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stillwaterspecs-blog · 6 years ago

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when i’m dead make these cowards eat the ashes

the new month is quickly approaching. august is winding down and the back to school shelves are nearly naked. all the shopping centers and shoe stores are bumbling ghost towns and kids are biting their nails again and the trees are beginning to feel weak. they know their time is almost up. i watch those trees bend and sway and start to break under this crippling realization, and in my unnamed, unmatched eyes, i see myself in those trees.

my life could be called good. it could be called bad. my mother will look back on it and tell everyone that i did what i loved always, with who i loved, and i yelled and screamed not to only to be heard, but to be listened to. she will tell her friends and she will tell my estranged family members that i was not going to find the cure for cancer, no, but i may have found the cure.

my friends will not look back on my life or me at all. they’ll look at all the people who ruined it and they will point fingers. they’ll ruin his life and her life and make them pay and they may even write songs and throw sick sad parties and puke their sadness out. they will say i was right to leave, wrong to go. nobody will understand and nobody ever has. i don’t understand. where do i go, where do i fit?

lately i’ve had the feeling that i don’t belong. that i never belonged. ever since i was little, ever since i could grasp disassociation, i think i’ve felt it. in order to understand september 1st, and all this noise, let me go back to the beginning. i don’t often tell my story. i can rarely do it without squirming and crying and shaking and wanting to punch my own stomach until i can’t feel my churning stomach anymore. but i am not telling. i am typing. my stare is cold and still and my lips, sealed. i refuse to squirm and give power to this keyboard and this blank and this twitching cursor. i am typing this story to make sense of my life and its turmoil and i am trying to answer a question. will i make it to september?

when i was twelve years old i was rambunctious and could read multiple grades above my level. i had power bangs and wore pink sweatpants and played my brothers drum set pretending i was meg white and sang into a shitty mic like i was jack and all was rainbows and butterflies or so they say. i was the kind of kid who could be left alone but didn’t want to be. a boy called bad was hired to be my babysitter. he had been hired years prior as a friend, almost a family member, by my older brother and his hair was brown and gelled near the top of his forehead and he didn’t smile but he laughed. his little sister was my age and she pretended she was a wolf and liked to hold my hand. she howled at the moon sometimes and told me secrets that weren’t really secrets; things about trees and squirrels and the fish that swam upstream. anyway, we had matching bangs.

her brother called bad made my heart pound. in the fight and flight way. he would sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor of my basement and let me sing and moan along with billie joe about my unknown male teenage angst. he clapped and sometimes he played the skins, and he was my mike dirnt and we were on tour in england. he told me i sang like an angel. a punk rock angel but an angel nonetheless. he told me i was extra pretty when i sang. i was twelve years old and he was old enough to drive. but he told me i was pretty and that was the only time i ever felt it.

it went on for weeks, maybe months like that. just the two of us, and sometimes he would bring his little werewolf sister over, and we made horrible music and i sang about masturbation without knowing and sang about bombs and heroin without knowing because i was too young. i was too young to understand that i was not supposed to be beautiful yet. not to anybody but my mommy. my babysitter called bad continued until to call me the beautiful girl until he could show me.

there’s a closet in my basement. nowadays we keep the xmas decorations in there with the old dance, dance revolution mats and bins upon bins of snow clothes. i can’t remember the last time i played in the snow. back then it was pretty empty. it was barren except for my dad’s workbench with his wrenches and hammers and screws and all those evil things. there was lots of room to hide and seek and play when i was twelve. it was just a big old closet. i don’t know what you’d call it these days.

the first time bad took me into the closet i learned how to play sticks. you put your fingers out and transfer fingers to each other and its all very lovely actually. you laugh when you get too many fingers and i imagine that perhaps that how love works. he taught me how to play sticks so many times. i was smart but i was silly and i cheated and he always said no. i should’ve respected his no. maybe he would’ve respected mine.

the second time we were in the closet he kept the lights off. he said that i was getting so good at sticks i could do it in the dark. joke was on him. my eyes had adjusted and i never did it in the dark. i could always see what he was doing. i could always fucking see what he was doing.

it’s here where i get angry and feel lost. so many games of sticks in both the light and dark. a week or two of sticks is exhausting. he agreed. the third time we were in the closet i lost a game of sticks. he told me that i lost the bet. i didn’t remember any bet. i couldn’t remember a bet that said he got to put his fingers in the waistband of my pink sweatpants and pull them down slowly to my ankles. i couldn’t remember a bet that said he got to rub his fingers against my underwear and make me squirm. i never made a bet that let him slide the black bandana in my hair over my eyes and then cover my mouth. i remember tasting the salty sweat on his thick angry fingers. i couldn't make a sound. even if i wanted to. i had lost this game of sticks and i had lost the bet. what else was i supposed to do?

it went on like that for three more years.

three years of absolute fear. i couldn’t hug my family and i couldn’t run away from them either. i couldn’t sleep alone but it hurt me to sleep between any warm bodies. three years of him inviting me upstairs to his bedroom at xmas parties and tying my hands behind my back, rubbing his wet jeans against mouth and hips and telling me to be a good girl. to this day i am always a good girl. it was three years of me being the center of his grown up fantasies and his heart pounding dreams. i tried to fight him once in his own home but he grabbed my wrists and i can still see the bruises if i cry hard enough. it was three years of pure torture, pure pain. my skin was ruined and reddened and tainted by the hands of a bad bad man who could only seem to find joy in the scared of eyes of a young girl. for three years i learned how to be quiet. i took socks in my mouth, my own panties, my own dignity and swallowed them all until my throat was so clogged i couldn’t say no.

and then one day i made a tiny little scene. pushed against him while he was grabbing my hips, ramming his own into mine, groaning and moaning and loving me bad. i let him grab me as tight as he possibly could, jerked my hips so hard hoping to hear them snap, hoping to hear him break, any part of him. my hand met his face with such fervor and delight i almost felt high. it wouldn't be the first time he hit me when he hit me back but it would be the last. i was a teenager now. i knew what was wrong and why it was wrong and i was old enough to know that i was always going to be the loser. but for a moment, the red stains my fingers left on his fat cheek whispered victory. we stared at each other, chests heaving in some sort of sick twisted unison. he pointed his cracked bedroom door and i followed his command for one last time and left.

its been another three years. those rooms and those houses and this body remain a crime scene. they remain a nightmare and they remain silent. my trauma has trampled my ego to pieces, my confidence to shreds. i am still a victim. i still can’t love completely and give completely or breathe right. i can’t dance or let go and i can’t wear bandanas and i can’t play sticks. well, i can. i can do all these things but it is not without consequence. it is not without my sobbing, puffy face hating itself in a public bathroom’s mirror. it is not without breathing so much yet so little that i black out. it is not without a loss of appetite so extreme that i can’t get out of bed, and i can’t pick up the phone. it is not without nightmares. it is never without them.

and yet i wish this was an isolated case. i wish i could tell you, whoever is reading this, that when my fifteen year old self left that bedroom she was never hurt again. she was never touched wrongly or unfairly or without her goddamn written consent.

when i was fifteen years old i was loneliness manifested into a skinny mousey haired brunette who had shed her punk rock baby snake skin and grown into a sophisticated and dramatic theatre kid. i was outspoken, but let myself be silenced often. i was hardened by life and by men and by family and by the seemingly never-ending weathers that plagued upstate new york. i was going to rehearsal mon wed fri and church sat and sun and reading the good book with broken eyes and an even more shattered soul. i was so far from redemption that i think i had found it myself. when i was fifteen i met a boy in a striped sweater who told me he liked boys and girls and especially girls like me. we baked cookies at a nursing home and told little old ladies and racist old men lies about jesus and then kissed each other with tongue on the bus ride home.

he was always in a striped sweater and one night, on a day when we weren't reading the good book with our broken eyes, he told me he was throwing a sort of party. the sort of party where everyone squints at each other and spins empty vodka bottles and yells and screams and laugh at you when you cover your ears. the sort of party where to music isn’t bad, it’s just too loud. and that sort of party sounded like the sort of party my parents wouldn’t like so it was my sort of party. he picked me up in his striped sweater because i wasn't old enough to drive yet. maybe that was always the appeal.

alcohol is a weapon. and i was shot, murdered, annihilated. all his friends were older and wore less clothes than i did, said more words that i did, and yet, made less sense than i ever did. they were laughing like i thought they might and screaming like i thought they might and popping pills like they were candy and telling each other they loved each other. i know what loves look like and it does not look like that, it does not look like them. they offered me their candy and their glow sticks and he put me in his striped sweater and told me to plug my nose when i drank it. drank what? there was a blue solo cup in my hand and i drank it dry. i was so scared and so warm. i drank it all dry. pinched my nose and closed my eyes and drank it all dry until i didn’t open my eyes again.

the next time my eyes were open they were laid on a video sprawled almost carelessly across somebody’s snapchat story. it was my first time seeing my body outside of my body. it looked like me and it slept like me and yet somehow it was somebody else. my limp broken jagged sad drunk dumb ugly body in a striped sweater slumped on his lap. he grabbed my soft hands and he laughed and he played with them and sucked each finger like a peach lollipop and then dragged it across his chest and down his pants, moaning like the wind in october and letting his eyes roll to the back of his head. he was laughing the whole time, just like i thought they did at those sort of parties. they all were. next time i saw him he was at the round table sitting underneath a crucifix and eating a fruit snack, and i told him i didn’t believe in god. he told me he knew that already.

“girls like you never do”

i asked him if he believed in god.

“what do you think?”

we got confirmed together and my new middle name was the same as the patron saint of the arts. i told my parents i didn’t believe in god, and neither did anybody else. i still think i’m right.

when i was sixteen i tasted more bitter than ever. my brain twisted around itself and became sadder than ever. i started to crawl back into my body and hate it from the inside. my hair was purple sometimes but mostly just unkempt. people were watching their step and their words around me and that was the way i wanted it and how i wanted it was going to be the only way. when i was sixteen i fell off a skateboard and cried. i was making friends out of necessity and slicing up my thighs and stomach because i was too scared to die. when i was sixteen i met a twenty one year old man who wore leather jackets and dyed his hair black. he wore pictures of green day on his t-shirts and sang like a punk rock angel. he liked that i could sing like one, too.

we read scripts together and watched each other change backstage and he showed me tricks with his zippo and watched the flame in my eyes diminish whenever he commanded it to. he told me stories of women and goddesses he’d seen writhe and the pushed his lips against my neck to whisper how he’d never had someone so young. i was beautiful again. i wore shoes with heels and smudged my eyeliner and cut thumbholes in my favorite maroon sweater. presented myself as a lifelong partner to a man who brought me to the basement costume room and told me to take my shirt off.

i stood in the dark in a training bra. when i was sixteen i still didn’t know how to handle my sexuality. he laughed and made me shiver until finally he cupped both my breasts with both his hands and twisted them so hard i yelped. it echoed in the room and it hit me. it hit me so hard i ran out of air and ran out of love. he pinched and squeezed me like i was my own voodoo doll and kept whispering bitter nothings into my collarbones. he planted seeds so menacing and so damaging that to this day the roots live in every dark, wet crevice of mine. in my eyes my curse of my youth pours out, from my nostrils my unbridled unwanted passion, and my shaking and open jaw drips like a moist cave and from the deep deaths of my throat his words still emit: so young, so new, so silly.

he touched me all over until he got bored. i felt stained. i felt warm and wet where i didn’t want to be and he ran a long slow finger from my crotch to my belly button and asked me to beg for it. when i didn’t, he took his box of costumes, and left. his footsteps were the least of his destruction and yet they made me quiver in fear. i thought about them coming back, i thought about him coming back. for what seemed like an hour, i stood half naked in front of a full body mirror and practiced saying no. i saw a sex driven bruise on the bottom of my neck and cried. it has never gone away.

(that night i went home and swallowed as many pills as i could.)

(that is a different story.)

i was still sixteen when i took a bus to nyc and carried a butter knife in a purse for the first time. it worked as a weapon and a mirror and scared me more than anything. i thought about stabbing my babysitter. i thought about watching blood seep and soak that striped sweater. i thought about strangling him with a training bra. i thought all these things in a black dress in black tights with black heals and a black heart sitting next to a white man. he struck up conversation with me and wished me luck. he knew the city was dangerous sometimes. i was just going to see a broadway show. i was just going to see art. the most dangerous thing about art was the truth. and so he was quiet and laid his head against the window until the winter sun set early on the two of us.

he woke to construction in the city. i watched him stir and just barely heard him mumble in confusion. the bus was dark and humming in the traffic. the shadows of the city were filling my brain and my mind and grounding my heavy sad feet. there were bandages wrapped around my ribcage. i was a shit show disguised as lonely girl disguised as a horrified girl. it must of showed. he put his hand on me knee.

they all put their hands on your knee. and they move and creep up slowly, and they don’t look at you, because they are ashamed, and they are just as alone as you are. except they are alone in their ecstasy. they are alone in their indulgence and you are alone in fear and you are drowning. the water and the stakes are high and yet your mouth is shut. i closed my eyes and let tears run down my cheeks as he touched me. i remember saying please. i remember whispering no. i remember believing in god for a split second just to tell him i hate him. hairy fingers pressed against my tights pressed against my body. he was rubbing my shoulder with the other hand, his head still on the window. my tears fell on his arms. they shone in the lights of forty second street and then were eaten up by a buildings’ moon cast shadow. he touched me until our bus parked in front of the theater. he touched me until i stood up and pulled down my dress and grabbed my jacket and collected what i could of my body that still belonged to me. i sat through the show and cried during intermission. i took a bus home and sat alone and cried three and a half hours back. i took off my bandages and let myself bleed. i haven’t been to a broadway show since.

dear god how i wish i could tell its over. that this story has seen its end. that the lesson has been learned. that at this point i have been saved. but i cannot tell you that. i can tell you that it is all beginning to blur. my story has no beginning anymore. no middle. no foreseeable end.

when i was seventeen i fell in love for the first time. i learned that it was okay to be damaged and in love because that was how i loved my CDs, my records, my guitar. when i was seventeen i met a boy who bought me flowers and candy and set an alarm to text me on the dot every night at 11:11. to make a wish. when i was seventeen i met a boy who told me music had a right and wrong, gave me a black eye, and lit all my joints. i let him take my virginity because he wanted it. i want it back.

when i was seventeen i learned that a true life cannot coexist with guilt. that love cannot coexist with hate. i learned that guilt did not only look like something but it felt like something. it felt like painful sex and it felt like being choked until my vision blurred. it sounded like one set of moans and groans and it rang out my own personal silence. it felt like my first bad trip, where the world became hyper clear and i called an ambulance over a dozen times. it felt like waking up in the back of my own car. alone. tripping. dissolved. used. it felt like the drive to school. it felt like a bareback. guilt manifested in my brain and body like a maggot and has since hatched into something uncontrollable. something undeniable. it has become me.

a man who cannot take no for answer is the same as a man who will not listen to your answer. a man who claims to love you is the same as all the men who didn’t as soon as he betrays you. a man who guilts you into the illusion of love and takes what he wants while you are under his spell is not a man; he is a fucking coward. he is a con artist.

when i was seventeen fucking years old i played my first ever punk rock show. i was shaking and alone and embarrassed and cold. but for the first time i was at least a musician. but leave it to a magician to turn me into nothing but a piece of meat. when i was seventeen years old i was followed out of my first gig by a man in a red hat and broken teeth and backed against my car. i put my number in his phone to avoid being hurt and months later he appeared at my work place to get me inside my car and grab my chin and my wrist and kiss me. kiss me with his tongue that tasted like an old chimney and leave a sticker promoting his band in my cupholder. and by the time i could hurt him and stab him to death with my car keys he was smirking at me from the other side of the glass of my passenger seat window, pulling a cigarette out its box.

i am not out of stories to tell but i am out of patience. i am out of anger. it is five o clock in the morning, i am eighteen years old, and i’m sweating and shaking from a nightmare. i am sick of seeing the faces of my loved ones and close friends superimposed on these angry thoughtless bodies that tie me up and gag me and sing happy birthday and squeeze my tits and ass and shove themselves inside me and i am sick of waking up in a cold fucking sweat crying and scrambling for my phone to call 911 or my mommy or my beautiful beautiful boyfriend who i trust more than anything and still cannot give myself to. i am sick of being a perpetual victim to PTSD. of BPD. i am sick of being perceived as unlovable. as tainted. as unwanted. not only by others but by myself. i am sick of the disgust i feel boiling in my chest as i look in the mirror and see a girl who never got the chance to grow up. and so she stays kind. she exudes innocence. she exudes curiosity. its because i am kind. its because i am innocent. its because i am curious. there a good side of people that i want to know but am afraid to try. there is a light side of life i crave but am afraid to shrivel up in.

september first is not because i am sad. it is not because i am dramatic. it is because i am exhausted. i am overused. i am saturated. i am limp with love and hatred and dripping with defeat. feed me to the dogs. i do not believe in god

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