Miscommunication

Her words came out as stunted breaths that hung heavy in the air. Words that hinted at some kind of unfinished meaning, begging for others to notice, decipher and understand. She hated this part of herself so much at times. Such a half-hearted attempt at communicating. Trapped inside herself, and always this constant feeling of struggling, itching to burst free. To fully participate, integrate with the other.

why am I in this body? p.ii

This body at times feels like a shell - an encasing that simply houses my bloody contents. I feel like some kind of sausage; this thin membrane of skin that separates interior from the outer world. Only to blister and crackle when exposed to the grill.

How strange it feels to "possess" a body. What does possession over this coagulation of water, plasma, fat, and bone mean? Sometimes I feel like I am looking at an external object whose movements I have some vague awareness of, as though, when it moves a thought occurs, "ah, I knew that would happen." But it still takes me by surprise.

An unfortunate reminder

L was the kind of person whose existence made P feel frustrated with herself. P experienced this frustration as a physical sensation, a constant itch that seemed to simmer deep beneath the surface of her skin, tense enough to burst at any second. As if it was her body's way of physiologically acknowledging what it understood as wild, unfocused hatred.

In other words on some level, L unfortunately reminded P of herself.

L had a presence about her that made tangible the slew of self-criticisms and half-formed thoughts that periodically shaped the way P saw her own sad existence. Being in L's company materialised these otherwise transient and immaterial thoughts,  made them excruciatingly concrete. L was a living, breathing, physical manifestation of everything P felt (and hated) about herself.

Of course P tried to attribute the annoyance to what she convinced herself were more objective criteria - it was her particular manner of speaking, the way she argued about a point that lacked any sort of contention worth debating about, even her body shape and size. These flimsy justifications shot out periodically from her animal brain. Of course L's personality, her figure, the simple fact of her existence, was to blame for P's annoyance.

But of course there was no logical justification. Only that L instigated a set of circumstances, an environment which fostered the unpleasant feeling that one was being continuously judged and criticised. How undignified! To be made to feel so self-conscious without intending to.

Useless question

It poured out from within her in a flood of visceral sensation that could only be expressed with a closing of her eyes and a short, but curt exhalation of breath. "What was the point of all of this?", she thought to herself, fully aware of the fact that this question had probably been repeated to the point of futility over thousands and thousands of years of human civilisation. She was even about seventy percent sure that an animal, perhaps a pig or horse or some other domesticated creature that had been in the company of humans for far too long, had thought the same thing to itself while struggling to appease the slew of base impulses and desires that propelled its every waking moment.

why am I in this body?

There is a part of me that wants to experience obliteration, that wants my physical form to burst into a million particles; to rejoin that which made me. As if, in an instant, I could be everything and nothing at the same time.

a dream

The cave. An echo, and then, silence. Not deafening, but a heavy consciousness that rings deep. An all-consuming whir of silence that builds its walls around my ears. Encasing them with the seductive promise of. Nothingness. Wet, damp, I sit alone in silence. Alone within the dark hollow. A gaping space whose presence I fill.

Nails

What controls the hands that write these words on this page? I am flesh and energy, some sort of abstract life force with a fleshy physicality that is visible to others like me. I am the warmth that leaves an imprint on this page - warmth that fades and will recede from memory. I am the dead cells that form the nails on my fingertips - why do they stay in that half-moon shape?