My hands were slightly wet when I returned to this room. Blessedly, my pup knows my moves better than I do, so he led me to the front of the house, I took him out, and previous me left the burnt popcorn bag of trash on the fire escape.

I found something comforting about the smell as I walked it down the stairs and across the lawn. It wasn’t harsh like office lunchroom microwaves, the burnt paper bag I think part of the worst of the offense. I thought of it then thought of returning to this room and trying to write. Not before I took the overflowing trash cans out. Previous me forgot to take them out on Tuesday.

My hands are foreign to me at moments.

Should. Should. Should. Should.

I made an analogy to my therapist yesterday, yesterday a big blue day. I told her sometimes it feels like people want from me all the time. They want and want, they try to pull me into their lives, but not the good, not the lovely, or shiny but the shitty. The graphic bads. The big sads. Something about me says please tell me your worst, there is space here for you. But a lot of their bads are heavy, and cloying, and impossible to escape. Like tar. The hot sticky and lethal tar that keeps you trapped, warps your skin and pulls off your hair. I apologized for the graphic nature of it and made several more analogies.

“You give the best analogies of anyone I’ve ever met.” She says as I carefully break off pieces of my sad and give them to her for safekeeping.

I haven’t dragged anyone into the bads & sads of my life, not fully. I sometimes share. My therapist gets them after they’ve rolled around in my head. Like those tumbling machines that you can put rocks into, with sand and glass, water, for days and days until they are shiny and stunning and so fucking smooth. I don’t like handing out the jagged unprocessed pieces of me, I could cut someone, or they could cut me. So my therapist gets some, but mostly after time with her I take them and I set them to tumble again with a heavier grit. They could be more smooth, more digestible when I share them with others.

People are surprised about the bads in my life. They don’t believe it until I’ve presented them with proof. Like when you are in the car, and suddenly the traffic is all stopped, “the jam” and then when they finally get to the catalyst it’s the gauk and stare, the drive by nice and slow to catalog the thing that held them up, so they have a reason. They have something to feel lucky about, or sad about, that doesn’t linger. So many things linger with me.

I’m so sick of performing for what I want. I’m so sick of swimming when all I want to do is tread and float and feel blissful. I want this freedom to float and enjoy for everyone. Liberation must be based in care, consideration, and tenderness to yourself and others. I’m afraid we’re all unsure of how to share the jagged bits and pieces to fight for something bigger.

I don’t know the last time I felt bliss. Okay. Maybe it just was fleeting and it’s not now and I’m tired and chasing the bliss just out of reach.

I don’t want fights to ruin things. I want fights to solve things, to reveal a deeper connection. I don’t want tears to gain sympathy. I want tears as a pure form of expression. Of grief, and power and beauty untethered.

I wonder when I’ll get to stop performing for good. Probably when I let go of a lot of this shame and anger.