Going Off-Leash
Welcome back babies,
It’s been too long. I’ve been playing pretend. I’m writing a screenplay. I’m in a slumber party play. I’m a born again virgin. I’m listening to Fall Out Boy and Blink 182. I’m having sex dreams about men I’ve never met. All the girls are reading ACOTAR and telling me about it. I told my hot therapist that I believe some of my mental illness got stored in my cervix and needs to be knocked loose. She laughed. Imagine your hot therapist diagnosing you with acute celibacy and writing you a prescription for a pounding. This didn’t happen. I wish it had.
I still haven’t gotten a handle on praying. But I’ve been having some really good chats with the moon. There was an eclipse. And the moon, she winked at me. I’ve been winking at her for years. This is the first time she did it back. Is this what it feels like? To talk to god? I felt something break inside me, maybe that dam thats been threatening to burst.
I don’t know what to say. I always know what to say. When I think of what to say, all I hear is a voice that sounds like me whispering “let me go.”
I would like to be free. I want to be freed. More than anything else, I’d like to be set free.
When I close my eyes I see myself on a horse. Can you see it? Don’t I look good? I hear drums and breath and laughter and moans. A field ripples out in front of me. Covered in green grass and the first buds of spring. I see my horse trample those buds back into the earth. Leaving his mark in the grass. My horse is black and shiny and strong. My horse is Black Beauty of course. We go faster and faster and faster. Riding harder and harder and harder. I can feel the hoof beats in my chest. Filling the space where my heart used to beat loudly, but my hand has since clenched around it telling it to shush. I wish myself on a horse when I’m dying to run. When I’m dying to go faster than I can go. When I want to be someone else somewhere else. Someone strong enough to spur a horse through the trees. Someone unleashed.
I’m dying to be let off my fucking leash. I’m such a good little girl. I know how to sit. How to stay. How to sit on my hands and shut my fucking mouth. I know how to give everything and ask for nothing. Aren’t I special? Who told me that healing was about control? I guess I did. When I realized I was sick, I put myself in a collar. To prove to everyone “You can’t hate me, don’t- look at my collar, I’m trying.” Of course they can. I healed some more and earned my leash. I walked myself around with my illness gripped tightly in my hand. Heartbreak after heartbreak. No matter how much I thrashed against that leash, I never let it out of my hand.
I was raised by a woman who could turn the air in the room to ice. When she didn’t like what I said. What I wouldn’t say. What she decided my face was saying. I’d turn my nose up in distaste. How embarrassing to change the air in the room with your mood. I believed that lack of restraint was the path to insanity. Restraint was close, close, closer to god. What is a martyr if not a saint? Maybe if I’m good he’ll help me. Maybe if I’m good she’ll stop. Maybe if I’m good they’ll love me.
But here I sit inside the walls of my mind and I feel myself rattling.
I would like to strip my clothes off in public.
I would like to scream at the edge of a cliff.
I would like to open my mouth underwater, I’ve held my breath for too long.
I want to be slutty and wrong and angry. I want to be ravenous, insatiable, greedy. I want to be all the things other people are and I love them anyway.
How do I tell my therapist that I don’t want to be good anymore? Do they have therapists that teach you how to be bad and survive? No wonder the couples in my romance novels fight and fuck. We all need to be reminded we can be bad and be wanted. I hear myself say I would never but the part I don’t say is I want to. I want to make a mess. Not a small mess I’ll clean up myself I promise. But a huge fucking mess. That everyone can see. I want you to help me clean it up.
I want you to love me anyway.
I want to have sex with the wrong person and for it to feel good.
I want to have sex with the right person and get to keep them.
I want to have sex loudly and not think about my mother telling me that she always knew I would be.
I want to tell my crush how much I want them at the wrong time in the wrong place and still hear them say “come with me.”
I want to stop wondering if goodness is worth it if it doesn’t get me what I want.
Love you fuckers,
Casey
💕