I think I’m losing my mind… oh wait nvm

How the fuck do people do this shit? When do you have time to unwind? I would say sorry for my language but swearing is the only way I feel these days, haven't got anymore energy for anything else.

Do you ever look at yourself, like truly look deep into your own eyes in a mirror and realise that you probably aren't worthy of what you have? You aren’t smart or lovable, the only reason you've made it this far is bobbing along on the pity of others.

You aren't good at your job, look you can barely spell, your grammar is shit and who would listen to you anyways. You call yourself a creative and this is what you do? You were too weak and not talented enough to be an actual writer, so you've taken to working for the man. Anytime you call yourself a creative, an angel dies and a starving artist gives up because they are in the same category as you.

Your parents don't like you. Look at how different you are from the rest of your family they probably don't even want you near, they wouldn't miss you if you left. Just picked up one day and was in the wind by dawn, if you sacrificed yourself to martyrdom right now no one would miss you. They would just be relieved you aren’t taking up space anymore. Even your friends wouldn't mourn, your death would affect no one and you will be forever forgotten leaving nothing in your wake, no legacy, no good memories, just one less space in the cemetery.

Oh, I’m just bleeding again.

by Giesle Thompson

The ins and outs of me

Pink is a soft color that brightens the day, because sometimes Red is too harsh. The pink tutus that if combined with jeans looks like a fashion disaster. Pink used to surround me and enveloped me in a cloud of cotton candy. One that I had to thread through as I tried to learn the ins and out of the world and society. But I was six.
Pink was what I saw when I woke up and saw the princess doll my mother scraped through to try to get me something normal to play with.
Pink was like a thorny teddy bear that I hugged tightly.
Blue was like a fresh new breath of air. Like when you chew a minty gum and then drink water. It felt like I was soaring through the skies but with limits.
Blue wasn’t a color that my parents liked. The blue toy car that suddenly got ‘lost’ the next day after I had gotten it. And later found in the trash bin destroyed.
It wasn’t the dolls they gave me, why did I need a toy car? Not the baby dolls that sat in my room untouched.
Blue was too brash for a girl as delicate as me. Blue was too much of a violent color like a bruise that I would receive if I were to play soccer. But blue was just perfect for a girl with a boyish voice like me.
I was eight when I almost threw out all my dresses and skirts as I hated how they looked on me. My cousin's quinceanera is when things began to spiral. As I stared at my cousins and saw how beautiful and feminine they looked in their body. How confident they felt in their bodies. How they wore their clothes and took care of themselves. And how lady-like they acted.
I was eight when I thought something was wrong with me. Was something wrong with me? Was it wrong that I preferred blue over pink sometimes. How sometimes I hated being called a girl when I didn’t feel like one.

I was eight when my parents lectured me for three hours about how I was a girl and that I shouldn’t go around telling people that I didn’t want them to call me that. And I shut down for a while. Holding on to the thorny pink, silently crying as I realized I was being dressed up as something I wasn’t to every party. When my parents told me to speak in a higher pitched voice in order to be ‘cuter’.
The dreaded dresses and skirts. How I was prohibited from playing soccer with my cousins, because it wasn’t lady-like. How I couldn’t play with his video games because it wasn’t perceived as feminine.
That continued till I was in middle school. Where for a reason I started going around calling myself Alex. Not because I hated my name. But because of the duality. And neutrality.
Middle school was where blue was prevalent to my life. When I ‘accidentally’ got gum stuck my hair so that my parents would cut it. And I tried to get rid of the automatic switch my tone of voice had whenever someone other than my parents were nearby.
Blue was there when I could sit on a chair without having to cross my legs. Blue was prevalent when I wore jeans and a T-shirt instead of a skirt and shirt.

Then High school came around and Pink began to battle with Blue. Clashing every once in a while. I punched and kicked Pink each time I thought about it. My relationship with Blue was tight. And I wasn’t going to betray blue as I had fought for years to experience just a second of it.
It was a bloody battle of custody over my body, it caused many sleepless nights and late night cries as I lost myself. And I felt like a fraud. Like an imposter. . Was it wrong to like both

Pink and Blue? I had to choose one. I had to choose one. One had to be it. Just one. One. One. One. One. One. God dammit it had to be one. And how much I hated it.
As my parents forced me to be with Pink, and my heart yearned for Blue. And society forced Pink, and I just wanted a moment with Blue.
As I tried to reject Pink with all my heart because I had to choose Blue. Because I couldn’t just abandon Blue, not after they showed me freedom. A freedom I didn’t really experience with Pink, at least not until the end of my high school education.
In my mind I told myself I was with Blue while my parents thought I was with Pink. But at least the mental struggle was gone. I was with Blue. And if I was okay with Blue, that was all that mattered.
My last year of high school is when Pink came back to me. When I started to get lured in by Pink. The beautiful skirts, the dresses, and the make up. Which no longer felt like they were being forced on me, but was I betraying Blue?
There were days and nights when I hated the feminine parts on me and I wanted them gone. Where they disgusted me and where I felt like I just did not belong. I was with Blue. Then there were moments when I loved them. I loved how the skirts and dresses fit, and got excited over makeup, upsetting me for rejecting Blue.
Blue was the freedom I fought for for years, it was the freedom I fought towards with my parents as they called me unusual and weird, as they got mad at me for not wanting to be with Pink. To embrace Pink. Was I about to just reject it all?
Did I suffer for years, rejecting Pink, only to reject Blue too? It was to the point that I didn’t want to see myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to see Pink or Blue.

They were just colors, but why did they have to make my heart hurt. Why did they have to stab me in the chest with the expectations of society. Why did I start to hate my short hair, why did I hate the make up.
Am I a fake?

I am nobody.
Who am I?
What was my Identity?
Am I a fraud to society?
Was I betraying my past self who fought hard to finally be with Blue?
These constant questions made me spiral to the point of depression where I couldn’t even answer my name.
What was the point? Who was I?
It wasn’t until my freshman year of college when I got tired of myself. Tired of feeling this way. Why couldn’t I be with both Pink and Blue? Sometimes I wanted to be with Blue and that was fine. Sometimes I wanted to be with Pink and that was valid.
It took months before I became comfortable with these feelings without feeling like an outsider, or like I was betraying myself. It took months before I was comfortable with wearing skirts and dresses, and wearing makeup. I got comfortable with wearing Blue.
Genderfluid. Genderfluid. Pink or Blue. It didn’t matter. It took years to comprehend that sometimes I hated the body I was born with, and sometimes I loved it. How I felt feminine sometimes, and masculine other times.

It took years to realize that it wasn’t that I hated Pink. It was just that being strictly with Pink felt suffocating. Being a female strictly was suffocating when some days I didn’t want to be that. It took years to accept that it was okay.
That it was okay to feel this way, even though sometimes it felt like it was not.
Now it doesn’t matter. Whether I am with Pink or Blue. I can be with both. Some days I may be with Pink more, and in others I may be with Blue. Or some days we are with Purple. My name no longer sends me into a spiral of depression, and I come to love dearly. But there are moments when A.C is what I prefer the most, and become more confident in.
To many they are just colors. But to me they were what caused me to question how I was to identify as.
Pink is no longer suffocating. It’s as free as Blue. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

by Anahi Cabrera

NEGATIVE SPACE

…

when you see a “weed” spiraling up between a concrete fault line, do you ask yourself a question. the same question i have while smoothing aloe vera over my overheated cheeks in the summertime: “Why are you here? You, specifically.”

if i could dig a shovel into that crack, free the roots and worms, and repave the streets with the preserved soil i would surely find my answer.

…

a thirty dollar serum infused with Jeju Island green tea used to feel like the pinnacle of indulgence and physical luxury. it cooled and smoothed my bumpy inflamed skin that i’d relentlessly pick, punishing my grease-filled pores.

it was already hard enough to look at me.

the way my grandmother would wince when she looked at her cherub-cheeked baby that was suddenly changing. the dark blemishes marked her own aging, and signified all the impurity brewing within me too. it was the way her lips would snap back into a neutral line just as quickly as they contorted in repulsion when she remembered i was still her family. this was a catalyst for my obsession with bodilessness.

…

a feeling that seemed exclusive to cinema and animation could be achieved here, if i connect my headspace, to my heartspace. my heartspace to my core, and to my womb.

sitting on the sofa, my body liquified and melted into the gaps between brown leather cushions. the sofa was a space in my home that already defied materiality, my stepdad’s hard-earned credit score and consequent Rent-A-Center purchase, etched with a permanent marker by a child who should have been allowed to make more mistakes. the wrath directed at my little sister is a prime example why i am always seeking escape. to breach systems and cycles ingrained into DNA.

this knack for disappearing is generational.

i can choose to call the butt groove in my grandfather’s itchy blue armchair a “depression”. i can choose to be welcomed by its warmth, or disturbed by the energy, still lingering. i can choose to see meaning in every frayed thread, to feel the presence of its ghosts, or i can choose to see an armchair. Granddad chooses to let everything too complicated seep into the foam filling, dozing off to The Temptations.

if the body is an avatar, if life is played like a game, damage can be transmuted into power-ups. the trauma stored in my hips can be caught within my breath and released through my lips. pain will be indestructible still, but mutable.

by Amaya Branche

“Nameless Pain”

i don't know my body,

only my body.

the way to know my mind

is to write.

after writing,

i gaze at these words,

feel pains and joy (and more),

then,

confirm that i'm alive.

but my body is more complicated

than my mind.

it changes,

contrary to my will.

sometimes it is bloody,

sometimes it is painful,

sometimes it is just a lump of meat,

sometimes it is just ripples of skin,

sometimes it is like a demon

that dwells in the details,

sometimes it is like an ugly sculpture

that no one wants to make.

i want to prove that

i'm not a woman, just a human.

i need to prove that

i don't need any gender.

i crave to prove that

i'm just an invisible smoke

that has a shape of a human.

what is freedom?

who is me?

my pain is only my pain.

the theory to solve my pain

is nowhere.

someone's theory

might be a knife

to kill me.

my theory

might be a blanket

to cocoon someone.

i don't know my body,

only my body.

24 hours, 365 days,

i'm always with my body

that i don't know the most.

but i can't escape

from this broken glass,

i can't change to the hazy horizon,

because

i'm writing,

by using a part of

my (cracked, crumbled, lonely) body.

by Yuu Ikeda