december is for dying

sending love to thought daughters everywhere

it’s december - christmas decorations are up and my birthday was two months ago and i still feel 16, let alone almost in my 20s. my mum painted my nails red a few weeks ago and i’ve been picking off the polish since it started wearing away, leaving small red specks on my therapist’s turquoise couch, in my crumpled bedsheets, on the train and metro. it’s stopped me from biting my nails raw up until now. i didn’t expect that compulsion to be gone once my nails were clean and gave in easily when it returned. and when i got put in that situation with that person and couldn’t say no, i realised some things will always be the same.

there’s a saying that goes “hair holds memories”, and i held this with me as i cut off and bleached every last trace of the past year. its one of the only things that helps me sleep at night - the fact that i can become unrecognisable to the strangers that know everything about who i once was. allowing myself to change, giving into it, letting myself be molded by the present. lucy dacus’ voice spins around my head. you never knew me like you thought you did.

i didn’t know myself either; i still don’t. i wake up everyday disagreeing with who i was the day before, trying to separate myself from myself, one response from another. i carry the guilt of the catholic i was raised to be, though i can’t find solace in a god, or a son, or a spirit. i feel closest to god when i criticise him; i’ve always found faith and purity difficult, so i dirty his name to understand it better. the only time i think i fully understood the divine love jesus offers was reading a blasphemous play written by a man as confused about religion as i am. in it, jesus said “what i need you to believe is that if you hate who i love, you do not know me at all. and make no mistake, “who i love” is every last one. i am every last one. people ask of me: where are you? where are you? . . . verily i ask of you to ask yourself: where are you? where are you?”. it makes me think that i could believe in god if i could make peace with not knowing the answers to all the questions humans ask that lead to false constructions of divinity. maybe my faith is not in choosing which story of creation to believe, but in love and the humans who are capable of it. love as an entity, an interdimensional unit. humans and god and the universe as one - experiencing itself. it surprises me how much i can learn about religion from those who don’t practice it.

this time of year also brings about one of the few days i am forced to go to church. i enjoy it more now than i did as a kid. i can appreciate the aesthetic while trying to ignore what the priest says. stained glass windows and high wood beams surround me as i struggle to sit with the discomfort of peering into the lives of a room full of people so different from me, who might hate me for what i believe in and who i am, or worse, accept me, and watch as i unravel over being unable to project my self hatred onto them. i push this down as far as i can, until some random thursday when i’ll light a candle and listen to adrianne lenker and cry over my soul rotting inside of me, just out of reach. i want to be saved, but i’m convinced only i can save myself, and this is my hamartia.

the idea of rebirth is on my mind for many reasons. behind all the ‘new year new me’ sentiments most people attempt to hold at the year’s end, i see attempts to change, to work on becoming a different, better person. rationally, the reason most people fail to achieve the goals they set out is because they only think about self improvement when prompted to by such things as the passage of time, rather than taking action consistently. i fall victim to this, though i feel that i have these crises fortnightly as opposed to yearly. the thought of making a list of resolutions honestly scares me - i know exactly what to write down because i go over and over them every night, and have done for months to years.

complacency is easy. for me, it’s like waking up in the morning and falling right back asleep; so brief a decision that i barely think about the consequences and give into my body’s desires. maybe i would achieve more if i found it harder to go back to sleep.