i must've binged in the underworld

in sex, in heart-work, in vision, in villainization, in willingness.

sometimes i feel like i have Lost something from my uglier, wilder days. even as i type those words they don’t seem to Capture it— what it was like to exist in a context in which i thought i’d die before i found peace. // i’ve written about this and ruminated on this before— how ‘moving on’/’moving forward’ from being in active crisis/suicidality/a litany of destructive habits and decisions is unlike the cleaner-cut-seeming sobriety from alcohol or drug use. you use, or you don’t. what about when it’s cravings? what about when it’s food? what about when it’s rumination on death and ‘edging into madness’? what even Is madness / emergence / Revelation / etc—? i feel like drawing a clean-cut line between me Now and Before-Me— self-hating me, destructive me— isn’t the most honest or accurate way to Put any of this. i have long struggled with what ‘recovery’ or ‘wellbeing’ or ‘health’ means to me. sometimes this is So Much More present in my Angel-wrestling; as it is, right Now. it’s Dangerous; self-annihilatory-territory. Yet; i feel so many of us are walking around with it; it’s why so many of us die, become exhausted from fighting; what the fuck is Giving Up / what the fuck is Giving In?

the first and only person i saw die was of a drug-related cause. in the in-betweens while i was tracking her while on life-support, That’s the place that we met. the Underneaths. the Reasons why. someone wants the womb-like comfort of belonging, safety, trance-like numbness or Nothingness, rather than All Of This. // one of my most beloved comrades, who was taken off life support the next year— chose to end his own life. it’s almost a year since that happened; i can’t fucking believe it. Me, who has had to Fight So Fucking Hard to remain here, to Stay here— don’t i understand, at a Visceral level, the feeling of it being too goddamn Hard to stay alive? he was in his early 50s; he had been fighting since his late teens. isn’t that Enough? who gets to say when its Enough? who gets to Talk About These Things without someone offering you a kind word about how loved you are or how grateful you should be, how worried they are about you, how you should probably call a suicide hotline; it’s not fair is what it is. there’s no space for the shamanic Intensity of all of this. of living in a body and with a psyche that Is that shamanically Intense; all the time. // i’ve also written before that everyone wants to be close to the luminary, the visionary— but does anyone want to be in close proximity with what it actually means/is to Be that, to Hold that light, And Especially, that dark-light?

i have striven for some kind of Frequency, some kind of Consistency, some kind of More Even Keel, more self-worth, more Peace. have i had it? yes— of Course. And. i see how sensitively and precariously i can hang in the balance between That and whatever is Not-That. and i’m tired. i don’t want to fight my isolationist tendencies; i just want to lay down in the water of my underground stream, routed into the sewer system. i just want to be that dark and that disgusting; that irrevocably Altered. And; still, somehow, Alive. i want to write all of this With The Goddamn Honesty of writing it. i feel like, as someone who has been actively suicidal, i un/subconsciously revoke my permission of writing the blood-soaked page Because the alarm bells will go off. because everyone is paying attention, now. same reason why i had to delete certain family members from my social media accounts, when i’d post photos of myself hanging out on the bridge i ruminated jumping from. there are many who don’t understand At All, what It, what This, is like. And— for those of you that Do. i thank you. for those of you who have Shared your deaths and your darknesses and your pits of roiling Pains with me; especially when i was a near-total stranger to you. i won’t undignify it with ‘trauma bonding’, thank you very fucking much— it means more to me, i think More to me, than sharing the Light does. there’s something about me meeting you, and you meeting me, in that Place of the Most Dark and the Most Pain. the Narrowest, most godforsaken, seemingly uninhabitable place. and we are just Down there. we are Down There. // Together.

///

i wrote something by hand tonight i want to type in here; my words above are written afterwards, yet they are Moving Together. in this strippage of so much i see the prejudices i still have towards myself, my habits, my Ways Of Life. yes, my fight looks different now— not as externally translated, not as outrightly filled with self-hate— but perhaps intensified in their Quietude, in their Secrecy, in a different way. // i still Feel Like— let me cast off Everything, if i somehow Lose Sight of what i am. this wildness, this ugliness, this ungodliness; Honestly. let me cast off Everything— any remaining titles, any remaining Names, social standings, or ‘reputations’— if it means i need to keep Fighting Against My Nature. my nature to Eat. my nature to be Hungry. my nature to be Sad. and Angry. and often, Alone. my nature to be constantly in flux, and ‘overly’ sensitive. barely capable ‘of Anything’ and yet ever In-Working; thinking; researching; wrangling; Questioning. is there Peace, here— Yes—? but i don’t really know what any common-person’s Peace is. maybe i never will. maybe i will never stop compulsively eating or being in pain or suddenly feeling mentally, spiritually, emotionally, bodily unstable, or unwell. maybe i will always long for and yet rabidly fight against anonymity. maybe i will be jealous and clutching and Terrible. maybe i will be these things and i will fit myself as a prayer into a crack in the wall and i will Wait there and i will just Wait. // no resurrection Promise, just a stack of translations all saying The Same and an Entirely Different thing.

this is me. if i could look back in time, to audrey nearly 7-years-ago to the days, making that psychiatrist appointment instead of buying all the wine and jumping the bridge. if i could step into that room, into the dark— show her my current Raggedness. show her, This Is What You Stayed Alive For, this is What It’s Like. you did it, and it’s Beautiful, so so Beautiful— and it’s so, so fucking Horrible, honestly. all the things you have no idea are Still coming, are coming Straight For You— and there’s nothing you can do. i can’t tell you this is all about Transcendence. i Know grace is real— And there’s also— All Of This. i feel i am more truthful when i am not pithy or teaching or drawing up the neat bows. my ex-boyfriend/lover/friend of now 14 years told me something similar in late night txt a day or so ago that cleaved him away from me Again, though we shared bodies and heart-beats and beauty and silence and Everything i wanted and Everything i will never, ever, ever ‘get.’ i hated him for it— i said, as someone who has been suicidal, meaning-making has saved my life. it makes the unbearable bearable, and for a person like me, i Need that. // what of myself, Now? sitting at the edge of the Edge, again— and the abyss seems more comforting than associative threading, the tattered cloak i clutch around me, Making It Make Sense—?

///

there’s something More Truthful, Here. about Always Being This Person and not Leaving Her Behind. about not drawing the sharpness of dividing line between Audrey-In-Madness and Audrey-Recovered. the life-struggling-against-death and the supposed Triumphant-After-Life. she is Here, she is Informing-Me. she looks Different Now— i am no longer in my late-20s, or early/mid-30s. i have lived 7 years— 10 years, even— past when i thought the story would be over; Needed to be over. sometimes i have riches in my hands; sometimes i feel like i have utterly, fucking Nothing. i wait like a cinderbiter, covered in ashes, for the Moment(s) i am supposed to Spring into action; alternately, see my attempts at things not ‘meant’ for me to do, that i Aim for or Want to do— foiled and crumbled and spat back in my face; many years ago, didn’t i say— make me an instrument? don’t i always say— i am a free agent for god? what does it mean— part of me wishes it would all just Fall Apart already (G U I L T washes over me as i type this); not this forever-teetering-on-the-edge of Everything-I-Don’t-Know. is it Me who needs to make the Move? or You—?

*

here is the piece. i am okay and not okay; like my brilliant friend sophie says, i will not perform wellness for you. that person you see in the street, screaming at someone else, screaming at nothing? that speeds your heartbeat, that makes you angrily sigh or avert your eyes or walk the other way? i’m closer to that, i feel, most days. do you know that that’s me? That’s Me. i want to open up a Channel for its Badness; in a Good way—?

///

“mary, who saw beyond this world and yet also embodied it”

“her devotion to the flesh”

“mary occupied the liminal territory between transgression and enlightenment”

“to embody the whole spectrum of vision and sin at the same time”

“blood-soaked earth at the foot of the cross, hair turned to ashes, and a plant growing in her mouth” […]

— from bruce chilton, ‘mary magdalene: a biography’

i see my Own life Here.

i see my struggles with sex, cravings, food, the body.

with madness, suicidality, emergence, revelation, Vision.

how to exist in a body, a Life, that is always Both?

that never quite feels resolved— that pendulates from peace/transcendence/embodiment— to hellscape, fear, escape.

and it is No Lack Of Effort on my part. my attempts at regularity are just that— Attempts.

the more i punish myself. the more i am punished.

isolation, withholding, stringency. penitence. starvation from nourishment— all kinds.

me here, in the warm lamplight— rosary beads, chilton’s biography of mary magdalene, the cloud of unknowing, jane kenyon poem, flowers— cut, alive, dead, drying. a map from women cartographers courting the edge (‘radiant cold’). a jug of water. an empty bowl. half-dead phone. russian fairy-tales picture book balanced on ave maria tall religious candle. there’s literally tons of them strewn throughout this apartment.

i am tired of struggling against my Nature.

what is my Nature?

i am Finding Out.

in sex, in heart-work, in vision, in villainization, in willingness. not enoughness/never enoughness. the arms of Craving reaching even into the church-cave— what does it mean that when i made my body invisible/translucent they were able to pass through?

will i ever be able to exist in this body without suffering?

— No.

so why am i trying?

what is the Purpose of being Here?

i fall into my early-20s self enchanted by enlightenment and my first experiences of meditation and buddhism— i remember ‘drala’— ‘above the enemy’— i still think somehow i can/will/need to strive for transcending my Nature. it’s not the fucking point, i thrum. it’s not the fucking point.

what if that creature is also me? i don’t want it to be, but is it? my Hunger— what if it Just Is— not redemptive? and the only way is to collapse before it, CoDA step 1, we admitted to ourselves that our lives had become unmanageable.

am i worthy when i stop eating to comfort myself? when i can ‘take regular shits’? when i am not inspecting my bowel movements or afraid to get blood tests or take airplanes? when i don’t forget my daughter in my post-rosary prayers invoking the dead— when i am able to honor my extremes of expression and confusion and utter Nothingness woven into Sexual Desire? “when i can have what i want?” “when what i want doesn’t cause me pain?” when Love is not a condition for Work but a place (is it Possible?) of Ease? when i do not balance the tipping points of my worth or success on self-renunciation; bitter and grateful, yet sometimes more Bitter at the same time?

i get up; a bunch of crumbs slide off of me from the crackers ‘i wasn’t supposed to eat.’ i run my hand over the floor in the dark, i eat a sticky mini Rx bar; i wonder what stops me— is it all an interrelation of similar impulses— from not jumping the bridge, not fully maxing the credit card, not eating/bingeing till i puke, not thrashing and screaming in the street, putting a chair through a windshield, Telling The Fucking Truth?

i’m afraid of pain; i’m afraid of dying; And, i am made of Both.

when i travel through the dark Lineage of these Basest of impulses— is it okay that i Find myself? there, in the bog, unrecognizable? part of me that Wants to be sunswick, buried in the sewer, putrid with the Everything, rotting like the mushrooms but with fecal matter and plastic products; i have tried, My God, i have tried to fucking Get Clean but

This is Me.

there is something satisfying and utter terrible, about it. the relief that comes from Truly giving up.

the horse with the broken legs everyone thought died at the bottom of the well— maybe i am its broken legs. its bones that are indefinite and unable to be pieced back together.

how much do i disgust myself; how unholy do i feel? maybe, for me— like/unlike others— it is not about Taming The Passions, becoming Complete.

i am erroneous in my self-hood, ‘marvelous error!’— not supposed to be Able to continue existing— but Does, somehow; Does.

the horse with the broken bones that Gets Up.

i have seen the fucking apocalypse; don’t you tell me what i need to prepare for.

don’t you fucking tell me that i have not done enough, i am HORSE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL, i stayed alive and played dead through my Falling through, and In.

collapse your panels of experts, your soundbites or tomes of what Activism looks like; how willing i need to be to martyr myself, to give up my life.

tell me what the creek Knows who once felt sun and salt marshland. tell me what she Knows Now, putrefacted, solid wastes, Deep calling to Deep. Dark is not a word, The word, for That.

she’s Me; still Me.

no amount of metaphorical daylighting can bring her Up from That;

i drank pomegranate juice in place of wine for my kitchen table eucharist, the box of seed flour crackers i was ‘supposed to save’ for next sunday

we need to be persephone, be persephone-minded, i want to write or say but then i remember, she comes back up

my goddess only ate 6 seeds—

i must’ve binged in the underworld

i must’ve as usual not been able to stop eating

are you there, sunswick?

new york city sewer system

it’s me, the broken-legged horse

i probably have the most Faith in god when i have none

no name and no theories and no fucking stories

the wastewaters’ inheritance;

it’s a miracle i can Abide in this,

the sheer Ferocity with which i want to

Stop Trying;

//

Wait

for the Spirit

It Is There

//

edge-dweller,

swimmer turned drowner

then back again and

back again

is that my pain

in my guts again

is that the contaminated river

flowing purely

through my arteries

my (he)Art?

//

times like this i miss my poetry when it didn’t explain anything— my blood-slicked page, my suffering, immor(t)al honesty was all there was— i wasn’t a teacher, i wasn’t a Center, i didn’t have wings inked in jagged lines on my ankles just yet— i Was jagged line, i Was blade and edge, in my Suffering, somehow, my power, my pity, my sex, my spectacle, my dirtiness and abject hatred— maybe i Knew what i Was, more than This.

what kind of piety am i trailing? i wanted to set fire to my Own village, i Do this— it’s a wonder i have Any Name at all, i don’t believe in any spectre of ‘mental illness’ anymore— i won’t cure myself of myself, i want to practice butoh so i can make shapes and stretch my face to encircle my darkness.

like a long long tunnel i’d panic to get out of; didn’t seán say there was only one gate? there was only one gate?

people forget what it takes to be a visionary.

there’s no space to be as garish as this life actually Calls Us to Be;

sometimes i can see my reflection in the dark-light of the windowpane

i am hand over mouth

leafless trees

smokestacks blinking

half a face,

snarling animal sounds

in the night i lean forwards

to Discern towards

something killing or

being killed

my feet going pins and needles

with all my weight on top

of them

knowing Better

to just

fall Asleep.

hey; i want to ask,

in a whisper—

would you follow a teacher

who crucified Herself—?

*********

thanks for reading. </3 <3

foto credits: all from brooklyn bike-ride/wander on sunday. // and sunswick creek is an Actual stream that was routed into the sewer system in my neighborhood in the late 1800s (and is Still flowing). myself + some incredible young artists did a ritual-performance-walk for her in 2022.