A True Stream of Consciousness

A True Stream of Consciousness By Mel Benedichuk

This is a true stream of consciousness. We’re on the verge of greatness or total human disaster.

This is a true stream of consciousness. More like a message recorded using a pink Nokia flip phone to those who will come after me. They won’t care about the contents of this message or the one who left it behind -- me. A universe and a speck of dust, everything and nothing, creation and destruction, life and death. I live and I die. You live and you die. Do you fancy dying together? Hand in hand, or just on the same (preselected) day? Never mind. Come as you please.

The outcomes are unpredictable. This is a true stream of consciousness. Despairing/pedantic/disorderly/ reckless it is not, it’s none of these things. This is a stream of consciousness, a stream by definition, it flows and so I no longer think. But consciousness! It’s there. Like a curse or a scar, the stains of an ugly snail, the nail polish I spilt and never washed off, brain almost splattered all over the bathroom floor, hoping it would cease to do the very thing it was created to do -- THINK!

When I was born, I used to know how to cry. All babies cry when they are born because somewhere deep inside they know that they would’ve been better off chilling together on the thick branches of their heavenly lemon tree, in their celestial crystal castle, or in their shithole of a pub in paradise. No boundaries, no divisions, all unashamed, naked, genderless, and ultimately -- happy. What was ‘happy’ supposed to mean back then?

When I was born, I used to know how to cry. I must’ve inherited tears from my mother, for she’d cry every time she feared I wouldn’t be born and then every time she wished I wasn’t her daughter. I had one fear - the fear of love misplaced and love withdrawn. What is love? I’d ask page ten of a magazine for girls (next to where it says ‘How to Find Your Perfect Boyfriend’) or maybe the reverse of a bubble gum wrapper reading ‘Love is…’ Apparently, love is two people kissing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mom and Dad kiss.

My mom has a tangerine for a heart. The glossy orange skin helped keep its precious contents locked away from the world, safely secured. Daughters must inherit sadness from their mothers. My mom’s tangerine heart was perfectly sealed off, all before the surrounding world let its tender insides be touched by dirty fingers, tearing apart whatever it holds, scattering the orange flesh much like a lion would tear up the remaining meat of a freshly slaughtered antelope. Once just a baby girl, she was taught that happiness is sacrificing yourself for the sake of others’ happiness. A true woman’s joy, they’d say. That was the first breach in the tangerine skin, juice slowly trickling away from the wounds carved out with so much tenderness by the hands and tongues of those who seemed to always know better. “You’ll understand when your first child starts kicking inside your womb,” they’d say. You’ll also understand when you can no longer sleep at night because of baby screams on top of anxious insomnia, and when your husband tells you that this exhaustion is what you’ve always wanted. Mom rarely lamented what they did to her poor little heart -- she only did sometimes, when we’d sit alone in the kitchen finishing up our last couple glasses of wine, remembering that we still needed to (hand) wash all of the dishes. I have a tangerine heart just like her. Glossy skin to keep the insides away from the world.

Daughters must inherit sadness from their mothers. It never speaks inside of them as loudly as it does when (newfound) lovers slam the door and leave, in the moments when this pain is shared. Life lesson number one: let them touch your lips but never let them reach down inside your shirt. Reach down to your heart, I mean. What is love? Apparently, love is being naked and defenseless, one-on-one in a room with a bunch of crumpled up letters and scars from things you’d never say because you don’t know how to. Naked and defenseless, when you don’t know whether they’ll kiss you or kick you when you’re down on your knees. Open up! Tell me about yourself.

What is there to say? My life is about unforeseen change and turbulent redefinition, about a gradual demolition of everything I used to hold true. This is a story about how I built my so-called soul. I stitched together the pieces of all the shit and not-so-shit things I could gather. My soul looks like a poorly-made patchwork blanket where nothing fits together and nothing goes together, but! Don’t forget, my life is that of a stray cat so that’s the only soul I have to rely on. I heard you want to see more of my soul. Ready to see some badly-stitched patchwork? Look at all of this. The face you see, the face I own, another face I own, fuck, who am I? Who am I out of all these identities I’ve assimilated but never owned? I’m all the things at once and none of them in particular. The geeky bookish kid. The bitch from the debate club. The punk-rock-star-wannabe. The girl who’ll never be popular. Through all of this, the only thread -- words. I used to know how to cry, but now I can only cry in ink & paper. You want to see this too? You sure?

It doesn’t matter if you love me or not, as long as I can love myself. It doesn’t matter if you hate me or not as long as I have enough self-hatred to go around. As I grew older, I thought I’d understand. Turns out I’m just more tangled up, tangled up in bedsheets scattered under my feet and endless lists of hopes and expectations. I was taught that love isn’t something to lose so I ran after being lovable, opening up, tearing up the skin, tearing up my tangerine heart, tearing up…love is naked and defenseless, and chances are you’ll stumble upon someone willing to stab you as you’re (carelessly) dropping your clothes to the floor in front of them. I don’t even think I know much about myself. Spare me from having to tell you something I barely know -- who the hell am I? I don’t want to have to sacrifice myself for the sake of others’ happiness. I also don’t think I’ve ever learned of another way of being happy. Maybe just back in heaven, on the thick branches of that lemon tree…

This is a true stream of consciousness. We’re on the verge of greatness or total human disaster.