Doctor, help. My guts are spilling out and there is something wrong with me. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I can’t articulate the feeling; my thoughts and words combine into an ungodly mass inside my skull, above my throat.

All I know is, I am a mess of knots. I am jumbled. I’d like to untangle the cords providing the makeup of my inner world, but the ends are an ouroboros. An eternal circle of my self destructive patterns.

I’d like to love, but I think I will ruin it. If I’d been alive in 48 B.C., I’d have been the one to set the Library of Alexandria ablaze. Not on purpose, never on purpose. That’s why it would be all the more tragic, you see.

I love with a fire of intensity and passion, while believing my affection calming like that of the Mediterranean Sea. A relaxing day in Santorini.

Love can be reckless.

Consequences be damned.

And then, Wisdom crawls back up the cliff I pushed her down. When you know better, you have no excuse for ignoring Wisdom. I am the fool. I babble irreverently and piously within the same breath, believing myself both a sinner and saint. I ignore Wisdom’s call. I leave my heart unguarded. I told the sentry to vanish so I can feel.

But it’s not just love that tears through me and leaves wounds. I have said I contain multitudes; I do not lie about my layered nature.

Did you know I loved using semicolons in my research papers? I would wax academically about a variety of theologies. Argue my position. Provide evidence. Footnotes and Works Cited. Discontinuity and Continuity—the hermeneutical study of God working in time (can we even know how God works in the concept of time and be unwavering in our foundational belief?). I can enlighten you about demons and angels and the concept of a soul. Tripartite or Bipartite? I hold to the latter, but even I can’t be certain.

The library was my second home. I know the shelves and decimal locales like floor plan of my home, complete with turns and nuance. Let me show you my favorite weird books. I know the location of many, from ESP to puppet making to The Odyssey. I keep checking out Homer’s works (I doubt I’ll ever read them completely).

There is something wrong with me tonight. I’d like to run or fight but there’s no where to go and no enemy in sight. I talk a big game about being mean, but really I live to please. You’d think I work at Chick-Fil-A with my level of people pleasing. And then I ruminate that I scheme. I am nothing more than a faux noblewoman who thrives in musty catacombs engaging in deceit.

I’m writing this in my notes app. The place where I keep to-do lists and random thoughts I know I’ll forget. Interspersed between “dream journal” and “mom things” are pieces like this. Stains blotting a garden of thought with pesticides. They are thorns, slicing into the petals with titles like “baby names.”

Even in my trauma posts, I cannot help but use simile. I rhyme like a poet trapped in a dictionary, between the thesaurus and the concordance.

Even my pain is curated for you to see. For why would I post something completely raw from me? I’m pretty sure you’d unsubscribe and scroll away, leaving me to wonder what I could have said to make you remain. The girl who’s friends always changed became a woman who just wants to be around someone who’ll stay.

When I peel back my skin, let you in, and give you a flashlight to examine my cavity, will you run away screaming when you see my heart still beating?

emma here: if you’re new to me, I tend to write my sorrows for the internet to read.

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