Salt on skin

I've come so far.

I’m having a rare sunrise moment in this australian Autumn cold, standing on my back deck with coffee, remembering how many tears took me to this place.

A new friend told me a few days ago that as a child she had heard that tears on your face actually soften the skin. As an adult she went through the darkest depression, constantly weeping, and she rubbed the salty wet tears into her body, over and over.

“At least there was that,” she laughed, and I laughed, and we knew that when you are that bad, nobody is laughing.

But we can’t help ourselves, when we are that sad. We still look for loopholes. Today I can’t shake the image. The woman, weeping. The salt on skin. The submission to sorrow.

The information that has recently arrived to me is that my diagnosis of Bipolar II may in fact be better named as Schizoaffective Disorder. (Or maybe it is both.) I’m quite tired by this news, and I also can tell that it’s true. I think about all the people I keep losing. I don’t know what to say.

When I think about the way I am holding down a full time job, and running an independent small press in my waking hours, I am amazed and also, how long can I hold this?

On April 30th the next Incision Press anthology will be launched in a kinky warehouse book party in Sydney with some of my favourite writers and kink performers. It will feel like family. It will be outrageous. It will also be soft. I know I will be happy.

After that, I will need someone to scoop me up, put me in a hotel room and feed me. Let me sleep for three days. Let me cry about all the broken things I cannot fix about myself. Let me pick up my notebook and write and not take care of anyone else. The room needs to have a window. It will need to have people there too. I don’t want to be by myself. I have had too much time by myself.

Incision Press has an open call soon, which is another way of saying, I will be resting for at least three months while people write books that they hope we will publish in 2027.

I don’t ever regret working this hard to build something so beautiful that so many lives have been changed. As a child, this is the man I hoped to be. I’ve arrived home to myself, I have written myself in, this is so so good. I am so proud of who I am.

There was a tipping point a little while ago, where I became free, and now I’m flying, and my god. I earned this, and I treasure it deeply, and I will also be grateful to rest.

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Orlando Silver

Director, Incision Press