I think about what others think. About me.
About everything I say or do or screw up.
I know that I shouldn’t care, that it doesn’t matter.
Before the room empties itself, I empty myself.
I can’t handle applause, I don’t perform self-deformation
To get some, maybe I crave it because I am a child inside.
I twist and turn within myself to find the right word
In the right moment to get the right reaction and all I
I hear is me stuttering, words coming out before thoughts,
The pressure of small talk, the shallow ends, the rotten
Electricity, the stagnant expectant gaze, I wish I’d never said hello.
I navigate minefields, vocabulary and sentences and etiquette,
What to do to, to say, right and wrong, dos and don’ts and all
I can think of is, why don’t you fuck right off?
I was convinced that I had dealt with all of my issues,
Anger the toxin, the rusty anchor, it cannot be,
From nothing to something, back and forth, it lingered,
The page just wasn’t turned, dog-eared, the memory
Had never been freed from the emotion.
I am the carrier. I never mastered the art of expulsion, then.
Who was I even, talking to her? To them?
Changing my faces and voices a million times a day?
Listening to myself and wondering: who is this child?
Yes, I’m vulnerable and I refuse your blue prints,
But who I am was born constitutionalised.
I wish I could look him in the eye without
Laughing out of discomfort or crying out of rage.
I wish I could tell them that they are the most miserable
People I have ever met.
I wish I wouldn’t have played by the book
Ending up chin-deep in debt in my twenties.
I wish I wouldn’t have admired what had been shallow and
Dumb for years.
I wish I wouldn’t have fed and complimented the worst
Kind of people just out of fear and co-dependency.
I wish I wouldn’t have made fun of myself
In front of the wrong crowd.
I wish I could have fought off the hands that touched me
As a kid. As a teenager. As a young woman.
I wish I would have known. Been taught to trust
My instincts and not repress them to please.
To fucking please. Whom? All the people
With knives in their hands?
Wisdom pearls that are handed down generation
After generation, unquestioned, infiltrating, slowly burning.
This is not me.
These thousands of roles that everybody
So joyfully accepted.
I tried being all alone.
The ghosts are in my body and in my brain.
The regret, the shame, the guilt, the pain, the insecurity, the fucking fears,
The hunger, the inconsistencies, the grief, the inacceptance, the obsession, the fury,
The woulda-shoulda-couldas.
Conformity. Complacency. And for what?
To not truly live? Maybe I am doing it right after all.
To finally do what I have never been taught,
What I got for free in my life.
To do as I see fit without all of your systematic lunacy,
Love the way I love,
Grieve the way I grieve,
Walk and talk and work and write my own way,
Without wondering whether you like it or not.
I threw your unbearable Stepford-snowglobe right against the fucking wall.
Wait for the apology until you’re grey.
I’ve apologised enough for three lifetimes.
Make it six, I’m a woman.
Yes, even for fucking sneezing. Can you imagine?
Croque-Melpomene 