It is 4 am when I empty the bottle of cough syrup into my throat. It goes down easy, but I am left feeling tired. I remember that we are going out in a few hours and panic immediately. My face feels hot. I am acting like a child. Another thing that has been taken away from me.
If you asked me why I was doing this, I could not tell you. I would blame my mother, identifying her as the primary cause of my self-destructive tendencies (She loved me just fine; I have nothing to say about it). I could tell you it was for the fun of it because that is what I say about most things I cannot so readily lie about because I cannot tell you the truth, which is that I am doing it for the story.
Funnily enough, I am too high to document this clearly, enough for it to be a story at all, defeating its intended purpose. Instead, I am stuck with a bulleted list (relying on underproduced half-baked ideas transcribed from audio clips and memory) to produce a similar effect.
1. I was born in the summer, in May, in the scorching heat left behind by April. I am told I was small and frail at birth, and now, I am afraid I might be that way forever. I like being talked about as someone younger because I am able to place myself somewhere else more quickly, somewhere that is not here.
2. My heart is beating rapidly. 5:06. I think for an image and settle on one of a girl at peace. The girl curls up into the fetal position to kill herself and realizes that she will be undoing the work of her mother. I could almost laugh. I have been hurting my own feelings, and with every passing day, my mother grows older.
3. I have this fantasy where I catfish The Love of My Life (my life has become a pursuit of overcoming this abstraction) until they reciprocate my feelings. I later learn they've been telling other people I have changed their life, world, and reason for existing, to which I agree. I get to be loud and call attention to my personhood, and you think this is making you better. It is true. I am enriching your life.
4. I am currently reading Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad about My Neck and thinking about how a 70-year-old woman is influential to me, an 18-year-old girl. She feels bad about her neck and thinks it makes her ugly; I am young and have a million necks. When I talk this way, I can never tell if I am motivated by a desire to be young or a desire never to grow old (When I was young, I had no desire to be wanted, but now that I am older, I want everyone to want to sleep with me).
My behavior, as of late, has been shocking and pitiful. I have been tying my hair with bows and lace, making offhanded jokes about how I am a Nabokov girl. I know this is not true—I am not unattractive, but I am nothing special either—still, I say it anyway, and my friends agree. Loving me makes them liars.
5. I am terrible at friendship and unsure of how I still have the friends I do. I am not a responsible person, and loving someone is all responsibility. I sometimes hate my Best Friends and think cruel things about them, texting them things like "You do NOT know me!!!!" or "Are we even friends anymore LOL." I am committed to this performance because I respect almost no one and think they are all boring. I fall asleep while they tell me about the boys they like (whose names I never remember) and think to myself, "So what? Big deal!"
I cannot for the life of me remember when this changed, but the friends I have now are different. These friendships are deliberate and not simply because I fear being alone. I enjoy being tethered to the people I love and am grateful for the friendships I have during this ruthless passing of seasons.
6. I am watching Lena Dunham's Girls on TV, and it is the episode with Patrick Wilson where he is (supposedly) hot but also profoundly lonely. She is telling him she desires happiness, and he agrees with her; only she is so self-obsessed, unable to recognize it is a severely unhappy person she is saying these things to. I am entertained until I realize I can't tell which one of the two roles I most often assume (unseen or never truly seeing), which prompts me to switch the channel.
7. One thing about me is that I love going out. I didn't know this about myself until very recently, and once I did, I learned I did not have the same feelings about being outside. I hate being outside and find nothing beautiful. It is not that I find nothing beautiful, but if you were to tell me that it is warm outside or that the sunset is breathtaking, I would no longer feel the same. Maybe this has nothing to do with beauty and is simply indicative of my impulse to have an original thought. Wanting this is not original either, and I feel the need to give up.
8. I am a dog with a bone, a bird with a fish in its beak. Wanting and then getting. I slip in and out of these roles frivolously because I am a child, and this is still allowed of me. Toying with the idea of rejection, I drive myself crazy. A hot-headed stir-crazy sad girl. Why can't you want me? Am I that hard to want?
9. There is such newness to everything I encounter that I stay silent. I am regularly dumbfounded. It is funny how in order to say a thing, you must refrain from saying so many more.
10. I am in town for a wedding, tired of the work it entails. I slip out, glad that you are happy, distressed by my incapability for it, my fingers itching for a job. I look over at the man you're marrying and feel betrayed. I begin to entertain myself by listing his shortcomings (there are none; he is the kindest man I have ever known). I don't know him until much later, of course, and when I do, we're on the roof sharing a cigarette, and all I see is a world that is wildly not mine, yet it is the only time I feel rooted. He tells me I am deserving of love, and I am nestled in his shoulder within seconds, grateful that he has chosen me, glad that we are family. It is shocking that there is no record of it because I record everything to death. Everything I do must be told to someone or written down because if it isn't, it is a waste of my time. It never matters if I had fun during (fun is fleeting! biography is eternal!).
11. I always say the last day I had a good time was sometime in May. Last week at the lake. With someone who wrapped their arms around me. I can only say something worth hearing, and so everything I say is a lie.
12. I do not want to give you the satisfaction, but it is hard being easy like this. I try to pace myself; I learn I cannot. My sweet surrender to your unflinching cool. I send you a text. You are still red-hot and abrasive. Eventually, I resort to petty name-calling—which I've learned is a surefire way of getting what you want—but you are smart and impartial to my behavior, so you do not engage.
13. I no longer have anyone to hurt me, so I have begun hurting my own feelings. It works wonders until I am aware of what I am doing and feel ashamed. I am young and thus impressionable. I should be exempt from blame.
Defeated, I take myself to bed. My last thought before I fall asleep is that I am high and should be writing.
God I loved it to the core , this is beautiful, so proud of you <3
Your writing is so beautiful I love it so much