private.
'Now it's the devil I love'.
& my own poisoned blood referenced, which is sort of an apt metaphor for most of how I feel. Me & Neko Case. In college it was Ani Difranco.
This is the song I listened to months ago when I was with Hyde. It was in my everything, including my head, even when I was alone. Am I really getting better? I think so. I jump less, pause less. But it's not just about me, & I think I've been focusing on that too much. I'm not the only one who's gone through something terrible, but even the memory of him can be momentarily absorbing. No more. I can't hate myself for not being stronger anymore (because it's not about that, strength has nothing to do with abuse, & I feel like a statistic when I call it that, even though I've used the term for other people without a second thought, like it's not me, but it is, it was, I'm not any different in that regard), & he's not even really gone, just--no longer autonomous. & because I don't want to bother Henry with this when he has his own things to work out--
I do have this strange feeling lately like we're on the tip of something. I don't know how significant it is, but it's the sense I get when someone is about to round a corner but hasn't, not quite yet. I've considered two things, the first of which I'm just restless. Quitting sex work & planning a wedding--I'm becoming genuinely 'respectable', even if I'll never stop being myself, because of something as simple as my job, & I'm almost uncertain of that, like maybe I'm not deserving, like this should all be happening to some nice humble white girl with a perfect heart that's not the whole of her, as Hyde & I once put it, but perfect & pink & doting & now I'm just disparaging myself unnecessarily, but really, when Hyde called me his princess, Snow White & Scheherazade & Cinderella & all of those things, it was because it was a little bit perverse: half precious, half sex toy, & I might be a good girl but I'm not really a nice one, I don't fit in those boxes. Because it's a certain kind of world that cuts women into pieces, and I'm more a Lilith than an Eve, let's face it. I can have their manners, but last I checked, even the most pretentious girls who called themselves 'courtesans' don't get the gold treatment emotionally, & that's what I have now, & so I keep wondering when the other shoe will drop. It's not that I think he needs an Emma, if I can judge a nice woman I never met without meaning anything cruel by it, someone whose kindness is all bright colors and pastels, or he'll do anything to hurt me, I trust him 100 percent, it's the persistent concern the world might go against us, Pentex & the market I won't admit to knowing about. But even though I am, really, nervous, that's normal, I've spoken with other friends I've had who have transitioned, they went through this, too, so I don't think that's the whole of it, even if it is something I ought to try to piece together privately. So the other possibility is that the little damped-down sensor in the back of my brain that'd crush steel into powder & rip souls into pieces burn the whole world...it's telling me I should look out for something.
& all I can think is, 'if this interferes with my life plans or even worse, Henry's, I will actually pick a fight with God's shattered remains.'