the toxicity of difference – rough and a draft

if i had to consider one thing being my super power it’s that i’ve learned to embrace “not belonging”. not as a woman in a male-centric scene and society, not geographically, not as a queer in a straight world, not as being single in a world of couples, and so on – my list is long but not the longest. coming out with any of it makes every sentence you speak perceived as loaded, in good ways (passion! contagiously energetic! inspiring! helpful!) and bad ways (touchy… over-sensitive… taking the fun out of it… demanding…) oh, can’t she for once just be… yes, can’t i for once just be?!!!
difference is a very slow but steady current that makes your ice floe drift away again and again from friends who don’t have to live with it. if i didn’t want to let it break me, i had to find and cling to the good sides of not belonging. and it keeps me alive and buzzing and feeling good and empowered 90% of the time. but then, sometimes, something switches the light out and in the dark it turns against me and then there’s nothing i can do but fall.
opening up about it always seems to be most necessary in the worst moments. the weakest moments. when you can hardly move. when you can hardly talk and if you dare every word comes out wrong. chest feels torn open. tits aching, an unrelatable soft mess of flesh, clawed soft messy meat, twin tower strangers translating into the physical this thing, this wrong, the pure pain of being othered and you succumb, you hide.
you, trying desperately to laugh at your friends’ jokes just to feel less different. just to feel… less. you, silently howling at the mediocrity of every thing that makes you stand out as the ulcer that’s just not gotten cut out yet. you, in these moments: deep throated by life, choking, silenced. loss of language is the worst. every move, every look turns into balancing on the edge of the abyss that then has opened between you and other people, between you and that life from a few hours ago, that seemed to live itself, as if natural. swear to never take that for granted again.
in those moments there’s no help, there’s just loss. you long for a look, a word, a touch that reaches out to you. understands. sees. eases. but: you are ready to fight it nail and tooth just to show you don’t need it. accidental isolation. don’t bleed. just breathe. i really don’t envy those around me.
the toxicity of difference: ever tried fighting loss of control with loss of control?
oh, what a pathetic failing load of letters.

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