

f(r)iends and demons
I was brought up to fear my own power, and the many disruptive forms that - for lack of any training in how to wield it well - it took. The explosions and the withdrawals, both. The detachment, while it simmered, the dread, when it began to rekindle, and the destruction, when I boiled over again. I was brought up to demonize all of this, and so, slowly I othered it, unconsciously dividing and partitioning my sense of self so completely that by the summer that I was turning se

we aren't taught to wield...
Sometimes, desperate times call for desperate measures. I was twenty when I realized the organizing principles of my life were no longer serving me. Relying on my therapist, surviving from one session to the next, one season to the next, a terrifying prospect had begun to make itself clear to me. I was getting better at coping, that was for sure. But it meant one dangerous thing. That my breaking points, when they came, were getting worse. Withstanding was not the same as ove