Animals Eat Each Other

I learned that Lilith was made from the same dust as Adam, and not from his rib. I learned that Lilith was either banished or left the Garden because she refused to obey and it seemed likely to me that was why Eve was punished the way that she was, as if any form that was not Adam was set up from the beginning to fail.

Pain is closer to love than indifference, right?

I didn’t know if I was crying because it hurt so bad or if I was crying because I had failed by letting the pain hurt me so much.

I got bored of being sexual when I felt like a dead package of skin waiting to be unwrapped.

Jealousy is the admission to yourself that you are replaceable.

But my natural inclination was to lie and hide, and it telt good not to deny myself of that. People hide from the things that make them vulnerable while they wait for the right moment, the opportunity to prey. It is instinctual to live in the dark.

People hide from the things that make them vulnerable while they wait for the right moment, the opportunity to prey. It is instinctual to live in the dark.

The truth cannot be known by anyone other than the person who experienced it. Add a third person, and you get much, much closer to it.

HOW DOES AN OBSESSION grow? Slowly, like a mold? The spores settle unseen and then blooms form, devouring any open brainscape. The genitals become infected quickly. I’m not sure how this process works exactly. A feedback loop. Mycelium reaches out, ridge by beating ridge, a thought, a heart rate rises, a feeling like sex or love, then another thought. Each pulse a quickening like river beneath the soil.

Maybe it wasn’t true love after all. That was disappointing. I had hoped it was true love, that something like that could exist. Instead, it was just sex. Like everything else.

I told myself it wasn’t my attraction to him that was making me feel this way, but that I was addicted to doing the wrong things. Breaking the rules felt wrong at first, but it was exciting. It raised the stakes.

A part of me was opening up, and while I could see the end of the road and new that it would lead to pain, instead of retreating, I wanted to walk directly into it. Pain is closer to love than indifference, right? I wanted to walk directly into it.

She was not afraid to demand what she wanted, and I envied that. I spent so much of my life doing what everybody asked me that I wasn’t even sure what I wanted anymore, if I wanted anything, if I had needs at all.

I watched the faces of other people. I didn’t look like them. They all looked the same—clean, happy.

I did too many things to my body that made it feel old and tired, as though I were dragging all of the mistakes I’d ever made behind me with each step.

At first I was attracted to changing the image of myself, placing tokens on my body to center who I was or where I’d been. After a while, I began to enjoy the dry, dull pain and the way each tattoo forced me to confront my own commitment to be hurt over and over again.