make it stop!

ISHANI JASMIN PRESENTS:

make it stop! an all singing, all dancing production, the salt of the earth, whispering to me at night in the dark quiet, telling me what to do

this was just what i needed.

28/12/2016

it is happening again. i have begun to feel deeply. like a monster coming out at night, it takes over, makes me good again, makes me whole. i stay up past the winter dawn talking. i’ll sleep when i’m dead, i say, and laugh. i’m not tired, i don’t have time to be. i share my softest spots. we sit in my favourites together, pointing at the bruises and smiling sadly to one another.

we stopped driving just to take this one.

i am so soft. easily bent. what is it peter parker said? ‘punch me, i bleed.’ i do not want to be this way. people keep telling me it’s for the best, that i’m gonna be great. that i’m really special and i’m gonna be really special when i get older, maybe even that they once felt this way and it’s been good for them. i kinda don’t feel great! i feel like everything is good and i am not. like i’m ruining it, or i’m a failure waiting to happen. no one else gets it. i guess i see why they might not.

i don’t even want to begin. in fact, i want to go. i want to stand up and walk and walk and walk until i am so far away from where i began that i can’t even hear it swilling around in my ears anymore. i want to be away from being in love. away from my head on a warm and caring shoulder, away from shivering into the next day. from butterflies in my stomach. my god, i hate the butterflies! i hate the need to break the tension - to move in once our foreheads are close, to put my hand over someone else’s, to throw myself into the next person. i hate how much it changes me. how i can go from confused and outside of myself to content with an evening spent in conversation. i am the worst introvert in all the world.

how’re you doing?

…I FEEL FINE!

i want to leave. after all, how do you love so deeply when there is no one to love?

it's never easy when you do things differently from everyone else. if things don't go well, you only have yourself to blame.

people have been writing me letters and they all tell me how things are and it isn’t even that there’s a pressure to be different - just i wonder what i would be, if not this, if not here, if not now. i could have a different dream. i dog-pile into a van with my things, and i drive, and i drive. it’s lonely, but it might be me.

i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just 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just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too much i am just too 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3/2/17 i’m sort of sitting in this room alone. i’m meant to be, it’s what i’m supposed to be doing, and i feel okay about it. i played a piano this week for the first time in months, the first time i’d got to, and it felt like breathing out. like i’d forgotten how, almost. there is floral bedspread. i am supposed to drink two litres of water a day. i wonder if i will manage. i am here for another three days, after this. i have plans, even stuck in this room - plans to make, to create, to collaborate. god, what is it to love? i love everyone. i am in love with everyone i know. i trace it back, lines on my hands and up my arms, and open notepad files i’ll never write in. it’s weird. i know in an instant, these days - i just know if someone will be the kind of person i will fall in love with. i’ve been told it’s a deep affection, one that lasts and is special and that people value - but then, those people will leave, they will go, and it won’t have actually been enough. i’m not allowed to brush my teeth in here. the thought of that makes me smile, though it shouldn’t - four days of not being allowed, using bottled water instead because i’m too scared to even try baking soda lest i backtrack. it’s probably a good thing that no one is here with me. i am not even eating today. it’s truly a retreat. people say they are proud of me and how i have grown and that i engage with things on a level that others don’t, and it scares me. it scares me that people don’t. the city rewards those who look, i say, over and over again! it does! you watch hard enough and you find new favourite bars, favourite buskers - i like a guy who hangs outside stations on either side of the bridge with an electric red guitar and a sharp as fuck whistle to him. i love how i walk out onto the bridge and there’ll always be a soundtrack. i love that there’s always a nook to bundle myself into when i need it, as long as i’m willing to sit on the floor (and i always am). i am feeling what it is to reconcile. to reconcile myself with everyone else, and this with that. it feels very complicated and painful in some ways. i am very scared of what i will do next, though i know that i'm not actually self destructive enough to throw away my objectively fantastic life over a whim, over wanting to get away from people that love me intensely, and whom i love back.

‌what do you take me for?

voices, but whose?