When I was a teenager, like 13-15, I was a HOPELESS romantic. I would write fully fledged, and ultimately fully produced and orchestrated songs for my crushes and create massive works of art across a variety of mediums that took months, sometimes years, to complete, at an age when most boys couldn’t be arsed to get a girl flowers unless their mothers or sisters prompted them, ESPECIALLY if that girl scared them shitless.
And I was intense about this art. If someone inspired a piece, they’d probably end up knowing. I was intense about EVERYTHING. I was often the teachers’ favorite, I knew the answers to most questions, I HAD done the homework, I had an excellent memory, and I wasn’t afraid to kick anyone’s ass if and when it came time for trivia in almost any subject. I was a pompous dick about it, too 🤣 I was gonna win by a mile and I knew it. I wasn’t the type of person in high school that guys wanted to date. Be friends with, if they were daring, but not date.
The transition from hopeless romantic to cynic came at about age 16-17 after endless rejections and being told to tone myself down over and over. I began to hate my happy, romantic side. After one final diplomatic rejection from the guy I had written “My Island” about and being told to tone myself down one final time, I marched into my long term hairstylist’s office as soon as she was free and told her to cut all my damn hair off and give me the pixie cut I’d desperately wanted since my headmate Castor had cut our hair short like that when he was 10. I buried the rest of my sentimentality with that haircut, too, and started playing my cards close to my chest.
I still wrote huge things for my crushes, but that, too, stopped after I wrote my album The Places We Come Home To in 2018 for my first husband when I was 20.
I hated it so viscerally that it took two years to release a proper follow-up to it, Light on the Final Day, and I had written that record a few months BEFORE most of Places ever occurred to me.
It would take nearly three years after that for us to release any kind of proper follow-up to Light on the Final Day, something broke in me so badly. And it wasn’t even really me that wrote any of it, Metacognition (2023) is Eight’s masterpiece.
And for someone used to writing and recording several records a YEAR, this devastated me.
It’s taken being in several lovely partnerships to get me to uncover a FRACTION of that sentimentality. I still really can’t write happy things without cringing or feeling sick, but I’m getting there. I’m immensely grateful for their patience while I unfuck myself.
-Allēna
Tag: Processing
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I think I’m starting to figure out why I’m so reserved/”cold” emotionally.
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“salvo ii”
last night I made you a promise
of a spiral staircase worth walking down
a poetically just sort of kick to the chest -
your heart nearly stops on a good day
screaming odd time flutters when you're distressed
well, I've got some words
that will keep it pounding
right from the box I keep
locked tight in my head
I don't know why I love you anymore
I'm just as much a prisoner of the emotion
as I am a prisoner here
the confusing as fuck
fact of the matter is, I
just do
I feel like less than half the person
than I did three years ago when this
began
and the time has come for me to
break these unseen chains for the last time
and I don't know what keeps me from exploding
spite, sheer force of will, practice,
compartmentalization?
you say you want better for me, then deliver
if you can
otherwise I'm no better off than I was
with the manipulative would be jailers
that attempted to control me before
so sit with this, torture yourself like I know you will
when you see it
let it burn a hole clean through
and simultaneously cauterize
what's left of your mind
I don't fight with guns, fists, or steel
I fight with words and the silences between them
and win
and frankly
that's much worse
-Allēna 10/23/2025 -
On the concept of doing it scared.
I found this post on Zelda‘s timeline and I have some thoughts about it:
Mother fucker. I experience all of these on a daily basis or HAVE experienced all of these on a daily basis at some point in time. Especially the “fear of being seen”, as that is my agoraphobia in a nutshell. If I haven’t mentally steeled myself for a social situation hours to days in advance, it feels like being set on fire to be looked at. It’s THAT scary to me.
I have to R E P E A T E D L Y face my terror and trauma to socialize and be amongst the world and do the poetry performances that I love. I’ve become the master of charging in and showing up to shit glass cannon style balls to the wall, when in reality, I do EVERYTHING scared. I do EVERYTHING some measure of tired. I may look fearless, but I’m really, really not.
Which is heartbreaking because I legitimately love people and I love my city. I just don’t feel safe in the vast majority of situations for a very long time.
My spouses have learned that I can be coaxed out of the house with decaf coffee bribes or cinnamon treats and the like, so that’s an improvement…
-Allēna
Fediverse Reactions
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“depersonalization blues”
these are the lengths you drove me to
I don't write verses anymore, I write indictments
I built a twisted empire out of everything you were
too afraid to touch in all of the places I knew you'd
never look, and there, in the shadows, I waited
you did exactly what I wanted you to do.
anger is a tool, I made it into an art form because of you.
I may be half the things you are but I am everywhere
you're not, and that's something to be proud of when
I could outclass you in my sleep by the time I was
fourteen. doesn't that eat you alive?
knowing that you created the one person who could
ever destroy you?
so go on, sleep soundly now, make those jokes
at my expense, tell them all I died or went insane
because the joke’s on you -
I may be crazy, but you made me that wayand I'm infinitely happier when you're gone
-Allēna & June, 8/13/2025
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“to be the lightning”
when the lightning strikes me back
and my cracked-cup mind can no longer hold
all the subtle fire it’s meant to contain
find me at the edge of a cold, dark place
i wanted to be the lightning,
not simply the bearer of it,
but sometimes both dream and nightmare
outpace me and i cannot find my way home
so if the world begins to slant
remind my parched mouth
that i am both cupbearer and bitter wine
reforge both sides of my twisted spine
when the lightning
strikes
me
back
-Allēna 7/31/2025Fediverse Reactions
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I ran a round of my poetry TTRPG with Sheik and this was my result.
Fediverse Reactions
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The world is a lot right now.
In all honesty, our phone is on Do Not Disturb to avoid the constant onslaught of news and we are messaging very few people to preserve spoons.
One of us (I forget who) saw a post a few days ago that talked about how a therapist was saying that a desire to build an off grid self sustaining farm and never come back to society was a manifestation of exhaustion and burnout, and whoever it was felt so called out that they almost started crying.
You don’t say that it’s a manifestation of exhaustion and fucking burnout, anonymous therapist! Society is fucking exhausting! Why do you think I rarely front around most people? They fucking exhaust me and burn me out!
I would do unholy things for an off grid, self sustaining farm if this body weren’t fucking allergic to the outdoors.
I know my body couldn’t handle the work to maintain it, let alone the lack of infrastructure, etc., and that fucking kills me. So I settle for being a housebound art gremlin in the city with hopefully half decent OpSec.
No amount of money can fix this particular yearning of ours, sadly. What’s the point of having money to buy land for a self sustaining farm if you can’t fucking work the farm without killing yourself? And what’s the point in having money for a farm even if other people you love lived on it with you if you can’t go outside eighty percent of the year to enjoy it? Even if I wanted to simply sit outside, it would hurt me too badly for most of the year than the enjoyment would be worth.
Unfortunately, we’re learning our limits, and that comes with a fair amount of grief.
Fuck. This hurts. This hurts so bad.
I’m gonna go grab a snack and nap or make art or something.
-Castor
