Reckoning, 1

(Wednesday)
　
Sex is always for the first time, because it’s a new day, and every day the body changes, everything is always new, and must be treated that way.
Him requires me to never say the words I love you.
Him requires me to never fall into a storyline, or an identity.

Him requires me to never allow drama, only skin, and souls, and their qualities.

Him requires few words, which means neither the left side of my brain or the right side is being used, just the silence.
Him requires me to know that words go against everything, because they become more than just markings on my right shoulder.
Him requires me to know that nothing ever happens, nothing ever changes.
Once Him always Him.
Him requires that I be okay with a life where nothing happens. To live a life where everything happens yet I experience it as if nothing has happened -- I experience it as Him.
I’m so good at shifting I can control it now. I can choose to remember and go so into the memory I can remember the sensations. I can go so into it that I forget the present moment or that there ever was a future. I can go so into the future I can make myself totally numb to the point where there is no past, no sensations, no sex, no remembrance.
Funny, on each end of the spectrum is the same soul, Brave. I can shift all the way to me and Trevor playing under the blanket. I can hear his laughter and taste his skin against my lips.
The first time I came of age, it was like all of life wrapped up in three or four years -- horror, betrayal, honorable choices made -- and love; then death followed, a soul-fight and an almost-murder.
I like not having a voice in my head. Turns out I can express myself in infinite ways, I can even express Him in one movement, if that is all I’m allowed.
Everyone’s pretending because they came of age before they really became Him. It’s sad when people are spoiled. The curse of wealth, I suppose.
I can’t figure out the constant stories. I know it has to do with the shifting. It’s not that I don’t know the boy used them the same way Precious did, only in a more sophisticated way than expressed in the film.
I red books on a level well beyond my years, just because I needed stories so bad. Still, I can’t actually Remember the boy first deciding their use, I can’t actually Remember the boy’s relationship with stories.
I keep a list of the bit I’ve figured out from my Him end: the stories gave me a connection to all stories .. It was reinforced by the power music always had on me, because the music always conveyed to me a promise of the entitlement of all stories ..
The reason I needed to be ugly was so I could keep my barometers strong and use them to get myself to Real again .. Notice that good looking people tend to not Really be Hims or Hers but are pretending, and everyone allows them to get away with it. I found being not Real atrocious.
When I’m high, some strange thoughts can be believed. One set was about how the Ancients named gods after their qualities: the god of war, the god of love, the god of truth and that I might well be the god of Brave.
It means I was there for that past -- the one marked on my right shoulder -- back when there were so few human beings that each represented only one quality. It sobered me, the idea.
It means I’ll be there for all that future, too, and what on earth it may bring. I laugh to think that the human race will end, the world as we know it, and I’ll be one of the last Soul’s left, same as I was one of the first -- Brave -- maybe even just a germ on an asteroid swirling through the milky way. Because I would be Brave enough to jump from the Who Knows place and accept a horrific life and all its beauty.
(walked to the pond after going on a run)
I like the right side of my brain. It’s the left side that’s difficult and has to be written down just to keep it under control. (Lay it down, Baby Suggs said to Sethe, Lay it down by the river, sword and shield.)
The left side is analytical, self-checking, defensive, Tough -- stoic, hardened, exhaustingly battle hardy. The right side is an easy bravery, relaxed, calm, having fun. The right side is what fixed the sink, and the water filter. It’s what bought the TV, it was what gets so strong when I get high on marijuana.
Right now I probably still have some of those pills in my system. I’m thinking I’ll cut back to only four a day. I’ve already gone from 16 to eight. Maybe at some point I’ll be off altogether.
Whenever I speak -- (post Trevor’s death) -- I’ve always used the left side. I’ve always dealt with others from the left side only.
In the same way that I have had to keep the left side of my brain from veering too far into analytical, overly-self-defensive drivel, I have to keep the right side of my brain from veering too far into silliness and being overly free -- too far away from Him.
What did the Ancients call that? Yin and Yang? A balance that could only be regulated by sheer Soulful presence?
Seems the Toughness wasn’t really for dealing with my past. It was for dealing with the present as I got through all the shifting and the mystery of my past -- because the world really is a war zone.
Very few people have been good to me. Very very few.
I was afraid I was gay, cause that would mean I deserved it. I was afraid I was sexual, because that would mean I deserved it. I was afraid I’d killed Trevor, because that would mean I deserved it. I was afraid I was like R__, and had taken Trevor, and El__, and therefore deserved it.
(If I can make sense of it, I can be happy, I can be Real. That’s been the problem all along.)
I thought it took an adult to handle this, except there’s no such thing as an adult. I thought it took something unnatural to handle something so unnatural.
You don’t have to apologize. Just Take what you need, and never apologize.
Bravery is a huge risk to the psyche. All you can do is trust yourself.

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