When I was eight years old I moved schools. I was systematically bullied, psychologically, emotionally, and mentally, for a decade. I remember, small, timid, but eager to make new friends, at eight years old, I was completely myself. I smiled broadly, laughed hysterically, and shared my love of Westlife and animals (and my hatred of bananas). I was shunned. I was ignored. I was abused and hated.
Since, I’ve never really been me. Being me didn’t work. Being me resulted in misery for ten long years. Now, I am so intent on being liked, on persuading others to appreciate me and not to hate me, that I please them. I sleep with men as soon as I can, I bitch about people with women. I let men stick their penis, tongue, fingers, words — wherever they want to. I let them ply me with drink and cut my skin, should it please them. I play the victim should I need to, I lie, I create a different persona. I am rarely, if ever, me.
And you know why? Because the real me is worthless. I know I am good-for-nothing. I know I am pathetic, useless, unworthy, unlikable. I am not me, because me is awful. Me deserves nothing more than to be abused, bullied. Me deserves nothing more than death.
And now, I don’t even know who I am, or what I am doing. The real me was lost inside that broadly smiling eight-year-old, who had moved to a beautiful new city, and was exciting about meeting new friends. The real me is left back at the first day of school, squatting by the pond, trying to stroke tadpoles. And the real me is still there; a ghost of a girl lost of the whispers of time, desperately trying to escape.
My eyelids are heavy and my breath is slowing. Maybe this is what’s its like to die. Today. She doesn’t know. She does. We are. I hope things change and words try to form in my mind and I letting them fall into place, like sand and ants. Nothing is certain and nothing is sure; yet. Who. Who am I. Words. Sunset. Hope. Some nights I stay up. Others I want to die. Most I have no skin. Most, I am dead. Silver and fingers. Blackness and red. Lines and loss. Eyelids and hurt. And pain. And I am broken. And red is the wall. Dog. Hurt. Breath. Heaven. Orchid. Lobby. Flower. Follower. Itch. Vase. Penis. I can the see the rain. I can press. Help. Aid.
I miss it. Urges, now, embody themselves in unbroken, worthless skin; scratches.
I yearn for the days when I would slice through to bone, letting £3 towels soak up streams of scarlet blood, idly staring from my window at drifting clouds.
Days would pass without thought; no food would pass my lips, fermented grapes oozing through my blood stream. Light-headed, fumed, uncontrollable; dead in all ways but one.
I’m better now. “Your progress is at a peak.” Drugs pass my lips each day as the sun rises, and my mood is steadied. But I cannot feel; not truly.
And as each day passes, and my skin — and mind — remain in tact, I am a little less myself.
