The season of perfectionism

So i can say something useful.
So i can say something useful.      The words haven’t been here lately. I don’t know where they’ve been. All words are lost in prepositions — where does it belong? When did it come here? When are you going to write that letter? Are you alright?

This isn’t self doubt. No, I have moved past the season of self doubt. I think I can write confidently, maybe even fluently. I’ve hardly written anything worthwhile in months. I’ve hardly written anything worthwhile in months. There’s nothing worth saying. Repetition is a composite trick of the hand, filling the mould of content with a word count.
My brain is cooked. Steamed in dishwater, stinking like unclean dishes. The smell of burnt chemicals dries the nose through. It’s a certain kind of lingering rot that sticks to the interior of my skull. I’ve been washing dishes for three days a week for the last while. The dishwashing machine does the meaningful work. I only clean around the edges, fixing everything the machine can’t do. I wear black gloves made for hands bigger than mine. That helps the dysphoria, though the water seeps through and I feel just as uncomfortable. The external fails, letting the internal become gross. The dishwasher churns, spitting water and billowing heat. Dishes emerge on the other end of the venting beast. Surprisingly soggy, surprisingly dirty. In the passing moments of peace, smoke billows from its unclean lips. It vents water, exhaling this filthy air. I sweat, watching it, uncertain of our mutual connection. That night I dreamt of washing dishes.
Just so I have something to say.
Just so I have something to say.
I’m repeating myself just so I have something to say. I can’t write anything good or worthwhile, I just have to put out noise. Having to say something is such a delight. A rare pleasure that I would do so much to touch and hold. Too materialistic a goal, especially with these hands.

    Therapy has stopped. I’m letting it go, in hopes of slowing down to examine the trauma it has raised. There is, quite frankly, too much to think about now. As a result, my thoughts are no longer my own. I am a penny machine, filled with the coins of other people. Copper insides with mistakes masking as silver linings. These thoughts are tiring. I keep saying I’m tired but I’m so much more.
I’m yearning to see my friends again. I’ve been missing the sight and familiarities of friends for such a long time now. There are so many beautiful people who I have not set eyes on in so long, and it is hurting me. Hurt feels like an exaggeration, maybe even not real enough.
What is the most true word for hurt?
I’m grieving for dying parts of me. I’m grieving for the family death I cannot mourn for. The cat, Ginger, lost his tail when he was only a kitten. We never learnt how, but he wags his little docked appendage still. Cut ties stay cut. Learning about a demented death in a forgetful facetime with family. You really couldn’t just tell me? I suppose, the signs were lost such a long while ago. I’m grieving for the relationship I assumed we had. That you would unconditionally and truthfully care about your child, as your child, in whatever shape I took. Did you already decide who you would love before I was born? Because you refuted me, leaving me chasing the ping pong ball of identity.  Hop, hop, hop. You refused to just tell me somebody died. Maybe you’ve also forgotten me.

I’m scared of my livings. A housemate crashes down stairs and exerts contempt towards me, as though I’m getting in their way. They will not clean their dishes. They will not pick up after themselves. How did people become so entitled to my time? I try to let it slide, though I am scared they will hurt me. I try to.
I’m too tired.
I’m too tired to talk about it.
I’m too tired to sleep.
I’m too tired to write.
I’m too tired.
I kept breaking all of the dishes. Hand by hand, all of the plates were smashed against the ground. I picked them up, and dropped them again. This did not clean them. Placed into the machine, it only smoked ceramic cigarettes. I broke the trays over my knees, one by one. I bent plastic, twisting and contorting between my hands. There was so much water in my gloves, my hands no longer felt like my own. I placed the cutlery in the machine, trapped between the rows. I could hear them clutter and rattle as the machine could not comprehend. It could not know what was happening to it. In this dream, the world was as imperfect. I worked in violet half-light, jumping each time the moth-catcher went off. It shook in electric pause, taking a moment out of the air. I had no idea when the shift ended. Everybody had already left, or I had arrived early. There were still dishes coming in, arriving blindly from nowhere. There were no other characters, but me and the breaking machine. Sightless, it only felt what went through it. Broken plates and twisted plastic, absently left to braise. Soon, a sickening gurn came from it. It was the sound of the plug being pulled, only for more water to bubble up. Could the machine hear its own illness? Was the machine trying to verbalize action? Was it wanting to swallow? Choke? The next day, a national lockdown was announced and we stopped serving using plates. There were no more plates brought through. Just cooking-ware. Metal boxes. Did you know how hard it is to get rid of potato burnt onto a metal tray?
I’m so tired. Too tired to do anything. The trauma only goes deeper. In that fissure across the flesh, the echoes bellow louder and louder and louder and louder and louder and louder until I’ve woke Maria up. I ask her to hold me. She does. She says she can hear my heartbeat. Sometimes I question if it is mine. Sometimes she calls me silly and I fall asleep.
She said we all had to change this year. We’ve all been summoned into a pool of bad, bad gunk, slowly wading our way. We’ve all had to change. In some sense, I’ve witnessed change in how people have messaged me. People miss me. It feels defeatist in saying, but I feel as though there’s nothing I can give. I am so incomplete, so broken, so distracting — the people around me are reaching out with more patience, my responses (excuses) only getting shorter. Have I changed? Have I grown?

I feel as though I’ve only become more despondent. More hateful of hotter weather. More close to cold nights. The machine burns up the room. I sweat and it sticks and I stink. The ceiling is low. I wonder if I can crawl through the vent to escape. There aren’t enough exits for me to find a way out. Escape won’t solve what I am right now. Instead, I’m stuck. I’m sweating and stinking and stuck. I’m scared of responding, scared of realizing something truer. Amongst this change I am scared of becoming something worse. I’m so tired. Sleep will not cure this tiredness anymore. Should I crawl inside the dishwasher?
Maybe then I’ll reply.
Should I crawl away?
Maybe then I’ll sort things out.
Should I clean the dishes?
Need money.
All of these coins make for bad wordplay. This machine is hurting. I’m hearing it now. This machine is hurting. Ultimately, I am trying to organise what season I am standing in, unnamed yet I am so firmly rooted within it.
Is this the season of perfectionism?
At the heart of myself, I am the source of destruction. If this trauma is mine, then I should no longer exist. The machine knows this. It hurts to find the core of these months in a place I can not manipulate. This the machine as it is known to me. A machine composed of regrets. I formed it within my own biology, a pacemaker for all the awful decisions and absentness that embody me. The bad decisions are not just my own, and that hurts only a little more. It is symbiotic yet so deeply selfless.
I’m too tired to deal with this now.
I’m too tired to deal with this anyway.
You know it’s bad when you dream about your work. You know it’s bad when you dream about your labour.