Do you ever slip your knuckle between your teeth,
and wonder how hard you'd have to bite down,
to break bone?

Sometimes, reading backwards I really want to delete things.
Things that I said, but didn't really mean. Things that I wrote trying to convince myself that I was happy and fine. I am not good at lying.
But I am very good at pretending.
At skirting around the issue. Writing at length about a lost ring, neglecting to mention that I never wanted it in the first place. Neglecting to mention that I wasn't remotely even in love-ish, but that it was nice to feel loved.
Love is nice. It is warm and comforting and safe.
Until it turns into control, and then it isn't really nice or safe anymore.
It's scary feeling and smothery.
 Except you're not scared because you haven't been told that you're scared. You are fine.
And while we're at it, you are helpless and weak and shouldn't eat that thing because you'll get fat. Fatter, really. And why don't you come out tonight, I said you'd come, they're your friends too, if you don't come I'll look stupid, I said you'd come without asking you therefore you must. And you wouldn't even be passing university without me. Do you remember what you were like when we met? And now you're getting As. Do you remember what you were like when we met? You couldn't even eat in public or finish a meal (No don't eat that thing you're getting fat). Look at your belly, what do you mean you're not in the mood? I have needs. You're still beautiful to me, I'm trying to help you. I have needs. What do you mean you won't? What do you mean no?
You really overreacted last night.
But it's okay.
I understand.
It was your anxiety.
Remember what you were like before you met me?
You're really so much better now.

It turns out that freedom, is actually nicer.
Wonderful even.

You will find no faces on my bedrooms walls. There are no people. No friends, no loved ones.
I don't mind them during the day.
But once it is night, once the sun is gone and my brain changes for the worse, they frighten me.
I think that they are looking at me.
When I was younger I couldn't look into a mirror at night.
I'd read something somewhere once. There was this girl, and she looked into the bathroom mirror, and her eyes didn't belong to her anymore. There was someone else in them.
I believed in demons back then.
Because my mother had told me that they were real. So I avoided mirrors past 5pm in winter and 9pm in summer, and each night I prayed fervently to a god I'd never felt, and didn't love.
I prayed desperately and fearfully, begging for an angel to be sent in the night to guard my door and keep me from harm. I prayed for everyone I knew, and some people I didn't.
As if that would earn me extra points.
As if that would keep me safe.
My mother was afraid of the night as well. She would move through the house, checking windows and doors once everyone else was asleep. She would draw the curtains and weigh them down with heavy objects, vases, and saucepans lids, hoping that their clatter would sound the alarm were our boundaries breached.
In the morning I would remove them, and let the light in.

Here are the things that are hard.
Daytime.
Outofbedtime.
Using my voice.
Using my voice and making it loud enough for you to hear.
Using my voice, making it loud, and trusting that you will notice me.
Being noticed.
Trusting you to notice me, and look at me, and see me for who I am.
Trusting you (I don't)
Florescent lights.
Wide open spaces.
Eye contact.

Here are the things that are not hard.
Being clean.
Chicken soup.
Dark time.
Sitting outside in the quiet dark time, breathing in cold air and second hand smoke.
Sitting outside on a concrete step.
Sitting outside, with you.

Yesterday I was talking with a friend, I think she's a friend. At the very least, a person who I admire and enjoy talking to. She was telling me about a girl who was causing trouble for the people around her.
A girl who was sick, and wasn't paying her rent, and was hiding in her room, and only coming out at night. Who cried when people were kind, and screamed when they tried to make her face reality.
And all I could think was, she sounds like the girl I used to be.
I said this, and my friend said "But you're awesome".
Extract some lies, and add on a night where everything falls apart, a night that looks like blood, and metal and a black coat that I never wore again.
A failed relationship, a refusal to let go.
I wasn't always awesome.

I haven't been writing things lately.
 I'm so cold, and my fingers seem to have frozen stiff.
 I think if I'm not careful they might snap right off.
 No seriously. I have the heat turned up so high right now, I should be able to close my eyes and convince myself that I'm sitting in a sub tropical environment. I should be sweaty and damp and overheated and removing articles of clothing.
But even with my eyes closed, I can tell that my hands are purple-grey-blue. And my knuckles white-white. They jut through my papery thin skin like exposed bone.
I've been thinking things instead, and half muttering them under my breath as I stomp through dark streets.
My boots on the pavement mark time. Slam poetry for one.
The rhythm feels so good, much better than simply finding the right words. I prefer to spit words out under pressure, between steamy push outs of air. It doesn't matter so much that they are right, I just can't miss the beat.
They are living words. And when I try to press them to paper, I can't remember a single one.

I can't think of anything to write lately. What little mental energy I have, is being sucked up into essay writing and forcing myself to read Just One More Chapter of the Iliad.
I think, honestly I wanted to take a Classics paper because it sounded smart and intimidating.
And then maybe people would think that I was smart and if not intimidating maybe, noticeable.
I've developed a mouse complex.
Really I could have taken another English Literature paper, and enjoyed it. But now I have paid a ridiculous amount of money, and it's too late to withdraw and I just have to keep going.

I found an old notebook of mine yesterday, and spent a while trying to decipher my handwriting. When I wrote in it I was very, very sad. And reading it, I felt strange. Feeling the memory of a hurt, was like trying to negotiate a ghost limb.
I went through and wrote myself notes in the margins.
Dear Beth, it stops hurting.
Dear Beth, there's a lot of love in your life now.
Dear Beth, it gets better.