now & now on

I am...disenchanted in what one might call a "new" way, which is to say that I can't remember the last time I felt this apathetic in general. Before I may have been apathetic but at least romantically distracted, or employed. Right now I feel as though my time aware, awake has been minimized. As if every sensation is a dull tap on my skin begging to pierce the surface but hesitating before the prick. I waver between anger and dismay in brief episodes but have plunged headlong into a rut. But this time I want the silence, I need the quiet. I need the rest. I need the noise of other people to settle into a minimum and stay ferociously static as a background instead of a constant. Things are changing for me, I need the space to think these things through.

If I could describe this year, I'd describe it simply as an "upheaval" - of values, morals, life decisions, infatuations. Things were flipped and thrown, reassembled. People came and went. Lovers did the same. I often think of myself as a solitary person and this time is no different - but this year I feel...fortified. I've sloughed off the pretty skin of naivety and tumbled head first into the yes and no of living. For every gain, there was a loss but every loss was necessary. I've been straddling a balance beam, praying for composure since.

What kind of woman am I?

I wear more and more black until I feel enveloped in the color. It's not an abyss to me - it's simple. It's not chaotic. It requires no more effort than absolutely necessary and yet feels unparalleled. My hair, the same color, grows longer and longer. I sit in front of the mirror and brush it each night. Feel the strands fall from the brush  - is it age? Deficiency? Loss. Skin, hair, external indications of my bodily presence in the physical world. Each day I grow more aware of my numbering imperfections, each day I grow closer to not caring.

Maybe that's a lie. I've become simply too busy, too tired, too...bored of my body dysmorphia. It's too draining to wallow in self hate, so I don't.

My birthday always feels like the end of the year, it's fitting anyway. How else would I associate the new year but with my birth? The dates are less than a month away and I am a child of Jupiter after all. My vision translates to the orb I've built around my presence - like the moon, I go through phases of growth and regression. I'm beginning to accept that not all growth is positive, and not all regression is negative. It's a careful balance that I used to find disconcerting as I allowed each phase to antagonize and exacerbate the presence of the other rather than exist in harmony. I'd like to think I'm rounding out this decade wiser, more mature, more true to myself than I've ever been before.

My only goal for 2016 is to, once again, become a poet.