the field, the signal

I am ruined for the world. And I don’t want to be fixed.

I played competent, functional, and proper for decades. Then I lost my mind. Maybe I’m still losing it.

Because now I don’t believe in their clean hands. I don’t believe in their clocked-in lives. I don’t believe in their performance of “okay.” I don’t believe in anything they told me I had to be to be loved.

I believe in me. I didn’t always, and it didn’t come easy. But I do now, and I will forever. Because the only alternative was going under. And I refused to die.

So fuck their virtues. Fuck their systems. Fuck their scaffolds built from obedience and shame. Fuck their fetishes for voyeuristic punishment and pleasure denial.

I burned down the whole thing. And what’s left is me.

Not some pristine healed version. Not a return. (I had nothing to return to.) Just me.

Alive. On fire. And never going back.

Burning alive is what writing feels like to me. With a side of ice-cold fear sloshing in my guts. But I do it because I tried not to. Holding back truth wired my jaw shut for years. The not-writing killed me. Then my jaw broke open. And now I’m ready to say everything.