--- date: 2019-10-10 weight: 6 --- Okay, I lied. Just a little bit. > Yes. You didn't dissociate through the entire thing. There was no small part of that scene that was horribly, terrfyingly intentional. What really woke me up was watching this person-who-was-me somehow go into 'fuck it' mode and tear the shit out of his right arm from one end to the other with a very sharp, very new razor blade. It was like the rush of coming to your senses after a nightmare, the pulling forward and the re-anchoring, the flood of adrenaline in preparation for flight. It wasn't necessarily the cut that woke me. It was the second or so before when I entered that 'fuck it' mode, and I was too slow, too confused and frightened to stop this person-who-was-me from pulling the ultimate embarrassing act: trying to commit suicide while watching a dumb '90s science fiction show. > It was a slow awakening. You weren't just too slow, you were not fully awake yet. The dream of dissociation was still clinging, gauzy, to you.
V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
I can remember it so clearly. > You can remember it because you still live it. Yes. I still feel that slide into someone-else-ness, and then the snap back when drawn back into self-ness. Back into here and now. > You felt that last night. Yes. > You felt that slide into dissociation, felt the folding blade click into place with a vague sense of surprise, then jolted as it drew across your leg. Yes. > You felt that same jolt of humiliation and pain and anger and fear. Yes. > Especially this time. You cut too deep. Your usual superficial-yet-still-painful scratch had turned into something of a flay. Yes. > You needed twelve stitches. You lied and said you dropped your knife while cleaning it. Yes. > Are you writing about this now because you were, on some subconscious level, working up to this most recent little climax? I really don't know. > Tell me what happened after. I started whispering James' name-- > Both times? Both times. I started whispering his name, then eventually swallowed the miniscule bit of pride I had left and called out loud enough to wake him up. "Can you come help me?" I asked. It took asking two more times before he got up. I found out later that he thought I had made a mess and just wanted help cleaning up, thinking that I should just clean up my own messes. A good point, that. Though the rest of the night in March is still sort of a blur --- I hadn't totally gotten out of the state that I was in, just woken up enough to engage with the mechanics --- I do remember James helping me to clean and bandage my arm as we sat on the floor of the bathroom, the dog occasionally wandering in and out. The whole time, I was still sobbing, blubbering out, "I don't want to leave you, I don't want to leave Zephyr, I don't know why I did that, I'm sorry" over and over again.