Thalassophobia In Atlantis

Nothing is as it seems.



Am I insane or just remembering things backwards.

Head in the clouds but roots carving through rocks deep under the sea.

Inside up or outside down.

I am facing unknown territory. An uncomfortable and terrifying position for me.

I was so sure the perspective was all in my head and i just wanted to enjoy that, i never even considered the possibility that you might feel the same things as me.

Im so used to having my reality corrected, challenged and dismissed. Even sharing my memories of you feels unnatural, I'm so used to it all just running rampant in my head.

Its like experiencing thalassophobia in Atlantis, aware of the never ending emptiness filled with everything.

A glowing ember deep within the abyss, protected by the shattered remains of an ancient coral ribcage.

Whispers in the water, silent screams you don't hear but you feel the power changing the pull of the tides.

Anemones like fists, caressing and constricting trapped in a paradoxical dance of life and survival.

Desire and terror.

A darkness pulses through the veins of the Ruins of me. Forever fuelling fear to a decaying temple built by the words of people that no longer think about me.

Despicable faces committing atrocities in the name of ego, so many eyes watching from inside i can't control what i see.

Or what I remember.

Too many perspectives and shattered fragments with conflicting opinions trying to disguise as a person, unable to exist without drive or motivation.

A drowing and suffocating shape-shifter.

My mind has tried to protect me, from life and from myself. It created barriers and walls between the different versions of me.

Different parts holding different information and traumas with absolutely no internal communication or interest in collaboration as a team.

Can't even rely on myself.

Whispering confessions of all my oppressions, fleeting memories illuminating wasteland and battlefields i had no intentions of revisiting in this lifetime.

The currents alive with the repressed impulses and thoughts, the unspoken words channelled straight into an unseen maw of a worse predator than me.

It feeds on the fear of being seen, perceived by another in my fragility. Would rather fight bloody battles than embrace vulnerability.

Echoes of past betrayals have destroyed the place inside my head i used to call home.

Names carved on my heart, raw and healing wounds that I am struggling to not rip open.

Purge the hatred and toxicity out of me.

Glowing eyes accompany phantom touches, some gentle gestures of affection and others are scratching deep into my soul.

In the gnawing abyss of lack, the only thing living in the womb is sorrow. No comfort of safety just the constant reminder of trauma.

Nothing is safe. Dont miss the danger again.

Trust no one.

Hollow eyes in statues i carved into Idols that never gave a fuck about me, everyone so busy decoding which piece of wood or plastic we should worship today.

So used to thinking it could predict the future because I was repeating the same routines.

Mind reading but it's just hypervigilant trauma responses to be ten steps ahead of anyone that looks at me.

I love how you keep proving me wrong.

Its very rare by the way, as an extreme perfectionist I have made a point of knowing just enough about a lot of things to assert intellectual dominance over most people I meet.

Its a control thing, it's also not a challenge as most people are running on basic impulses with not even the common sense to acknowledge it's primal ego nonsense.

I know how to navigate terrifying emotions. Provoke it masterfully. I can sit and hold all the space in the world for fear and anger and grief.

Coping strategies for days.

I freak out and panic when I'm wrong, and I understand that i lack experiences with pleasure and pleasant things in life.

Anytime I have misstepped in the past it has cost me everything.

Exhausting.

I don't understand how to just exist in a moment without thinking about the next. I don't understand that I don't have to perform or be on. Just breathe.

Iv never been seen.

I am carefully observing you.

Its so draining trying to understand and plot the millions of possible outcomes in any given situation and it eats me alive.

Even when I do try engage in conversations, I'm too busy overanalysing micro expressions and tone inflections to concentrate on the words. Predict hostility and be ready to deflect or appease.

Forever assessing a million types of danger and every single crisis plan i could need. Conciously and subconsciously reading and matching energies.

Overanalysing everything in an obsessive and controlling way i cannot help but am starting to question.

I would never hold you to the same standards I hold myself to by the way, it's just been conditioned into me that I am nothing but a hassle.

Always somebody else's problem but that someone is always me.

See the things you do and say, I do cling on to those memories rather fiercely. They are mine forever and I am so scared to even share with you.

What if it didn't happen like I thought? What if you don't see it the same way and im wrong?

I dont know, even typing that I know I'm lying. You really do care about my perspectives, even if they aren't fully formed and solid yet.

Solid enough in your identity to allow room for mine to be seen.

Is it possible that you need to hear these things from me? Am I being selfish keeping all this to myself instead of offering you an insight into the way my twisted mind works?

Maybe that's the fear.

I am so scared of being perceived.

If I expose my softness and abandon the stoicism that my culture prides itself on.... You could destroy me.

Take something i want away.

Honestly the voices in my head are screaming that I manipulated and took advantage of you but honestly the truth is I know I didn't.

You are not simple minded enough to not be making decisons without my influence. You have offered me power so many times but I am too scared to seize it.

What do you see in me?

I dance with it, channel it into art and words I would never be able to say in real time.

I enjoy it. Even today I can pull from the memories that I have built a new life around this year.

Its like my first breath of air after escaping drowning in the depths of the sea of grief.

Unconditionally loved today.

All I have to offer is who I am and the potential versions of me that live in the future.

It's never been enough for anyone, the only versions of me that have ever been loved are the potential ones if I just changed everything about myself.

I love me today. I love freely and without conditions.

But protected by something with boundaries and not haemorrhaging myself into a world that did not give a fuck about me.

Its making things difficult, suddenly having a new standard of treatment to compare everyone to. If this guy can choose to do it, why has nobody even tried before?

A mutual respect and appreciation without barriers or masks.

Unchartered waters and new adventures on the horizon.

I can be anything.

I finally found the surface, I made it to the other side. Reborn and gasping for breath, unaware the monsters feed on the salt in my lungs.

I will never be free of the nightmares.

I look in a mirror and while i see all this love and hope, I see the ruins of Atlantis' tendrils reaching out to find me.

Something calls me from the abyss, the shadows below know and remember my name.

But something else has been a source of energy, that tiny ember that was all that was left of me in the shell of who I used to be. It ignited and burned me alive.

Channelling creativity and authenticity through autonomous choices that have changed my life as I claimed it.

So strange...to have lived so many lives at the same time previously. My timeline is destroyed.

Imploded while my mind shattered into a million fragments and a million tears.

No longer mourning or doubting that i am alive.

I am an abomination against nature, the integrated parts that survived an exorcism through the abortion of ego.

I sacrificed the fear and grief and shame and claimed this identity by stepping into myself.

I left the corpses at the bottom of the ocean.

I will not fucking drown in me.