just part of the curse...

(Trigger warning for self harm, vomiting, depression, etc. This is an old rambling thing I wrote down awhile ago that I just dug up. )

The bathroom. The bathroom. Why, always, in the bathroom? What cannot be accomplished in the bathroom? Room of excretion, room of bathing. Vomit, blood and semen on the floor. Make love in the shower, then fill the tub and bleed your wrists dry when your heart breaks. Make yourself perfect, then destroy yourself in front of the same mirror. Get that brilliant idea that will change your life while standing under running water. Hold your hair back when your body rejects everything you did from a failed night of intoxication. Watch the mascara run and wonder if you’re forcing it. The bathroom. So peaceful. Until life catches up.

This night. This night involves a knife, an empty apartment, and the sort of nostalgia that you miss until you realize that you’ve matured past adolescent longing and the wish to get fucked and all you ever needed from him was to never be in your life.

“You’re the worst thing to ever happen to me.” Such epic movie lines and you never realize how true they are. Until the only thing you wish to see is that glazed look, the one that you can’t distinguish between passionate longing and awkward pity, you want to see him looking at you like that with his hair in your fist and gravel embedded in his forehead. You bloody mess. I want to see blood down your face. I never understood the term ‘mixed feelings’ until I wanted you so badly that it made my fingers ache but I wanted your blood on the pavement just as much.

This night involves a knife and an empty bathroom. It involves humming and rocking as the only way to stay sane. It involves a half-assed will and the sense of reluctant restraint. It involves the same pattern of thought that was always plagued me. The pain, the shame, the hate, the deed, the calm, the consequence.

Funny how not even two minutes of your face can result in hours of that sinking feeling in my gut. Funny how you think we’re still friends when the only thing we ever had was far from friendship. Funny how I only exist when I’m necessary. Funny how all these idiotic thoughts spiral through my mind when my mind is spinning on the closed toilet seat. Funny how the only way you’ll ever know how you’ve affected me is never.

I am silly. I am childish. I am immature. I am emotionally pathetic. I am wretched. I am a girl with knife in hand and bruises on arm. I am a girl who never knew how to cope. I am a girl who always tried too hard and never looked pretty enough and never fit her own skin.

Purple specks on eyelids that can open only halfway, swollen with tears, so tired. I’ve exhausted every pore in my body. You are out of me now. Until the next time you try to reach me. For now, you are gone.

This night involves a dropped knife, a tired body, and two friends on the bathroom floor. This night involves shame and an ever present sense of weakness. Drained. Sad songs are written like this, in bathrooms, drained of everything and then recycled by the listener who ends up with blood on the floor. I could never understand how they can sing without their voices cracking.

I never understood the thing about endorphins that adults would tell me. Back in middle school. Those days. They said that people did it to feel better. To feel something. To feel anything. I felt things. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t that until I realized how the calm after the storm was like liberation. Tears stopped forming in the pits of my eyes. Mouth gaped slightly open, mesmerized by deeds done with alien hands. Forget emotional. This is physical now.

This night involves a guarded roommate, a guarded friend, a guarded girl. Guarded like watchful eyes over people who are too weak to move far. Half-lidded eyes and a numb sense of being. Not numb like every piece of bad poetry, including this one, claim to be. Exhaustion like this is a reward.

Oh, but suddenly, it’s all about me. Creation of my mind, you almost got away scot-free. That’s how you would like to be. That’s how you are. I told you once that our relationship, our “friendship” consists of me feeling terrible and you drifting in and out of my life. “Oh, hello”, kiss on the neck and retreat. Let’s not blame anyone.

I am done with you. This night involves a girl who was never broken but always questioned it. I am done with you. This night involves a girl who grew up and understands now. I am done with you. You were never good for me, not even close.

There is such a difference between the girl who wants a poisonous boy if only for the brief hour of passion he can bring, and the girl who knows that it’s time to finally say no.

This night involves a girl in bed, safe at last. Safe for tonight. Safe for a day. After 24 hours, the warranty is void. For now, there is no energy left to self-loathe. There is so much left to say, so many words to vomit, on the tip of my tongue, to hurl at you. But tonight, this one-person battle will end.

You were never even close to listening.