Living in is a cosmic terror by itself, feeling like a prisoner in this palace, undergoing assaults from all sides and unable to fight back. no weapon sharp enough, lethal enough to put an end to the suffering that's coming my way. it remains my eternal demeure, my vault.
If you listen carefully you could hear a collection of ruminations, of endless echoes of rotten ‘should’ and ‘could’. this walking coffin has changed shape and size so much time over the years that I can barely remember what I was once, some sort of fever dream. perhaps that explains why I can't find my place in it. lately I've been referring to my body as the embodiment of Theseus’s Paradox: think about it, would I still be fundamentally the same if my body were to change? to lose its curves and the heaviness in which I drown? if thinness took its place in the polished velvet seat, that I have strategically positioned at the centre of my mind? will I see some otherness ? everything that might once have been flat, thin, slender, is now nothing but overflow, dilation, excess ? Cause with all the different bodies i’ve been in, comes a different personnality, a different me, some more confident or more insecure.
They keep repeating like some ritornello that if treat it well enough, it would make it a decent place, a one worthy to be called ‘home’. It doesnt have to be shape in some way, just to shelter my heart and offer a logis to my soul.
Sometimes I take a pencil then i let my fingers trace the path
Sketching my dream palace
Full of gold and rubies
Gold out my aspirations and rubies out of my blood
They’re will be the backbone of my reign; a one full of hatred and pain.
The embryo of my misery, throbbed in the most secluded parts of the palace, each time taking on a new guise. Unstable. Elusive. Unstoppable.
Everything goes beyond the frame, beyond me when it comes to this palace. And deep down I feel like I'm the only thing standing in the way of what this body could be. Every mouthful, every swallow takes me further away from this body, keeping me at the bottom of the hill of disgust. Every corner of this palace is haunted by my own projections, this intractable fear of being nothing but myself. Trying desperately to paint with my blood, layer after layer, to hide the writings on the walls, which perhaps contain with them, a bit of ipséité that I refuse to tolerate. I’m not only restricting what goes into my oesophagus, I also restricting my freedom.
Then I overthink of a life where I signed the armistice between my palace and my brain, never knowing if it is doomed anyway or if I’m the one tourmenting it. Or peraphs, peraphs the palace is not haunted by me, it is my haunting.
am I not supposed to be sovereign of the palace ? Day by day, night after night, I see the cracks devouring the place, like carrion by a carnivore with a voracious appetite. I didn't make the rules; the palace had already found a foreman and his orders were engraved on every surface of this building, they had a value and a weight that my own wishes struggled to surpass. Up until now I've been in charge of renovations, and I sometimes wonder if a professional couldn't solve the problem once and for all.
Because I have a will, but was it mine? Or the one influenced by the foreman? They crafted around that my house is rotten to the ground, unacceptable, irreparable, and undesirable. They have cemented these beliefs, assuring me of a unique and irredeemable place only if I indulge in a few purchases of items, ornaments, or trinkets supposed to transform my living space into this optimal empire of beauty.
That’s enough, I can no longer starved myself in my own home.
Once-but not so far away, I was setting fire all across the palace.
My body breathed with the rhythm of the tachycardias
I felt the bones of my pelvis, and the simple sensation gave me great pleasure,
My body was in its apotheosis and my mind in its decay. But that was just a trivial detail. It was only and solely when i was on the edge of the collapse, embracing the very pernicious nature of the thing, that i felt more alive.
I was nothing more than a collection of fragmented pieces that someone was trying as best they could to hold together. i was anaemic, on the verge of fainting every time I sat up, the blood that dripped from the walls every month left the house, bodyhair were proliferating all over my arms and legs, I was incapable of the slightest physical effort, but girl, it was so good to be thin. cause that's the thing about being thin, it's intoxicating, like a poisonous scent that's been tickling your nostrils since you were a teenager. i've rarely known anything as laborious as thinness. Losing and losing and losing yourself in the track.
The palace was in an imminently fragile state and an easy target but was it even noteworthy ?
The ranking/demand was so high when the walls were cracked/decrepit, the pain was creeping all around me when the love letters fell of my letterbox, the silhouette was so thin when the shadow never cease to grow thicker and thicker to shallow myself.
Mourning my yesteryear figure, there is no real end to thinness track, as a morbid example, it’s like a malignant tumour, it finds a way of adapting, of surviving even in an environment that strives to finish it off, to keep it at bay.
Then I tried to remember that this body is just a vessel for my soul, my ideas, my art but also food for the dirt, the nature and the ecosystem I will come back to. My remains will be a full meal for something. Nothing is eternal. And it may be a cliché, but it's no less real; there's no such thing as eternal night, immutable day, or a living being that doesn't perish. every cycle of life comes to an end, your suffering lives too, it exists and is sometimes more tangible than you would like, but it has no eternity status.
There is something more tangible and more robust in me than any excess of skin.
This piece was supposed to be published since July but, for whatever reason of mine it is only now that I feel I can post it. And what a timing; when my own house + bedroom are renovating for the first time since 8 years. Ironic isn’t it ?
I guess I just have to take back my housing contract.
J’ai vraiment adoré ma lecture. J’ai rarement lu de métaphore aussi profonde et lourde de sens sur ce sujet. C’est, je trouve, une très belle façon de décrire le vaisseau de ton âme et ton vécu ma foi ardu dans ce palais. J’espère que tu finiras par t’y sentir pleinement chez toi.
Aucun mot ne peut vraiment exprimer l'admiration que j'ai porté à cet écrit. La métaphore filée était bien amenée vraiment. Et tu as réussi à mettre des mots sur un truc que j'arrive pas à trop à exprimer. C'est aussi effrayant ce que tu vis, j'ose à peine imaginer comment tu te sens vraiment. J'espère que tu devriendras vite le hôte