so much
i needed somewhere for time to rest.
content note: this piece references self-harm, illness, state violence, and death.
i did not set out to write an essay. i was trying to make sense of what my body was holding. the need came first. the tattoo followed. i needed something that could hold time still long enough for me to breathe inside it.
this writing is a record of what it means to remain here while everything continues to move. it is written from sensation and pattern. it does not offer answers. it names what is being held.
this is me placing something down and allowing it to rest.
i keep coming back to the tattoo on my left hand.
a rectangle on my middle finger.
two straight lines.
curves gathering at the bottom right.
the left side shaded.
lines that extend past the edges.
three dots that do not explain themselves.
it looks simple until you sit with it. then it opens.
when i asked for the tattoo, i did not yet know why i needed it. i only knew that i did.
i asked my friend who understands me and sees me for help choosing the piece. what she created held what i did not yet have words for.
now i can see what it gave me. something small and firm, able to hold what keeps moving through me. the pain brought me back into my body. it gave me edges. it let me know i was still here.
a doorway and container and reminder that my life has always been a mix of rigidity and flow, structure and rupture, discipline and surrender. the spaces. the spaces between. and between. the rectangle holds all of it. past, present, future pressing against each other without collapsing.
i have been writing a lot lately, mostly to stay honest about what is happening inside my body. much of it is too personal. much of it is grief still moving. i am not ready to share all of it yet. i am still inside it. still letting it metabolize.
everything has been heavy. my mind moves slowly, sorting through stimulation, trying to keep up. i am exhausted. and i am also grateful. i have a new doctor who listens to my body like it is telling the truth. my psychiatrist listens to my mind the same way. together, they are helping me find balance again. i do not take that lightly. i know how rare it is to be believed.
being alive takes more effort than people think. i feel everything as pattern and pressure. i see what is coming before it arrives. i notice the shifts in rooms, in voices, in systems. i have learned to anticipate harm, emotional and physical, before it happens. that vigilance once kept me safe. now i am learning how to loosen it without losing myself.
i do not want to exist. this is not a metaphor. it is not despair. it is how my nervous system reads the world.
i exist because i chose to bring a life into it. that choice is not obligation. it is sacred. something older. something that does not negotiate.
i stayed because a life passed through me and continues to pass through me still.
my son is not my reason. he is my gravity.
i chose him. and in choosing him, something chose me back.
the world may fracture. my wanting may thin. there is a thread that does not break. i follow it. i stay.
some days the medication makes me feel like i am floating at night and numb during the day. it is not good or bad. it allows me to move through a world that demands productivity over presence. we are told to function while everything burns. people are kidnapped off the street by masked cosplay federal agents. people are shot in the face and the regime justifies it with lies. people are held in death camps where basic needs are denied and lives disappear without legal witness. and still we are told to normalize, to adapt. my rectangle keeps me grounded in what is happening, holding all the lies, half-lietruths, and truths within its lines.
i wonder often how much adaptation is too much.
sometimes i think the body knows the answer before language does.
i removed the razor blades from my house again. this is not a punishment. it is care. i want to feel, but i do not want pain to become the only doorway back to myself. one day i will bring them back for art. i trust that day will come.
this is what choosing myself looks like right now.
the tattoo helps. the pain of it anchored me. the trust required soothed me. the rectangle reminds me that containment is not the same as erasure. that boundaries can be protective. that even small spaces can hold entire universes.
my family is moving through illness. not one thing at a time. all of it together.
my father has been hospitalized more than once. the last time, my mother thought he died. i cannot imagine what it is to love someone that long, that deeply, and face that kind of terror twice in one week. my mother wants him to live as long as possible. i want her to live as long as possible. i do not know how to help when the help they need is not something i can give.
someone i love has cancer again. a kind people call manageable, as if that word makes it easier. it does not. no one should have to endure this twice. i do not understand why suffering distributes itself the way it does. i only know that when i see pain, i want to intervene. i want to ease it. i want to stand between people and what harms them. this instinct has cost me. it has also shaped me.
another mother i love is also in the hospital. she will wake with only part of her brain function intact, forty percent if we are lucky. her husband waits, holding the life they built together. i see devotion there. a love that stayed. they are like my parents, inseparable, moving through life in lockstep. i think about love that deep, the kind that binds people side by side through everything, illness included. i wonder what that feels like. i wonder if it is something i will ever know.
joy feels strange to share right now. pain feels too exposed. i am not sure how to separate the personal from the political, the intimate from the systemic. everything touches everything.
i look at the tattoo again.
the shaded side. the curved edge. the lines that refuse to stay connected. the three dots, past, present, future, or maybe nothing at all.
it does not explain itself. it does not promise healing. it simply stays.
and so do i.
the tattoo does not explain my life. it does not fix what hurts. it does not promise what comes next. it gives shape to what is already here.
this is a statement of presence: i am here.