raw.

i am afraid of contortionists. 

i don't know why i said that. afraid, isn't the right word either. it's a feeling. it's a nauseating discomfort, or an unsettling sensation that seeps into the skin and crawls beneath the layers - so you feel it, but don't bear enough control to extract it. it's a sort of feeling that runs all over but is diluted by the fact that it probably won't inflict harm more than you've already tolerated. and a sort of feeling that stays long after it has left. like stains on your sheets.

i am afraid of contortionists.

-

a lot of people peel off their dead skin. i do too. i look at it and inspect the section closely with a sense of superiority. it feels grand to hold a dead piece of you.

you have served me well. it is your time to ascend.

-

i dislike people who commercialize the mind. i dislike this trendy mcdonaldization of mindfulness. one cannot package a remedy into awareness. i am upset, because no amount of drawings of people crouched up in a foetal position would ease me when i stayed up all night, a slit on my thumb- and apathy in the room.

if people like heeya ruin heeya, then how many heeyas has heeya ruined ?

-

i am afraid of loving.

no. that is incorrect. 

i do not understand what loving means.

i am afraid of donating the entire self in exchange for a home. i admire people who love. to be able to give yourself up to something that doesn't exist. 

it's similar to how i don't understand the religious dedication. or even the way you don't understand the abrupt spacing of this paragraph.

it makes you feel strange.

it is scary. to give up your mind. your body. your soul. 

i was at the varanasi ghat a few days ago. a girl sat next to me, explaining this elaborate operation i did not understand. i was vocal about the fact that i thought it was meaningless. she explained how i was rash. she explained to me how the pundits with the brush-like wands moving in the directions held meaning. one which included the story of ganga who descended to cleanse the sins of a king's predecessors. one which somewhere included a god who was exiled. 

she thought it was beautiful.

i had considered it mass oblivion. it felt ugly to have done this to so many scared people.

it felt unfair.

it felt transactional. 

my mind was mine.

my body, after everything, still had my name on it.

my soul was mine.

i could never worship you.

how could you.

-

i have never liked people around me.

lingering.

hovering.

i like being on my own.

i am the quietest on my own.

contactless.

ears under water.

afloat.

when i scream.

it is silent.

and nobody hears.

all the sound is in my head.

all of the pain belongs to me.

all the people i want are the people i build out of myself.

these

extraterrestrials,

i cannot kill them when i want to.

-

a hermit.

i am afraid of the day i die.

when all the words i have not spoken

bleed through my fingers

like quicksand.

when the breathing stops.

when 

all of the mediocrity

means the world.

distance - ian cumberland.

i am so sick of the grief.