So many decisions.

So many decisions need to be made - or at least, that's how I keep feeling. But why should I? Why can't I go with the flow; let life pick me up, take me along, and put me down somewhere new?

Things can stay the same, if I want them to, or they can change. I can adapt where necessary. I just need to remember who I am.

I am alone. I am happy. I am secure. I am capable. I am not searching in vain. I am everything I want to be and one day I'll probably even be more.

Fast.

Fast, fast, faster.

You are better than them. So prove it.

I had moved Pen.

I had moved Pen into a ward. Her plush armchair was replaced by a metal bed frame, hard mattress and prescription sheets. The walls were white and cushioned, and her fireplace no longer cast shadows upon them. She had become dangerous, so I tried to contain her. She was resentful.

She clawed and beat with clamped fists more often than she used to, but the sound was somewhat muffled. She cried and cried – the kind of wracking sobs that used to reach my ears and produce a similar, if somewhat subdued response – but I felt increasingly numbed to her pleas. She paced back and forth, muttering and cursing and stamping her feet. I heard only parts of what she said. She was so very angry at me.

Her skin was paler than ever before; almost translucent. She would not eat and every day she became more skeletal. Her emancipated bones jutted. Her eyes darkened to wells of wrath and when she turned to face me I had to look away. I couldn’t bare it.

Last night she had visitors. I did not invite them. I was not warned of their impending invasion. A door appeared and they entered; one small, one dark. Pen would not hear them, and neither will I. She began to scream, and this time the noise broke through my veil. She ran, flailing, at the walls. She pointed and gestured. All I could do was cower out of their sight.

Pen had never been as powerless as she was then. She was always the strong one, but even she couldn’t make them leave. They stood, stoic where they’d entered until she exhausted herself. She lay down and placed a pillow on her face, gesturing me over and holding my hands in place as I pressed down. We began to choke. She would have my strength, then, but I failed at that too.

We are still here though the visitors have gone. Pen waits for them to return, as we know they inevitably will. In the meantime she sits in a corner, her knees hugged to her chest and her eyes wide and unblinking. She prays for the next time and she whispers to me that I can do it. I am the strong one now.

Her words.

Her words fill the space of her therapist's cushy office. Sanitized air mingles with empty breaths.

The nights are still the worst. Porn and masturbation so I can pretend I'm not alone. Metallic kisses to subdue tears. Fingers scooping the emptiness and body lurching in response. Ash burning linen. Trying to hibernate in a nest of blankets that are never quite warm enough. Waking several times with a start from dreams of being pushed down stairs. Wonder if next time I fall from a building I'll make contact with the pavement. If I died they wouldn't find me till tomorrow night. Slipping further and further into dysfunction. "You're pretty," they say. "You're nice and smart and funny and everyone likes you." But there is no proof and it's not enough, anyway. I don't want everyone to like me. I only want you.

She's just blood, bile, smoke and bones.

"I don't love you anymore."

"I don't love you anymore." He had turned his head away and she watched as his words fogged up the window of the last train home. She couldn't speak, but she felt the way he was slipping out of her grasp, just as his hand did. She leaned towards him but he turned his head away. He wouldn't even give her a chance, so she forced herself to find the words.
"I had a dream." He didn't respond but she knew he was listening.
"We were arguing. I was crying. You were unkind." Still no answer. She swallowed and continued, "I had a bottle and I smashed it against the curb. I slit my wrists with the shards and then ran. I disappeared into the night."
He looked at her now, but she saw nothing in his gaze.
"It was so liberating. I felt more alive than I ever have."
The train slowed to a stop and she arose, wrapping her cruedly hand-made scarf around her neck and buttoning her coat. This was her stop. She stepped out into the cold and shivered as the train rolled away behind her turned back. He hadn't followed her, but she hadn't expected him to. She disappeared into the night.

This will be the last time.

This will be the last time I write for you. Or at least, this is my hope for myself. Because if I have to re-play those days one more time in my head, I might die. I cannot sleep anymore. I cannot eat. I spend hours avoiding thinking about you; distracting myself in a futile attempt to forget.

I have stopped crying so much. But I have also stopped feeling the same way. I replace one vice with another. I can stave off tears with something else but it is more painful, in a way, and you would not like it. But who gives a fuck what you like.

I have replaced sadness with anger – love with hate. I do it to survive. I wonder sometimes if you will push through the screen and find me on the other side, as you said you would.

I think of the other times often. I think how little they matter now, and I think it should make me feel better. But it’s the same as then, now. I wonder if this time is the time that it won’t get better. Maybe this is how it will be forever. Maybe there is nothing to salvage – nothing to hope for.

I’m searching for new life, but all I can see is the ruins.

Previous post.

Previous post is a work in progress. Say what you will about it, because it needs some serious improvement. Thoughts??

The Doll.

The doll sits on a high shelf. So high, in fact, that most shoppers pass her by without so much as a glance. Every day she watches the tops of heads flit past, and she sighs. She often feels like calling out. “Hey!” she would cry, “I’m here! Look at me!” But the looped end of her string remains at the small of her back, and so the words will not come out.

She was pretty once, though she can’t recall the time. Her hair is still thick and dark and frames her perfect complexion. She wears a red dress of the softest fabric. Her hands are perfectly manicured, and her lashes as long and lush as they ever were. But there is a stain on the doll. It runs from her chin, under her dress, over her heart and across to the joint between her leg and her hip. It is the product of someone’s mistreatment from so long ago, but time has not faded it one bit.

Some days her only friend takes her down and dusts her off. He looks into her glassed eyes and smiles. She thinks maybe he sees something that the others do not. The warmth of his hand cupping her face reaches deep within her, and her rosy lips ache for his own. It’s these moments she lives for now, but they are fleeting and ultimately leave her feeling empty. His eyes will stray to the other dolls. Perhaps sometimes he will reach for one in plain view, as if he intends to swap them – but he never does. The doll finds herself on the high shelf again.

Early on a Monday morning, the doll hears the tinkling of the shop bell and sees a boy walk in. The clicks of his boots bounce off the walls as he walks through the room. He yawns, his eyes skimming lazily over the shelves. Finally, he comes towards her, and her heart skips a beat as she notices how very tall this boy is – how his eye line is almost level with her own. He sees her, and she knows the moment that he does. His face lights up and his hand reaches delicately for her own. His touch is unlike any she has felt before. His thumb brushes gently across her stain, but she does not flinch away. His fingers find her string and he pulls. “I don’t know how to love,” she tells him, “But I wish someone would teach me”. He is enchanted, and she watches him as he watches her. There is no one else.

He takes her home and places her on his desk. He glances at her now and again, a smile crossing his face. She knows that he loves her, so she doesn’t mind when he leaves her there alone for days. He always comes back. She watches him sleep, and though she longs to lie with him – to hear his breath up close and feel the warmth of his slumbering form – she is content.

Time passes and things change. The doll feels the difference in the boy, but she can’t explain it. One day she wakes to find him packing his things into boxes. He is hurrying, and in his haste he knocks a glass full of drink over. He does not notice as the pool of liquid spreads across the surface of the desk, finally reaching the doll and seeping into the hem of her dress. He does not see the corners of her lips turn down, and the tears escaping from her eyes. She wants to tell him, but it’s been months since he’s pulled her string.

The boy barely looks at the doll as he returns her to the shop. He hands her over and pockets the cash, and he is gone before she can stop him. She knows she will never see him again. Her old friend returns her to her shelf and she sighs. She feels the stain across her chest, looks sadly at the fresh one on her clothing and contemplates the time that she may spend in this very spot. Her life seems to stretch endlessly before her and she feels so very alone.

Who knows how long it will take for another boy to wander in off the street and find her? Perhaps it won’t happen at all. She is patient but not hopeful, because she knows it takes a very special kind to really want a damaged doll. But she will wait.

How detached.

How detached can one person become from all that surrounds them?

I suppose that we shall see.

People push from all directions. Why can't we co-exist in peace?

I wish.

I wish our stupid scanner would work. Dad is trying to fix it... In the mean time I guess I'll have to settle for taking shit photos.

I painted this last night, consumed with fatigue, but wanting to produce something pretty. It was supposed to be me, but she looks sooo very Caucasian. Dammit.