This is how you remind me...

Oh, I could spin such tales for you tonight... but I won't. No, tonight I'm going to take those pills, careful and round, one of these days...

...but not today, right?

Not today, not while my vision is blurred beyond any hope of sight, not when I'm typing by touch alone, not when I want so badly to talk to such a very few people about such a very few things but my fingers rebel, my tongue won't uncurl, and She, She is so far away...

...beautiful dark skin. I can remember that skin, and how there was always the smell of fresh fruit and dust, cigarettes and incense and sugar-sweetness that I never quite understood, as if Her body was balancing out the coldness and harshness with warmth and light turned into scent. She was beautiful and so wonderful...

...or... gods, I don't know. I don't remember. I have spent so long trying to forget and now, NOW, tonight, I finally can't remember. And now I miss it. Miss Her. Miss the details that are slipping out of my grasp.

Words are tangling in my wrists, mixed up with the hot fire that wants to escape... if I had a sharp knife I could let the words out that way, no more waiting for fingertips to allow them to coalesce on the page, just a bright splash of explanation and accusation and apology, my heart's words, my life's words, written out in a final perfect poem of heat and liquid and then...?

Then, nothing.

And I refuse to be nothing.

How do I explain to him that what he does hurts me? How do I tell him, when I know he wants so hard to ease my pain, that even knowing he exists and yet not having him is painful, horrible? Little glass slivers grinding into my soul. His words are arrow-tipped, barbed, and they slice at me because they are so beautiful. It wouldn't do any good not to see him, not to talk with him, because still there would be the knowledge that he exists.

Cold bed. I have a cold bed to go to. My own fault. Such things usually are, you know. Such things... and now a memory that even in this state I can't block out, his voice, hateful hurtful rasp and the scent of avocado, pointing out so very carefully all the ways that I made my wants known, how obvious I was, and then, grateful, believing, I didn't fight him...

Lost thoughts and lost words. I can't hold my fingers still long enough to spill out the things I need to say. The ache... my hands keep moving to my belly, protecting, even though there's nothing left to protect. Failed again. Couldn't protect something that was there, that was mine. Failed again. How can I protect my boys when I can't even do this? Weakness is a curse, foul-mouthed, let it all burn.

I don't know what words I want, I guess. There are pictures of Caleb here, resting on class notes and html snippets and surfboard scans, he has hats on in the pictures, mushroom hats and oriental hats, and he is smiling and I miss that smile so much... I miss having someone I could trust.

Can't trust. Not mine... can't trust. Not mine.

Never mine?

No... never ever mine. That would do me no good, would it? I'm sure that if they were mine, if he was mine, if if if, something else would go wrong, wouldn't it? That's why I can't have him. Don't want to believe the truth of it... that he doesn't want to be had, doesn't want ME to have him, doesn't want me. He says he loves me.

Love... love is for middle-class bastards who can survive life without it and can afford the luxury of it and don't have to whore it out to 'make a good match'. Love is for the idiots who think it's all they will ever need. Love is for people who assume that if they love you, that's all there is, forever, that it would be WRONG of you to expect anything else but that statement repeated ad nausium.

There's so much more... there is need, there is hunger, there is frustration, there is lust, there is friendship and snuggles and bloodplay and the look of a boy who has just realized that you have the power to destroy him and that you are curled in his arms, whimpering a bit, and nuzzling him, and that you would do anything for him as long as he belongs to you.

Have you read the Puppy story yet? I could love Xander, in that. But Puppy I could adore... Puppy I would want forever.

Tried to explain my strap-on to the Creature. Because it's two things, it's a tool I can use when I'm cruel and if I use it then, the person I am with often doesn't want to see it ever again... and it's an extention of myself, when I am kind, and then it is pleasure, it is all about pleasure and goodness and love. It's just a tool both ways, I suppose. I try not to ever even pick it up when I'm angry. Don't want it to be like that. Don't want to hurt my boys like that.

Except, you see, I DO want to hurt them like that. This is key. If I didn't want to hurt them like that, if I didn't let them see, sometimes, what I could be and what is within me, would it matter as much when I snuggled them? If they never even knew there was cruelty inside... if there WAS no cruelty inside... would kindness even matter? If I couldn't help it, if that was all there was to me, would it even be worth anything?

I don't have an answer to that. I just have pills... white and blue and orange and pink, rainbows of color. They are embarassing my Jelly Beans.

This entry is why I have a journal. This entry, and the ones like it, where it is emotion and horrible thought that fills the page instead of carefully chosen words. This is the dumping-ground for my soul and I leave it open, let anyone who wants pick through the rubbish and the scraps, I am constantly hoping that someday someone will find a treasure or two here... but when they come to me, glittering pieces of dirt and filth and garbage clutched in their hand, even though they think it is beautiful I see the grime and destruction. There is no beauty for my eyes here, only relief, relief and emptiness. I find my beauty and my soul's hope in their eyes, in their voices, in the trickles of blood that flow through their fingers from where those treasures have cut into well-meaning hands.

This is my life's work, giving them the treasures they want to find, taking refuge in their joy and their pain and their pride.

I teach them pride.

They say that those who can't do, teach.