Crueldad

4-feb-2016

To be cruel: to inflict suffering unto others. Sometimes cruelty accrues a personal gain, but sometimes others' suffering is its own reward; the knowing other humans endure suffering for our sake. The knowing of others' suffering.

You keep referring to Freud inasmuch as his consideration of sadism as satisfaction of primalmost drives. You seem to ignore Freud's tendency to regard drives as inherently sexual. Such a take on sexuality at large and the human psyche is grossly reductive. Yet, I keep thinking about it. Cruelty may tie in properly with a sexual component, but how can I be sure.

——

6-feb-2016

Puberty is cruelty itself. Children have no moral compass and therefore develop an astonishing capacity for cruelty. Mix in the hormonal turbulence that comes along with the development of a body and the result is astonishingly violent. Most preteens tend to direct their violence towards themselves, but not all. I think 'bullies' stem from violent households. When pain is inflicted unto them, they compensate their self hatred with external brutality. This may or may not result on the release of primalmost drives.

When we reached puberty Megan learned how my love for her could be exploited. She developed an uncanny fluency in cruelty and suffering. She took it upon her to inflict pain, suffering and despair unto me. She knew I would endure whatever came from her and so I did. She hit my face and arms; sometimes scarring me, sometimes not. Once she was wiser as to leaving marks on my body, Megan switched to a more efficient abuse technique: emotional abuse. Emotions leave no bruises and carry a longer-term effect.  I still have a mark from a lighter on my hip. She said she wanted to mark me forever to remind me how worthless I was. The scar eventually shifted its meaning as these things usually do.

She yelled at me and bossed me around. Initially I did her math homework and she wrote my book reports. Back then she had a way with words. When she learned cruelty I carried the weight of the two of us. I was not happy to do it but not entirely unhappy either. She would belittle, insult and abuse me. I endured her abuse gratefully because a crumb of her attention was better than her absence. Doing double the homework was just an extra expense of my energy. Love provides a sort of energy that makes me endure.

I was thirteen or so when some girl approached me at a restroom and tried to bully me. Megan yanked her by the ponytail straight into the ground, spat on her face and said something along the lines of "touch her again and I will kill you". She kicked her stomach several times, then took my hand and led me elsewhere. I was unable to comprehend the dissonance between Megan's compulsion to protect me and her abuse. It was nor an act of love but, rather a display of her grasp on me. I was grateful for becoming the target of her violence and her protection. Other girls bullied me because they found me ugly. Megan tormented me, though I still don't understand why and neither does she.

——

14-ago-2019

When I received an unfavorable diagnosis, Megan drove from California to Chicago within two days. She looked pale and spent hours upon hours without eating. I asked her why she would do that. I guess she thought inflicting pain upon herself would earn her some sort of redemption. I was not angry at her, but she thought I should be.

She asked me to show her the scar on my hip. She tried to kiss it, but I didn't let her. The gesture seemed corny and unnecessary. I think I was still in shock. I was well aware of the imminent decay of my body and I sort of expected my mind to go simultaneously. I now know this is not the case. I was granted the mercy of keeping lucidity throughout this ordeal.

——

17-ago-2019

I want out. My body has always been a burden, but illness makes it worse. I say out as if I could be me outside this body. Body as a prison of the soul etcetera. Soul. I would like to hope; to have a certainty that I am more than continuous decay. The 'me' that remains after death is memories or dreams or these words. And all of them become distorted over time. The concept I hold of myself shifts and distorts, is always incomplete. You could never know me as I do and I guess that is a kind of tragedy.

When I chose to become fully open to you and hold no secrets I did not feel safe or reassured. What I say about myself is never 'complete', never quite it. I can twist and break language: touching is another way of speaking, hitting, biting, hurting. You told me once how people interacting try violently to assert themselves and be-recognized by others. That kind of tragedy. We cannot communicate what we are.

Complete openness entails I hide no secrets from you. There I am: I openly share my shame, my fear, but do not communicate them. Narrating my experiences does not communicate them; it tells my reading of them, my construction of meaning because I am thwarted by language. I may touch you, but touching is not speaking. Joining lips and tongues and teeth is kissing and that is a means of communication. I panic because of my desire to conceptualize myself and remain as a concept, but I am not only that and I am not only your ever-distorting memories of me. Memory is an illness.

Yo

8-nov-2015

eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes you said you had never seen eyes like mine but my eyes eyes eyes are common
is it their color
or their expressiveness
you said I look sad and I do because I am
so that was a useless observation
my eyes green blue red blue red

frat boy wisdom:
"blonde girls with blue eyes are batshit crazy"
amen.

10-nov-2015

I usually am more poetic when drunk like that last time: eyes eyes and so on. "Eyes" seemed like a meaningful word at the time. You showed me a poem called You and me and told me it was the first time you were able to write in years. I gave you formal comments on it: some grammar improvements. I did not understand its meaning until you went stanza by stanza and explained it to me. You often complain about being misunderstood but make no effort whatsoever to become clear. Comes with the territory, I guess. Wish I could tell you.

3-nov-2016

Today is your birthday and we had a long phonecall. Sadness clings to your voice. "I am sadness", you say. I don't know what to do with that statement. Our kindredness turns our sufferings into parallels. My pain is yours and likewise. I told you about that poem from last year. When I read it again it became clearer: you do not write about events, but about emotional textures. I wish we needn't inflict such violence upon our emotions. Yet we do. Your happiness is cryptic, whereas your sadness is ever clearer. Something similar happens to me. Happiness seems too much an abstraction and sadness is always concrete. Pink is unreal in front of gray.

It is still hard carrying things I wish I had said. When I told Megan about my love for her she wasn't one bit surprised. She kissed my lips lightly and then said she could never become what I need. I wanted not to need her. Loving her is not a call for satisfaction. Not a requirement. I think she was surprised when I told her about you—you made out with a boy!— and I still can't explain it. It felt right at the moment and though I don't regret it, I wish it had happened in a different way. We were two ill people fondling each other's illness. I found that night in my horrible sofa how bodies can connect and how illness tries to heal itself. It is an illness, isn't it?

4 dic-2018

During the past months I had some cognitive misfires. Words separating from their meaning and shapes intertwining. But shapes should not intertwine in real life. Shapes are shapes and not love and words are not sounds. I felt scared and called you because the same thing happened to my mom. You didn't answer.

Megan

14/3/2015

Girl on Girl Violence

Disgusting. The first line of Plath's Lesbos: "Viciousness in the kitchen!" as if she were announcing a fight. I hate the fact that I compete with men, but I hate even further how I am forced into competition with women. Should I say "fellow women"? Does my biology tie me to them? I am a disgusting person. I am filled with disgusting fluids and bones and marrow. I am full of disgusting hatred and foul feelings. Who the fuck cares. My goddess-like figure is all-at-once disgusting to me. Entire epics can and should be written on disgust. I am disgusted of everything around me. You. My words, my sister. My mother. She fucked me into existence. Existence was inflicted unto me. Disgusting.

Girl-on-girl. Why do they call me a girl. I am disgusted by being a girl, but I would hate even more to be a man.

—

23/10/2016

tie a string to my heart
and call it a tendril
next morning I'll leave
a note on your windshield

"I was here where you are
remember me
laugh at coincidences
carve your name
unto a sycamore"

I will tie my destiny to yours
I will become we,
dissolve unto your skin,
carry you within me,
craft you into existence
with my words

my collision with you,
a catastrophe

—

21/11/2017

When we were five, Megan took me to her attic to show me something. I was scared, so she took my hand. I felt a warmth that spread from my right hand all the way to the bottom of my feet. A seed was planted in me that day. She became my lungs. I learned to love in seconds. I asked if she felt it too. She didn't understand the question.

—

2/1/2018

They use the term "unrequited" to describe my love for her. To requite is, in a way, to reward. She does not love me like I love her. We came to accept this fact very early on. She is my one and only love; I am not hers. It hurts, but it hurt way more when she wasn't in my life. Some things hurt by their presence and others by their absence; she hurts either way, so I decided to love both ways of pain. Pain makes me woman. Pain makes me real.

—

3/6/2019

"I think I left your backseat"
sounds on the radio as she drives me home
her eyes on the road
hands ten and two

she worries too much
rides the bumps slowly
so it will not hurt me

she asks me if I still feel it
and my loins fire up

do I still feel what

that thing you felt
when we were little
what was it

it was love

has it faded

not one bit

Más fragmentos

2-nov-2019

I was raised at an all-girls school. All-girls. A bunch of girls I hate, some I liked, some I loved. They say they may have to take one or both of my breasts. I am a woman or a girl and having breasts is woman-ly. Body makes me a girl and suffering makes me woman. My breasts are supposed to attract suitors and feed my offspring. Attract because men will look at my body and deem me worthy of attention or not. My offspring should feed off of my body. Most of the all-girls are already married and some have children. I grew up with a group of horrible girls who tormented me because my body refused to blossom along with theirs.

I will not bear children because my loins are barren. Barren. Like fields. I convinced myself I did not want to bear them, but who's to say now. You once told me a story of how you cheated on a girlfriend and how you felt the hands of that other girl like talons holding your loins and how you could not feel anything beyond her hand-talons within you. You were not sure if you felt regret or accomplishment or both at once. We marvel at how we can experience contradiction. Did she hold your loins to harm you? Did you want her to hurt you so you would feel less guilty? We learned to link pain with forgiveness — we may do harm, but being hurt by someone else offsets our transgression.

I wonder if the collapse of my body is supposed to offset the damage I have done to others. I don't think it would be enough, but who am I to say. Who am I to dispel their talons from my loins.

—

23-oct-2019

Sometimes I perceive pain as noise and it becomes bearable. I have perceived meaning lagging behind the sound of words and don't know what to do with it. It scares me, like that nightmare wherein all colors turned to shades of red. All was red — even feelings, somehow. I knew it was a dream, but I felt red-scared of everything. I was eleven or so. I think the dissociative episodes started after that nightmare.

—

21-oct-2019

Pangs: of hunger, guilt, lust, pain. A physical reaction.

"J'ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité." (I dreamt of you so often you become unreal.)
—Robert Denses

I don't think most suicidal people wish for death, but for non-existence. Death seems too much an abstraction; too underdetermined, yet too scary to wish for. Death is a threshold without the possibility of return, and most deaths are painful in one way or the other: the body clings frenetically to life. I have seen long-agonizing humans still clinging to agony; except for acute moments of crisis, the body remains lethargic — passive, even.

I wonder how it will feel when I die. Will I cling to this body, as if I were something different from it? Will something mine remain other than these pages? Will I experience hope? Hope. I am weary of that word; the amulets they brought me, having me in their thoughts, refusing to look me in the eye. I think they are also tired of caring for me. I know. It must be exhausting.

—

20-oct-2019

Megan came to visit and brought some pizza hidden inside her backpack. I knew it would make me sick, but I wanted to taste it. I vomited for two hours, but Megan and I laughed the whole time. Small victories, I guess.

—

Fragmenta

To thank you would profane you —

There are moments when Gratitude is a desecration —

—Emily Dickinson a Abigail Cooper

L. Sott me envió desde Chicago los diarios que escribió desde 2015 hasta el momento en que decidió morir en el 2019. El paquete incluía una breve nota y tres libretas: una amarilla que abarca sus anotaciones desde febrero de 2015 hasta mayo de 2017; una rosa, de julio de 2017 a febrero de 2018 con varias páginas en blanco; una negra desde febrero de 2018 hasta noviembre de 2019. Las notas incluyen entradas de diario tradicionales, bocetos de poema, reflexiones breves, citas de otros textos y notas de asuntos pendientes como listas de supermercado o quehaceres domésticos.

Sott me veía como una especie de editor. Varias veces me envió sus poemas para mis comentarios antes de presentarlos en clase. Supongo que confiarme sus diarios obedece a ello. Tengo entendido que dejó varias notas de suicidio a personas cercanas. Creo, también, que planeaba su muerte y el envío de sus diarios desde que recibió el diagnóstico de su enfermedad. Después de la fecha en que la conocí —octubre de 2015—, las entradas y fragmentos me incluyen por nombre o en un impersonal "you".

Hasta donde sé, las únicas publicaciones que hizo en vida fueron a través de mí y con mi intervención editorial. Antes de su muerte me asignó la prerrogativa de publicar fragmentos. No me siento con derecho a la elección de lo que deba o no publicarse. Pero L. me adscribió la responsabilidad de hacerlo. El hecho de que los textos a veces están escritos bajo un influjo emocional fuerte y bajo el progresivo desgaste de su cuerpo dificulta mi tarea: la caligrafía se deteriora, hay páginas rotas y algunas palabras simplemente son incomprensibles. Algunas de las entradas no tienen fecha, pero el cambio en la escritura o la tinta me hacen pensar que se escribieron en días distintos.

La llegada de los diarios me produjo un impacto similar a la noticia de su diagnóstico y su suicidio. L. Sott me instruyó que publicara los textos que me parecieran relevantes en mi propio blog y los interviniera si era necesario. Mi forma de agradecer, por así decirlo, su presencia, consiste en obedecer sus instrucciones. Todavía soy incapaz de medir la influencia que sus palabras tienen en las mías. Ojalá que mi labor con sus textos sirva como un tributo digno a la contribución que L. Sott tuvo en mi vida.

———

15-nov-2019

I decided. Decided. It isn't pain, but numbness that will bury me. It is not how my body—"aw, this old thing?"—has failed, nor the pain. It hurts to write but I insist on using a pen. My legs don't work anymore and my face doesn't resemble what I think should be my face. So I decided. Decided. I trust you will receive my diaries and know what to do with them. I hoped to see you again before this and am sad that we could not make it happen, but please feel no remorse for my decision. I entrust you with my words and thoughts as a way of thanking you for your presence these past years. I hope you will lead a bountiful life. Count on my eternal gratitude—may it not desecrate you.

Love,
L

—

10-nov-2019

James Joyce — Ulysses, 18:

"yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so long he made me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this one anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the least thing Ill get him to keep that up and Ill take those eggs beaten up with marsala"

They removed my right breast because tumors made them "unviable". That is what they called them. Unviable. Viable for what I do not know. I beg for touch, but my skin has become too sensitive and I find touch unbearable. I feel lonely because I am alone in this entire body. I beg for touch, not relief. Being touched, felt, held. I beg beg beg. They feed me pills and I sleep most days. The other day my sister took my hand and I felt her trembling. Her trembling hurt me, not metaphorically: my skin hurt from her but I held tight to her because all I could feel was her hand.

I wonder if you still feel sad. You were sad when I met you. I am dying and sad. I wonder if your hand would hurt me. I know it would but wish it would not, because holding is the only thing we can do now. Hold. I will hold.

—