buzz words & masochism - Bria Corcuera
non-fiction ☆
non-fiction ☆
I braced myself in therapy last week as I said the buzz words most patients know better than to say. “I don’t want to say self harm but-” / “it’s emotional self harm”. What a reductive use of the phrase, a trivialization to refer to something so petty, so inconsequential, so unevolved. I had never expected her to agree, surprised she hadn’t followed the social script. She didn’t tear out her throat, accuse me of experiencing something so profoundly gutting, threaten to call the police to shoot me if I did not get to it first. I suppose I was catastrophizing, as I always do.
I find it embarrassing to speak with my therapist about these ridiculous things when real life holds a knife to so many other people’s throats. Some unknown force holds a gun to their temple, yet these familiar shaking hands bring one to my own. I grab a towel from deep in the folds of my brain and douse it in honey, and it is me who holds it to this face and drowns myself underneath it with a steady flow of memories and hypotheticals. It’s me who considers the past with inconsequential people and faces that should have left my mind; me who eats my regrets until I am sick, confusing the taste for affection. I can not help but consume, can not help but fill until I bloat, can not look at this bulging body without wondering what the voices that I have forgotten would sound like if they saw this disgusting mass and if they would sing it praise.
It occurred to me in this fourth iteration (they are all the same) that I am not special. That when a hypothetical world is built for me, its foundations are simply a passing breath. It is almost narcissistic, fantastical tales spun through a person’s ego to prove to them and to you how much they could create from their love once these impossible circumstances align. Once I get my life together / once I make enough / once I can tell you I love you. I think I am addicted to confusion, another one added to the list. I learned, in this twenty fifth year, that these freshly built palaces are not promises, but a whim. It is almost impressive how a person can build entire futures out of a passing thought and feeling of affection. It is more impressive that I believed, that I continued to believe, that I spend years believing after already having forgotten the scent of them in the morning. Another form of catastrophizing, maybe.
This spiral continues and my therapist’s words echo through this empty brain: are you worthy? She asks me this nearly every session and every time I am confused as to why. “I think I am. I’m cool, I’m funny, I’m beautiful, I’m kind.” I was advised to remind myself of my worth every morning and every time that I am confronted with the thoughts that I willingly shove into my brain. A small exhausted voice bounces through this empty room. “I’m cool, I’m funny, I’m beautiful, I’m kind.” I converse with it in my head, desperate to find just one worthwhile adjective. I search through experiences, shuffling through the dirty laundry in my heart until I am covered in the filth that people from the past have left behind. I fish for a word in all this mess, hoping to find this golden trait that made me likeable. What a disgusting instinct to douse myself in this blackened honey. Will my worth come from beauty, from my perfectly preserved statue stuck within the tar of these hardened regrets? Expert sculptors know how to make marble look soft, mimicking the flow of fabric and the youthful press of skin. Is this how I will look too?
Do I look soft, and will I continue to do so when this sticky mask is ripped from my face and I am dripping in blood? Maybe then I will be an endless spout, an opportunity for the gross and unworthy to bathe and step out clean and new. Maybe then they will be grateful, in awe of the sacrifices I have made and ready to repay me in full. Some horrible part of me wants this, wants to be patched back together like paper mache by pretty words and shows of affection. A bandage is too clinical, too final, too terrifying; instead I want slop. I want to be shaped back together like a deep red wet sand, and – of course – I would be worthy because somebody chose to do this valiant act. In this fantastical tale, every horrible thing I’ve done and experienced has been erased. Every ounce of trauma can be healed if somebody takes bleach to my wounds and covers them up with their hands and their lips. I’m fixed! I’m healed! Tell me you love me and you want me to love you in return! My therapist will be so relieved that she never has to hear about any of that.
Bria Corcuera (they/she) is a creative born and raised in Southern California. They work in higher education providing accommodations for students with disabilities and creating community-based events for their school. Outside of campus, she can be found hanging out (typically eating) with family, making art with friends, and getting far too excited at the aquarium. An excessive overthinker, Bria has turned to writing as a means of organizing and conveying their innermost thoughts and to linocut as a meditative practice to finally quiet down their brain. Find them and their elaborate narcissistic Instagram stories @Briaacore, and on Tiktok @Briaacore whenever they finally decide to post.
