#nwrite

you really did try to get better, huh? you ate that one meal mom thought was you loved. but it hasnt been your favorite since elementary school, when that kid called you fat- right? or when your own father said “you’re getting a little fluffy”- or was it that time when your bestfriend said “ehh.. you could be a bit skinnier”.

you’ve never liked working out. excercizing just isnt your thing. but now, if you dont get AT LEAST 150 jumping jacks 100 sit-ups 50 knee-highs and walk 2 miles you’ll freak out.

you chew on ice and bring water bottles to school to get you thru lunch sometimes your friends make you get lunch… you look… happy but we know you’ll cry about it later.

Journal: 8/4/12, 12:27 AM EST  (Warning: a massive amount of rambling follows!) 

I've been too numb to write lately. I force myself to journal descriptions of life with hope that I can link them to something more, but have had no luck. Either way, I still consider myself a writer and will continue to write with faith in the idea that this block will one day float away. 

Eight days from today will mark two months since I finally rid myself of Colorado. I know the word "rid" is harsh in this context, but everything was wrong there. The air I breathed was stale, most of the people I surrounded myself with were too consumed by something else to care, and, in the four years I lived there, I never once lived in a place I could call "home". 

I need to stop summarizing.

It's been six weeks and I've managed to commit myself to four hours a day of precalc. I'm managing to keep a solid B. But sometimes I panic. A lot of the time I panic. If I can't work my way through a problem, my body tenses up and I grip whatever I'm holding on to and if there's nothing to hold on to, I scratch, straight through the skin. So the doctor has pre-diagnosed me with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

I've been at the beach for the last week. The water was cool and salty, but sand still managed to burn the soles of my feet while the sun worked on coloring my skin red. I held a baby, one of the new generation, in my arms and cocooned her against my chest as the waves slapped our skin. She touched the ocean for the first time in my arms. After evenings on the boardwalk filled with people and ice cream, we retired to the couches of our rental and flipped to the Olympics. The fifteen year old swimmers and gymnasts ricocheted their way to the top and I still have yet to make sense of where they find the willpower and motivation to get there. 

They say that swollen, pus-filled patches of green lie beneath those bandages of yours. Remnants of the lonely nights you spend listening to the bubbling of the tea kettle, protecting your palm with a ragged towel as you slosh piping hot water down the length of your forearm. As your skin, boiling, sizzles down the drain, you lay naked in your tub, tears plopping into the heightening water in time with the spurts of cold you release upon the newly formed wound. The pain, that lovely, familiar, securing sting you've acquainted yourself with, leaves fuzzy black clouds eating away at your vision. You're dizzy and high again, all of the energies in your body focused on fighting the intentional mutilation throbbing on your arm. 

Your love's kiss marks leave DNA on the scars decorating your wrists, but it'll never be enough. Your razors, wrapped within a leather pouch, are nestled behind the vinyls, beckoning you with the whistling kettle on the stove. 

We all know. We're watching you deteriorate from afar, awaiting the brave soul who dares to bring attention to the mysteries under your wrappings.

Tonight, I speed around my house draped in poly fiber cloth and no underwear, babbling to myself about failure and loss as I absentmindedly spin sugar into hot water. I collapse on the floor of my living room, my face aching and my heart bubbling underneath my chest. I can't help but scream, breathing in hiccups and gripping the carpet. My torn lips bleed and red streaks curl down my arms, poetry filled paper growing damp underneath my face. I run blindly into my room, trying my and failing to suffocate myself with pillows. My wailing is uncontrollable, and remnants of charcoal trail down my face, carried by the streams pouring from my eyes.

The tea is cold by the time I can finally lift my face to check the time, wiping my eyes. I get up, gripping the skin on my scalp and I squeeze my eyes shut in frustration, tearing the dress off. I'm splayed, exhausted, on my desk chair. The lack of caffeine crushes me, leaving me unable to do anything but stare off into blank walls. Coldplay echoes off of my monitor. 

So here I am, left naked at 2:43 A.M. on a Monday morning, sleepless hours the only thing near enough to accompany me.

Currently I find myself balanced on a broken desk chair with a copy of Hamlet in my lap, a highlighter in between my teeth, and I can't help but think, I could be happy, if I try. 

But instead I'm stuck, unpeeling, to this idea that I'm shattered, that each of the 206 bones assembled inside of me are slowly crumbling to nothing, and I'm centimeters away from melting. And I'll always hear a whisper, soft, seventeen. I'm seventeen! Why choose now to be sad? 

That word, choose, it implies that I could just turn my head, snap my fingers, and everything would feel better. I could thrust open my window and breathe, just breathe, taking in everything without these all-too-familiar hovering aspects of failure, of loss, of sickness, of death. I could run outside barefoot and fall into the grass, listen to the secrets between the trees, rock myself to sleep by a river and wake up without panic, lacking the subconscious scratches down my arms I find myself carving into myself while I dream.

I could call you, beg you to drive over here and hold me closer than you ever have,  press your lips wherever you wanted, trace my skin with your fingers, pull my messy hair out if its tie and leave it disheveled and knotty just like I used to hate. We could mold ourselves to each other like we used to, grip each others shirts and entwine our legs. I would let you. I wouldn't abscond just as you were falling asleep like I've done too many times before. 

But it's all too late for that.

I'm still here alone, slowly forgetting what I'm worth and going to bed to the feeling of my nails digging into my arms and a wetness on my face. If anybody asked me to describe myself, I couldn't. I'm nobody. 

There is a petite, unfading heart etched in red pen at the edge of my temporary desk in this temporary new territory. I can't help but repeatedly rub my thumb over it. It's been traced and retraced over again, I can tell, because the forward-backward movement of skin to wood does nothing. 

I wonder if she was in love. I wonder if she was thinking of a boy with a shy smirk, a witty tongue, a clever mind. I wonder if she even thought of a boy. Perhaps she was broken, perhaps that boy was with somebody else; perhaps that somebody else was beautiful, more beautiful than she who etched out that heart in permanent pen. Perhaps he loved her back, and perhaps they were happy. Perhaps they had spent nights in each other's arms, speaking of the moon and the earth and of petty things such as the day's newspaper heading, or the upcoming summer. Perhaps it was the mere thought of love itself that urged her to draw this heart left on this desk for me to see; was there nobody? What if she was desperate to love someone, but that someone didn't exist for her just yet? Perhaps she felt like the feeling of love did not exist and desperately carved this heart into wood, hoping she could perhaps feel this love everybody was talking about.