I have no idea what I’m doing, whether I should leave the house when my isolation is up, is there enough social lubricant to keep my mouth wet, or will the dry small talk soak up all hydration? 

Starting again in the city that left me once mendable is commendable, I mean for one I came back to a father with cancer so the backstory is compatible with channel 4 programming at least, also comes with a local therapist, now that is handy. I guess the main focus of the story I want to talk or release from my mind is my queerness, a thing hidden like pandoras box or porn on a browser. Since I came out at the age of 22 in the same city it feels only now essential that I eat pussy. I say it’s not to prove anything but when you’ve wanted to die and the lack of one experience keeps urging you to live you kinda have to, also if the therapist describes it as ‘healing’ that helps too. I wanted to go down on anyone with a vulva at this point. I’m 25 its time to act on desires and hold the internalised homophobia at the poorly constructed door.

So like any mature adult during a global pandemic I got tipsy off a remaining red wine bottle that I had bought with my partner Conor the night before and went to a house party notorious for non-binary and sexy folks. I turned up an hour late in a tiny black dress and patterned tights feeling like Grimes but looking like a shit cosplayer, I walked into the front room and said out loud ‘Oh god, everyone’s fit’ as I avoided platform boots and fishnets into the tiny flak. Like a wolf’s den with chokers and corsets at every peripheral. I ordered more wine an hour in, I drank continuously until I realised I had missed an opportunity of a threesome going on in one of the bedrooms whilst agreeing with a mutual friend of the host ‘I didn’t know it was going to be that type of party. I knew then that tonight was the night, and started to sweat. I messaged Conor explaining I was opting in on the gay experience, an option I never thought I would ever bargain with a partner on; especially on a Monday, work night. 

I went for it.

It wasn’t long before I was getting a lap dance in the living room from a feminine force. I looked like one of those giddy teenage boys from the 90s near Pamela Anderson, my knickers and my face screamed rookie and I fought every expression that took over my facial muscles. All the red wine seeped into my glazed eyes, the beautiful woman took me away into a bedroom explaining that I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to, I wanted to have an epiphony, I wanted to have the Gay TM Experience, the L word franchise. I secretly never wanted to go back to men because in my mind that’s easier than healing the trauma left by them. But alas, I am a pillow princess after all, how much battling could one do with a disposition, the position being my back, I was passive on all accounts. I didn’t lick pussy that night but got wined and dined, finger licking good style for about 3 hours. 

The next morning I was battered and bruised, hungover, and felt the rise of shame I got the woman’s phone number and left as soon as my legs gained consciousness. I felt awful ringing Conor up and blubbering, my queerness had cost me my safety before and triggered something deeper. He accepted me for me and reassured me everything was fine between us, I felt so much relief on the hot ride home on the 80A. I felt rough into the early evening and rough after pole, I felt rough the next day and the day after that. Until I got a text. The text was from my housemate explaining they had tested positive for COVID, I took a test, it came back negative.

The shame spiral is so interwoven subconsciously I knew something had changed in my body, I was weak and tired. I thought maybe it’s depression? I was wrong two days after my gay evening I test positive for Covid on a lateral flow test, I was then isolated in my room for 10 days. 10 days to think about what I had done, a dyke cinderella punished for going to the ball, my therapist held no sympathy and laughed when I told her about my encounters of the gay kind and how god set me up for a hate crime. 

The truth is I wouldn’t have expected any less than the situation having a sense of humour after all I mean only me and my traumatised mind would see this as a comedic gold mine. The sexual experience was as mundane as a joke, a human experience reduced to a laugh and smile that lingers. 

How do I explain myself, I’ve been avoiding writing as I’m once again lacking confidence, I am unwell.

I have never felt this unstable probably due to having more self-awareness of my C-PTSD, abandonment depression is a thing and apparently, that’s why I feel hollow. I’ve felt like a shell for the majority of my life. A vessel for emptiness, searching for something to fill a void. 

I’m thinking of how the dog is anxious and on anti-anxiety medication maybe he has PTSD too, mum denies it but she denies it generally, like my childhood trauma or my feelings. It all adds up I feel like I was set up for bad choices from the get-go this neglect and loneliness and lack of safety lead me to the path of the bar being nonexistent I didn’t know about healthy relationships or respectful interactions I expected and willingly received the worst. 

A domestic abusive relationship is done, sexual assault on 3 accounts done, traumatic childhood done.  Not necessarily closed, but finished in a sense of it being a foreshadowing of character development. As a character always developing I am stagnant, a trapped soul in a personal hell.

I am a cleaner at a local college, living with parents that are triggering and unloving, all during a pandemic while my dad suffers from blood cancer. This is a wank deal. I’m grieving the living and my past self. Trying to calm my inner child when my parents argue and stifling emotions due to their incapableness of witnessing them.

 My dad refuses to see me cry, thank god he will be dead at his funeral. 

I’ve wished for his death for years as it’s the simplest direct way of closure, I know this and he is more of a stranger than ever, the customer service roles in me creep out when conversing with him. It’s easier if I imagine I’m getting paid for it. Not that shocking to type that as the marriage is in their mind transactional rhetoric. I feel like I have heard unconvincing lines like ‘I love your dad really’ or ‘I love you,’ but that feels like a mockery or parody of their relationship as it’s full of resentment. One simple interaction of the location of where the butter is in the fridge is reciprocated by my clattering of pans or a more dramatic close of a drawer. These choreographed moves over time become infectiously ravenous in the subconscious of a child, it understands those cues mean unrest or potential shouting and lack of safety - ultimately fear. 

Trying to explain this sensation of anxiety and hyper-awareness to two adults who deny the trauma caused or relentlessly belittle mental health problems until suicide is mentioned is exhausting. I do not exist to convince. I should just be able to be. But here I am explaining myself to no one as this is what I have learned to do, to justify my feelings I must explain them into oblivion, imagine if I just accepted them? That’s what you get when your mum doesn’t respect you saying no, or you’re uncomfortable as a child you have to make it so believable you begin to perform. And here I am feeling like my yes or no was never respected or listened to as a child of course consent as a concept or boundary felt alien, unworthy, not needed, I was a shell after all. 

I can’t even have a wank as they are never both leaving the fucking house, the repressed sexual child all over again, pretty sure this stifling of my erotic will equal to heady nights to come when lockdown is over. I want good sober sex with connecting individuals I want to be desired and desire others. This absence of men is cold turkey, I notice when male attention comes it’s only after an image is published, a curated visual of when I felt desirable. 

The chaos, the chaos is the peaks and troths that guided my childhood that I seek in adulthood, it’s predictable and soothing to me, un-learning this will be the biggest feat. the last man I felt deeply connected to threw a blender across the kitchen and then declared he wasn’t violent. I deserve better, I deserve consistency and to be gaslit again with my guard down hurts me still. But it’s the chaos I crave not the man. 

We are triggered, we are tired, and we are not having a fun time. (me and the child within) But there is always hope for a better time.

Fetishizing death or the subversion of family into a long life embodiment of an expiration date.

Consuming a prototype of what family is through pop culture, but what happens, in reality, as we grow up and form complexes through childhood trauma, and by the time you’re 25 you are just about ready to not give a fuck about what your cousins think about you? 

My mum was doing a workshop via zoom about ‘Writing A Life Story’, I felt a twinge of if only I had shared that knowledge and how maybe she would react to a book format of my life. Would the trauma have been worth it with a paycheque in tow? Or mass humiliation that would cut ties with me, that would be disowning while in bed reading her kindle.

I’m feeling cynical and pessimistic which is okay, I know, the pandemic is still going and I am doing a job I hate, in my hometown whilst living with my parents, triggered daily. This contextualizes everything I write, say, touch. I am more aware than ever of my unstable leaking mental capacity affecting my only profitable role right now, and my money will be wet with tears over time.

 I am indeed over-time. 

I had a childish strop at 9:30 pm last night from my parents interrupting my night of masturbating. I was talking about cancer on the landing while retrieving objects from downstairs. I’m waiting for one of us to fall down them, call it a strike, I will not be going to work either way. I cried last night because I thought about how tragic my pleasures have been dampened by anxiety-inducing pressure-building release pending way, it’s a recogniseable pattern a familiar family outburst of emotions that can’t be regulated or consumed well by anyone near. 

I cried salty tears, I miss cum, how devilish I can be here away from tumblr and twitter my, my, I have grown up. 

Every morning I get asked ‘how’s ye dad?’ in a wool accent by Jessie James, a grandmother, and recent widow, she is charitable and gives me a lift to work. I can feel her project her vulnerability and grief onto me. I grieve the past, she grieves in the present all while I prepare for the loss in the future. How do you grasp all that and a mop at 6:30am cleaning the halls of a college you never went to?