PhotoHunt: Emotion(s)

Smile like you mean it and one day you'll realise that you do.

I dispense this advice to the people I care about, knowing that it's worked for me before. It worked for me during a hellish breakup - I was working in customer service and faked my smile and conversation with the regulars until occasionally I would realise that I wasn't faking it, that my laughter for once was real. These people had no idea about the times that I had talked and joked with them about the products and the industry and then had to high-tail it to the bathroom out the back so that I could silently scream it all away. They had no idea about the infections and the constant vomiting. They saw me running out of the shop to the warehouse to get their order and thought I was enthusiastic - where really I couldn't go at walking pace because I would have too much time to think, and to think meant to allow the possibility of falling apart again. Eventually the sad bits fell away, and my smiles did have meaning.

I've lost sight of that.

You're not happy here. It comes across as an accusation to my spiralling mind. It's true - I'm not happy here. But that isn't the full extent of it. I'm not happy here, there, or anywhere. A well-timed how are you will bring it all falling out of me - screaming, thrashing, hurting like a caged feral animal. I want to hide, I want to die, I want to escape the constant feeling of failure that I carry with me.

I thought I was stronger. That I could move away from the mistakes I was involved in at my last home and build a new life from scratch. I thought that this process would build me as a person, but instead I'm broken. I feel like a failure in my social life, my music life and through my inability to be a strong foundation of support, a failure in my love life.

Being gay comes into it. I have trouble dealing with gay people who throw their sex life about in conversation. I don't think it's necessary, in fact it's trying to build a divide in a way. I don't like being introduced as a "dyke" even though I identify as one. I am Vic, and what I do in bed is my own business. But then there is conversation on the way to work. In choosing to not disclose my sex life, my partnered life, I am automatically segregated from the conversation anyway. The guys I work with can make comments about what "the missus" packed them for lunch, and I can't really participate. It's a losing situation. Through that need to hide to avoid conflict with those around me and also conflict with my own ideals, I have started to lose my own identity. I used to be proud of myself. I used to be proud of the way I dressed. I wasn't hiding my femininity, or even trying to be "one of the blokes". I was trying to be Vic, who likes suits and collared shirts, and dress pants. Vic, who lusts after cufflinks not because of what they represent but because they are goddamned sexy.

The fact that I've stopped talking to my parents should be a relief. It kind of was. The last contact I had, Christmas just past, was heated and completely awful. To me it was a culmination of twenty-seven years of bullshit, threats, bad tempers, apathy and lies. Too many years of sweeping feelings under the carpet and finally I walked away. I'm angry at them. I'm angry for the traits that I've learned from them that I hate. I'm angry for the lack of positive emotional support they ever gave me. I want them to suffer my absence as punishment for that in a way, but mainly... Mainly I want all of that to disappear so that I don't have to acknowledge it. It should be liberating. But it isn't going away. Their brilliant teaching of self-blame and internalisation is still biting me, especially now.

Even playing guitar is slipping away. I get frustrated and violent at my own inability and segregate myself from my instruments due to a possibility of hurting them irreparably if I lose my temper. This causes another spiral in itself. Days, weeks, months without playing will affect my ability more. In a way I am too scared to touch my instruments because they remind me of my own failures. I know this will get worse but I have no idea how to stop it. This kind of withdrawal in case I damage something is not restricted to my instruments. It's people, places, everything. I'm scared of opening the fridge in case I lose my temper at something and I hit it, denting it. I'm scared of driving in case of the temptation to put my foot flat to the floor and wrap myself and the car around a pole. I'm scared to live and I'm scared to die.