The shock is wearing off

Like the flashbulb that popped on the souvenir photo

We looked at Cinderella’s toppled carriage and laughed and laughed. 

I would message you “I want to die, I want to die” 

And so did you.

You were the only friend to visit me in London. We went to Banksy’s exhibit Dismaland at an abandoned underwater amusement park. You ordered all of these toys, and a Unicorn Tears gin made with real silver edible glitter to be delivered  to my friend’s house where I was renting a room. 

I weighed 74lbs. I was a ketamine addict. In the photos, I had a kidney infection and I look nearly dead. 

Of the other two girls in the photos, one ghosted me and the other I had to sever contact with to protect another friend. And yet that day is one of my favorite memories. 

I made a youtube video with a package you sent me. 

“I feel lonely all the time” I said. “Do you ever feel alone?” I said. 

You mailed me a unicorn grumpy cat plushie and rainbow gumballs in a package that said “Always be yourself. Unless you can be a unicorn, then always be a unicorn.” 

I raised a fake shotgun to my head and talked about possession of a gun being legal in Florida. There was a gun range a 15 minute walk away from my family’s house. This was my plan. 

I had distanced myself from you for over 2 years when I found out. 

From 26 to 28 I am now a script writer. I am clean off of drugs. I am writing a novel. I was employed before the pandemic. I practice yoga. 

When I heard the news of your death it was very late on a Monday night. I had just finished a chapter in the book that I was stressing about. Suddenly I am no longer a stable woman of a healthy weight who is pulling herself together. Suddenly I am 24 and I have long keratin treated platinum blonde hair and I am underweight and I stab my arms with needles. 

I feel like my exoskeleton is  collapsing into a previous x-ray. And the next day I have a friend over and we make cocktails and I drink too much, forgetting that these days I have a glass of wine occasionally and my tolerance is nonexistent. And that night I vomited into a toilet wondering why I poisoned myself. Usually, I am over-aware of my limits now. 

Today I woke up with a hangover, like Athena pounding her way with an ax out of Zeus’s skull. 

I feel like a naked red skinless nerve, all raw ends. 

More and more of our friends are posting about you. I don’t want to think death. I don’t want to think drama. I don’t want to think mental instability.

I want to think of how I met so many of my Brooklyn friends through you. I want to think of glitter. I want to think of the musicals and rainbows we loved. I want to think about how even the Unicorn Tears in your gin sparkled.

It is surreal for me, when I feel like my nightmares have turned into reality and my dreams are my only refuge. On the streets, people keep distance and look at each other with such fear in their eyes. It’s seasonal allergy season but in the Spring of Covid 19 every cough hurts like a blow to the gut, every sneeze  feels like a death sentence. 

No toilet paper or hand sanitizer on the shelves. The news reports are so cold they turn hot, the `freezer burn churning out tales of deserted buildings and empty shelves. Cold hard facts. The shots of ghost towns as the death tolls rise. “What about us?” the dying whisper in overcrowded hospital beds, makeshift tents in Central park  serving as beds as corporations refuse to rent out Hospitals because the city won’t pay their desired rent. You feel like you are in a doctor who episode where the kids have gas masks and whisper “are you my mummy” and the humans have been reduced to flesh grown by Cat people as Republican Governors preach that dying for the economy is the purest form of patriotism. 

At night you pray for a zombie apocalypse so you have a visible enemy. You are already agoraphobic and have a phobia of masks because of trauma so every jaunt outside takes a day to prep for and going to the deli feels as draining as a marathon. No one is safe. Your father is quarantined to a nursing home bed, and for once you are grateful for the Parkinsons because another prayer is for your father to not know where he is. Let him think he is on a cruise and you are at school, safe.  

The headlines are screaming that this is a pandemic and that you are at the epicenter. Death tolls in New York doubled today. “It’s only dangerous to the elderly or immune compromised” the papers say, which is hardly helpful when your lover has chrones. You are tired of worrying about him dying every day. You are both picking fights and suffocating each other because you both agreed about boundaries and personal space but after the virus hit, social distancing dictated you are not to see another human soul apart from each other. 

And so you wash your hands until the skin is cracked and bleeding, you put on your facemask as you worry if the cloth isn’t sanitary enough, but the stores are charging $2 per disposable mask and you are out of work to keep you safe. Safety means masking up and not forgetting the hand sanitizer and lysoling everything to keep the enemy at bay. Your stomach hurts today, are you sick? Do you have it? Your friend has it. What about your friends roomate? The hours blur into days and weeks. You try to remember to check in on everyone. Is she ok? How is Amanda? Frida? What about Mary, your friend in Florida, they closed all the beaches. Teela, is she quarantined? Is she getting  her chemo infusions? Anna is worried her daughter Olivia will be taken from her if the borders close and she is with her father in New Jersey. 

You are filled with panic. This is keeping you safe. Hugs are bad. Your boyfriend, should you even see him? But how can you not? There was a time when you were reckless. There is a time when you did drugs and you whipped men  and you smoked ciggaretes you found on the side of London roads because you were an addict and an assault victim and you did not give a fuck. The creature had full hold of you then. The creature did not think about germs, did not care about the state of people of the world. The creature cared only for its next hit of poison. The creature was waiting for the people to use the cigarettes and light a collective bonfire. The creature wanted to watch the whole world go up in a blaze and laugh at the screams and the bones turning to ash. 

And now you think diet and now you think exercise and now you pray intentionally. But when your friend Joan messages you wanting to do shrooms and watch Alice in Wonderland and dance in the park the creature pokes its head out of your left shoulder like, want to play? 

Loving you had drove the creature underground. And part of you misses the time before your healing, before you allowed yourself to feel, to love. Part of you misses the very thing that would have killed you because, without your human vessel to contain it you now feel that the creature has been set loose to infect the planet.

I don’t wanna be the girl that has to fill the silence
The quiet scares me ’cause it screams the truth
Please don’t tell me that we had that conversation
Cause I won’t remember, save your breath, ’cause what’s the use?

Ah, the night is calling
And it whispers to me softly come and play
But I, I am falling
And If I let myself go I’m the only one to blame

What happens to the party girl when the event ends? 

Disco ball light and jovial smiles fading into the wee morning hours, sun creeping over the horizon as the hangover sets in. 

Last night, I had a nightmare. My father and sister were seated in a restaurant. My thighs feel sticky squishing into ripped red vinyl. He tells me he is dying and there is nothing they can do. She is to the left of him, her platinum hair glinting in the sun. She takes my hand. 

What do you see in this picture? 

Do you see the blonde dreadlocks, the short skirt? Look closer.

Do you see a model, a junkie, a whore?

What about the backdrop, what is it about barren hotel rooms that make you wonder at the desolate facade of having a place to sleep. 

Looking back at old selfies is surreal. 

You are pulling faces, lipstick kisses, saccharine smiles. 

Now you can see you were at the sharpest tip of razor’s edge.

Homeless at 23, but at least she dined with you then.

This was the last photo you would ever take with your sister.

18 February at 03:10 ·

I’m feeling sad and insomniac. I am scared to trust myself. I am scared I am too impulsive and scare people away. I am scaring myself and my mood keeps on cycling so like one min I can be absolutely fine and the next anxiety. It’s making talking to anyone pretty hard because its not them I don’t trust. Need faith. I don’t know what I believe in but I just need to believe in this moment everything will be ok.

21 February at 17:20 ·

Lots of anxiety. Really concerned over my friend in ICU. Going to force myself to yoga or something.

22 February at 20:39 ·

Life is passing by too quick for me to capture it. I feel like a fisherman who has lost his net. I see images and words and stories all floating in the sea but I am too impatient to write this down, to feel this. Apparently one of my biggest things I am working on right now is when a negative thought attaches to a feeling. It’s when my loneliness or fear/anxiety attaches to “I fuck everything up” it stops me from fully processing the feeling and I get stuck there. Also, wherever I am I want to be somewhere else. (complex ptsd) Everything is blurring in an impressionistic canvas cranium. I don’t want to feel this. I feel the tears well up despite the emptiness and wonder at their origin. I am an empty latex fetish suit. Don’t cry you will ruin the makeup. Life is just a cancer ward cabaret after all.
=P

22 February at 20:51 ·

CW: physical and sexual Assault So…a huge part of my PTSD involves grooming/coercion. I’ll go into more details somewhere else, but in a nutshell how this affects me now is because I am afraid of my own mind. I am in constant anxious fight or flight. Yoga helps, but I can’t always practice everyday. Meditation helps but sometimes nothing feels like enough and I just want to jump out of my skin and watch the empty pink suit deflate like a condom in a murky duck pond. I want to transcend away, away from all of this. I thought I was going to be a star right before my assault so I feel like some of these self destructive urges kick in when i’m actually doing great. I feel crazy crazy crazy and want it to all stop.A

Pixie is feeling lonely 😦

18 hrs ·

Really want to go out and see friends but literally no energy. None. Like…. I spent today making avocado toast and doing laundry. And while I know in theory there will be other nights, other drag show cabarets… I’m sad.