tried to kill himself drinking rat poison at 17. Now his parents are dead, his son will be deployed and im a failing artist. His only kids don’t talk to eachother (bc Vinnie is a psychopath). And when I go beyond the mourning of my parents I mourn for my friends and it just keeps extending outwards. I feel so fragile and I don’t know how to make everyone okay and I wish so desperately I could sacrifice myself but it isn’t how the world works.
27/12/2022
i desperately wish for my wishes to be met. nothing big, not money or success, but consent. i shouldn’t need to fear in these ways. i shouldn’t need another person to bring up my concerns. friendship is love, it is respect, it is family. it isnt unwanted touches and comments. it makes me feel dirty. if it is not noah i don’t want it and i don’t understand how I’ve been unclear and i wish i could just say something to the people who do it. i wish I didn’t fear i was being perceived as dramatic. i wish to be alone. for a long time. i wish to settle as moss upon an eternally unmoving rock and stretch upon its curvature, dreaming softly as the sun kisses my tiny leaves, and only the sun kisses me as a mother upon my forehead. And I’m not touched by kids with their curious hands or treaded upon by a man seeking peace at a mountains peak. There is no one but myself and it is quiet. and may the howling winds be the only voice who whispers itself to me. without a body to impose upon mine.
17/03/2023
It would be a blessing to be a cloud. I would like to become inhuman and without shell. I would like to be a calm collection of mist that rests upon pine and witnesses the life without life ever knowing me.
09/05/2023
there is something unfeeling about drunken words of affirmation. as if inebriation is the only stop in making it to confession. i don’t know. i am getting bad again, as i do around this time of year. i think my medication postponed the rainfall and im not hallucinating again but it’s getting harder to go out. the facade is most frequented with the changes in my life this year. i sobbed to noah recently about the feeling of this bird in my chest. the bird wishes to sing and build nests flourished with flowers and lace and share these things with the moon. though for now it has had its wings clipped and vocal chords severed. i had a nightmare about this bird. it was purple and trapped in a tiny cage with 30 other birds, with no space to extend their wings let alone exhale in comfort. i discovered these birds in panic and opened the cage. this purple bird, disfigured and bloody flew directly into my throat. it clawed and rammed itself into my oesophagus. I tried so gently to remove it from my throat. it’s body was so delicate, fragile as ever. i don’t know. i just feel off again. i want to be without body again. i don’t want to be real. i don’t think i want to die, just rest without responsibility to a social personhood. it would be nice to be a shadow from moon of branches and leaves upon the bedroom of an abandoned home. or the sound waves of passing cars in the night. the gentle low hum of distant rushing rivers. the idea of a childhood home. though if i could die by my hand and become these things in my next breath still id hesitate. ive made little of my life so far. i in presence of others am not a person i like or feel true to. i typed a sentence about hate of my art but that would sadden the bird who made it. i am a pathetic cage to a feathered other (ether.)
18/05/2023
i think despondency misses me because i give her so much attention.
26/05/2023
may has crashed on the shore as it does every single fucking year. i know i literally repeat the same shit over and over. but I’ve done everything I was supposed to. im medicated, i talk about my feelings, i write and sing and fucking paint about them. im at university. im not sleeping in. im getting out the house. i socialise and don’t isolate. i have hobbies. but still, im on the floor with my face in the carpet. this time of year, every year since i was 14 i have rotted. i am so capable of performing for others but i feel so bad for ____ because i don’t have to be anything for him. i can’t speak, only mumble. i cant move. i cant cry. only make poor attempts to exhale this fucking weight in my chest. i remember how bad it was last year before i was medicated properly. i couldn’t walk into a room without finding a fixture i could hang myself from, it was my sole comfort to find an exit in every room. when i tell you i thought about killing myself about every 15 seconds i mean it. it was so fucking unbearable. and the paranoia. still now i believe every car behind me is following me. since i was a kid i couldn’t walk up my driveway at night if i was alone and cars were driving by. id hide behind the poplar tree or stone wall until they’d passed, and this hasn’t changed. I drive around the block until no one is behind me. i just want this one to not last a quarter of my year. i want ____ to know i love him dearly despite my inability to function. this time last year i tried to leave him because I couldn’t bare him having to help me when i was unfixable. I don’t even know. I think when I get my meds again next month I’ll up them a bit as they helped me when they were new in my system last year. Idk. I just feel those old thought patterns creeping back in, as the wind blows under a closed door.
30/11/2025
i worry i will always be nothing. a schizophrenic woman called out to me today in the grocery store. she said “you must keep your distance”. we made eye contact but it was as though she were talking to a mirror. i did not react because i was hardly in my own body enough to notice her.
and as i checked out she was demanding in the aisles “i have received the message i have been waiting for”, but i heard the doubt in her voice. and i was so tired, otherwise i might have asked her what the message was, and how long she had been waiting for it.
i have been taking pills again. and i have been so tired. and i cry when i see women with other women in public. not many tears, but as easy as a breath i am moved to moments before they would burst (and i would feel shame.) i think its because i think womanhood is so beautiful, and kind and though my hearts greatest wound was gifted by a woman i cant help but feel that there is a kind of beauty in womanhood that is inaccessible to me. i feel misshapen, contorted. i feel impure, vile. i feel like i am only pretending to be a girl.
i miss talking to the moon, she now feels to me as a friend i have burdened. even speaking aloud to myself or her, i feel eyes on me and act in accordance (shame). a few months ago i seemed to reach a conclusion that it doesn’t matter what becomes of my life. life will happen to me and it doesn’t matter if i am unhappy, i just have to finish the job. i just have to make it home. and god i am so tired and i am thinking about when my dad used to drive the car and i could sleep knowing id be carried to bed. and as i tried to sleep i could count the corners and bends and guess how many until we reached the driveway. but now i am driving the car myself, and im so, so tired.
but it’s okay. i just have to make it to the end. i’d like to think maybe, if i try hard enough, i can take a back seat in my body, and let some hyper real simulation of myself drive until the end. and i can just look out the window, which i have always loved dearly. home to me is 3am on the empty motorway, head hung out the window, the ether in my body opens for the cold air and silhouettes of the hills.
home is also zopiclone and being alone.
and the feeling of writing a song that tethers to the ether in my chest . and going to shows, and playing shows. god. live music just turns me into firecracker. i wish i had more confidence at shows. i see woman dancing together and wish desperately that they might invite me to dance with them.
truthfully, i don’t think ill ever make it. and it’s okay. i knew from a very young age that id take my own life and id do it in a way that felt beautiful. in the ocean, in a sheer white dress. id weigh 48kgs and id inflate an air mattress and put a floral sheet on it. id float to the middle of the wellington harbour on a warm evening in the summer. And when i reach the centre of the harbour id inject myself with heroin, smoke a cigarette and imagine the city lights to be boats. I’ve always loved doing this. then, when i felt ready, maybe at the first instance of dawn. i would slit my wrists and die beautifully,
my granny died recently, and days before she left us she told us that she was worried that she couldn’t find time to clean her room before she passed. she didn’t know she was too unwell to ever return home. and she was so desperate to see the garden just one more time. i miss her a lot.
i sat in her room and sung to her after she fell into a coma. id hold her hand and sing her billie holiday, the ink spots, ella fitzgerald and the pied pipers. i could have sworn she grabbed my hand once and opened her eyes, just for a moment.
I’ll never forget when she was really sick, she collapsed on the floor, and for an hour I spoon fed her chicken soup. Or when she overdosed, I sat in the ambulance with her and held her while she cried at the thought of leaving us. It gets hard having the mother I do. Not for reasons unusual, but because I often see her as my child.
I’d like to hover above people and study them, see what they teach me about myself. Fall in love with the kindness of some, fascinated with the evil of others. This body is a burden. The burden of being liked, the burden of being a burden.
Maybe if I was never born but always lived. Maybe if my shifts of observation ended in dispersing the sun rays to colour the other watchers pink.
Maybe if I loved myself.
Maybe if I didn’t live only for approval, or to prove myself.
I am wearing the skin of an artist but this organ isn’t mine, I mean this.
