misactor

[misactor]

Tantrumania

vignettes from life as a mythical airbag

This year, I turn twenty. It’s odd to think about, since I’m awful at being nineteen, and was even worse at playing the parts of the eighteen roles that preceded it. If I were wholly therapized to my fullest potential, I’d say it’s because I refuse to acknowledge myself as a person in the world, and that any bouts of self awareness debilitate me.

I’ve been to therapy, and it felt like I was talking to a wall. That’s probably a me-problem that could be solved by several more hour-long sessions that run over to match the salt stains down my cheeks, but I don’t think I can emotionally take having to explain myself to yet another woman with rectangular glasses. Instead, I’ll blame my shortcomings on the cracks that have lined my bedroom floor since childhood. I’m pretty sure I lost one of my teeth down there, and there’s probably an evil little fairy that doomed me to an eternity of suffering because of it. Sorry for dropping my incisor in through your ceiling, but I was sad.

Since cutting the umbilical cord that once pulled me taught to the place I grew up, I’ve realized just how bad I am at keeping myself alive. Realistically, it shouldn't be that difficult. You buy food, you sleep well, and you do just enough work to stop everyone you know from whispering about how lazy you’ve gotten. I do buy food — just too much, or not the right kinds. I’ve eaten canned peaches with a fork for the past week straight, and my dinner is usually blackout binged, stopping only when the single guest — my stomach — has decided it can’t take it anymore. We reconcile the table-side insults over porcelain and water, and then I fall asleep with mint toothpaste still stuck under my tongue.

Most babies cry when the cord is cut. I didn’t, and it took months before that dam ever broke. I was a good baby (see: quiet, non-disruptive, and understanding). My mother complimented me on it for years whenever she couldn’t think of anything else nice to say to me. At some point during one of her eulogies to the women she and I were when I was young, I figured out that I really am just like her. We’re both bad at keeping ourselves alive, and the only difference is that I got born into the job of lifetime airbag for the generations that choose to lean on me.

That’s me, the mythical airbag. Always too soft or not enough, too big and never comfortable. I partook in the rituals of longing that have been passed down through frail hands and tinsel wrists, only to fall rattling in my lap, looking entirely out of place. Before meals we didn’t pray to a god or deity, but instead to a figure who all of us knew — nameless, faceless, with butterfly skin, soft lips, and arms that sat like wings at her side.

There are moments when I remember the woman I conjured when I was young. She was tall, thin, delicate — she never had to open her mouth to say anything, and her eyes spoke to the masses, cutting through lens and air. She was me, graduated from the pit of Girlhood, one that I thought I could escape and leave behind simply by going on another year with the promise of becoming prettier held safely in my pocket. I kept her close, prayed to her, and laid her down next to me every night before I slept. I took care of her, watered her, fed her with clippings from magazines and porn sites, and studied the boys who sat next to me in class — following their eyes around the room and keeping a tally of where they landed.

Like all things do, she managed to crawl out from between my fingers and run, just when I needed her to curl in on herself and ready her body to be swallowed. That promise — the one I had made to myself, my mother, her mother, and all of the other women that wanted me to heal the promises that they themselves were unable to keep — had fled from me.

In many ways, that loss was the match that struck up the rest to follow. You get to an age where your baby fat isn't baby anymore, and when people in public stop looking at your parents with disapproval, and instead turn their gaze towards you. No more shirts that show my shoulders, no more pants that show my knees. No more shoes that show my ankles, and no bare wrists until I can wrap two fingers around them and watch the nails overlap. Gone is the person, replaced instead with glass shards that are carefully glued before bed. The cracks are there, but hidden. I’m equal parts girl and craftsman, equal servings of woman and ingenue. The proximity to breakage is exhilarating. I’ve dreamt of being delicate since I was conscious of myself, and if repairing a ravaged body is my way to get there, I’ll take it.

It’s around this same time that I started fantasizing about being kidnapped by one of the men who would brush up against me in the grocery store parking lot. Instead of walking away, I imagined he’d grab my waist and pick me up (see: skinny) and toss me over his shoulder. I’d spend the next days, months, and years locked in his basement wasting away until all that was left was the phrase “you look just like your mother”. She was beautiful, and small, and that would be a triumph. After enough time, he’d see her instead of me, no more girl but woman, and fall in love.

Now, there’s nothing girl left about me, and the fantasy ends differently. We don’t make it to the basement, because he kills me in the car. I let him chop me up and serve me to his friends much later, and I smile while they chew and compliment him on his cooking. It feels good to be desired, and if this is what it takes, I’ll live in his freezer for as long as he wants me to.

Why, exactly, do I hate myself?

I write an anonymous online diary entry in hopes that someone who I know but doesn’t know me will read it. When they do, I hope the person they conjure looks nothing like me but acts and thinks the same.

Fall in love with my shadow, with the spit I’ve left on the sidewalk. Pity the way that I forget to clean up after myself, and leave a carcass when I’m gone. Admire how I taste, remember it while you devour, and don’t comment on how little is left for the rest of the dinner guests afterwards.

Most importantly, if you require your pills pre-chewed by your mother before you swallow, I suggest you look away.

[misactor]