Bruise

This is a story, and a memory, a premonition but also a song, softly chanted. It does not need to be understood, in the way me and you do. 

The bruises only appeared once a month, to begin with. Small and so purple they were almost black, the size of a penny, in the indentation of my hip. Or high up on my inner thigh. Never above my waist, always trailing down my leg or behind my knee. I didn’t know how to explain them, at first. I didn’t remember hitting myself against anything, being prodded or battered by something. Nothing that would’ve caused such an impact, to bruise so darkly and in such a shape. I woke up one morning and found a bigger bruise, on the side of my thigh under my hipbone. It was right in the middle of an area I had been scratching the night before. In my mind, I dismissed that it had been me. Sure, I had used pressure to scratch, to tend to the itch in the skin in the area, but there was no way I had the level of strength that was required to bruise myself like that. 

Yet, there it was. Dark and angry, branding me, surrounded by the translucent pale stretch marks that wound their way down my thighs, striped inside, stretched across my back. It was almost beautiful, in its own way. I had always found bruises to be beautiful in a sick kind of way. Those photographs of roller derby girls, the huge painting-like bruises on their behinds, the size of a hand. Black, and purple, and blue and yellow at the edges, an explosion of colour but also a reminder of an event, a brand, a sense of realness. I write about it in the notes-section of my phone.

I found a new stretch mark today
up
on the inside of my thigh.
It’s still purple,
new
yawning into place.

I didn’t realise I was still
under construction.
I'm not ready to be loved
yet.

Who I am is how you see me,
And I am full of faults.

This was before I realised other things were changing too. My brain had always felt jumbled, contradicting itself and arguing, making up discussions and getting lost in daydreams of future and past. Even when I started taking medication for it, not a lot changed. The voice quieted down for a while, the one that told me it was all hopeless and there was no use in living. But in its space rose another. An indifferent voice. Questioning, but not pressuring. I broke a glass in the sink one day, by accident. It fell apart in my hands as I tried to wash the inside with a sponge. I rinsed the pieces and put them on the table, apologised to my roommate about breaking it. Later, I found myself still thinking about it. About how cleanly it had broken, how easily it could’ve injured me. I went back to it the next day. Picked up one of the pieces. I could not stop thinking about how much pressure I would have to exert with it against my skin to draw blood. I tried. I dragged it a few times, across the soft inside of my wrist. Not too close to the veins, I wasn’t that stupid. With a cold indifference I hunched against the counter, willed myself to push harder. It hurt. I cursed out loud, softly. Still, no blood. Now, a tiny line. Not enough to bead, but enough to satisfy my curiosity. The skin stung for a bit, then forgotten. No one could see the evidence of where this emptiness, this cold curiosity had lead me.

I tried a few days later, under that line, with a knife. It wasn’t that sharp. The serrated edge amused me, looked like a steak knife. Did that make me the meal? I couldn’t do it, couldn’t force myself to draw blood. I rinsed the knife and put it back in the drawer. For now, that corner of my mind was satisfied.

The medication got rid of the nagging voice in my head that told me bad things would happen if I didn’t fold things a specific way, or left my socks on the floor and not in the hamper. I did it now without suggestion, automatically, as if folding all my clothing and putting it back where I got it that morning was something I had always done. It became something I couldn’t even think of breaking away from. I found solace in folding my socks, arranging my T-shirts again and again. Getting delightfully stuck in the routines of life.

My preference for solitude magnified almost without notice. I soon found my need to be noticed by others, to spend time with others, fading away. I enjoyed long quiet hours in the reading area of my university, or laying in bed with music playing on my phone on the pillow next to me. Sitting on the bus, near the front next to the window, with earphones in but nothing playing. Pretending like I was on my way somewhere, like I was. 

i am not okay but my bed is made
i sit at my desk
staring into the distance,
like being still will somehow make me feel more like I’m part of the universe
but everything keeps moving without me,
which leads me to think
logically
that it will continue to do so
when i am gone.

I started fading from my online communities. Deleted apps off my phone, first reasoned as an act of self-control and purging, applauded by others as a mental health break, a smart choice. I started scrolling the only one left on my phone, Facebook. Hesitant to leave any trace, I started not interacting with any of the things my friends had posted. I observed, quietly. Commented, perhaps, in my head. But did not leave a mark, a like, a comment. Nothing. There was a pressure there, in my mind, as if showing interest carried a mark. Exhausted by the mere thought of feigning interest in others.

No one really noticed to begin with. Or they did, and blamed it on my depression. After starting my medication, on the side effects. Whatever it was, they didn’t ponder it too long, at least not to me. I had recurring daydreams, ones that became hard to stop. I felt an urge to live them through every time, even though I knew there were parts I didn’t want to see again. I woke up in the mornings, missing the embrace of someone I knew before, feeling so tender towards people I only exchanged a few words with. 

Eating became harder. I’d go as long as I could without food, out of some desire to be thinner, to be able to wear skirts and not have them look like I was three months pregnant. I never mentioned this to my friends, as the smallest one I didn’t dare complain about my body for fear of making them feel bad about theirs. I didn’t see them like that, like me. I didn’t care if their bellies protruded or if their thighs touched. But in myself it was disgusting. I wanted to cover it up, wear looser clothing, hide underneath layers. My biology betrayed me, made me so I had to eat if I wanted to remain inconspicuous, quiet down the groaning of my stomach when it had been too long. I wolfed down meals, when they were made for me. Found the taste of something so exciting I managed to cook with it. Then fade again into anything I could find, cookies, yoghurt, a small clementine found under all the others at the supermarket. 

Stabbing headaches like ice picks became my nightly visitor. They’d start soft, around my left temple, throbbing once in a while. Then, harsher but faster. I got up, drank a huge gulp of water. Remembered I hadn’t had nearly enough water in days. Drank another gulp, couldn’t have any more. Laid back down, resigned to my fate. Fell asleep, somehow forgetting the headaches until they came back the next night.

How long does something have to keep happening for it to be considered a symptom of something other than the weight of living? Of a real, physical ailment, not just the aches and pains our bodies make over time. The spasms in your back, the trouble breathing after sitting in a bad position, the way your neck cramps up if you’ve slept on the wrong side one night. 

How long until those become identifiable? Part of a bigger web, a collage connected by red string hurriedly pinned up against your bedroom wall.

My hands started hurting, erratically at first. Once in a while, a bolt like lightening through my forefinger. A throbbing in the knuckles on my right hand, immobilising pain but gone in a second. I couldn’t bend my fingers a specific way, or spread them wide, without feeling the phantom memory of that pain, feeling like I was going to cause it again somehow.

I kept a mirror next to my laptop on my desk. It had to be facing me at all times. I’d look up once in a while, glance at my reflection, then continue working. Reminding myself I was still there. If I stared too long it became unbearable. An impending sense of doom. How to describe it?

Like something was wrong.

I was not who I was seven years ago. Our cells renew themselves continuously. If I’m not myself, then who am I? Borrowed parts from other people, other books, other songs. Pieced together by experience, memory, other people’s throwaway comments.

I found myself obsessed with particular memories from years back. Furiously writing down moments in prose and poems, underlining, circling and writing around them. Blacking out words, highlighting others. Creating a beautiful nest of nostalgia, memories twisted just rose coloured enough to make a pretty bouquet. Trying to remember who I was then, how that person related to who I am now. What we shared. 

I became more self-conscious of the way I moved, how I walked. How my palm lingered on the handrail as I went up the stairs. How it glided across the smooth surface as I descended. How I took each step.

I had a vivid flashback the other day to about five years ago. Wearing something useless, lying on the bathroom floor in the apartment of someone I barely knew. The tile was soothingly cold and white, the grout between stained from use. I lay there, on my side, my head near the shower drain. I cried, convulsing, unable to stop. Emotion flowed through me so strongly. I must have stayed there for ages. It felt like hours, but when I emerged it had been ten minutes. I had tried to dry my tears, remove the tracks and put on a brave face. But it was a lost cause. My eyes were rimmed in red, glossy, my irises black and unfocused.

Am I a creature of convenience, 
Do I hold value of my own?
I feel like a page overturned, 
A song skipped in favour of another. 
It's hard to believe.

I lost part of my hearing for weeks. Everything was muffled, even my own voice. Other things became louder. The scratch of my nail against my scalp, my breathing, the heavy thud of my steps on the wooden floors of my house. 

i indulged in a graphic
and detailed
daydream last night,
of me jumping out my window
the fall isn’t much
i’d probably just break my legs
or an arm if I landed weirdly
crack my skull if I’m lucky
i mean
not lucky

you’d think you heard something outside your window
cracked open your curtain and saw me there
laying
in a pool of my own blood
maybe you’d scream?
or would you be so in shock no noise would leave your mouth?
you’d run down the stairs
I’d still be conscious
maybe 
how would we come back from that?
how would we reinstate our normal
go back to the status quo
after that happened

we probably couldn’t 
I’d forever be fragile and a worry and a burden
so I won’t do it
for your sake.

All of this I observed calmly, as if looking at myself from the outside. Wrote it in my notebook. I knew I wouldn’t actually do it. Thinking about it was enough. For now. Some sick part of me wanted to show it to my friends, make them feel bad. They were always going about their own lives, leaving me to my own devices. But as I soon found out, they didn’t owe me anything. It’s not like I treated them like I wanted to be treated, with extreme care and curiosity and tenderness. No one really cared about my dreams, what hand cream I used, the fact that I had meticulously selected the right pair of socks this morning. No one could be brought to care, I realised. No one could understand you in the way you knew yourself. Grappling with this feels endless.

It is then that the painful
realisation
hits me.
I am so terribly terribly alone. 

I live permanently in nostalgic dreams of the future. My own apartment, the spoons all carefully organised in the drawer underneath the sink. The baking supplies stuffed into a cupboard, my eclectic collection of mugs spilling from the shelves above the toaster. The way I roll over in the morning, the light between the blinds hitting me just right, in soft slices. My hair, wild but pretty, my beautiful thin thighs, smooth and soft, peeking out from underneath the big t-shirt I wear to sleep. There’s a logo on it, from some band you listen to, before I remember there is no one else in this daydream. I can’t afford it.

I’ve given up on coherence. On making a point. On creating a path for the reader, something to follow, to draw them in. I don’t care about it anymore, not as much. Being seen or being heard, how much does it really matter until it doesn’t anymore? How much do I need you to see me, to listen, not just hear me, until it’s enough. It will never be. You will never care for me enough. And I see that now. 

The signs were clear then, became clearer even. I would not get out of this. I would not come out the same as I was. I was becoming something else.