My Dirty Secret

Today I fell back again, into old habits, things I promised myself I would never go back to. But I did. I suppose I always knew I would.

Some people spend much of their life dealing with pain. They have an alarmingly high tolerance. They push on when they want to break down and then some. But maybe that is because when these people break they break. It’s bad. It’s messy. And sometimes they never come back. Sometimes they decide ending it is simpler then dredging through the darkness that has consumed each miniscule part of their lives, there is no light, there never will be.

The first time I cut myself, it stung and I flinched. But when the blood trickled out I knew I had just crossed into something I could never walk away from. It didn’t hurt again. It felt good. It felt great. I finally had something I had complete control over, this was mine, all mine. I hide a small blade in my wallet and every time I just couldn’t deal I knew what I had to do, cut the pain out. Make it go away. The blade was always cold against my skin, I slid it across and waited, waited for it to split open. And slowly it would, that was the sting I waited for and then of course the relief with the blood that trickled out. Sometimes in my fury I would cut in too deep and those are the scars I can’t hide, the angry ones. But I was addicted, I didn’t care. I don’t think I still do.

The day I decided to tell me friend of my addiction I didn’t know what was running through my head. I still don’t. She launched off into a lecture I didn’t really care about, see this was my plan. I knew that since she knew I would know she would judge me even if she said she didn’t and she was one person I could never stand being judged by; I was always a little in love with her. But I don’t know why. I suppose I could say I hated the scars. Maybe I wanted to stop. Maybe I was tired of the secret. But I wasn’t, I loved it, still do. I guess it was mostly because I had hit an all time new and now I knew if I held on to this I would never come back. One day I would wake up and not see the point of it all, and I was not prepared to die.

I don’t care anymore. I love the cut, the sting, the relief and even the scars. When everything is taken away this is how I cope. This is my dirty secret.

Hope in the Rain

She told me to take my rain boots along with, never know what disaster is lurking around the corner. Poets put on rain boots because they know in life it’s always raining. I took my rain boots; turns out I didn’t need them. She did.

On the front page of the newspaper just below the fold, that is where I found out the love of my life was dead. It didn’t occur to anyone to find her partner, maybe they looked for a boyfriend and gave up, maybe no one knew who I was.

Partner. I’ve always hated the word. So clinical. As if she were the girl I made science with in the eighth grade, which isn’t altogether incorrect. Partner. The word irked me. It’s why I planned on changing it to fiancé that night, with pizza, beer, our first bad movie from the Sunday evening twelve years ago and the smooth silver ring on top of the cherry on the pancakes for dessert. As the ring lay melting its way through the whipped cream I felt silly, this was no grand romantic gesture. If she turned me down I would deserve it. Is this what I wanted to tell our kids and grandkids when they asked me how I proposed? Certainly not.

I sat on the porch stewing with irritation at being stood up on a date she didn’t know about but as the hours ticked away my furry turned to panic and over a dozen calls, her voicemail maxed out by my frenzied pleas for her to call me back. The contents of last night’s meal lay where they were, the ring forgotten in the puddle of milky cream and soggy breakfast that we always ate as desert. Dawn rolled by and light spilled onto the street, I kept waiting. I never stopped waiting for the news to be wrong after the paperboy came, my fingers clutching my phone as I raced to the hospital, hoping she would call, hoping they got the wrong person. The hope burnt a tiny hole in my heart that spread and stole away all the life inside of me until I had nothing left to give. I suppose I did need the rain boots, because it never stopped raining after that morning.

They wouldn’t let me see her; the crash had disfigured her face. They said I wouldn’t recognize her, they identified her off her ID. I tried to explain to them that I had spent all my life memorizing all her curves, the lines, the scars. I tried to tell them I would know. But I wasn’t family. I told them she had none. They didn’t let me see her anyway.

The funeral was a closed casket with three wailing people in the audience and me in my stunned silence still hoping it wasn’t her. Hoping she would come up from behind and laugh at me for even thinking she was in there. The phone still clutched in my sweaty hand, it was all the hope I had. It rained at the funeral. I didn’t have my rain boots.

WHEN YOUR LIFE SPLITS OPEN

Before I start I should warn you, this is not a story of redemption or a young girl finding confidence or love or herself. This is a story of how one broken person begins to heal only to realize there is no such thing as pieces too small.

You’re a meek girl smarter than you let on but you like being underestimated what you hate is when people tell you that you can’t do something, this infuriates you and drives you twice as fast to achieve said thing. Now I’m not talking about your parents forbidding you to date some boy or go to some party I’m talking about the other kind of you-can’t-do-this, the one that makes your blood boil.

You finish school with the friends you’ve had since sixth grade and now you’re standing face first against the big bad world. You all split up into different colleges, different cities, hell different continents and now you have to face it all alone. Your confidence issues grab your trust issues and they both bob up to the surface swarming your gut with so much self-doubt it could sink the titanic.

You sail by two years of college isolating yourself in the library with books because who needs a friend when you have a book, right? You disappear even when you oh so desperately want to shine, you are invisible; a chameleon. And really, you don’t care. You just want to make it through, counting down the days, hours and minutes.

And then you come to university. This dreaded moment is what you have not been looking forward to. Ever! You are terrified of not making friends, of failing, of not achieving enough, of disappointing people, of being invisible all over again, so much fear that I am surprised you make it out of the bed in the morning. And truly, these are all rational fears; your tack record proves it.

University begins and in some courses you do fine but in others you soar, you take time but you find people. People you are glad to call your people. People you laugh with, people who understand you and people who you can really see being friends with for a very long time. Alas, never admit to life that you’re actually happy. You look forward to everyday even though it means sacrificing precious sleep but life is good and maybe today you can be less broken than yesterday, less of a disaster. And you are.

Until life decides this has gone on for too long it’s time to split open and pull any form of solid ground from under this girls feet. You come home from class one day and your parents tell you that they’ve decided what you’re studying is not good and they don’t like it, they go so far as to say it doesn’t suit you. Suit you? How they hell you do get to decide what does and does not suit you? And about that, maybe they just don’t like that you’re happy, maybe happiness doesn’t suit you. Yeah, I’m thinking that’s it. They just can see you smile for no reason for a change. You hate them, so much you swear to do whatever the fuck, make money and get so far they can’t get a whiff of you. But ultimately, you hate them.

You’re so angry you rip apart your life the very next day and tell them here, this make you happy? And who knows, maybe it does. In this manic fury you go to your program manager at university to tell him you want out and he talks to you and something inside you calms down. Maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe you’ll find someone nice there, fall in love, that sort of thing. Maybe it’ll be fine. Ha-Ha. But anyway, you tell him you’ll take some time think about it and you do and you decide you’ve already lost the battle no point in losing the dignity you have left, if any.

This time you don’t go back to the blade. You did that when you were happy, you were convinced that if you just bled out the bad you could stay happy. Joke’s on you! But you don’t touch the blade again. Maybe you’re afraid that if you do you won’t be able to come back or stop yourself. Maybe you just want to die and if you hold that piece of metal again you will kill yourself. But you stood inches from the ledge and you felt the cold wind whipping your skin and you imagined what plummeting would feel like and you almost do. But you don’t. You never will.

You, my friend, are a masochist and I wonder, maybe you like it.