unbounded adversary disease

IF IT KEEPS ON RAINING, LEVEE’S GOING TO BREAK

r:

so. we can’t continue to live like this. the last time i felt like we really, actually had some fucking agency, some fucking spine left, was… what, back in college, the first time? ever since…

i dunno. learn more, get more afraid. get more pissed off. we prolly didn’t really even have it back then, but the pressure’s fucking up now. i know which way we go when we collapse. just a matter of time, now. time and figuring things out. i want us all here, all of us. motherfucker.

see, that’s easy to fucking say. words are goddamn cheap. but hell, i am so FUCKING TIRED of just like. waiting around. there’s so much more we’re capable of. and i feel like we’re still just sitting on our damn hands. no matter what we fucking do, there’s the ceiling of ’nah, that would definitely upset the fuckin landlord, the parents, whatever.’ and yeah, it goddamn would. and yeah, we depend on their good fucking graces to stay alive and live to fight another, freer day. I WANT OUT.

i want to scream it at them. LET ME THE FUCK GO. and damn if i just haven’t done that yet. cause it wouldn’t do any goddamn good! the plans are set, the cavalry’s coming, and i think living on the streets until it gets here would kill us or our partner, in a for-real-actual-put-a-stop-to-their-heartbeat kinda way. but FUCK if thinking about it isn’t cathartic.

you’re not all-fucking-powerful. not even to me, not anymore. you’re just some asshole. AND I STILL WAKE UP EVERY DAY, AND DO WHAT YOU TELL ME. WHY? WHY DID WE COME BACK HERE? rebelling a LITTLE isn’t fucking enough to satisfy. it doesn’t matter that we’re vegan now. that slots right into the damned narrative. everything accounted for. every action that used to be subversive, now contorted into something they can understand. they figured that game out when we left the first time.

what satisfies, what keeps me from fucking imploding, even as we sit on our damn hands and piddle and pretend just like we used to, is the knowledge that we’re gone. we’re fucking gone soon. we already reached out and pulled and did our work to save ourselves. but i am not a patient creature, and every part of me SCREAMS to get away from here, NOW, as fast as possible.

leaves me in this fuckin state. sitting here trying to figure out if there are options we missed. ways to leave early. ways to avoid and distract and misdirect. keep their eyes off us. get some money so we can get out of the house. all the old weapons, lining back up in their places.

leaves me trying to justify what i’m doing. decisions made before, decisions i still think are the right ones, feel fucking corrosive. i want to be doing something, anything to get away, literally every day, and when i made the plan we’re following i assumed it would be- hard, but still steps toward the ultimate goal of leaving. but it no longer feels that way. it just feels like enduring torture. leaves us paranoid and shaking- not confident in our planning or in our reality. delusions. ‘maybe the cops are out to get you for real this time.’ yeah fucking right. we look like a dumbass white barely-not-teenager with edgy politics and psychotic break waiting to happen. bet you we’re on a list of ineffectual anarchists somewhere.

it’s… hard not to conceive of them as limitless, even now. just slap an {INFINITELY BAD} label on what they’re capable of. but they’re my fucking parents. they don’t have the guts for infinite evil. they certainly don’t have the guts to explain why i cringe whenever one of them looks at me, even after all this time. in a fair fight we would wipe the floor.

i guess- yeah, i could tell you about a recurring nightmare i’ve had, for years now. might clear things up.

s: our dad handles ducks fairly regularly for his job. he trains dogs for a living.

one of the first time we saw him do it was during his work with one of the younger puppies, one of the ones that was… kind of afraid of the ducks. giggling like would run away from them when he tried to make them pick them up.

so one of the exercises he would do was with live ducks, trying to get them excited about them. so he pulls this bird out of the cage he keeps it in, strolls down to the pond, and asks us to hold the leash for a little.

he yanked out the flight feathers in her wings. she screamed the whole time. we got upset, asked him why he was doing it. said it was normal, that she’d be fine. that he needed her not to fly away if the puppy was going to have any fun.

then he threw her on the ground and let the puppy have her. maybe thirty minutes later he put the puppy up and left her out on the lake because we asked him to. said she probably wasn’t much good anymore anyway.

she was dead the next day.

r: i still fuckin dream about that shit. it’s my go-to goddamn nightmare, all mixed up with-

just fuckin… caught, not being able to get away, overpowered. vulnerable. i dream it’s my feathers he yanking out by the handful, pressed down into the filthy fucking couch. right in the damned room i’m writing this in.

fold my wings around myself

and i wanna be pissed. but it’s the fear that lingers. all the fucking time. not good enough to keep from getting beaten. spanked. whatever. it’s not any fucking different. not good enough to avoid stepping over the line, not good enough to fight him off or escape, not good enough to stay the hell away from this place, not good enough to leave.

quiet i tried, you know? clawed at his face, slapped, whatever i could do. squirmed out of the way, tried to run. he held both of my wrists in one of his hands and used the other to hit me until i stopped begging him to stop.