2024年10月12日
Does the shame ever go away? It's barely day 2 and I'm sick of it already. Yesterday I thought about it too long and broke down. Every time I close my eyes I see him, cock-eyed and grinning and close-up. I wore the same jacket that I wore that night because it's lightweight and big, it's comfy, it's my favorite jacket, and it burned. My body tingled in it. It was molested. I smelled it and it smelled foreign, like nothing else in the apartment. I almost wanted to burn it off me.
My body feels strange. Exercising, masturbating, eating, laying down. It feels strange no matter what I do, and it feels like punishment. I'm not crying too often, I just feel confused. Tripping over my own feet in a rapidly whirling room and wondering why it won't stop. I look at myself in the mirror and think, "beautiful boy." It's what he said to me. I don't feel confident. I am meat, I am a fleshlight, I am silicone, I am filled to the brim.
I had to comply or I would have gotten my lights punched out. I'm perfectly fine outwardly, maybe my face looks a little more gaunt and pale, but there's a fat winding snake of barbed wire heating up hot in my gut, and I want to tear my flesh open to rip it right out of me. Sometimes it shrinks and crawls underneath other areas of my body and I can never stop it, just feel it writhe, itch, and if it's merciful, fade away.
Seeing others offer help and support makes me want to retract inwards, have my spine and my ribs burst out of my back. I'm smiling, genuinely, while it happens, though. It's too kind, too sweet, and I love you all so much, and it's hard. It's hard that this happens and that it's constant, and that the natural human response is to offer care and love because it's so prevalent. And it happened to me, like I never thought it would.
I don't know what to do. I'm not saying that out of helplessness or despair. I just feel static. I feel hollow. I know I'm still myself and that no part of me has been taken away, but the "who" and "what" of the person I am doesn't take the same shape anymore. I have to walk with my friends at my side, mangled, dragging this newly corrupted body across burning asphalt. For now, though, I just want to hold myself and be alone for a bit.
I love you. I'll be back soon.