Entry #4

 I am often thinking about the way I express myself on this blog - as with every little thing that I use for self-expression, I am hopelessly analyzing whether I am doing things the right way. The proper way, to be exact. I used to write everything in broken, disjointed lyrics, trying to give a sense of flow to the written word that would soothe my mind a bit. And I love writing that way still, except that these days I need to write longer sentences, endless paragraphs. It might be because I have grown more quiet, it might be that I have for a long time now been too quiet and now everything is coming out in waves of words that in total might amount to very little for anyone else but to the present me they feel like part of the solution.

  Healing is a slow process. The reconstruction of bones is more painful than I would like to admit and I want to rebel against that pain and go back to hibernation. I am not sure I can afford to though. I spend most of my time in my head and through all the writing that I have been doing in the past few months and year I have managed to notice some patterns - would it that that would suffice. But alas, even clarity comes in waves and though some problems become clear one day, their cause might be gone back to obscurity the next.

  I have found during this time that I am more obstinate in my misery that I thought. I have always perceived myself as a person who lacked any significant backbone but the way I end up going in circles that I know are bad, the way I refuse to voice my needs, they must be also a true sign of stubbornness. I grasp on this refusal with claws and teeth, holding on to it in hopes of shaping it into something more beneficial. I try to use the anger and the despair as fuel to help me move forward, to break through.

  Like I said, healing is a slow, imperfect process. Sometimes it's expressed in asking someone to come over for pizza, even though you're afraid that they will be too bored and say no. It's being able to steal some sleep while the body of an infrequent lover lies beside you and wake up and realize you're more well-rested than all the times you slept longer but alone. It's realizing you're able to sleep next to a lover again and spending the morning basking in their warmth, their soft caresses. It's accepting that it's ok for two weary, lonely to share intimacy even if they're not in love, even if it's not forever. It's allowing yourself to cry when alone when the other option is to never cry at all. It's not smoking for two months straight even though you really want to because you decided you should poison yourself less. It's struggling to find a way out of your retail job.

  I did not find much peace in my escape with nature, as I was hardly left alone. In spite of that, there were moments, quite a few of them in fact, where my insides found a harmony, a balance. I particularly remember sitting at the foot of the rocky cliffs, my feet digging into the sand, staring at the waves, taking in the vast openness of the sea, breathing the salty air, thinking of every little thing and then slowly, everything fading. Washed away, or maybe eroded by the salt. When I was a kid, the moment I got my knees scraped or a cut, I was instructed to run to the sea and drench my wound, for the sea would purify it and make it heal faster. The more the years pass, the more the wounds differ from those I carried as a kid, yet the sea seems to purify these ones too.

  Looking out at the sea, I thought of nothing, I chased after nothing, I was simply there.

  This morning I woke with a slight chill on my skin, the sunlight piercing through the curtains and aiming straight from my eyes. His presence next to me was like an anchor to the presence. Even in his sleep, if he was not pressed against me then his limbs would be outstretched, so that we were always connected. Small carresses, intimacies, I rubbed my nose and lips against his skin, luxuriating in the contact. I was, in a different way, present, thinking of nothing, focusing on the privilege of touch. I laid down earlier and realized that his smell has lingered on the pillow.

  And in the turbulent days that consist this year for every one, in the process of trying to dress wounds that I had thought had turned into scars but instead have been left bleeding, that is a small consolation. One that is all but insignificant.