Fever Dreams

Lying here ill day after day, I find myself pondering the way some people take concepts and fashion them into weapons. The way some omit facts to maintain the false superiority of knowing the truth. There is the devaluation of lived experience and independent thought. Insularity that breeds mediocrity. It's all weakness masquerading as strength, but if the last few years have proved anything, it's how easily we will buy into a façade. 

When I'm strong enough to stand up, I contemplate my image in the bathroom mirror, my awareness of -- the appearance of being -- an object without value. It may come as a surprise, but this hasn't always been the case. I've been a valuable object a time or two, and this is how I know that the difference between them is no more than a hair's breadth, entirely dependent on the whims of the one who thinks they decide your worth. This is not to say it does not hurt. If you care, then oh god yes, it hurts. Devaluation can feel like dying while having to stay alive. Self-objectification is worse yet. It's what happens when your survival depends on watching yourself through other people's eyes. 

I'm aware I'm not making a very good case for myself by telling this half -- my internal half -- of the story. I'm aware I could kick my image up a notch by switching the view. That requisite hair's breadth. I could convince you that I'm more worthy of your attention than you think I am. I note the impulse, see the shadow of it in my words (see, I've been valued, I've been loved, don't take me for granted!) but these days I lack much interest in self-deception. 

...

Last night I dreamed of a phrase etched on my own flayed flesh: "just because you've been given this doesn't mean it's a gift."

I woke up and realized it was true. 

The distance between seeing pain as a gift and pain as a punishment is a hair's breadth, too. 

These are the things you notice when you are sick.

(Illustration: Martin Ware, Donkeyskin)

Underneath

Cruel summer. Miserly summer. All steaming drizzle and sodden heat. Mosquitoes breeding in muddy puddles. There aren't enough baths in the world to wash away this malaise.

There's nothing to do but wheeze and cough and think about all the work left undone. The air is thick with both disease and disgrace and it's a toss-up as to which is more suffocating.

My ideas wither under that corrosive dripdripdrip, the one you think I don't notice. 

My thoughts are toxic condensation, collecting beneath an August that never really came.