temple of a thousand doors

with beginning-ness

this is nearly too tremulous; never shared anywhere except my own inbox. but it Needs to be here. without any other explanation. just sifted out of the sands— Here. These.

sunday, january 1st, 2023. 3:33 pm. // email to myself, subject line: breaking doorways.

up until these days i still did not accept my Original collapse at end of 2015. still saw it in a vaccuum. a hiding, a giving up.

so much of this journey has been discovering what acts of mercy actually are. they are often the Simplest things. sunlight. sitting in a tree. laughing unexpectedly. being able to lay down without searing pain. letting your body have the say in making the rest of the world Stop.

gabor maté said we are the only species who would create and perpetuate conditions unfavorable to our lives.

we are just a species like everything else. like the plants, mushrooms, animals, rivers. we are not absolved because we think, we write, we philosophize, we think we know.

[keep it on track.]

what is it that tells me i should dance instead of throw myself off a bridge? to block both of my parents’ numbers instead of scraping the ground with my forever groveling, trying to be good?

mary oliver. i cry almost everytime. i have few things memorized and this poem is one of them, this poem and a few prayers.

you do not have to be good...

how do i— unlearn what has kept me alive, while understanding that i won’t die because of it? while understanding that i am not a defenseless child anymore but an adult who feels like they could just as legitimately die of grief?

i am in a process right now. to experiment with the space i have never been allowed to have. because of guilt. and chaos. and my father’s health problems. and needing to defend my mother. stop myself from curling up against the destructive urge.

people wonder why there is so much suicide.

when i did my last ritual performance 5 years ago one of the first moments, images, to become clear in my memory, was this. and i acted it out to the full brunt of myself. even now the camera misses the first blow of my body but the sound forced out of me on impact, recorded.

on a long blank sheet of paper on the wall i draw the outline of a doorway and write inside it in capital letters, THE WAY OUT. i slam myself against the wall. over and over and over.

funnily not funnily enough, the last interaction i had with my father involved me breaking the wall of the doorframe. i screamed so loud i saw those ghostly floaty bits in front of my eyes. slammed the door and threw myself against it. don’t break my door or i’ll break your face.

the last time i broke a doorframe was the threshold of the last safe place i lived, in 2020. it was summertime, i had no shoes on, no phone, shorts and a bikini top. the door locked behind me as i let a fly out i had trapped in a jar. panic overtook me. i checked the door with my shoulder. once, twice. the door gave way, the entire frame and wall, splintered onto the floor of the vestibule. i paid for it with my own money, laid on the ground upstairs, mitigating the shame of my Forcefulness as the workers replaced it all, a week or so later.

the first time i broke a doorway. was august 12th 1986 at almost 2pm. my birthday. i split my mother open, she needed stitches from vagina to anus. have i never forgiven myself, the way she has never forgiven me? the temperance of my life in penance to her suffering, her permanently stretched and disfigured stomach she had already been so insecure of. the scar from removing her appendix causing so much grief. hiding. shame. now this. Now This. now Me.

*

sunday, january 1, 2023. 3:47pm. // second email to myself.

it is said that to the narcissist, the presence of the truthteller induces and activates such electrifying shame that the narcissist tries over and over to destroy them. even if they are the narcissist’s child.

i wonder, if my daughter knew, the act of mercy my decision my abortion really was. i don’t have to think long or hard at all, now, to see what our life would have been. and would we ever have gotten out of it? would we have ever made it to this point? would i have killed myself, if i had a daughter? would i have continued the pattern and scapegoated her for all my pain, my family’s pain? would she be blocking my number now, to prevent the hurt i am causing her. an act of mercy. would i keep trying to slam into and slam into her doorway. until i broke through.

the complexity of this is nausea inducing. more like freeze inducing. more like fuck it all, curl up in a ball, and never come out again-inducing. i almost wanted to try smoking my first cigarette the other night, surrounded by the spilling over ashtrays my ex-fiancé left strewn everywhere in the house. almost. Almost. what makes you dance instead of throw yourself off a bridge? what makes you sift through the ashes to find that quietly growing sprig, The Will to Live?

written in brooklyn, nyc during time in exile from my childhood home; the first space i ever Really and Fully took from my parents. fotos from late summer 2021, manchester/old trafford, and the forest in kersal dale. <3 </3 <3

the ritual performance i mention is my show, PROVENANCE (2018).

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