i hated him at first.
he was short and annoying and stole my book from my table during english so i hated him.
that was how easy it was at age eleven to decide how you feel.

but we became friends, very good friends, actually. he was still short and annoying, but so was i, so we decided it was okay. he was the only boy who would still playfight with me even though i was a girl, and i was glad that at least somebody didn't treat me differently, dangerously. i was glad i stopped hating him.

we were playfighting once, right before first bell, when he jabbed at me and i forgot to move and he got me in the eye. it was an accident and i yelped in pain and he held my head like puppies do, im so sorry and are you hurt and i didn't mean it falling from his mouth quicker than i could tell him i was okay. there is a single bloodshot line perpendicular to my right iris, seven years later.

in year nine he dated the girl i had a crush on. it lasted two months and he sent her a christmas card after the break up, laden with curses and swears and wishes for a terrible new year. she showed everyone, even the teachers, and laughed at his immaturity. i asked him why he did it. he said he didn't know. i told him it made him look stupid. he didn't tell me anything back.

he dated my best friend in sixth form. she said she was relieved i was gay, or else she would be insecure. i spent two years hearing her stress of whether he wanted her, and i began to hate him again. she begged me not to speak to him about it. if he thought that she had ruined my friendship with him, she said, he would get mad. i said nothing. we stopped playfighting.

he texted me a year before their final break up. he told me he wanted to cut it off, but she kept threatening to **** herself. i told him he had done enough and it was time to walk away. he thanked me and told me he missed me. they got back together three months later.

they broke up after nearly four years of on and off. he abused her. he spiked another girl's drink. he let his friends assault women he was dating and told them they were crazy to be upset about it.

he's named for the angel. somewhere in my heart i think he can still be good, but i know that love is for a boy long dead. the man that wears his face is someone i never want to be near. he was always good to me, and it made it hard to hate him. i don't like being the exception. it leaves a terrible taste in my mouth.

i sew. i own a pair of thread cutters, tiny scissor blades on an ergonomic handle. it's very easy to cut thread, paper, tape, whatever you need to trim down from tailoring.

last month i took the cap off of my tool and stabbed myself in the forearm. it sounds worse than it is. or maybe it sounds just as bad as it is, and my radar for what is normal is off-kilter from years of slicing back and forth across my skin. i had done it a few times before, and told myself that it was shallow, and did not draw blood, so it didn't count as self-harm. i'm not usually this willfully ignorant, i swear.

i heard a pop as the points dug in. it terrified me. i had looked away as i plunged my hand down so i wouldn't hold back on the pain. i wasn't looking, and pushed far deeper far closer to the blue stream of blood vessel millimeters from the surface.

there was a terrible split-second where i thought i had just killed myself by mistake. everything went white, and flashed in technicolour, and the beat of my heart raced to stratosphere and drowned out the neverending buzz of electricity until i could hear, see, think of nothing but blood blood blood.

but i was wrong. i popped my skin, but the vein was untouched. i got lucky. it barely bled, but the bruise flowered about two inches around the twin punctures and didn't fade for a fortnight. blue, purple, brown, yellow, gone. the punctures are still pink and raised, but they are small and easy to hide amongst the constellation moles across my body.

i can feel the tunnel of the wound between my fingers, underneath the skin, where it hasn't fully healed. i roll it around in my fingertips like the scar of my umbilical cord, but i can't place what it connects me to. a better poet would make a metaphor of it, but i am not a poet. i am a self destructive, impulsive, stupid girl that pours her sorrows onto a ****** laptop keyboard in an attempt to make it beautiful, because if it's beautiful it's not just pathetic.

i asked my girlfriend to take the thread cutters, to keep them with her until i felt okay enough to have them around again. she didn't ask questions and i thought of marrying her for it. i told myself enough was enough and this time i was walking away from the rage and wasn't coming back.

i meant it. i really did. last monday i scratched myself with a seam ripper over and over until my vision cleared. the reason i tell myself is that physical injury snaps my brain out of hysteria and forces me to take care of myself. it doesn't work anymore. i just hate myself more for reaching out to metal like a child instead of solving my problems. i didn't tell my girlfriend about this. i know she saw, i know she knows, but she does not ask questions, and i love her for that. answering would make us both feel worse. but she holds me, and makes me tea, and listens to podcasts she doesn't care about so i can fall asleep. at this rate i won't have any ****** sewing supplies left.

in the dark she heard me crying. felt it more than anything. i can cry in complete silence, but the stuttering of my chest under her hand gives the game away.

'what is it?' she asked me.

i waited. said nothing for a moment.

'it's been eight years,' i whispered, 'i'm scared i'll be like this for the rest of my life.'

'you won't be. you're the strongest person i know' she said.

'i don't care about strong. i just want to be happy.'

she whispered something into my hair, but i couldn't make out the words. she has things she is afraid of being for the rest of her life too, and as sick as it makes me, i'm glad we understand each other.

this is not a poem. it's a confession. everything is. i don't deal in fiction. i walked out of the church at sixteen and four years later I'm trapped in the booth with the voiceless father, spilling sin after sin and he opens his mouth but instead of absolution, viscous black pile drips from his lips. i've searched for god more times than i care to count, but he is determined to hide from me, so the answer must come from elsewhere.

i'm trying to get therapy. i decided years ago when grieving a friend i would never take my life, so if i am resigned to endure it i am determined to enjoy it. i'm bored of suffering. i want sunlight and happiness and a balcony with a view. i don't want to hurt myself. i want to be kind to her, because she is fragile. i'm working on it. sometimes i will fail, and that is okay. i write this down mouthing the letters as they go, convincing myself each one is true.

i will fail but it is okay because i am trying. i will recognise when i succeed. people love me and i love them too, and none of us deserve this. i am excited to look backwards one day and be glad i am no longer this version of myself. i'm excited to meet the next one. in the end, whenever that is, i will be okay.

i sit upright, cross legged, chest heavy with ghosts
and transparent in a trapped beam of daybreak.
my back against the nightstand that was my grandfathers before mine.
he is dead and the top two drawers do not close right.

in the first lies a razor blade i have not used since i was 17,
it sits atop a birthday card from someone i can’t truthfully still call a friend
we don’t speak
but there is still a home for her in my life, the bed made and warm, should she ever choose to return.

there are a hundred pictures strewn around of someone i no longer am
i feel the weight of her in this place
i paint the walls and strip the bed and throw away my clothes
but this is still her room, not mine.
i can hear her crying late at night when the tissue paper curtains let in too much light to sleep

i don’t look like her anymore
she feels dead, is dead, was dead the moment i stopped being her and became someone else
but when i flip through my life like a waiting room magazine i cannot find where it happened

i know she was afraid of losing herself
i remember the fear, heavy and cold wrapped around my spine, crawling into my rib cage
i don’t know how to tell her i did, and i’m happier for it
she is lost and she is gone and i am free so WHY can i not escape
why does my head fill with static when i think about my life for too long

i clean her things, finally throwing away the memories that mean nothing beyond the act of rememberance
letting go of a life that no longer feels like mine
grieving a death that didn’t happen
i wonder if that’s why my friends don’t speak to me
because i am not myself, and yet i can’t be anything else
i put that thought in a box with the other things and set it aside for the dump

this room is mine for the next two months,
after that i’ll run back to the damp safety of another city where her ghost cannot find me
and i’ll find the peace she could not
and, just maybe, one day i will catch my own eye in the mirror
and she won’t be dead at all
she’ll be right where i left her

until then, i’ll throw away her things, paint the walls again, exorcise my cell until i can lie down and breathe without the hand around my throat

something is rotting inside of me.
i feel its heaviness spread from the centre of my chest
i know it is not my heart, for it sits right behind my sternum.
but it has made its way there.
and through my blood spreads its crushing static
it follows me. the decay.
i am never alone.
even when my door is locked and my window is bolted and there is nobody beside me.

i fear i am losing my mind, losing my grip.
i fear more so that i am not, and i am completely within myself,
and this is myself.
i cannot touch someone for too long,
in case i am catching
and i infect them with whatever is causing my skin to hang from my bones in ways that do not fit

but my lord i am so lonely, and i am so tired
though it seems all i do is sleep,
and i am begging for someone to hold me long enough to push my muscles back into a shape that looks human

i am afraid i will ruin everything i love because i do not know how to love it.
and i will be back where i have always been, alone at a party, with people at every inch around me saying nothing.

i knew, when the sky finally cleared, that the rain would come again.
but the sunlight was warm and easy,
so i did not seal my roof tiles.
and now the buckets on the kitchen floor are full
and the water has nowhere else to go.

years ago, when i would climb fully clothed into a dry bathtub to cry, i would think about atoms.
my own, specifically. though whether any of them are still mine, i do not know.
the atoms making my bones, my liver, my lungs, are older than stars.
what were they before me?
that's not the question that scared me. what scared me, scares me still, is if i am made of anyone else. and if they should despise what they had become.

but at the end of history, for it has finally come, it seems silly.
who cares what i am made of?
the world is full of death and fire and shoes with separate toes.
why waste the time to care about the history of my skin?
and while this voice who belongs to nobody makes an excellent point, and i am aware of my ridiculousness as it pours down my face, i cannot shake it.
our minds have not evolved to fit the whole world. i cannot visualise it.
the great, stomping, climate-change godzilla is transient. he phases through the walls of my brain like a ghost, chains scraping along the floor as he goes.
but he finds me, as he leaves me, alone with myself.

and that, i can never run from.

i can cut my hair off with fabric scissors in the middle of the night. i can fill my empty hours with meaningless, instant content i forget as soon as it ends. i can move houses, cities, entire continents. but in blasted spite of every effort, it's still me.
of course i preoccupy myself. it's the one thing from which i shall never escape.

there is no way to trace my body backwards through time. that i know.
i will be myself for the rest of my life. that i also know.
planet earth may not outlive me. makes a trinity of knowledge i have.

so where do i go? stuck inside a body who feels like a stranger, hurtling ever forwards on an increasingly broken world.
i would love someone to come to me, preferably accompanied with a cloud of smoke and ****** of crows, and give me the secret of a life that never feels like static.
but that's only because I'm waiting for a quest that won't come.

no, the solution is far less fantastical, far less the stuff of poetry.
i have to learn to like myself. to know them, trust them, to build a foundation stronger than anything i can break it with.
and though i have already started, i am nowhere near finished. maybe i never will be.
but that is a fear i am letting go of, finger by finger, releasing my grip on.
eventually the wind can sweep it away, and i can forget.

several months ago, i wrote about love.
how i thought it would be fire, sunlight, a single candle in an empty room.
i built a girl to put all my love into so i had a way to let it out,
but i had never loved then, and now i have.

i love a girl with short hair and dark eyes who is allergic to all my favourite foods,
and she made me realise that loving was easier than i feared.
i love her without hesitation, without waiting, without restraint.
but when she loved me back i was afraid. i'm afraid now.

because what happens when - not if- she wakes up and sees me as i do?
she sees she was wrong, and i am not warm or kind or anything she thinks of me.
and a voice whispers above the fear that maybe she's right, and i am wrong.
if she does not see how awful i am, how awful could i really be?

she thinks i am good to her because i am good. but its not true.
i love her because of her, not myself.
i am good for her because i want her to be happy with me, and i want to deserve the esteem she holds me in.

and in the core of my heart i know i'm just scrambling for reasons to ruin things,
because i'm happy in a way i've never been before.
and i hold onto her like i am afraid she'll vanish once my brain stops screaming at me.
i wonder how she can look at me and not be repelled like i am.

but i don't think i would hate myself if i were somebody else.
if i was a stranger, what would i think?
the truth is, i don't think I'm a bad person.
i think i am loved and that terrifies me.
because what have i done to deserve it?
it cannot be enough.

i was used to dealing with myself at my worst,
to licking my wounds like a cat in silence
but now she is here and determined to stay
and i want her to.
so if she wants to see everything i will let her,
and the rest is her choice to make

the future is a recent concept to me.

i spend my entire life looking backwards, to worlds and people that left me behind long before i was born.
reaching into water i can't see the bottom of, down on my knees in the mud, just close enough to the edge to sweat.
i thought of futures sometimes, occasionally, sleek and chrome with wires peeking through each rusted corner.
but they were never futures i was a part of. always for a generation whose parents were yet to exist, a century i couldn't even count to.

i didn't imagine my own adulthood at all until a week before my 18th birthday.

when i was a child it never crossed my mind. i didn't realize yet that youth was a state that all except the tragic move beyond.

i pried a disposable razor apart with nail clippers when i was twelve, and pulled it through my skin.
once the anger drained itself dry i stared at the scratches, the edges, the angles between them,
as if i was investigating a cave painting, making guess after empty guess at meaning and motivation and reason.
until i remembered that skin would scar.

and suddenly every year of an average life hit at once, and i panicked.
it was long, unbearably long. minutes stretched into days and a decade sounded unending.
so i resigned myself to simply
                                  
                       ­                                         not make it.


and i told myself that, often, for years.
i would set a date, tidy my room, make sure i had all my arguments settled.
then i would cry, and fail, and come up with an excuse to postpone it a few months.

i tried twice, on the same day, four years apart.
i even tried to go to school the morning after each overdose, but i never made it past midday.
i ran off the morning bus the first time, puked and cried and stared at strangers who walked past thirteen year old me, unflinching, until i was done.
i was half dragged, half carried, half conscious to my classes, until i got sent home. but i said i was tired, and nobody asked questions.

when i was seventeen i made it to the alleyway by the school gate before vomiting, eyes watering from the force and the fear.
a man in a van bought me water and offered to drive me to hospital. i wondered what he was doing four years ago.
but the hospital told my parents, and gave me a counsellor, and a month into therapy she asked me why i had nearly thrown away an entire future.

i couldn't answer her. i cried, and we were silent, and she changed the topic.
what could i tell her? that the future always cut off a few vague months ahead whenever i tried to look at it? that i had never even expected myself to get this far? that my entire life has felt like borrowed time? no, then she would only ask more. and i just wanted to leave.

so i left, and somewhere along the way i stopped going back, stopped answering her calls, her letters, her voice asking my mother if i was still alive.
it was a week before my 18th birthday when i realised i would actually live to see it.

but i've made it through a whole year of university so far, despite never thinking i would leave school. it's been one year and four months of winging it now.
time still passes when you aren't looking,
and somehow i made it this far.

i've accepted the rest of my life, however long it is. i hope as much as i fear. i'm tired, mostly. i'm angry at myself for wasting so much time. but there's nothing i can do about that now, i just have to move forward.

i wonder sometimes, often, if i will ever get to a point where i will be okay forever. where i can take the sad little piece of myself that i carry each day out of my pocket, put her down, and walk away.
i don't think i will, but i'm trying to make my peace with that.