Category: essays

ransom

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

11-30-21

Tell me. What is your price? Do you ask money or words? Is it groveling, a debt of language and power, or compensation for the extra monetary burden my existence in the world and my stumbling about in it has placed on you?

I first thought it was a password you sought, always tried to find exactly the right words, kept searching when you lashed out. No entry.

But there are no right words. Only wrong ones. And trying to repay my imagined debt in apologies only deepens the divide between us. Makes me feel smaller and you feel farther away. But you tell me money isn’t the way out, could never be exchanged for a human life, is not the point, but continue to talk about it first with my heart in front of you, bleeding.

I’m done guessing, so tell me, what price do I need to pay to be free.

nightshade 1

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“Grandpa, tell me a story!” Tori said, holding her small hands, up, folded together, a wordless pleased. Grandpa chucked.

“How about,” he said, reaching down to take her hand, “I show you a story instead?” Tori pulled back as he led her to the door.

“We’re going into the woods,” she wavered, “at night?” Grandpa chucked again and pulled Tori into his arms

“Don’t you worry, munchkin,” he said kindly, “nothing can hurt you while I’m around.”

The dry fall leaves, frosted over by the first cold snap of the season, crunched under grandpa’s large leather working boots.

His warm arms calmed Tori’s rapidly beating toddler heart and she grew enough courage to pull her face out of his faded flannel and started to notice the night-darkened woods around them. A completely different woods than the daytime woods she played in, completely different trees than the daytime trees she climbed.

No, this was an entirely different world than then the world the Nightshade Forest inhabited in the day.

women talking 2

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We think of ourselves, our goals, as climbing mountains. The fallacy of this is there are always taller mountains to climb, we must always keep moving. Our progress, then, is more like the ocean, or any body of water, in its constant movement slowly but surely eroding the rock benath it, creating new shapes and softening old.

(I am allowed to talk in a pretensious way, a ‘male’ way/breifly i wonder, what will I amount to?/the anxiety overtakes me for a second)

women talking

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

01/25/2023

what makes something cinematic…

and here i begin to doubt my own words

they falter because i stop believing in them as i create them

what make something cinematic is the artful manipulation of coincidence. the kind that rarely happens in real life and when it does, it feels magical. you feel as though you’ve seen something you should not have. a peak behind some universal curtain

“what follows is an act of female imagination” – Women Talking

we wrest the narrative from our attackers hands

why?

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always ready

what am i hoping to no longer be in pain for? what fear fuels me now?

two facets:

  1. i need to get back up so you can knock me down again, I need to ability to withstand, to continue to withstand, this one is rooted in the past
  2. i want to enjoy life, the tightening in my neck impedes me, rooted in past and present

a contradiction, a paradox: to enjoy the moment, you must release the desire to create a perfect one

how do we deal with our changing opinions of others? am I still hedging against my fear of being hurt

I speak in generalities now, specifics elude me. so much fear surrounds them. baseless fear, I believe.

  1. being in pain sucks.

coffee

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You know, I made two cups of coffee this morning and neither turned out right. They were just…bitter. And on the way to work, I went to merge lanes, and the guy, some blue fucking Nissan, he wouldn’t let me in, he fucking honked at me. So yeah, I guess I’m just bitter. I don’t even remember why. I think I just woke up that way. But like, people like coffee, even though it’s bitter. Even when it’s made right, it’s bitter. But people still like it. it’s just the way it is. 

ya dig?

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We all deserve a chance to be scared, don’t we Victor?

Do you remember the next part Victor?

I do, I did it on my own, and it felt good.

And one day, the whole of the world realigned so two little twinks could fall in love

No, it didn’t happen over night. It felt like it would because everything changed so fast that summer, but it took those two little twinks two years to realize how they really felt about each other.

Thank god, some words that finally feel normal.

-You are my best thing, Victor, but you’re not my only good thing, and it want that to me true for you too.

So yeah, my grandfather was the missing beat king, a little German twink named Victor Löwen

“I can be myself now finally”

And if it feels true, maybe that’s because it is.

Maybe that’s because you don’t own truth anymore. We do now it’s our turn, so shut the fuck up and listen, you dig?

-One breath at a time, Soph, you got this. It’ll all work out. Keep saying it, because the more times you say it, the truer it is.

I don’t want to be invisible anymore

See, now I’m sure of it. Death doesn’t happen after life, it happens before. We all start out dead and must crawl our way back to the living.

Ghosts, gods, myths, legends? Well, we’ve all just been around the time spiral a few more times.

the reality

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11-29-21

“I loose touch with reality often”

It’s a question on psychological inventories, the intake form, the one they ask me to retake each new therapist’s appointment.

I mark it high.

It scares me. This slipping away. This unmooring from the physical world around me. In favor of my ever deep internal world.

But why is this – this nebulous emotional world – not reality as well? Am I dreaming without my knowllege or consent? Maybe the real problem, the real pathology, is that I let others define my reality, draw these subjective lines for me.

“I often let others define my reality for me”

Ask me that question. Be concerned if I mark it high.

act like a grownup

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okay, yeah, fuck you, i can act like a grownup.

it’s just not that fucking valuable.

yeah, that’s right

as someone who’s been forced to grow up early, yeah, that’s right, forced, i can tell you, acting all grown up and boring, it ain’t all that. i’ve been taking care of my own shit for as long as i can remember. i’ve spent my entire life dealing with massive amounts of consistent soul-crushing physical and emotional pain for as long as i can remember. alone. any help i got, i sought out myself.

so yeah, I can take care of myself just fine, thanks. probably better than you can. seriously. most of you can’t take care of yourselves for shit.

so why do you think you can tell me I gotta act boring while doing it?? it’s not like that makes me better at rolling up my sleeves and getting shit done. it just makes ya sadder.

you know those people that have sticks so far up their asses you could probably see it if you looked down their throats? or those people who seem to take some sadistic sexual pleasure in dredging up all the negativity around them?

yeah, those people don’t know jack shit. to quote the most annoying song i know (sans “Paperback Writer” by the Beatles), “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

i almost envy these people even. cause it is, almost, enviable to have enough positive vibes around you that you can afford to kill a few by being a fucking square.

but dude, if that’s you, why not stop and smell the roses every once and while…instead of trampling them, cause they’re not grownup enough?

i’ll be over here acting like the kid i never got to be. cause it’s fucking fun.