Narcissism is
A subtle beast waiting to
Devour me whole.
Narcissism is
A subtle beast waiting to
Devour me whole.
I failed my board exam. I had spent months studying, and done everything I thought I could and I should. I bombed it.
I have to retake it in June, and hope to still graduate residency in time. I’m really upset about it.
I pray that it’s a glitch, a electronic error on the part of the testing administrator, and this will all be a bad dream. But it brings me back to dark places.
I’ve spent the past few months writing reflective journal entries about my life. I am starting to recognize how many harmful patterns in my life are the result of what I went through as a kid, terrified and humiliated and neglected, beaten by my brother and verbally abused and sometimes physically abused by my dad, neglected by my mom, and made to watch her have sex when she and her boyfriend were drunk, and all the kids were in one hotel room together.
I was starting to heal, as difficult as it all was. Now I’m questioning myself all over again. And I have to go back into study mode, where I have to sit at a computer all day, mentally roasting myself while trying to stay focused.
I thought I had gotten to a place where I could get back to my writing, creative and spiritual interests, and move past all the hurt and shame and pain of the past. But it’s still here, and I have to live in that pit for another three months.
I’m reminded of this gut wrenching scene, Matt Damon and Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting: https://youtu.be/ZQht2yOX9Js
For all the internalizers out there, the ones who always had to be strong, smile and say that nothing was wrong, they were fine and didn’t need anything. For those who saw what no one else saw, and bore what no one should bear. For the lonely and the devastated, for all who suffer in silence when they want to scream. For the marks that don’t show and the wounds that won’t heal.
Being an abused and neglected kid, you never leave the pit. It stays in you. I relate to this sequence from Tom Kong’s Mister Miracle, because I always want someone to see the good in me, accept the hurt I’ve felt, and help me to move through it. I have to become that person for myself. I have to hug that boy, and tell him he’s loved and wanted and doesn’t have to prove anything.
My face doesn’t work.
When my family sees me,
They worry, “what has
Happened?” Nothing. This
Is just who I am now. This
Shell is all I am.
He flitters and he
Flutters through my mind all day
Long, and I want to
Suck him dry. Where is
He? Soaking here on my own,
This can’t all go to
Waste. How he murmurs
Nasty phrases in my ear
When we are fucking,
My deepest muscles
Tighten. He makes me feel like
A goddess and a
Whore, newborn and as
Old as time. We vibrate, and
Transcend existence.
Grandfather has been
Dead fifteen years. I put on
My mask today, and
Smelled him in my stale
Sweat, like a revenant. Deep
In my glands, lingers
The old man. Coming
For my youth. Vitality.
Aroma of death.
“Rational truth, root of evil and good.
Round me flew the flaming sword;
Round her snowy whirlwinds roar’d,
Freezing her veil, the mundane shell.
I rent the veil where the dead dwell:
When weary man enters his cave,
He meets his Saviour in the grave.
Some find a female garment there,
And some a male, woven with care,
Lest the sexual garments sweet
Should grow a devouring winding sheet.
One dies! alas! the living and dead!
One is slain! and one is fled!
In vain-glory hatcht and nurst,
By double Spectres, self accurst.” William Blake
I am no one. But
I lift my shirt, and now I
Am your everything.
Never was she taught
To hide that which she was; her
Power, to be shared.
The strangeness of the
Nude form. By undressing, we
Become someone else.
My binary logic:
Nude woman is a gift, nude
Man is a threat. Man
Is ugly, woman
Is beautiful. The way it
Is and will remain.
Leaking nudes without
Consent, a violation,
Worse than a theft. The
Genie, released, the
Damage is done. The tree from
which Eve ate revealed
Her, like how after
Orgasm, you think so clear.
Ham, cursed by his Dad’s
Cock. So it goes. What
We hide from outside is our
Similarity.
Defeated Gorgon
Dread with one glimpse of these
Incredible tits.