the bleeding heart of decay

seeking value in what is believed to be lost and the embrace of a tender heart

It took me a long time to learn the language of my mind.

It appears as if it does not operate as it should. A brain that has been known to romanticize humanness in its grotesqueries. One that falls in love with the creative mind—enamored by the beauty and morbidity of what connects us.

A narrative about humankind is fed to us before we are old enough to even digest what being human is. It is the seed of rot. The decay spreads very, very slowly. Spinning in a calculated stupor, orbiting the gravitational pull of a flaming star, we remember our histories of destruction and corruption. The rise and fall to ruin is so innately human that it has become the vernacular of our existence. It has built the framework to seek impurities in others. These flaws become nourishment for our ever-growing minds. We come to know our loved ones to be good, but beyond that circle, it’s difficult to extend the same grace to a humanity that has never been presented as such.

As we morph into our adult forms, we have been required to observe the world through the rapid evolution of human-built and artificial technology. In reality, this requirement has been masked as an opportunity. The digital pathways are a necessary means that aids in the expansion of both connection and severance.

The terror of our lived reality is unwieldy. The wilds are abundant and ravenous, eating away until we are shells of ourselves. Our organic forms have become hollow cores illuminated by blue light. Yet, technology’s ability to connect reminds me it is unreasonable for me to bash our evolutionary path. This trajectory has given me so many avenues of incredible and meaningful connection. Just as it has nourished my return to writing. Through the confines of my relationship with digital intimacy, I have learned so much about myself, others, and the world. Neither technology nor humans are the epitome of evil.

Self-Portrait (1948), by Hyman Bloom *rotated

Do I read as the existentialist I am? I hope so.

Existentialism can so easily be interpreted as a void of emotion and an embodiment of discontentment, but I argue that it is one of the most empathetic and hopeful systems of belief. We may be taught the realities of humankind, but holding ourselves to the belief there is any predestination can be (not is) a blockade to actively fighting the rot we were once fed.

As time progresses, we are physiologically and psychologically different people. Shedding cells, beliefs, minds morphing and adapting, until born again. In evolution aided by predatory technological optimization, the natural human desire to seek understanding in everything becomes extreme. It has led to a perverse obsession with reversing the stages of decay.

On the surface, when something loses its recognizability, there is an immediate impulse to disregard it. The human mind cannot identify its value beyond its original form. When someone takes their last breath, they suddenly no longer look like the person they’ve always known to be. When an orange, forgotten at the bottom of the fruit bowl, turns musty and dry, there is no tending back to health. It is tossed and disregarded, leaving only the remnants of what was. But while it is living, we inject it, we medicate it, we push it to be perfect and desirable. Longevity becomes a means to measure health, and the appearance of decay is staved off. Except, that is only in preservation of its original form.

That is a tragedy. Decay is an integral part of the cycle of regeneration. A carcass once held life, but that is not to say it is no longer of value to the ecosystem. A heart stops beating, but the body begins its next stage of work. Bacteria break down tissues, and in time gases expand then rapidly de-mass, liquefying matter back into the earth. Larvae dance beneath flaps of rotten skin until all that is left behind in this physical form are the bones that once held it all in.

Decomposition is one of the most vital processes in nourishing healthy ecosystems. So why are we so violently against it?

Rot will always remain. It will not always be a graceful process. In fact, it will be ugly and disgusting; seeping and stinking, writhing with yellowed, feasting maggots. Being original in your thought, not letting the past determine the future, loving parts of yourself that have been labeled ugly by others, can be a horribly painful process. It is against what we know to sit and watch the stages of decay, but there will always be the promise of something new. What we then do with that nourishment revitalizes meaning back into our otherwise unexplainable existence. Feed your communities, crack yourself open to welcome in new perspectives, allow the complicated emotions that come with humankind to exist.

Decayed Daguerreotypes: unidentified woman, by Mathew Brady

In the last few years, I have completely changed the trajectory of what I thought was the life I was predestined to live. It began shortly before I created an Instagram page that started as horror book reviews and quickly turned into something so much more. I gained a community I didn’t realize I was missing in my life; I began connecting and creating within a world that I felt so comfortable and so seen within. I am incredibly fortunate, beyond my wildest dreams, because of it.

I slowly realized that my devotion to storytelling was truly marrow deep. I wanted to explore the intimacies of being human through fictional acts of consumption. To write about what lives within the slick heat of our guts. I wanted to know what it meant to love and truly be loved through stories of devouring. I longed to dive into the deepest, darkest bits of ourselves and peel back the layers of skin and sinew, uncovering what we are truly made of. What makes us, what has chipped away at us, and what breaks us.

Thus, devoted marrow was born.

I am so deeply devout to the people, the spaces, and the things that I love the most. I do not agonize when digging into the parts of myself that have been tainted by that spoon-fed rot, but I have spent too much time in the pain of believing that the language of my mind was operating at a frequency that was not worthy of adoration. There is an honest beauty and tragedy in states of decomposition, including relinquishing pain that is not yours to carry.

I want to love the parts of me that have been chipped away at and weathered thin, then contribute to the greater collective energy we all harness. Decay reenergizes our drive to fight fascism, to return to critical thinking, and to dismantle systems of oppression. It is in how we choose to be a part of the greater ecosystem that we accept our own decay as a means of sustenance for the plentiful good of a better humankind.

I wanted this to be an introductory post to devoted marrow, and well… me. In a roundabout way, I think I did just that. I stopped writing in July, but have written almost every single day since September. I am in absolute awe that you have believed in my work, my musings, and have trusted in the art of it. If I ever lose my ability to see the kindness in those I am in community with and beyond, then I do not wish to continue on. So I devote myself to my craft, and I aim to celebrate how other creatives do too. Horror is rooted in the human experience, and through its lens, I want to tell stories and write essays about consumption, devotion, life, and decay.

So, welcome. I am glad you are here.

xo,

e.