I have just spent the last hour and a half staring into the middle distance, hating my body. Every inch, individually. All of it. 

What a fucking waste of time. 

Some days are bad, and that’s fine. I hardly ever hangout in the middle distance anymore, and that’s great. But tonight, oh tonight. It was a doozy.

If I’m so afraid of lost time, why do I keep ending up here? I don’t want this to be what I use idle time for–I don’t want to pick myself apart. I’m fine! I’m great! Who gives a shit, right?

I dunno, sometimes I get lost in it.

But see, I rolled over and started typing. I hope that’s okay.

I’m going to make a list of things I could have done in that hour and a half, instead of despising my meat-suit. 

Here goes

I could have:

1. Lost a game of chess
2. Learned literally anything about chess that might help me lose less
3. Fucked myself several times
4. Watched a documentary about dismantling dams
5. Written “Choke Me” in calligraphy 
6. Written approximately one paragraph of prose which I’d ultimately trash
7. Taken a bath in the forbidden upstairs bathroom
8. Listened to Doo Wop by Lauryn Hill 18 times in preparation for eventual karaoke performance 
9. Called my sister to catch up on her neighbor’s cat, Pinocchio 
10. Applied for 3.2 jobs 
11. Made slightly underdone pumpkin pie 
12. Had elaborate sexy daydream
13. Had 2 elaborate sexy daydreams
14. Relearned Fur Elise to flex
15. 3 sexy daydreams–an episodic experience
16. Had a good cry

I’ve already chosen several for next time.

Take care, dear reader. Please.

I love you.

I think a lot about going home, dear reader. Not because I want to, but because my family is there. The family that raised me, and the family that has seen me dying. 

I hate that time is passing. I hate that days, months–a year has passed since I’ve seen my sister. I hate that I haven’t seen my sister in a year.

I am very afraid of lost time, and I have years of it. I feel both stunted and ancient, which is fucking weird, man.

I’m older now than I was when this all started. That’s cool, and confusing. 

We’ve grown in ways that we don’t know how to measure yet. We’ve grown with compassion, maybe, and with grief. We’ve grown tired and we’ve grown older–this is how it goes. This is how it goes.

I think about going home a lot, dear reader. And I think about the people I miss. 

I’ve written about it. 

Read if you want to. As always, this is to borrow, or to keep. 

–

–

There’s something very sweet about coordinates 

–

I think it’s their exactness

Having spent no time at all deciding

where they stood they 

fall immediately to a single point, bound

To all the others just the same. 

I think it’s their fracture having 

broken to their own, they show

Location in relation to a center 

which they’ll never meet I think 

it’s their sincerity.

Map making and time telling both old habits made 

sacred by numbers that have outlived them. 

I think it’s their boundaries. How long

How far if only so much 

without falling to the next

I think its their frivolity–they’re funny really

Names for temporary hills 

Who may stay still crack open. 

Widen. 

I think its their place

In all this

Silly and sturdy 

Needed for flight paths 

And some kind of sweetness

To which we point and say here

Look here

This is the place where I came from

–

–

I love you so much

take care.

You know, if I do one thing in this life, I’d like for it to be something good.

When my skin is rotting away, or being picked apart by a scientist in search of the secret to near perfect tits, I don’t seem to think I’d mind not having been a big deal. 

What with the being dead, ya know, “no big deal” would be alright. Being the girl who sought peanut butter as a metaphorical device is swell, certainly.

I’d like for my life to be something good. That’s all.

This used to feel more like pressure than drive, dear reader. I used to be very afraid of not being “good” or some derivative like “kind” or “agreeable”. I used to feel this stress like something very heavy on my chest. An elephant, let’s say, to go with a cliche and a cutie.

For a very long time, I felt like there was an elephant on my chest–I couldn’t breath. I was very afraid to die, and perhaps more afraid of causing harm because I wasn’t Good. 

These days, the worry looks really different: I’m the elephant. Conceited and contrived as it sounds, it’s not a comment on my new curves (though damn.)

I am the elephant, lovely reader, and every place I’d like to sit is a chest. Hilarious maybe, but I feel like I’d squash people left and right. Absolute smush. Accidentally-crushing-my-own-baby-without-noticing type of deal.

I know: “poor little girl with great tits can’t find somewhere to sit that’s not on top of someone else.” Listen, pal, everything’s relative. 

I’m wary of being around; It’s a lot to ask of friends and family to listen—to, as it feels, let me crush them to death. Though I’m sure it would be a pleasure for all involved, I just couldn’t do that. Well–no, can’t.

But, dear reader, I’m maybe starting to get a handle on this feeling-like-a-burden thing. Quiet and complacent are two words that don’t fit anymore, and like my old, obscenely small jeans, they shall be tossed (donated really, but that’s less dramatic.)

I like when other people tell me why and where they hurt. I like to be there. This, I hope, can be the something good. 

I’d like to listen, I think. I’d like to listen and write, also. 

If this is true for me–if I find so much in listening–it might be okay for me to go ahead and speak. I don’t think I’d crush anyone, at least not immediately. 

I say, sit freely, dear reader. Go ahead. I think whoever you’re worried about will appreciate you even more for it.

Who doesn’t love an elephant, or an ass to the face?

All my love (which is a shit-ton)

Allison 

We can never really see ourselves, can we? 

I can guess what people see when they look at me–when they talk to me and choose to know me. I can guess, but yeah. I’ll never really know.

There’s a lot of trust in this. 

For the better part of a decade I focused all this uncertainty towards becoming as small as possible. Unobtrusive edges. The least amount of present possible.

I didn’t trust anyone to see me.

With this came a lot of space. For everyone else sure, but also in me. There was a big empty space in my life where I’d have liked to put something. People–places–really anything.

I was spacy as hell too, what with running a blood sugar of 50 most always. I was half a human and half present and completely fucking nuts.

It’s crazy–it is. It’s a kind of crazy I understand, of course. It makes so much sense while you’re going through it, but it’s fucking nuts looking back.

This is a promise to people in recovery: your eating disorder will stop making sense. It won’t be appealing. It’ll be nuts, I promise. You’ll see it from some other side and laugh at the person who wiped peanut butter under the table to get out of eating it. You will.

So now, in the absence of nuttiness, I really don’t know how people see me. This is why I write, but it’s also a big reason why I’m scared. 

It’s really scary, actually, to go ahead and show up without a shield or disguise or a vice. 

I was talking to my roommate about this the other night–trying to figure out how people saw me and freaking out because I just couldn’t do it. I made all kinds of excuses as to why people choose not to know me. 

“Dude, I think I’m just weird.” 

To this, my roommate said,

“Allison, one day you will be standing at the fucking altar. You’ll whisper to the audience, ‘Don’t worry, I think it’s cause he likes weird chicks.’”

I laughed. And you know what? I felt a little better. Because goddamn I think she gets it. 

I’ll never know how she sees me, really. But I think she understands the person I’m trying to be. These days, I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing. 

I’ll never know how you see me, dear reader. By now, it’s probably not looking good.

But hey. You like weird chicks, don’t you?

My whole heart.

Allison

I boiled water, dear reader, and then forgot about it. Now, much like me, it is hot and waiting. 

I refuse to go get it, partially because I’d almost always rather coffee than tea, and partially because I cannot be fucked to get up.

In order to make my stillness justified, I will write a bit. I will not reheat the water. It’s quickly becoming the principle of the thing, which is a phrase I hate, but must use in extreme cases like this. 

The word “pragmatic” has a similar bite. It’s only ever been used at me, as an excuse to speak over, laugh at, or ignore me completely. I am, in fact, aware that I speak with romantic enthusiasm. I’m not even a little sorry about it. 

I am a sentimental shitbag.

In fact, there are ashes on the floor where I burned a math problem earlier today–I can see them from here. It was a very old page from a very old journal.  I had drawn an equilateral triangle with two circles and no ruler. It was a proof really. Not a problem. 

It was a small accomplishment of which, at the time, I was moderately proud. But more than a tiny win for a younger Allison, the space it took up marked further descent into my seemingly unending love for Not Letting Things Go. 

I’m a deeply sentimental individual. I’m a writer for Fuck Sake–a POET–and keeping stuff that’s painful is kinda my schtik. Keeping stuff that’s painful is also, kinda my problem. 

The origin of The Math Problem in Question is not a story worth telling, but know that its pseudo-sacrificial burning was a long time coming. And also, mostly an accident. There was a candle, whatever. 

I don’t want to hold on to stuff I don’t need anymore. I’m so fucking tired of it. I sincerely don’t have the space, but more than this, the past is actively hurting me. It hurts me to live in the present, sure–who the fuck is thriving right now–but living in the past hurts and hinders any possibility of change.

I burned the shit. I feel only slightly better. 

 I think though, that maybe I have enough intention to let more shit go now.

Dear reader, I hope you can do the same.

I think it’s time, don’t you?

I can’t do much to quiet your anxiety, my lovely reader. I wish I could. I’m just one girl who knows nothing of virology, or how to sell good drugs on the internet. 

But I figure if you’re reading this, you know me. So maybe we can just chat a while. Or. I’ll chat, and you’ll read and maybe like. Crack a smile. Who knows. 

When I’m really afraid, or sad–when I want out of my mind with major urgency–I remember a bit of the novel The Road. Disclaimer–I wouldn’t recommend this book. I wouldn’t recommend this book during the most mentally stable period of your life, least the fuck of all now. 

It is an incredibly grim commentary on human nature, and I really just hated it a bunch. Yet here I am, talking about it. Whatever, I’m a masochist. 

My point is. There’s this one part–a single bit of this godforsaken book that I really like. Our protagonist is musing it up about dreams. He believes that when life is chaos, our minds are kind to us while we’re asleep; we have really beautiful dreams to offset the horror of waking life. 

I don’t know if this is true (I tend to think it’s poetic bullshit) but I like the idea that the mind is on our side. Like, “oh you’re sad and scared? Here’s a dream about that guy you’re missing. As a little treat.”

I’d like a little dream treat. I deserve that, you know?

I don’t give any attention to dreams. They hold no weight, other than maybe how they make us feel when we wake up. But god, wouldn’t it be sweet to wake up feeling all warm and good? We deserve that. 

So, look out for my petition, wherein I will be demanding that all dreams are really nice until further notice.

I’m not really into dreams. I’m an excellent sleeper though. Honestly, one of my sexiest qualities. 

You know what else is sexy, dear reader? (Seamless transition, Allison. Someone should really pay you for this.) Niche passions. I get off on that shit. I think it’s incredibly sexy to care about silly stuff, and bonus sexy if you don’t apologize for it. 

I envy the nerds. 

I am so jealous of people whose stamina never ends when it comes to Those Specific Things. Just never fucking ends. Their Things are always bubbling and brewing in the backs of their minds like sexy little cocktails of minutiae. It’s hot as hell. Get me a glass, I’ll toast to you.

To those whose love for the very specific runs true through their veins, I say rock on. 

Dynamically passionate individuals are the untouchable babes of this world, and though not a hot take, I think it bears repeating. Even if only to make myself all hot and bothered. 

Even as a frequently hot and bothered individual (due the extraordinary imaginative power that brought you here to read today) I will continue to disregard all claims made by those who propagate cold showers. It’s just really unpleasant, and I don’t wanna.

I was told recently that cold showers in the morning can help fight depression, and to that I say, fuck you. 

I’ve done a whole bunch of therapy, dear reader. So whether or not this is sexy, I know that–ehem–temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing and progressive muscle relaxation are all proven to help–ehem–center oneself in the present moment. 

But I just don’t want to. That’s it. Don’t want to. I want to sit here at the kitchen table, and talk shit on my laptop, and pretend someone’s reading along. Can’t I just have that?

I deserve it.

And so do you, my redhot reader. 

All my love.

Al

I was raised Catholic, dear reader, and with this came a childhood spent learning how to treat myself with punitive guilt. I know this is not, technically speaking, the heart of Christianity, but in the skewed and partial practice I was exposed to, it felt like being alive was enough reason to be ashamed.

Prayer was obligation–it felt like an empty attempt at righting my wrongs, and the wrongs of people I didn’t even know. In first grade I had my first communion, and was taught that receiving Christ (a dry, tasteless wafer with whom I have more in common than Christ himself) was a sacred affair. I needed to be pure. We wore white.

I had my first confession; I sat alone in a room with a priest, and told him of my shame. His response felt punitive too. Saying the Hail Mary forty times or something equally inane. Why?

Maybe it was young Allison who was unreceptive and closed to the ideas presented every Sunday–maybe it was being young and confused. I think, however, that it had more to do with the fact that these words of “forgiveness” and “selflessness” came from an old white man standing on a literal altar.

I think that in my very small, Northern New York town, going to church felt like something for somebody else. It wasn’t for me–a little girl who knew only that she was powerless and afraid.

I’ve heard a Catholic childhood described as, “the wounding of distorted Christianity.” I feel this. I felt wounded and cold and alone–not supported or loved by God or Jesus or the spooky holy ghost. Not even by the people sitting in the church around me, or the cup of piss cheap red wine.

I don’t like dismissing anything without trying to understand. So with great pain, years ago, I deep dove into the writing of modern Christian scholars. I was stunned by the descriptions of Christianity as a feminine form of receiving a loving God. It is open and passive and hopeful. It never felt this way to me. It felt cold and bitter and punishing.

Again, there’s something to be said of being young and skeptical and confused. Even so, as a child I wanted nothing more than to feel the kind of love that was (apparently) promised by this divine connection. 

Yes, I resist a relationship with God. I resist recognizing the existence–real or symbolic–of any God at all. I do and I’m really not sorry or afraid of that. I don’t understand how faith could come at the expense of one’s self-compassion. I want to love myself–I do. Even if my actions don’t reflect that. I don’t want to hate my body or pleasure or getting angry or sad or drunk.

I don’t know If I will ever be able to see Christianity as something separate from “pro-life” fascists. And this is my own bias. I see that. I know that. But after a lifetime that, so far, has really kicked my ass, I’d like the option to have sex and get myself off without guilt. Thank you very much.

Religion isn’t my thing. But, hey. Dear reader, if it is yours, I’d love to hear from you. I want to hear how it has impacted and shaped you. I really, really do. I love when people surprise me–it is my favorite thing.

Every bit of my love.

Allison The Atheist.

I was sitting on the kitchen floor, lovely reader–as I am wont to do at least once an evening–when I realized I am better at this than I give myself credit for. “This” being, um, speaking. 

The orgasmic power of the words, “well said” send me further than I’d care to admit–speaking without someone visibly fuming is basically indie porn. I like to talk shit. And I’m good at it. 

I don’t mean trashing other people–I’m actually pretty bad at that. I mean getting really passionate about seemingly insignificant shit. 

I unleash some monster monologues on the kitchen floor, let me tell you. We got the mime story. We got the ambulance delirium story. We got the time I saved my friend’s job by threatening to dye my hair blue. We got the first time I heard That One Song which devolved into a story about being cheated on. That, my dear reader, was a long one. Somehow it ended up being about cults?  Who the fuck knows.

My point is. I can talk some serious shit about some silly shit. Having surpassed getting drunk and fucking myself, it is now maybe my favorite thing to do. It comes so damn easily on the kitchen floor; it was like that growing up, too. Maybe it’s proximity to snacks. Well, historically, that’s probably not it.

Why do I hate chairs, you may be asking. Well, I don’t fucking know and that’s rude. But, what I DO know is that it is excellent motivation to clean, and even better motivation to not hide in my little joke of a room and write truly awful poetry, which as we know, is crack to me. 

I have compiled a list of takeaways from these kitchen floor monologues, and because I don’t have a podcast on which each would get an episode, I will give them names here. 

Enjoy

1. Digging out corks with your thumbnail: a lesson

2. Little bottom bigs, big bottom littles, little bottom littles, and Gods

3. Why you’re wrong and why I won’t tell you that

4. Feelings: we’re in support of them unless dumb

5. Kissing is highly rated and still underrated

6. I’m down–I’d be down–I could be down: and other signs of failing friendship

7. Milk frothers as an arousing appliance

8. Look at this freckle in my eye did you see it?

9. Visual snow: no one cares but I’ll keep talking about it

10. Baking is a lie: I used boxed mix and no one noticed 

11. Seriously look at this freckle

12. I work for The Man but I am in fact The Guy

13. You get 3 great loves–sometimes more, sometimes less, there’s no telling actually

14. People: most are fine

15. Hummus is hummus about 60% of the time

16. Dumpster diving is effective if necessary

17. Can I bum a cigarette

18, Why I need to bum a cigarette

19. “bum” as a verb

20. The art of the nod

21. Don’t sleep on evening naps

22. Shared playlists as an intimate dialogue

That’s all for now, my dear reader. 

Let’s talk soon.

Our lives do not have linear plots, dear reader, and this makes them tricky to analyze. 

We may be inclined to look at our lives like films–to look first for meaning and marked change. We could choose to measure our lives over distance–like a straight line from “then” to “now” that could somehow show us our own heartbeat. All the climactic hills and valleys leading to some ultimate lesson–but again, lives do not have linear plots. 

So, what do we do to understand films or novels with nonlinear plots? 

We look for symbolic repetition, baby. 

Lives are not cleanly organized; aside from birth and death you can count on quite the clusterfuck. “Meaning” feels like too big of an issue to tackle here, but I’ll suffice it to say that, in my opinion, if we want it (meaning), we have got to make our own. We have to accept the crazy, stupid, rock and roll nothing that we’ve got, and decide that our lives matter anyway. 

In our silly, nonlinear clusterfuckery, how the hell do we reflect on the meaning we’ve made? Well, my darling reader, I’m so glad you asked. We can start by looking for repetition. 

I don’t want to stay too long in hypothetical nonsense, so as always, here’s an example: 

Roller Coasters. 

Until I was 22 I didn’t know how it felt to ride one. I was so afraid of feeling something new and potentially uncomfortable that I avoided the loop de loop completely. I was the friend who held everyone’s water bottles by the exit; a performative sacrifice that kept me safely on the ground.

I did this song and dance when I was 18 and at Six Flags with friends, when I was 8 with my family on the pier, and 14 at a shitty county fair. I never even tried it. Roller coasters just weren’t worth feeling for.

And in the spirit of Making Meaning, OF COURSE this is symbolic. You get it, dear reader, you’re smart. I was afraid of doing anything, because I was afraid of feeling something. It just wasn’t worth the risk. When given the choice, I would always choose to feel nothing instead of not knowing an outcome.

But! Someone lovely took me to ride a roller coaster last October. Oh I was sweating through jackets; I was shaking uncontrollably; there were tears in my eyes. And you KNOW I asked someone in a nametag and polo shirt to double check that I was clicked in. Triple mother fucking check homie I was going upside down.

I shut my eyes. 

I didn’t think I’d like the feeling of falling to potential death. It’s very human, actually–to avoid falling at like, all costs. But, my sweet reader, I fucking loved it. I loved it. I lived through it, and it made me happy. It had taken 22 years to choose it. 

I would have avoided everything until the bitter end had I not reached a point of frustration with myself; had I not been so tired of feeling empty. 

I would have missed everything had I not gone to treatment for my eating disorder; had I not started writing; had I not said hello. 

These things will keep showing up, dear reader, until we address them. They’ll keep digging holes in our chests and we’ll try to fill them–oh will we ever try. Groundhog’s day, except you’re at a Six Flags for some reason? It’s all very poetic.

It becomes impossible to ignore the lessons we need to learn, not because of the “all knowing universe”, but because our own flawed selves will keep making the same mistakes until we do something differently.

The only way we can overcome our fear of emptiness, is to stop feeding it. 

What keeps repeating for you, dear reader? Look there, instead of from start to finish.

I love you so much.

I love you so much.

(see, repetition)

I don’t drink much anymore, dear reader. If I’m feeling very afraid of nothing in particular, I go on very long walks. During these walks my brain writes and I listen. This one came in fragments today, and I really liked it. It isn’t about me, or anyone. It’s just words, and I love that.

So here

if I were to be studied —I’m not

but if I were to be under a bell jar or

on some kind of

stand behind glass or under you, a man, a microscope

one may find several things to be true 

all at once many accurate descriptions of love as I am one 

girl woman human child agreeable otherwise understood 

as having. long walks in the dark, drunk but in the day—I’m very good 

at crosswalks—

if you let me speak if you let me I’ll tell you everything 

I’ll tell you anything with such a brightness one 

you’ve never known and grossly romanticize as do my hips

like how behind glass it is distorted—time 

lovers. the absence of memory. it’s fine.

before I woke up and started screaming about something 

inconsequential I knew everything I am 

to be studied 

for this reason and a handful of others 

much less exciting, but equal in worth to the viewer