manic-lili-dream-girl

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

To the trans woman I matched with on tinder in 2019, Im sorry. I didnt know I was trans at the time. I struggled to see you as a woman, I wanted to. I didnt understand what it meant to be trans, or why I felt so adversarial about people who denied trans identities. My heart longed to be what you were, and everything else felt weak and hollow in comparison.

I think if we met now, if you could meet the fag that I am, youd understand why I acted so strange in that woefully short conversation.

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

there's a video on instagram of a man kicking his partner's door in. the top comment is (with over 4 thousand likes): "how about you tell us what you did to make him that angry?"

barring emergency, nobody should be kicking anybody's door in. many of us lived in houses where it was always, somehow, an emergency. there is a strange, almost hysterical calm that comes over you in that moment - everything feels muted, and you almost feel, however incongruently, like you should be laughing. you are living inside of "the emergency." oh my god, you think. i am now a fucking statistic.

there is another comment with 2.8 thousand likes: "if this was a woman doing it to a man, nobody would give a shit."

do people give a shit now, though?

barring emergency, the door should remain standing. the emergency should be panicked, desperate - "i'm coming in there to protect you." many of us know what it feels like when the emergency is instead "i'm coming in there to get you."

1.5k likes: "and yet you post this for notes. glad to see being the victim has become your whole personality."

hysteria is a word connected to womb, from greek. what you're experiencing is so senseless and inhumane that you (a rational creature) try to find any ground within what is irrational and cannot be explained. one of the most frustrating things about staying in bad situations is that we also lie to ourselves. we also ask ourselves - wow. what did i do?

women can be, and often are, also abusers. abuse is not gendered. abuse is not just a "straight person" problem. abuse does not have a face or figure or sexuality. you cannot pick an abuser out of a crowd. an abuser could be actually anybody.

and then so many people rally behind the man kicking the door in. here is something nobody should be doing, right? you want to ask every person that liked that first comment: do you ask this because you side with him? do you ask this because it helps you feel safe from this ever happening?

in some ways, you're weirdly sympathetic to the top comment, because it is the same logic you see frequently. the idea is that the average, normal, sane person doesn't just break down a door. doesn't just shoot up a school. doesn't stalk and kill women. doesn't threaten sexual assault. doesn't run over protesters. doesn't shoot an unarmed black person. doesn't scream at underpaid walmart employees. doesn't just "lose it". something had to have happened, right? because the default (white. straight. cis.) - that is someone who is always, you know. "sane."

(right?)

on a podcast, you hear a sane, normal, rational person. "if you piss me off, i'm going to need to hit something. sorry but i'm not apologizing. that's just who i am that's how it is." his voice almost sounds like he's laughing.

you think of the door, and how you were almost laughing behind it, too. ironically, every real emergency in your life has almost felt peaceful in comparison. fire, car accident, flash flooding - these felt quiet, covenant to you. you'd stood in all of them, feeling them pass over and up to your chin, never actually overwhelming.

but when the door was coming down, you had felt - is there a word for that? there has to be, a word, right.

surely one of us has figured out the word for that, i mean. it's such a large fucking statistic.

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

no but you know what would be nice? experiencing the kind of happiness that doesn’t turn out to be a lesson that I have to mourn over for at least 3 months

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

wizard seeing a small crowd of people and their knees immediately buckle in sexual pleasure imagining how much damage a fireball would do

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

it’s so insane to me that most of the people you meet in life are just passing moments. you’ll know them for a brief period of time before they’re a stranger again and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it because that is just how it’s meant to be..

#this one hurts

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!

they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.

they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.

you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.

but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.

where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.

and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?

doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.

but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and good for each other and bad in equal measure.

what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.

just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?

your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

I put my mind to it and failed. You cant do everything you put your mind to. You can try, and I tried wrong

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

Give me arms to pray with instead of ones that hold too tightly

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

keep going

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

Is there no fire in your heart? Is there nothing you would fight for?

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

Whoever said it was easy musta had it pretty good

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

If everything goes wrong, I still have one last piece of my heart to give you

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

There is a fire in my heart and if you send me across this wicker bridge, you'll come back to find nothing but ash.

[manic-lili-dream-girl]

The days finish sooner, tired and quiet. And soon, the trees will find rest as well, their brown only bringing attention to the wainings of winter