This week I’ve been see­ing images when I wake up in the mid­dle of the night. Usually in the form of slow, flesh rip­ping decap­i­ta­tion, or bul­lets enter­ing non-vital parts of my body, like my arms. Not of self-mutilation but muti­la­tion of the self. These images, in some form or another, have fol­lowed me my whole life, and went away after I started ther­apy1. Now they’re back.

There’s been a new one lately though.

I have a one-inch thick, two meter pole through the heart, stick­ing out per­pen­dic­u­larly to my body in both direc­tions evenly. My heart and lungs have grown and healed around this pole, and even a gen­tle impact on either end, due to the mechanical-force mul­ti­ply­ing nature of the ful­crum that is my heart, could dis­rupt my organs and kill me.

So as I’m try­ing to fall asleep again, I see myself going about any reg­u­lar day, stum­bling around with this unwieldy pole, hop­ing I don’t trip, and no one bumps into it.

  1. Or per­haps, co-incidentally from something/someone else. [↑]