names

cédrìc

i said your name a lot

because

i said chris' a lot

because

i said jeff's a lot

because

i read years ago that when you say someone's name it makes them feel valuable to you 

so, like, this was a relationship thing...

...and i realized

t felt so nice saying the name of someone i trusted

mind you, jeff was supposed to just be a best friend

but anyway

i don't know how to erase one name

jeff? feh 

you?

fuck outta here

i'm scared, cédrìc

you were gonna help me and the kids live free and happy

i don't miss YOU 

you lost every right to anything positive from me when you decided i was trying to control you from america in a romantic manner 

i hate you for that

my heart goes where it goes and it stays right where it roots if it feels enriched 

you were in my heart

but

not

like

that

but oh am i terrified right now

I CANNOT STAY IN THIS WORLD 

my heart screams...

...what ugliness it has wrought and always

and forever (i mean in the way it makes narcissists 

where do i plug up the hole i need to somehow fill

how do we live whole knowing what we love was crushed

so young it doesn't fly quite right)

control

 oh, cédric 

i don't know what this feeling is

maybe it's a sense of control

i told his brothers 

that i want them to help me 

help him

and it feels good to say

i need to work this out with love

i wouldn't want

to ask his ex-wife

if she's been abused because--just

if she hasn't she wouldn't believe me

and if she has

it just isn't necessarily something she could handle coming from me

you know?...

and i feel 

so

peaceful somewhere inside

between my heart and my stomach

but, oh, i want to run headfirst into a wall of nails

how do i ever get my love back

but

i started this long ago so he would never let me back

oh, why, why

i don't care if i'm not safe there

all i want is the sun 

eden

oh, cédric

you know...

...i never told you, did i 

...did i?--

--oh, i 

oh, but anyway

you didn't know...i wanted to be celibate

and that was what hurt me so much about dee

i wanted to find out, but i wanted to abstain wholly unless i could trust him with my heart, head, and body 

because

i cannot be with someone 

unless somehow i can live inside myself

with 

did i say his name is chris

because, oh, my panic

oh

i'm scared 

oh

oh, cédric

what do i do

if they won't help

he's an addict and i think

he's looking for a rush

i have lots of evidence that points to that but

cédric 

he chose from Feast of Love how to 

no, no

i can't 

oh

he chose

me

not because i was cool and artistic 

that was what distracted him

that was what surprised him

that was what made him start to fall for me

i'll never forget that day

but

he snapped back and went right into total sex domination mode

and i have never 

felt

like i can be with another man--it's just

i thought that loving him meant finding someone to pretend i loved

and dee, i mean

he was impressed with my art

but, oh, tenderly helping me clean up the vomit after he forced himself too deep into my throat when i was too closed off 

like, i learned in NYC

to love giving head instead of the look of shock

when i BIT

and if i get into someone i give head so wholly into it

that i

cum doing it

but my kids' dad never

oh, you know

when i told him i don't do white guys (that is what i think i must never have told you)

oh

seven years of danger

but

oh...cédric 

the towel was lime 

the vomit stained it and dee was so happy

he is a BOY

no 28yo man really believes making a woman vomit during head

is the desired outcome--

--and dee has been accused of sexual assault before

or, i suspect

as he is so afraid of social media and of women lying 

and sharing his name 

convicted

cédric 

thank you

but oh

i went right to chris, i was so horrified you thought

i

wanted

you

i loved, loved, loved you

i loved showing you me

i loved that you were able to admit you didn't know much about sex

that you asked about things that seemed dark to you

but, cédric 

only chris, i think, could have understood

i kinda do sex therapy for free

in whatever form a man needs that i agree to accommodate

i thought chris would understand me

silence

 i just go silent about what hurts me sometimes

and with you i was FURIOUS

i HATED you and maybe 

still

i can still get my revenge

because better you

than my love

and i

can't

fucking

stand

you

NO WOMAN WANTED YOU i read it all

all of it

and it was hard to read and the past you won't discuss is so dark and so sad

and you write so like i do

our young selves were so like each other inside

and, look

you have such intriguing, intense cheekbones

your chin is so strong

you're striking

but, cédric 

apparently

i love men who want to hurt me

orgasm time!

origin

 (of love, maybe, hedwig&the angry inch would argue)--

--i needed you as a friend

not as a man who was gonna say i want him

i only want one

and, cédric

i know he wants to hurt me

but something in me

is all melted in his cup

FURY

cédric 

fuck it

once you asked me to move 

yeah

i Googled you and 

FUCK YOU

i don't know if i'd get used to your face enough

so STOP YOUR FUCKING LIES

to yourself

and the reason i said "i'm so very sorry" those two times

FUCK YOU

were not about pretending to be so caring i could destroy you later

it was that i'm in love with someone

--you said you didn't quite understand "besotted" and needed me to explain--

--and the way i looked at you, yes

it reminds me of the way i looked at him--

but, cédric

i was scared that if you misunderstood 

you'd start threatening and switching things around on me

like 

chris

i was so happy you were halfway around the world

but then i was so happy you asked me to be a poet in real life again

i didn't mind meeting 

--and then you asked why i'd commit hara kiri, and i got scared again--

--thinking you wouldn't understand "oh, it's just a way of expressing embarrassment at having to explain what besotted means"--

so i said "i'm so very sorry"

again....

chris thought i was being mean when i asked, "what's your venmo? i'll pay for your beard's funeral," and

we ended that night 

and i accidentally hurt him too

i was blinded by tears and switching between him and my friend dan

screaming about how his cock looks just like my serial abuser's--who raped and abused me, and beat me, and even almost killed me just because he wanted to run up the hill to the football field with me over his shoulder one night--

almost snapped my neck--

only the colors are different--

and was texting him instead of dan just being heartbroken 

and said something i shouldn't have

i'll never forget hurting him

and, cédric 

when i asked him to shave his beard

you know it was that i was scared that i'd see my dad with him on top of me

but he didn't know, of course

so, fuck, cédrìc

i was HAPPY that you wouldn't find out

that i can't let another man touch me--

--and when you helped me accept that dee had coerced me into the blowjobs

there's something you'll never know

--something--

about chris

and my mouth

i loved you so much until you decided

i loved you

like

that

I AM ME

I CHOOSE

I CHOSE TWO YEARS AGO

and you...i would have tried, if you had wanted me to

but...MY CHOICE IS CELIBACY

the reason i didn't want to give head to dee so immediately, maybe never 

is

I CHOSE TWO YEARS AGO

nobody was supposed to hurt my body 

and take chris away from me

i was so, so, so good...

...i didn't write this as a scathing essay and post it to your fucking boss's site

and all your YouTube poems

oh, the FURY

i had to bite it back

(thank chris for that. he's the No Revenge OG

and i am a mere guru)

sex

i don't want to hurt myself by having sex with men in order to make you happy. i want to be the person i am, because the person i am would make you happy.

to punish myself for you is to turn into the person you say i am.

hope

 i think maybe what you meant could have been loving. i think maybe you just couldn't see the truth, and that in not seeing who i am you said something unintentionally life-crushing.

i used that dildo on myself two days ago, brutally. i hurt myself beyond reason with it. it went so deep into my cervix, and then it also tore me open more than my cervix had ever been (i could not dilate past 3.5cm for my daughter. i was forced to try to deliver vaginally for 10 hours because my scheduled C-section was delayed, and by the time the surgeon came to see me, i had already begun labor, so it was likely 12+ hours. she died before they performed an emergency c-section 12 hours and 27 minutes after the scheduled one), and the biggest part was very punishing at the entrance of my vaginal canal. i hurt myself so very badly to punish myself for what you say i am, and do, and how you say i hurt my boyfriends, when i have always been the dazzling part of their lives. i fill them with shame at not being talented, but i do not do it. they do it. they feel like i shine so brightly they're not worth my love.

but, truthfully, they are sociopaths and narcissists. they are groomers. i was only a child and i had four men grooming me. i know you can't see inside my life.

but i cannot continue to try to believe you are a narcissist. it would destroy me so utterly i would never allow myself to live.

i know that most of my exes are narcissists. i know this is true. i do not believe you are one. i believe now that you projected things onto me from your past, things that have wounded you and frightened you.

i cannot continue to believe you hurt me for fun, that you wanted to turn me into a project. i believe bianca. you projected things onto me and you have issues. except...i believe with all my heart it comes from pain. she thinks "there's something wrong, a problem. a core issue." she's right, but she's new to compassion. she's new to depression and emotion. she's still struggling to believe that she shut down her emotional self when she wxperienced the trauma she has shared with me, and its effects. she has always responded with disgust and anger to people like her ex-husband brett (the one you read the poem about) and to me when i said that being molested and raped as a child and teen was like coming untethered, and that Black Snake Moan was more therapeutic than i had ever imagined it could be.

so, you see, she's right. but she can't understand that the "issue" is that you've been hurt. she says i'm making excuses for you, and that because i have such deep emotional trauma doesn't mean that you do.

i have things i want to say. i am still afraid to say them.

but the pain i brutalized into myself with that dildo is slowly ebbing away, and what's left is: why did i punish myself for something you said that isn't true? if it were true, it would have been something i'd wrestle with emotionally. i'd feel guilt. i'd feel so many things and grapple with what i'd done to myself.

all i feel is like...it was useless.

i never meant to ignore your feelings. i'm having a very hard time typing this. i believe that what happened was a miscommunication, and that i know what the miscommunication was. i'm pretty sure i know. 

i'm scared to write it. my therapist said that the impact of the trauma from last year was so strange to him because it was not even anything but a narcissistic rage from a man i barely knew. he could not understand why it hurt so deeply i could not see the forest for the trees for weeks

this time, i do not believe 

the man is essentially broken. i believe the man has pain he is trying very hard not to access, and projected it onto me. narcissists are not human. they are broken beyond repair.

you are not. i have always wished for you to experience wonderful things with women you meet, women who care about you, women who want to love you.

i have never wanted to control you or make you mine while you are halfway around the world. that would be the ultimate selfishness. i think 

it was

a misunderstanding...

and i know

i dissociated, but i know exactly why. i made sure i spread out all the facts before me.

and my girlfriends are all telling me anyone would "go crazy" if a man pretended he had never told me that moving to a country in europe (that is war adjacent) and that he knew six months was a long wait, but that after the six months were up, assuming it is only a six-month stay, i should move toward him.

that is crazymaking. that is your responsibility to accept and bear. you have to, cédric; otherwise you're not the man you strive to be, or the man i love.

i think i know what's going on.

you have somehow been in relationship after relationship with women you believe you have rescued.

i think that is what you mean, and it is not for us.

i would never hurt you by being anything but who i am...i am

the life of the party

and i thought this was what you knew to be true. i thought you were purposely destroying my core to turn me into someone to despise.

but i think...you didn't understand the reason for the dissociation.

what dee did was pretend he had never promised me brunch, a real date.

i never told you

but when he was here

it hurts 

he said he had chosen me for my glasses

so i know, and i am so ashamed of myself

that he wanted to see me look up through or above my glasses during blowjobs and then discard me

but he had said he wanted me for a life partner 

all he chose were my glasses and he loved my. breasts

my figure

so much

he was asking for more.

but my glasses and i did not want to be so silenced

love

 all i really feel for you is love

but at what you said...terror has maybe edged toward anger.

you meant to destroy me to my very core.

how could you say that because i was terrified of dee making me throw up all over his penis and swallow my own vomit, and watch him tell me it was a really good "suck,"

his word, i don't know how to handle that word, it is so vile

and the memory it brings up is a man i thought was my first real, happy boyfriend...

...who made me vomit and swallow my vomit, slamming it down my throat, loving hear me retch

watching me helplessly flail as he shoved my head with his hand

i have never in my life until you been told

i drain the fun from a man's life

i had only meant to reach out and connect with you and find out who you are

i would

never

sent you other women, experiences you want to have, happiness

i only hoped that we would be the correct fit someday...but wanted you to find that fit even if she isn't me

because 

you deserve love...

cessation

bahie.

but i think i'm going to show you. 

and the world can see it, because that's how toxic

how disgusting

what shit

you ground into me.

such utter disrespect

and i wanted you to be free. but you indicted me and wanted to leave me with my abduction

when i

have fought. and clawed. and found my way to a beautiful poet, you.

not to be smeared into something i am not.

not to be thrown into the deepest ocean and told i owe $62.37 for swimming lessons. 

harlot

when i was fifteen a boy at school, jason kulchinsky, started calling me a harlot. sometimes a couple dozen times in a row.

i went to a residential high school; this was routine at dinnertime. "harlot harlot harlot harlot harlot."

i was only 15. i had never even been kissed.

he did this for at least two years. yes. two. he was a grade above me. so two.

turned out it was because he had a crush on me. it was cruel.

but maybe now i need it. 

i'm trying to make things right with dee. i know i'm acting like a classic victim. i'm watching myself do it and my heart and brain are screaming, "stop! why are you letting him deny everything?"

but i am not capable of being with someone...and i can't even understand why you want me to be. i know i somehow destroyed my favorite friendship

pregnancy

he's 23 and wants a baby

says he has trauma like mine

that he gets flashbacks going down on women too soon

i told him if he ever has flashbacks i'll give him all the time

he needs

to get out (and no, i don't want this, i don't want him 

i want to move to poland but you're too scared of me

for me to try)

because both of the men i love

yelled at me and said i had to be myself NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW

and made it so much worse and turned and walked away saying

my flashbacks meant i wasn't good enough

and left me bleeding

oh, a baby would keep me from anything 

everything

keep you safe from me

dee

 he says it was all consensual

and he's so angry with me

but i see the same in you

you refuse to let me be me

you two cause me such searing pain and break my identity

and then tell me my identity isn't real

if i could just hide in this, in dee

i could be strong

writhing

 all night.

how could you be my abuser

i have lost purchase 

of my

of everything

i can't bear it

dee won't take me back

i could hide there 

vomit

 i can't stop throwing up

it's only been eight hours and Hinge is blowing up

i can't stomach the disgust 

awakening

what if the issue was just

well, not so simple, but as simple as

holding each other's hands and trusting each other to really see, and hear, really listen

instead of with bated breath hoping we would guess what the other really meant, or which thing we really referred to?

i think i understand what you mean about

your feelings, when i thought i had addressed

your

feelings

and clearly

if this is what i'm seeing correctly

now that i'm not so scared, now that the flashbacks are calming down

now

that

i wonder if your gaslighting really was just fear, since i was too afraid to touch it and see you explode and burn me so i could never get over it and back to alive

then i see how unnecessarily we blew to smithereens

but your impatience with me was also part of the gaslighting--

--because gaslighting means

refusal to communicate and allow two people to meet

i'd roller skate over to your part of the equation and hug you

into eternity

prestidigitation

 that's you.

that was me. what if i can't write without you by my side

jazzing up Japanese prawns with your own spice

i am not saying yes to any of them, just crying at you telling me i'd hurt myself and me wanting to give you what you want because that seems to be what you want

to laugh at me far, far away

dashed

to pieces

oh, i just can't bear it

so i'm doing whatever it takes to get banned and the responses

who knew i'd cry this hard

cédric, asking if you'd ever known the real me

i would die a thousand deaths to prove to you

i really was that productive, busy--oh, i would even have seen if i could get my transcript from EKU from before my son was born

i'd have done whatever it took to prove that i'm a hard worker

if that's what you meant--

--oh, my God, i did everything, i went to college and everything

and was torn away from it--

so why did you choose a self for me that's thirty years old? twenty-eight...

oh, cédric, did you suspect i was the kind who would crumple and die if you guided me to it?

is that why you guided me there, and told me the things to do?

i never thought that would be you, shoving my face into the sand and making me eat it

i thought you were the one who wanted to sit next to me while i stoked my fire with my platinum words

not laugh at me while i look at all

the things

you told me i must be

when all we ever did was smile together

control

 you need it in everything

that's part of the gaslighting

oh, what hurt you caused a freezing

and, oh, no, i prefer to be frozen so i don't remember the list

control is at the top

but dreaming you're not that

i can't sleep

my body

sleep

 contains you

and unlike resin cruz

you're not stabbing me dozens of times

or shooting me until i'm riddled with holes

and the blood so slick smears the floor...

so i can't go back

but the nights number what curls like infinity before me

and i wonder if i am glad i am dying sooner

than when i was 19 and being raped nearly every day

i changed my profile picture thinking it would be so nice to show you just me

not my high school graduation photo with the man who abused me in every single way possible for four years

but i guess it alarmed

anger

to dream of you--

--i have only dreamed of these real men:

dad (coming to beat and rape me and being eaten alive by crabs and lobsters bursting from their tanks in a basement aquarium while my deaf classmates and i were on a field trip)

clint forgiving me for being his rape victim

dad (shooting me to death for telling him i couldn't be molested anymore, and then one month later--to the day--going about my business as he hanged himself in his basement to give me an incest-free Valentine's Day funeral at which to speak)

david (resin cruz: shooting me to death, or stabbing me to death, for loving him and trying not to have been raped by him, or having had my arm nearly broken for $160 from the ATM, or 

slapped in the mouth for loving him)

jeff (the kids' dad, shooting me to death or stabbing me to death for being so strong i left him as many times as it took...ally made me calculate it to be struck in the face with the bare facts, and i was raped at least 560 times by jeff...556 of these times between october of 2014 and february of 2015. yes, a minimum of two times a day, usually four to seven, for not wanting my legs to open for him, and for asking where he'd pawned my gold jewelry)

and now you. and it's just loving silence

but that's not even the truth

you wish you'd never met me

terror

 is typing things like

*saying i'm emotional is gaslighting

oh, there are so many examples and i said but it was just the one, just the one

ignoring he said that in six months i could move toward him

every time i asked...

--when i could have copied and pasted what you'd typed and kept spamming you with it

posting it fifty times a minute

i could've taken out an ad in a cork newspaper

i could've written a play about it and put on a caper--

...but that's not just a tiny example, you see--

--it was designed to make me fall apart so you could desecrate

but why would you destroy me just to piss all over my besotted face?

"because he's a man " resounding

from all

the 

women

with whom i used to swing in solidarity 

and now just don't make any sense to me

(i am actually...i am a logical person, and i always still love...

...you caressed me in so many ways, helped me steady myself, showed me that a man can see...

...but apparently you lack empathy)

facts and logic and coping

aren't compassion, but i thought

you were compassion and love and

anyway, i am living in terror

for having to name it all. there is more than i thought--but you'd never forgive me, you will travel farther and farther away

when all i want is to still your pain.

there's more, and it goes back to almost the very beginning...extinguishing my flame

denying my core

but what was the whole friendship even for...