My Mouth Is Full of Blood and Joy

I know the world so violently. And it’s not at any fault of the world itself, it’s just that I don’t know how to experience things mildly. Maybe it’s the pressure of knowing that the time I have on this planet is short-lived, so I can’t help but carry around this burden to never do things halfway, both a strength and a flaw that bleeds into every corner of my life. It’s almost impossible to miss; I leave stains on my favorite books, marks on every page I’ve turned. Stains on my best friends, on my parents, on past partners, fingerprints trailing up their arms, my grip sewn into their waists, my handprint on the small of their backs. There’s discoloration on my favorite mug, stains on the door handle of my favorite coffee shop, an unerasable blood trail along the river that I run past every morning. The world knows me so violently.

I can’t help but think I do it to myself, that I have no one to blame but me. I am unsure how to let go of things with finality. I take my time with it, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year. It’s a best friend who’s no longer my best friend. It’s someone I’m trying to fall out of love with. It’s a book ending I can’t stop thinking about. It’s moving away from my parents. It’s moving from apartment to apartment to apartment but never seeming to find a home. It’s like letting out the string of a kite. Except the string is coming from inside me, unraveling my heart inch by inch, pulling out my bloody entrails, the disembowelment and evisceration of my body and soul, exposing my carcass to the world just to prove myself. It will just take time. Please, just give me time. It is such a violent process.

Everything seems to be so vicious, so passionate. I wonder if one can not exist without the other, if the good must always precede the bad, and vice versa. Does it always have to be this way? Even when I find joy and humor in little moments, agony exists in the smallest holes, in between the breaths I take. Laughing so hard that physical pain will find a way to burrow into the side of my ribcage. Smiling so hard that my cheeks hurt. The accomplishment that swells in your chest after you run so hard even though you thought you were going to die seconds ago. Loving someone so much that I would burn down the world for them. Maybe that’s why the world thinks of me so violently. 

Everything is consuming. Listening to a song on repeat just because of that one riff in between the chorus and the second verse. Exhausting it until you can’t even stand hearing the first notes. Escaping so deeply into a book that you lose yourself. These friends, these characters you cling so hard to will forever live on these pages, but they are not the answer to the questions you have. Holding so much love in your heart until it has nowhere to go and you’re alone in your bedroom clutching your chest, whimpering like a child, calling out for your mom. Falling in love. Love is so consuming, so fulfilling, so debilitating. It radiates with an inexhaustible light. Oh, you shine so bright but my dear, you are so brilliant I can’t even bear to look at you. What is the point, then? To love with such fervor that it blinds you, that it blinds the one you love. 

And the thing is, it will always find you. As much as you run from it, grief, misery, and the punishment of over-indulgence will always find you. Years down the line, it will find you on a sunny Saturday afternoon, barreling into you like a freight train, and you have no choice but to let it. It will hurt. My god, will it hurt. It will be an inexplicable pain, insurmountable suffering that sometimes you think it is better to die than to speak. But you must not let it wear you down. You must not let it beat you down like a dog in the street. You must get back up, like you always do, and brush the dirt off your knees and continue living. 

I know the world so violently. I have experienced it so incredibly deeply; my mouth is full of laughter and tears and blood and joy and love. In my left hand, I carry my beating heart, in my right, the tape and stitches that have kept it together all these years. These tools, the glue that has held me together all this time, they take the shape of my best friends, of my sister, of my parents, of my cat, of kind strangers on the Internet. They look like the books beneath my windowsill, the full pages of my journals, the face of every person who has taken the time to consume the art that I put out into this world. They are the reason I am able to get back on my two feet.

So I’ve asked myself, what is the point, then? Why do I continue to endure it all? Well, to live. There is no other explanation other than to live.