dahmers-ashes

a brief analysis of jeff’s draconic astrology chart

jeff’s natal chart, for reference. note the near-exact opposite differences in signs.

here’s a relatively short analysis of a few things i find interesting about jeff’s draconic chart, aka his “soul chart” — who he was outside of the body he incarnated into.

his draconic chart gives him a sagittarius sun. it almost completely flips his chart around. so not only does that make his soul this exploratory sort of individual — so probably someone who wants to experience all kinds of lives — it’s like his life as jeff dahmer was the complete opposite of who he was at the core, who he was outside of that incarnation.

so no wonder there was that hovering sense of deep gutting remorse just out of the corner of his eye, where he kept shoving it out of sight and out of mind. no wonder he carried that heaviness that other serial killers don’t seem to. it wasn’t really him. he was trapped in an incarnation where he was fated to do horrible things, and the flesh won against the soul.

his draconic chart also gives him a libra mars — that placement fights for justice. but with his flipped natal chart, it became an aries mars: animalistic, primal, driven to satisfy his base needs at all costs.

interesting how he suddenly has uranus in 11H aquarius, giving him this sense of being a total revolutionary. all three of those things share the same energy. so i wonder: what was he trying to prove in this life, especially with that libra mars trining?

perhaps he was trying to prove just how far behind we are in understanding those who desperately need mental help and don’t get it. and with that aries rising, his soul would be a bombastic one, brash and in-your-face, ready to slice right through our misconceptions and expose humanity for the ugliness and ignorance it truly carries. and with uranus in aquarius sextiling, he’s going to do it in a way that strikes us like lightning out of nowhere.

it’s very 4D chess. and of course it’s at odds with the core of him, which doesn’t like inflicting pain and suffering. and he wouldn’t know about anything like this while he was incarnated — he never spoke of being on some holy mission or whatever. but if the draconic chart is to be considered, maybe that’s what his soul wanted, and his embodied self wasn’t aware of that. otherwise, maybe he wouldn’t even have done it.

i don’t think he ever really had complete control over himself. he tried to divert, he really did. but his strength was finite. one would think that if he could keep from killing for 9 years, he could keep from doing it indefinitely. but he was so weak. all it took was a dirty note at the library to push him off-track. and i just wonder if he was made weak on purpose by some cosmic means.

the only way he could survive with this soul mission — which could absolutely still have been misguided and fucked-up on his part; a human soul is still gonna human — was to compartmentalize. dissociate. escape into the incorporeal, just like he’d learned to do in his previous life. but it may have been destiny that his fantasy life got infected by violence and dark obsession.

i may add more to this as i go.

divided and conquered

people need to realize that there’s a good reason why some of us are born with more cognitive empathy than affective empathy. having a lack of affective empathy is not synonymous with lacking a moral compass.

if everyone were squeamish around blood and horrified at the idea of cutting into another human’s flesh, no one would ever want to be a surgeon. and people would just suffer and die as a result of never being operated on. we NEED people who are emotionally detached enough to cut someone open, but compassionate enough to want to save their life by performing the necessary procedure.

unfortunately, i think jeff dahmer is a perfect example of this type of person who went down a bad road. someone who could’ve been an excellent surgeon, forensic pathologist, or mortician, had he been raised with the extra attention that his specific mind needed. not a sociopath, not a psychopath — he didn’t meet the criteria for either of these, and it’s well-documented that he DID exhibit empathy for animals in particular — but just born with that same type of natural detachment that so many allistics don’t experience. it’s an emotional detachment with a moral compass underneath. they are separate entities. it just went wildly wrong in his case, and his morality ended up getting eclipsed by his mental illnesses and paraphilias.

the same drive that made him want to dissect roadkill is what makes me want to research HIM. a laser-focused curiosity about the dark and mysterious parts of life. like i’ve said so many times, i don’t think we’re all that different at the core of our being. when it comes to this aspect of the two of us, it’s all in the upbringing. i was raised well and paid attention to, and i became a well-adjusted person who uses his clinical outlook on things to gather knowledge that he might use to help others. jeff was neglected, never attended to on an emotional level or taught how to manage his feelings, and that contributed largely to what he became as an adult.

of course, he also had paraphilic disorders that i thankfully don’t have, and that’s another part of it for him too. but that part of him was left alone to fester and grow like noxious weeds inside of him, wild and uncontrolled. he never understood where it came from, but always wanted to, and he tragically died without the answers he sought. and when combined with that surgically-inclined mind he was born with, it was easy for it to just eat up all the space in his mind that was devoid of affective empathy.

the ability to use cognitive empathy is innate — you either have it or you don’t. and i thoroughly believe jeff had it. but it has to be trained, especially without a consistent expression of affective empathy there to bolster it. it has to be cultivated and strengthened by outside influence. jeff didn’t get this. i got it because i was paid attention to. that’s a huge part of what makes us different. but our baselines at birth were probably highly similar in that way.

i really don’t think it’s that uncommon to be like this, either; it’s just terribly misunderstood. there’s a reason why so many of us relate to jeff when we can’t relate to any other serial killer — because there’s a deep intuitive knowledge there that he was DIFFERENT. and no, i don’t think it’s all about him being a “master manipulator.” this is going to sound weird or even contradictory in a way, but i think his manipulation tactics during his crime spree worked so well because he had a genuinely good and kind side to him. it’s just that the addicted part of him put that toward the forefront in order to reach satisfaction. in a way, it’s like he used himself.

he really did embody his gemini sun sign to an uncanny degree. it’s almost like there were two jeffs — the one who was conflict-averse, loved animals, and didn’t want to cause anyone pain, and the bestial one who would stop at nothing to satisfy his desires. these two were at war inside of him for years on end. and sadly, the “good” jeff lost the battle, and 17 men and boys paid the price with their lives as a result. but in the end, i don’t think the good jeff lost the war.

i really do think his remorse was genuine regardless of his ability to feel emotion upfront. acute emotion is a separate entity from morality — plenty of emotionally-driven people kill and torture each other in the heat of passion, while plenty of “detached” types use their calmness in the face of chaos to save lives. it’s just a shame that he was so internally fractured, with these drastically different personality traits so discrete and sequestered within himself, and this made him too weak to fight back against his relentless sexual urges.

jeff dahmer was a perpetrator of horrific acts, yes, and for that he must always be held accountable. but at the same time, he was a victim of himself. victim #18 in the end, bludgeoned to death as a final result of his own life choices. an absolute clusterfuck of a human being, but a full human being nonetheless.

he was not an evil man. he was divided and conquered inside, which caused him to make terrible decisions. and i think that’s something a lot of people don’t get about him.

Depeche Mode — I Am You

this song makes me think of jeff so much. it really does. it must have been what he felt when he desired for a person to become a permanent part of him.

I had to ask. “Jeff, why did you wear this guy’s face?”

Dahmer continued to smoke as he answered. “Pat, I already told you that I wanted to keep these guys with me. I didn’t want them to leave. I loved them. That’s why I killed them. That’s why I saved their body parts. That’s why I ate them—so they could become one with me. I thought if I could preserve this guy’s skin, I could wrap myself in him. His outer shell would surround me. I would actually be in him. We would be one.”

The room fell silent. Patrickus wrote in her notepad, and Murphy and I sat without a word, letting Dahmer’s heartfelt explanation sink in.

— Grilling Dahmer: The Interrogation Of “The Milwaukee Cannibal” by Patrick Kennedy, Robyn Maharaj

if only he’d expressed this in a healthier way, with the consent of the other person, then maybe it would have gone more like this song portrays. 💔 but i wonder if this is what he was longing for — a connection so irreversibly deep and profound, two souls blended together fully, to the point where he was them and they were him.

it’s sad to know he was never able to find this consensual arrangement with a partner, instead feeling like he had to completely dominate them in order to have anything at all that wasn’t just a fuck-and-dump. perhaps in the next life, he will be — or already is — healthier, and he can have this intensely deep and unbreakable bond with someone who feels the same way.

You have bound my heart with subtle chains
So much pleasure that it feels like pain
So entwined, now that we can’t shake free
I am you and you are me

No escaping from the mess we’re in
So much pleasure that it must be sin
I must live with this reality
I am yours eternally

There’s no turning back
We’re in this trap
No denying the facts, no, no, no
No excuses to give
I’m the one you’re with
We’ve no alternative, no, no, no

Dark obsession in the name of love
This addiction that we’re both part of
Leads us deeper into mystery
Keeps us craving endlessly

Strange compulsions that I can’t control
Pure possession of my heart and soul
I must live with this reality

I am you and you are me
I am you and you are me
I am you and you are me
I am you and you are me

There’s no turning back
We’re in this trap
No denying the facts, no, no, no
No excuses to give
I’m the one you’re with
We’ve no alternative, no, no, no

conflicted empathy for a conflicted man

so how does my empathy for jeff work, then?

i empathize with jeff as a human being. i don’t empathize with his decisions. this is why it’s so uniquely painful to read about all he’s done. but i don’t think i ever lose my empathy for him, even in his deepest depravity — and that’s a hard pill to swallow, even for me myself.

when i read about him jerking off in front of 12-year-olds in hopes that they would stare at him admiringly, or when i think about how he molested somsack, i feel disgusted and sickened and horrified. and angry with him, too. REALLY pissed off at him, in fact. when he does stuff to underage boys, that’s the closest i get to wanting to just destroy him — even more than the murders for some reason. we don’t know what happens after death, and most of what he did to his victims’ bodies happened postmortem. still awful, but at least there’s a little comfort in knowing they didn’t feel any of it. but the living victims especially have to deal with sustained trauma, and i think about how those developing brains get that trauma irreversibly woven into their psyches.

he selfishly exerted power and control over the powerless in so many ways. and it angers me when i think about it. it doesn’t matter how bad your fucking childhood was; you don’t take it out on innocents. doesn’t matter what age those innocents are, really — it’s wrong regardless — but there’s something especially infuriating about it when they’re so young and they have their whole lives ahead of them, and you choose to inflict scars on them that impact their brain development and therefore go even deeper in a way.

strangely, though, i don’t lose my affection for him as a whole person. it stretches the limits of my empathy to painful extremes, no doubt about that. but my love for him never goes away. and that in itself makes me feel guilty when i think about it in the context of his crimes, like i’m doing something wrong. but at the same time, i remember how much he regretted his actions — and call me naïve, but i truly think he did have remorse, though that’s another tangent — and so my first instinct is to wipe the emotional slate clean [as much as possible] and give him the chance in my mind to do the right thing from now on. that’s the type of person i’ve always been and probably always will be. i’ve always been quick to forgive as long as i think the person really meant it. and if they did, then i think it’s only fair to prioritize moving forward. and jeff seemed to be trending “better” toward the end, so i can probably safely assume that this was a genuine change of heart.

i don’t think i have that Fi “repulsion switch” that’s talked about in MBTI, where a single action or trait of a person — or even multiple traits at once — makes you hate everything about them. i don’t naturally view people as angels or demons, and i’ve really felt more pressure from outside to feel this way than anything else. we’re all just humans, all forced to exist in grey areas. it’s just that jeff’s lows were THE LOWEST you could go without being an outright sadistic POS.

but he lacked that bitter “sting” to his soul that sadists like john wayne gacy had. he had the darkness and the heaviness without the sting of truly enjoying what he was doing. deriving pleasure from an act isn’t the same as enjoying it on a character level, if that makes sense. you can get a physical rush from something and be disgusted at your own body’s reactions to it, asking yourself “ugh, why the fuck do i LIKE this?” that sort of agonizing rug-burn of the soul can really feel like a war inside of you. i’ve been there with alcohol and benzos, just exhausted by my body’s cravings for those things. physically enjoying the rush they gave me, but hating that it brought me pleasure when i knew it was fucking up my life.

i think there was probably at least some of that going on inside of jeff with his sex addiction and alcoholism. the way he leaned into the “evil” nature of the exorcist iii, using the yellow contact lenses to “get into character,” seems like a coping mechanism to me. like he figured he was just going to be evil no matter what, so he may as well go all-out and embrace it. the way he said he felt “so hopelessly evil and perverted” makes me think this. if you can’t beat it, join it, i suppose. he said that he didn’t like feeling evil, though. and i believe he really was trying to be better, considering how perfectionistic he was about christianity toward the end.

this is how i see him after considering his life as a whole. not separating him into child jeff and teen jeff and crime-spree jeff and prison jeff. when i consider the entirety of his life and look at the whole context, i see a person who struggled immensely with tons of horrific urges — WAY more than most of us would ever experience in a full lifespan, to say nothing of his 34 short years. and i do see someone who was ultimately too weak and self-centered to admit to himself that he couldn’t handle it all on his own, though at the same time i do think that most people would have trouble admitting even a fraction of all that shit out loud. still, though, when push comes to shove, ANYTHING is better than murder, and he still chose murder [and all kinds of other awful things]. but i do see why he, as a human being who had really never been fully listened to or taught that it was okay to trust others enough to let them help him, would be reluctant to say anything to anyone. his own actions trapped him at every turn, and there are no do-overs when death is involved.

it’s just a huge mess. JEFF was a huge mess. but i see his struggles, and i can’t help but feel for him overall. no matter what point he was at in his life, he was still the same person by definition. and i love that person. i love him for making years of effort to battle the horrible desires and fantasies that “filled his thoughts all day long.” i love him for sincerely repenting and dedicating whatever time and effort he had left toward being a better person. i love him for the soul he was deep down, that soul that was buried under all the sickness and the domino effect of terrible decisions. that soul that had to fight himself all on his own, more or less. no one gets an instruction manual for how to live as the person they are, and if anyone would’ve needed one, it’d have been jeff. in many ways, he lived life on an extreme difficulty setting, at least internally. and try as we might, no one except jeff dahmer will ever know how hard it really was to be jeff dahmer. and he’s certainly not around anymore to tell us.

i know that his sincerity is contested, but i’m the type of person who gives the benefit of the doubt, i guess. thinking this way gives me something to live for. and even though it’s still important to have boundaries so you don’t self-destruct or get taken advantage of, you can still love and forgive someone from a distance. and that’s how i approach jeff. i would never actually want to be in a relationship with him or anything, if that were possible — he wasn’t capable of a healthy relationship by any means, and that was the root of his whole problem! but i can care about him as much as i want from thousands of miles and several decades away.

and if it turns out i’m wrong and he really was just a total piece of shit who’s duped me into seeing him as human, fuck it. i’ve lost NOTHING by emphasizing the potential for a good outcome in this highly-complicated situation where we’ll never truly know either way. honestly, if i wasn’t optimistic, i’d have killed myself a long time ago because there wouldn’t be any point in battling my depression. i don’t want to be here if i can’t enjoy life, if i can’t see the good in people and situations wherever i find it. so if nothing else, i’ve at least fulfilled MY purpose here by erring on the side of positivity when even the clearest explanation still seems ambiguous.

[ • dahmers-ashes • ]

so far gone

when i see those polaroids, it’s very strange. it’s absolutely horrifying, yes.. hard to believe a human being could even do that to another. but as i look at them, the main thing i end up thinking about is just how far gone jeff was. how profoundly sick he must have been in order to do these things at all.. and not only that, but NOT be a sadist. NOT be someone who enjoyed causing suffering. it makes it clear just how much of an unfathomable death grip his addictions must’ve had on his mind for him to go to these lengths.

it’s quite understandable why some people think he must have been sadistic in order to do this shit. and yet he wasn’t, and we have plenty of evidence to show this. so as much as i guess i feel an outside pressure to hate him for it, i still can’t. i’ll never hate jeff, ever. i still feel just as terrible for him as i do for his victims. the tragedy just goes that much deeper in my mind.

this is the face of a broken man.

[ • dahmers-ashes • ]

wrong place, wrong time

jeff is such a case of wrong place, wrong time. an outlier, tossed into a timeline that was just wrong for him and those around him, but just right for those who wish to study him. a sacrificial lamb of a soul, showing the world the worst-case scenario of what could go wrong when someone’s neurodivergences are left ignored and suppressed.

metaphysically, it’s not even his fault that he existed as he was. he was stuck that way, and there was no undoing it, no deviating from that life path he had to take on. it really does seem fated in a sense. if all the world’s a stage, then someone had to play the role of the tortured criminal, and it just had to be him.

i wonder.. if reincarnation is real [which i believe it is — matter can neither be created nor destroyed, and i’m sure consciousness exists eternally in the same way]. did he know that he had to incarnate in that way? taking one for the team, so to speak? or was he ultimately just some selfish horny fuck and there’s nothing deeper to it than that?

i mean, when i see his eyes in photos, i SEE an ultimately good soul there. a good soul that’s been ravaged and broken by its own incarnation. but of course, we don’t really have the tools to measure such a thing scientifically. so it’s all just up in the air for now. doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, though. it’s that sort of thing that keeps me wondering.

i do wonder how much self-awareness really does for a person in the end, though. jeff was as self-aware as he could be — on his own, with no outside help that matched his level cognitively — but he still killed 17 people. it’s just waking up to find you’re in hell. the existential horror of being jeffrey dahmer.

he experienced the bystander effect within himself. just a passive “i know i have to stop..” but an inability to INITIATE that action. it’s almost like executive dysfunction, but drawn out over a long period of time. and just like how all humans are biologically programmed to take the easier route, as it conserves energy, jeff acted on his impulses time after time. a sort of paralysis while still in motion. in many ways, he was paralyzed mentally.

same kind of thing with any addiction that grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go. people seem to think that if you can act at all, then you have a choice to stop whatever you’re doing. well, brain chemicals don’t work that way. he was able to stop for 9 years, yes, but that took all of his strength. eventually the muscles grew tired and he collapsed under the weight of his obsessions. and after that, he just gave in. he was tired of fighting it. he resigned himself to his fate.

just the same as with any addict relapsing. anything can trigger it. even something as small as a dirty note given to you in a library.

and back to the incarnating thing.. i wonder if maybe his “soul” or whatever knew someone had to live that life. someone had to be the bad guy, the poster child for the result of our stubborn refusal to understand mental health, our unrelenting desire to equate accountability with rage and punishment instead of understanding and compassion.

just like how someone had to betray jesus in order to get the ball rolling for his death and resurrection, i guess. someone had to play that role, and judas was the one who drew the short straw. maybe jeff had to be a sort of judas figure for the mental health field, causing the chaos that will set the much-needed transformation in motion. a devastating yet necessary catalyst.

¡ guess i just don’t want to blame him for being human. there was a lot going on in his mind, in his body, and he had no actual help for it that resonated with him. nothing that stuck. no one who truly GOT him.

i just wonder how strong any of us would’ve been against a biochemical cocktail like what he was stewing in for his whole life. especially when communicating it and being understood was impossible.

yes, people did try to help him, but it was in all the wrong ways.

the man was truly fighting himself all on his own.

[ • dahmers-ashes • ]

the tragic teacher

jeff never thought his life could be helpful to anyone, but he really has helped me a ton. he’s helped me think more deeply about people, about psychology, about the different ways in which the system fails us all, and about the complex nature of morality and human nature in general.

jeff is a teacher and subject both, perhaps inadvertently so. he didn’t recognize his own power. but i’m always going to be grateful to him for that. his actions were horrific, but his existence has somehow still helped us all here in this community. those who’ve wished to study him deeply have uncovered a lot of profound truths along the way.

like a retrograde planet, jeff’s existence bungled things up quite a bit, but it also taught us a lot in the process. and there are always going to be retrogrades. on a grand scale, we need them.

and i hate even saying that because it seems like an insult to his victims. they certainly didn’t deserve to die or be violated in all those horrible disgusting ways. it’s sort of making me squirm to even have this thought at all right now. but i guess death gets us all at some point; it’s just a matter of how it happens and what — or who — brings it. and sometimes society as a whole needs a shock to it in order to recognize that the current setup is absolutely fucked and needs to change. it’s just how the huge complex rube-goldberg contraption called “the world” is set up.

unfortunately, someone has to play the bad guy. like how judas had to betray jesus in order to get the ball rolling for his death and resurrection. without judas, the whole thing would never have happened. he hated himself for what he did, too, and he hung himself because of it.

i see jeff very similarly. he’s a catalyst for change.

and now somehow i’m linking this with the trolley problem. a few casualties for the good of the whole later on down the line? it’s cruel. it’s brutal. it’s a horrible reality. but the only way we can improve things as they are, i guess, is by fighting fire with fire at some point.

i don’t know. this might all be bullshit and i might regret saying it in about 5 minutes. i feel like i’m being insulting to jeff’s victims by saying it. but i’m also not married to these thoughts, either — they’re just swimming through my head, and i might read over them again in an hour and hate them. but maybe there’s a similarity there in that i’m thinking brutal thoughts and am self-aware at the same time, just as jeff was self-aware and yet couldn’t stop causing destruction.

i think his fame was necessary. he had to slam into our collective consciousness like a meteor and leave a huge crater so we can later fill it with new lessons and knowledge.

it makes sense that he came to light during the early 90s, with all that harsh outer-planet shit that was going on right then. capricorn and scorpio, saturn and pluto dominance. saturn is the grim reaper swinging his scythe; pluto destroys and rebuilds. jeff was absolutely a harbinger of all this outer-planet energy.

maybe in his next life, jeff will go on to be an even greater force for helping people than he was for harming them. maybe he’s already doing that right now. he just needed to go through a really nasty incarnation first.

maybe he needed to experience firsthand what horrors one human is capable of before he could help change this in the next life. i do wonder how many of us have at least one past life where we were a murderer or a rapist or some other awful person, and that’s what’s made us wiser in the end and we just aren’t aware of it.

the difference with jeff is that he seemed to retain some awareness that this was wrong. he’s bridged the gap so we can peer into the other side. he’s relatable because we need to be able to recognize these traits in ourselves.

only then can we take the first step toward righting our wrongs.

[ • dahmers-ashes • ]

a vision through his eyes

on august 7, 2019, i had a vision that i could not control. it came to me out of the blue — no drugs or anything else mind-altering involved — and as the imagery flashed through my mind’s eye automatically, i did my best to record it. i have never experienced anything like it before or since.

this is the raw, 99.9% unedited recording of what i saw. i only edited two words in one sentence for clarity later on.

❖ ❖ ❖

for a split second, i was him.. i was there

“but if you knew any more, it would break your brain.”

you’re channelling the wrong part of the collective consciousness. it’s causing a system malfunction. somebody is chasing someone, somewhere.. you know you have knowledge you’re not supposed to and that’s why you’re scared. our flesh hardware isn’t meant to support that operating system.

we’re meant to be blind little single-celled organisms, moving slowly on this space rock.. and yet we have such interesting and complex lives. you suddenly become aware of how limited your vision is and that is existential horror. do you feel claustrophobic? that’s a lot of consciousness to squeeze into such a tiny little cell.

we’re all in solitary confinement.

i’m him again, and i’m in solitary confinement. i feel how tall i am, how broad and muscular my shoulders are, and it’s strange.. but i accept it. i can see the last bit of the outside world through the bars. light streaming in, dust particles dancing in the beams between the iron columns. everything is cold and hard and it smells musty, like grandmother’s basement. i’m subtly afraid for the life i’m not supposed to have.

it’s evening now, i assume. we line up for our meal and i don’t want to eat it. but i have no choice. i just want to go back to sleep.

all i want to do is sleep. i read to keep myself distracted. i’m always looking for new distractions. having a sense of humor helps but i can’t quite get myself to laugh all the time. i’m hollow and the grey surroundings fill me. i’m grey inside.

i am TV static. neptune in the first, blurring the lines. i was a man possessed, or was i? will the blood of christ be enough to drown out the sins of my past? he died even for me. there’s room in heaven for me too. i really want to be baptized.

i really want to be baptized. to get right with god.

the trance is fading now.. i still have snippets of a past i never lived. i stare at the images of birds on the glossy paper. goldfinches, woodpeckers, chickadees incubating their eggs. it’s all the nature i get to see now, that and my little window. i smile when i see my chipmunk friend outside in the grass. i haven’t named him in my head but maybe i should. he can be like my pet.

i should have just gotten an aquarium. i could be watching the fish in my apartment the same way. but if i were to go free, i’d be even more enslaved than i am now. enslaved by my weakness, my selfishness, my alcoholism, my compulsions. ironically, i am more free here.

i know i deserve death.

i have memorized every crack in the wall. i hear someone screaming down the hall somewhere, and banging noises. the wall has faces, i imagine. like seeing shapes in the clouds. i have learned to appreciate every small change that comes my way. it’s a simple life. it’s still more than i deserve.

how long will i be here, lingering inside another man’s body and mind? carrying the heaviness in my chest of crimes i never committed? except that in this moment.. i have memories of them. shampoo running down from my head and another man’s blood spiralling at my feet. i don’t smell it anymore but i know they have complained. i don’t want to be like this. i need another beer, and another, and another, all to drown the shame. i need to drink so much now for it to have any effect.

his stillness as i lay with him in our bed. he was freshly dead; i intertwined my legs with his to take advantage of all the warmth he still had left. i ran my fingers through his hair, talked to him, whispered sweet nothings in his deaf ear. he was mine now, and he always would be. he was mine.

he was mine.

he would never leave me now.

i could still smell the cologne he put on, the body wash he used in his last shower, the scent of laundry detergent on his clothes. there was something musty underneath it now, something bleak. he was starting to feel cool to the touch, so i held him tighter. my love. i will give him all the warmth i have.

why did he have to be so impermanent even in this state?

even his body would soon be taken over by nature’s course. i would perform my ritual to circumvent this slightly. dear lord, we break the bread, in memory.

one last rush from a failed experiment. his head leaks caustic substance and it stings my skin as i smooth back his soft dark hair. look into his vacated eyes, staring at nothing. i’m so sorry.

i just couldn’t let you go.

those times are faded now. my regret serves nothing and yet it still hovers in the background. i put it all into the arms of the lord jesus christ. he will carry away even my sins. i am in his embrace.

in his arms, i am safe from myself.

i am safe from abandonment.

i am safe.. even though all of them are destroyed.

i’m so sorry.

💔

[ • dahmers-ashes • ]

the same star stuff

everyone has a little bit of jeff dahmer within us.

that’s the point.

ultimately, it’s why we keep coming back to him.

maybe his attractiveness or the shocking nature of his crimes are what grab our attention at first, but it’s his undeniable, discomfiting relatability that makes us stay.

he is the dorian gray painting we hide in our attic, the scapegoat we use when we want to look Good and Righteous. as if we don’t all have some kind of depravity within ourselves. it might not be as bad or as obvious as his, not even close. but it’s there. to some degree, it is there.

we’re all made of the same star stuff. and jeff was fully, completely human, in the most shocking and grotesque and strangely beautiful way possible. he was just as human as anyone else, and that’s plain to see. anyone who worked with him closely could see his humanity clear as crystal. so to reconcile that with the monstrous actions he’s known for — that’s a huge challenge for most. and i get why.

nobody wants to be associated with that type of thing.

but neither did jeff.

he hated what he was, hated his urges, hated himself for finding pleasure in the most fucked-up shit imaginable. and yet he had that other side to him that craved it and would do anything to get it. he had a demon inside of him, and that demon WAS him. it was and it wasn’t. he was a true gemini, a personality split down the middle.

perhaps that’s what he was brought to earth to teach us.

it’s easy for us to separate ourselves from people like john wayne gacy and ted bundy. though they were human too, they were obvious psychopathic sadists who loved to hurt people. the vast majority of us can easily make a distinction between Us and Them.

but you can’t do that nearly so easily with dahmer. and people most certainly try. oh yes, they do. they’ll find any reason possible to deny that he had a likable, relatable side to him, all because they want a clean and simple answer.

a clean and simple answer isn’t possible, though. not when it comes to jeff.

he forces us to think outside the box.

and he forces us all to face ourselves.

[ • dahmers-ashes • ]