I
keep thinking I need to stay calm, that it’s all in my head, that everything is
going to be fine and someone is going to open the door now, someone is going to
let me out of here. I keep thinking it’s going to happen. I keep thinking it
has to happen, because things like this don’t just happen. This doesn’t happen.
People aren’t forgotten like this. Not abandoned like this.
This
doesn’t just happen.
My
face is caked with blood from when they threw me on the ground and my hands are
still shaking even as I write this. This pen is my only outlet, my only voice,
because I have no one else to speak to, no mind but my own to drown in and all
the lifeboats are taken and all the life preservers are broken and I don’t know
how to swim I can’t swim I can’t swim and it’s getting so hard. It’s getting so
hard. It’s like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest but I
have to keep them all in because what’s the point of screaming if you’ll never
be heard and no one will ever hear me in here. No one will ever hear me ever
again.
I’ve
learned to stare at things.
The
walls. My hands. The cracks in the walls. The lines on my fingers. The shades
of gray in the concrete. The shape of my fingernails. I pick one thing and
stare at it for what must be hours. I keep time in my head by counting the
seconds as they pass. I keep days in my head by writing them down. Today is day
two. Today is the second day. Today is a day.
Today.
It’s
so cold. It’s so cold it’s so cold.
Please
please please
I started
screaming today.
It’s a
strange thing, to never know peace. To know that no matter where you go, there
is no sanctuary. That the threat of pain is always a whisper away. I’m not safe
locked into these 4 walls, I was never safe leaving my house, and I couldn’t
even feel safe in the 14 years I lived at home. The asylum kills people every
day, the world has already been taught to fear me, and my home is the same
place where my father locked me in my room every night and my mother screamed
at me for being the abomination she was forced to raise.
She always
said it was my face.
There was
something about my face, she said, that she couldn’t stand. Something about my
eyes, the way I looked at her, the fact that I even existed. She’d always tell
me to stop looking at her. She’d always scream it. Like I might attack her. Stop looking at me,
she’d scream. You just stop looking at me, she’d scream.
She put my
hand in the fire once.
Just to see
it would burn, she said. Just to check if it was a regular hand, she said.
I was 6
years old then.
I remember
because it was my birthday.
Sometimes I close my
eyes and paint these walls a different color.
I imagine
I’m wearing warm socks and sitting by a fire. I imagine someone’s given me a
book to read, a story to take me away from the torture of my own mind. I want
to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind. I want
to run, to feel the wind tug at my hair. I want to pretend that this is just a
story within a story. That this cell is just a scene, that these hands don’t
belong to me, that this window leads to somewhere beautiful if only I could
break it. I pretend this pillow is clean, I pretend this bed is soft. I pretend
and pretend and pretend until the world becomes so breathtaking behind my
eyelids that I can no longer contain it. But then my eyes fly open and I’m
caught around the throat by a pair of hands that won’t stop suffocating
suffocating suffocating
My
thoughts, I think, will soon be sound.
My mind, I
hope, will soon be found.
I wonder
what they’re thinking. My parents. I wonder where they are. I wonder if they’re
okay now, if they’re happy now, if they finally got what they wanted. I
wonder if my mother will ever have another child. I wonder if someone will ever
be kind enough to kill me and I wonder hell is better than here. I wonder what
my face looks like now. I wonder I’ll ever breathe fresh air again.
I wonder
about so many things.
Sometimes
I’ll stay awake for days just counting everything I can find. I count the
walls, the cracks in the walls, my fingers and toes. I count the springs in the
bed, the threads in the blanket, the steps it takes to cross the room and back. I count my
teeth and the individual hairs on my head and the number of seconds I can hold my
breath.
But
sometimes I get so tired that I forget I’m not allowed to wish for things
anymore and I find myself wishing for the one thing I’ve always wanted. The
only thing I've always dreamt about.
I wish all
the time for a friend.
I dream
about it. I imagine what it would be like. To smile and be smiled upon. To have
a person to confide in, someone who wouldn’t throw things at me or stick my
hands in the fire or beat me for being born. Someone who would hear that I’d
been thrown away and would try to find me, who would never be afraid of me.
Someone
who'd know I’d never try to hurt them.
I fold
myself into a corner of this room and bury my head in my knees and rock back
and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I wish and I wish and I
wish and I dream of impossible things until I’ve cried myself to sleep.
I wonder
what it would be like to have a friend.
And then I
wonder who else is locked in this asylum. I wonder where the other screams are
coming from.
I wonder
they’re coming from me.
I don’t
know what’s happening to me.
We had
homes. Before.
All
different kinds.
I-story
homes. 2-story homes. 3-story homes.
We bought
lawn ornaments and twinkle lights, learned to ride bikes without training
wheels. We purchased lives confined within 1, 2, 3 stories already built,
stories caught inside of structures we could not change.
We lived in
those stories for a while.
We followed the tale
laid out for us, the prose pinned down in every square foot of space we’d
acquired. We were content with the plot twists that only mildly redirected our
lives. We signed on the dotted line for the things we didn’t know we cared
about. We ate the things we shouldn’t, spent money when we couldn’t, lost sight
of the Earth we had to inhabit, and wasted wasted wasted everything. Food.
Water. Resources.
Soon the
skies were gray with chemical pollution and the plants and animals were sick
from genetic modification, and diseases rooted themselves in our air, our
meals, our blood and bones. The food disappeared. The people were dying. Our
empire fell to pieces.
The
Reestablishment said they would help us. Save us. Rebuild our society.
Instead
they tore us all apart.
I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so so sorry I’m so sorry. I’m so
sorry I’m so sorry I’m so so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry
I’m so so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so so sorry. I’m so
sorry. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so so sorry I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
I’m so sorry I’m so so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so so
sorry I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry. I’m so sorry.
I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so so sorry I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so
sorry I’m so so sorry. I’m sorry I’m so sorry please forgive me.
It was an
accident.
Forgive me
Please
forgive me
Swallow the
tears back often enough and they’ll start feeling like acid dripping down your
throat.
It’s that
terrible moment when you’re sitting still so still so still because you
don’t want them to see you cry you don’t want to cry but your lips won’t
stop trembling and your eyes are filled to the brim with please and I beg
you and please and I’m sorry and please and have mercy and maybe this time it’ll be different but it’s always the same. There’s no one to run to for comfort. No one
on your side.
Light a
candle for me, I used to whisper to no one.
Someone
Anyone
If you’re
out there
Please tell
me you can feel this fire.
These
letters are all I have left.
26 friends
to tell my stories to.
26 letters
are all I need. I can stitch them together to create oceans and ecosystems. I
can fit them together to form planets and solar systems. I can use letters to
construct skyscrapers and metropolitan cities populated by people, places,
things, and ideas that are more real to me than these 4 walls.
I need
nothing but letters to live. Without them I would not exist.
Because
these words I write down are the only proof I have that I’m still alive.
Sometimes I
think the shadows are moving.
Sometimes I
think someone might be watching.
Sometimes
this idea scares me and sometimes the idea makes me so absurdly happy I can’t
stop crying. And then sometimes I think I have no idea when I started losing my
mind in here. Nothing seems real anymore and I can’t tell if I’m screaming out
loud or only in my head.
There’s no
one here to hear me.
To tell me
I’m not dead.
* * *
No one
wants a dandelion.
They crop
up all over the place, ugly and unfortunate, an average blossom in a world
desperately seeking beauty. They’re
weeds, people say. They’re uninteresting
and offer no fragrance and there are too many of them, too much of them, we
don’t want them, destroy them.
Dandelions
are a nuisance.
We desire
the buttercups, the daffodils, the morning glories. We want the azalea, the
poinsettia, the calla lily. We pluck them from our gardens and plant them in
our homes and we don’t seem to remember their toxic nature.
We don’t
seem to care that
if you get
too close?
if you take
a small bite?
The beauty
is replaced with pain and laced with a poison that laughs in your blood,
destroys your organs, infects your heart.
But pick a
dandelion.
Pick a
dandelion and make a salad, eat the leaves, the flower, the stem. Thread it in
your hair, plant it in the ground and watch it thrive.
Pick a
dandelion and close your eyes
make a wish
blow it
into the wind.
Watch it
change
the
world.
Hate.
It’s
poison, an unrelenting punch to the gut, an injustice injected directly into
your bloodstream that slowly paralyzes your organs until you can’t breathe
you can’t
breathe
because
loneliness has stuffed itself into your clothes and you’re rotting to death in
a dark corner of the world and you’re already forgotten.
You never
even were.
Pick a
cloud just to pin it down and wear it in your hair.
Jump up to
catch its soft soft strands, its feathery wisps; piles of tufted snow sailing
through the air, cotton candy stretched so thin it melts the moment you try to
taste it.
Life is
like a cloud.
It comes in a million
shapes and sizes and it offers no guarantees, no certainties, no sympathies for
the man who told his kid he’d fly a kite today, no consideration for the girl
who was sure she’d see the sun today, no promises for the weary world and the
wants wants wants of which it has too many today.
Life is
like that.
Sometimes
full and fluffy and floating along and sometimes dark and angry and sobbing
sobbing sobbing anger and passion and vengeance and retaliation.
It’s agony
It’s
anguish
It’s a
gift, a lesson, a reminder.
Because
only once the storm has passed, only once the tears have flooded the rivers and
gorged the ground and washed away the dirt the debris the destruction and
decay, only then—
only then
will the sun step outside
smile to
the sky
and dare to
shine.
I count
everything.
Even
numbers, odd numbers, multiples of ten. I count the ticks of the clock I count
the tocks of the clock I count the lines between the lines on a sheet of paper.
I count the broken beats of my heart I count my pulse and my blinks and the
number of tries it takes to inhale enough oxygen for my lungs. I stay like this
I stand like this I count like this until the feeling stops. Until the tears
stop spilling, until my fists stop shaking, until my heart stops aching.
There are
never enough numbers.
Loneliness
is a strange sort of thing.
It creeps
up on you, quiet and still, sits by your side in the dark, strokes your hair as
you sleep. It wraps itself around your bones, squeezing so tight you almost
can’t breathe, almost can’t hear the pulse racing in your blood as it rushes up
your skin and touches its lips to the soft hairs at the back of your neck. It
leaves lies in your heart, lies next to you at night, leeches the light out
from every corner. It’s a constant companion, clasping your hand only to yank
you down when you’re struggling to stand up, catching your tears only to force
them down your throat. It scares you simply by standing by your side.
You wake up
in the morning and wonder who you are. You fail to fall asleep at night and
tremble in your skin. You doubt you doubt you doubt
do I
don’t I
should I
why won’t I
And even
when you’re ready to let go. When you’re ready to break free. When you’re ready
to be brand-new. Loneliness is an old friend standing beside you in the mirror,
looking you in the eye, challenging you to live your life without it. You can’t
find the words to fight yourself, to fight the words screaming that you’re not
enough never enough never ever enough.
Loneliness
is a bitter, wretched companion.
Sometimes
it just won’t let go.
I am a thief.
I stole
this notebook and this pen from one of the doctors, from one of his lab coats
when he wasn’t looking, and I shoved them both down my pants. This was just
before he ordered those men to come and get me. The ones in the strange suits
with the thick gloves and the gas masks with the foggy plastic windows hiding
their eyes. They were aliens, I remember thinking. I remember thinking they
must’ve been aliens because they couldn’t have been human, the ones who
handcuffed my hands behind my back, the ones who strapped me to my seat. They
stuck Tasers to my skin over and over for no reason other than to hear me
scream but I wouldn’t. I whimpered but I never said a word. I felt the tears
streak down my cheeks but I wasn’t crying.
I think it
made them angry.
They
slapped me awake even though my eyes were open when we arrived. Someone
unstrapped me without removing my handcuffs and kicked me in both kneecaps
before ordering me to rise. And I tried. I tried but I couldn’t and finally 6
hands shoved me out the door and my face was bleeding on the concrete for a
while. I can’t really remember the part where they dragged me inside.
I feel cold
all the time.
I feel
empty, like there is nothing inside of me but this broken heart, the only organ
left in this shell. I feel the bleats echo within me, I feel the thumping
reverberate around my skeleton. I have a heart, says science, but I am a
monster, says society. And I know it, of course I know it. I know what I’ve
done. I’m not asking for sympathy.
But sometimes
I think—sometimes I wonder—1f I were a monster—surely, I would feel it by now?
I would
feel angry and vicious and vengeful. I’d know blind rage and bloodlust and a
need for vindication.
Instead I
feel an abyss within me that’s so deep, so dark I can’t see within it; I can’t
see what it holds. I do not know what lam or what might happen to me.
I do not
know what I might do again.
* *
*
I sit here
every day.
Some days I
stand up and stretch and feel these stiff bones, these creaky joints, this
trampled spirit cramped inside my being. I roll my shoulders, I blink my eyes,
I count the seconds creeping up the walls, the minutes shivering under my skin,
the breaths I have to remember to take. Sometimes I allow my mouth to drop
open, just a little bit; I touch my tongue to the backs of my teeth and the
seam of my lips and I walk around this small space, I trail my fingers along
the cracks in the concrete and wonder, I wonder what it would be like to speak
out loud and be heard. I hold my breath, listen closely for anything, any sound
of life, and wonder at the beauty, the impossibility of possibly hearing
another person breathing beside me.
I stop. I stand still.
I close my eyes and try to remember a world beyond these walls. I wonder what
it would be like to know that I’m not dreaming, that this isolated existence is
not caged within my own mind.
And I do. I
do I wonder, I think about it all the time.
What it
would be like to kill myself.
Because I
never really know, I still can’t tell the difference, I’m never quite certain
whether or not I’m actually alive.
So I sit
here.
I sit here
every day.
Run, I said
to myself.
Run until
your lungs collapse, until the wind whips and snaps at your tattered clothes,
until you’re a blur that blends into the background.
Run, Juliette, run
faster, run until your bones break and your shins split and your muscles
atrophy and your heart dies because it was always too big for your chest and it
beat too fast for too long and run.
Run run run
until you can’t hear their feet behind you. Run until they drop their fists and
their shouts dissolve in the air. Run with your eyes open and your mouth shut
and darn the river rushing up behind your eyes. Run, Juliette.
Run until
you drop dead.
Make sure
your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you.
Run, I
said.
Just a moment.
Just one
second, just one more minute, just give me another hour or maybe the weekend to
think it over it’s not so much it’s not so hard it’s all we ever ask for it’s a
simple request.
But the
moments the seconds the minutes the hours the days and years become one big
mistake, one extraordinary opportunity slipped right through our fingers
because we couldn’t decide, we couldn’t understand, we needed more time, we
didn’t know what to do.
We don’t
even know what we’ve done.
We have no
idea how we even got here when all we ever wanted was to wake up in the morning
and go to sleep at night and maybe stop for ice cream on the way home and that
one decision, that one choice, that one accidental opportunity unraveled
everything we’ve ever known and ever believed in and what do we do?
What do we
do
from here?
* * *
On the
darkest days you have to search for a spot of brightness, on the coldest days
you have to seek out a spot of warmth; on the bleakest days you have to keep
your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open
to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give them a chance to wash out the
pain in order to see fresh and clear once again.
Nothing in
this life will ever make sense to me but I can’t help but try to collect the change
and hope it’s enough to pay for our mistakes.
I don’t
know when it started.
I don’t
know why it started.
I don’t
know anything about anything except for the screaming.
My mother
screaming when she realized she could no longer touch me. My father screaming
when he realized what I’d done to my mother. My parents screaming when they’d
lock me in my room and tell me I should be grateful. For their food. For their
humane treatment of this thing that could not possibly be their child. For the
yardstick they used to measure the distance I needed to keep away.
I ruined
their lives, is what they said to me.
I stole
their happiness. Destroyed my mother’s hope for ever having children again.
Couldn’t I see what I’d done? is what they’d ask me. Couldn’t I see that I’d ruined everything?
I tried so
hard to fix what I’d ruined. I tried every single day to be what they wanted. I
tried all the time to be better but I never really knew how.
I only know
now that the scientists are wrong.
The world
is flat.
I know
because I was tossed right off the edge and I’ve been trying to hold on for
seventeen years. I’ve been trying to climb back up for seventeen years but it’s
nearly impossible to beat gravity when no one is willing to give you a hand.
When no one
wants to risk touching you.
One word,
two lips, three four five fingers form one fist.
One corner,
two parents, three four five reasons to hide.
One child,
two eyes, three four seventeen years of fear.
A broken
broomstick, a pair of wild faces, angry whispers, locks on my door.
Look at me,
is what I wanted to say to you. Talk to me every once in a while. Find me a
cure for these tears, I’d really like to exhale for the first time in my life.
The broken
broomstick was the mediator between me and them.
The
broomstick broke on my back.
I remember
televisions and fireplaces and porcelain sinks. I remember movie tickets and
parking lots and SUVs. I remember hair salons and holidays and window shutters
and dandelions and the smell of freshly paved driveways. I remember toothpaste
commercials and ladies in high heels and old men in business suits. I remember
mailmen and libraries and boy bands and balloons and Christmas trees.
I remember
being 10 years old when we couldn’t ignore the food shortages anymore and
things got so expensive no one could afford to live.
* * *
Why don’t you just kill yourself? someone at school asked me once.
I think it
was the kind of question intended to be cruel, but it was the first time I ever
contemplated the possibility. I didn’t know what to say. Maybe I was crazy to
consider it, but I always hoped that if I were a good enough girl—if I did
everything right, if I said the right things or said nothing at all—I thought
my parents would change their minds. I thought they would finally listen when I
tried to talk. I thought they would give me a chance. I thought they might
finally love me.
I always
had that stupid hope.
There’s no
light in here. I’m not sure if I’m writing on paper or skin or stone but
Were you
happy
Were you
sad
Were you
scared
Were you
mad
the first
time you screamed?
Were you
fighting for your life your decency your dignity your humanity
When someone touches
you now, do you scream?
When
someone smiles at you now, do you smile back?
Did he tell
you not to scream did he hit you when you cried?
Did he have one nose
two eyes two lips two cheeks two ears two eyebrows.
Was he one
human who looked just like you.
Color your
personality.
Shapes and
sizes are variety.
Your heart
is an anomaly.
Your
actions
are
the
only
traces
you leave
behind.
Hang tight
Hold on
Look up
Stay strong
Hang on
Hold tight
Look strong
Stay up
One day I
might break
One day I
might
break
free
