blood & gunk

DETONATE 100820

The past few weeks have been hell, like the hell inside the hell. I'm doing well, I'm doing badly, whichever you prefer - because it doesn't matter how I'm doing as long as you read this. I deeply hope this finds you physically well, mentally present and emotionally capable of embracing a sentimental whirlwind that's been travelling distances looking for you.

I know what follows may defy the kind of person I try to represent or aspire to seem to be because at the point I've reached I've failed to find a singular other way to approach you with what I currently have. I write this with an agony, a longing; a ruthless longing that runs deeply; to hear your breath in mine, to feel the chafing of your hand against a surface, to watch your lashes meeting as you blink, to see your lips move, to memorise the way your cheeks could hollow slightly as you speak, to sculpt your shoulders and arms with my hands, to let myself - a million, million disintegrating atoms yearning for stability - sink and sleep in your eyes. I think of things I don't understand and recall glimpses of images I don't remember seeing and hear words that have never been said - all of which circulate around you, involve you, resemble you, that consume me until there's nothing left but you.

I don't know how all of this happened - how you're suddenly the only person I think about when I eat and when I swim and when I listen to something old or something new and when I brush my teeth and when I go to bed knowing I can't sleep and when I buy deodorant and when I try to cook and when I write and when I'm at work and when I hear Trump. The only time there's nothing and nobody is when one of the patients has a heart attack and I'm doing chest presses or preparing an adrenaline shot or looking breathlessly for a thriving heart rhythm. And when it's all over, you're there again. You're there in the room with us; me, nurses, a doctor and the patient - looking at me, looking through me, and you never go away.

There were times when I thought something had happened to you. I'm that person. I'll brick myself with my own feelings and ideas and frustrations and obsessions so knowingly and willingly despite everything. I still remember last year in August when mum travelled and I called you, lying in her bed, telling you I'm almost sure she's not coming back and you said my feelings were compounded by the hospital's environment, so if people were always terminally ill and dying in my department, I was unfortunately bound to subconsciously subject my beloved ones to the same fate. I try to focus on that memory when I have to, but I've eventually found that I naturally subject everything to doom, in my head, and while nothing might happen to things, the torment is tenacious, and it's all mine. There was one time when I thought you died, other times when I thought you were sick, and countless times when I thought you got into an accident.

Again, I don't know how all of this happened/happens. You gave me something radioactive weeks ago, I don't know why you did it, and I don't know where you are now after what you said, but I've been bombarding since then, going places I've never been, feeling things I've always feared, thinking things I've never heard in my head. I even asked people to walk in my head, see everything I have of you around my mind, give an opinion, guide me through. I ceaselessly tried to explain to them the inexplicable, draw the intangible, make them hear distant whispers that I'm probably just imagining. I walked with strangers talking about you. Asking my friends for advice for "a little guy problem". I've never had guy problems. It flattered my vanity thinking I reigned over everyone because I always figured my things out. But you. What have you done to me?

I'm always thinking - always defending you, always blaming myself for something I can't pinpoint. I'm thinking on behalf of me and you and my parents and your parents and my friends and your friends and the street cats and the stray dogs and the walnut trees around my house and the kids you teach and the strangers I meet and the water that you drink - I'm thinking for everyone and everything. I'm creating monologues between walls, clouds, raindrops, bones of people, pairs of shoes - about me and you, and you, and me, and everyone else. And not one conversation has helped because they're all just me talking, assuming you'd respond as a bird or a pan or a little girl.

You wrote in an email once that people are drawn to me. I believe you, I've clutched onto that, I've held that near my ribs, by my heart or in it, but why are you away? Have you changed your mind? Did you notice that being involved with me could be you throwing yourself in the abyss? Was it just a joke? Was it a comeback after what I did multiple times before? Is this what you wanted to do? Are you busy? Are you asleep? Are you showering? Are you thinking of things? Are you thinking of me?

You said you used to feel nervous talking to me, in that same email, and I think that's where I am now. I'm self-conscious and cautious messaging you most of the time because I know you're busy and I try imagining the weight of being a hard-worker in a country that isn't your home amongst people who don't share your mother tongue. You're one of the bravest people I've ever met in my life - in fact, I don't think I've ever met someone like you who could go through half of what you've gone through and still fight. You're a warrior, and that's probably one of the main reasons why I love you. You inspire me and push me forward - and it's not a gentle push, it's like a rocket launcher has pushed me through all realistic limits and given me infinity.

I'm cautious with you because with all that power you have on me, you're just as untouchable as I was to you, and probably even more. I've tried not to bother you with my mind-aches because we both know there's more to life than thoughts and imagination, but you always seemed to want to know about what I think. Or at least I wanted to believe so.

The distance and the silence only made room for imagination, and thus, confusion.

I want to know where you are, what you're thinking, how you're sleeping, what you're doing, what you're humming, what you're drinking, what you have in mind, what you have to say. I long for you. I miss you. I miss you in my life. I want you to talk to me. To correct me. To tell me I've done this wrong. I should've never let my mind take it too far. Or that you didn't mean this. That maybe I made this up because I'm so obsessed with being a writer I took it out of fiction and brought it into life. I'm always making love to myself on your behalf and it gets crazier sometimes. You've taken everything - my hair, my eyes, my hands, my sleep, my appetite, my words, my feelings - yet so unaware of it. You've taken all of me yet so unaware of it. And I don't mind it. Go on. Have all of me. I don't care.