sharting on paper

19 yrs old. trying really hard. i dont live here anymore.

[rory-is-hiding]

i feel my pain in secret, my last place where i could be loud was taken away from me. i observe myself observing my own diary. my brain has gone quiet. i used to think my feelings in the words to a poem i might write. i lay in my bed.

i am forever watched by you. you are around every corner and behind every blank photo. i catch myself speaking in a voice you would approve of. i catch myself trying to be forgiven for a sin i never committed, forgiven by a friend i never loved. i admit what you do to me. i wish you could experience guilt.

what else could you take from me? i will spend the rest of my life trying to prove you wrong. i can call you paranoid and i believe it. but when she held me down i heard your voice in my head, telling me i abandoned people. telling me that i never give enough chances, telling me to forgive.

i forgave.

i can say that i did, that i tried. i talked and i left messages and i gave you a chance years later at that stupid fucking party that you ruined. you felt dirty to touch. you wanted this. you wanted all of this.

i know it will never be enough for you, your sacred victimhood. to let go of me would be to let go of everything you imagine is wrong with your life. you could never admit it.

you need to believe that you can forgive the unforgiveable. you will never find another person who isnt disgusting willing to tolerate you. you dont know what its like, to love unconditionally. to trust in someones goodness. good people exist. imperfect and good. you just arent good.

you arent a pattern. you dont know my pattern. my pattern is to desperately try and fix people. you did that to me, you were a leech from birth. you attack me in a wound that never existed. you arent my legacy.

you will never get the attention you so desperately crave. eldest daughter, the little princess who dreamt of fairies when she got her teeth fixed. poor little girl, a suicidal tantrum because you couldnt go on holidays. eldest baby, an imaginary agency waiting to make you famous. too pretty for tv, too talented to make anything of your life. too damaged to be blamed. blame me. i know you sleep better for it.

[rory-is-hiding]

i want to be evil, i want to be evil for you. i want it to be full of venom, even though i hate the way you say that word. i want to be disgusted. i want you to want me like i want people who are wrong for me. i want it to be the other way. i feel sick of this, i grow purer and whiter ever moment before i vanish completely. this is so one note, so dull. i have only ever told one story, i want something new. let me taste it.

[rory-is-hiding]

im so full of love that i think ive fallen in love with hating you.

[rory-is-hiding]

i dont think im in love with you anymore. i wish i could make it sound beautiful.

you stopped loving me too, i think. a while back.

you were jealous, and small, and selfish, and pathetic. and it ate away at everything i could give you until there was nothing left.

i was egotistical, and insecure, and prophetic, and pretentious. i always had to be right, i always was. i am sadder now than i ever have been before. i still love you like i did back then.

[rory-is-hiding]

i pull a memory of us out of my pocket, its the opening credits. we are two teenagers sitting on a couch and we are madly in love. we hold hands and try too hard to be cool. it worked for a while, it did. i know it did. i know that was real. i watch it over and over until i get dizzy from the circles.

[rory-is-hiding]

i wish you loved me so then you would be kind to me. i wish you loved me enough.

[rory-is-hiding]

in my dream i write something beautiful. i wake up and i am just a sad little girl alone in my room. i never leave.

[rory-is-hiding]

theres red hair dye staining the counter. im not supposed to wash with hot water, otherwise it leaks. i gave up a few weeks ago.

my bed sheets have been on for too long. there are dirty dishes on my carpet. i barely slept last night thinking about it.

today the to do list looks more like a suicide note. the rest of my room is too far away. i lay in my bed.

i swallow my painkillers dry. nothing hurts but im too addicted to kill myself anyway. my partner can sleep knowing im safe.

i think theres something wrong with me. this isnt normal.

[rory-is-hiding]

they found something bad.

the nurses are whispering, they tell me to wait for the doctor to find out the results. they read my chart in the corner when they think im asleep. they give me everything i ask for.

my surgery goes well. i was scared when i woke up. it went for an hour longer than expected. i called my mum. my sister brings me a present. everyone is nice to me.

they found something bad. i know what it feels like to be sick. i know what it means when people are nice like that. i know.

[rory-is-hiding]

leave something here for me, folded neatly in between our bedsheets and the nightmares i flick through. leave me a secret, leave me a riddle, leave me a memory. leave the unfinished business that you will haunt me for, hide it where only you know how to find it. plant something that you will come back for one day, so i know you will always come back for me one day.

[rory-is-hiding]

tell me why i am evil, with examples.

i know it must be true, im not too arrogant to think ive existed this long without becoming disgusting. i think maybe we all get this way eventually, and i know i am and that i have. i know it is rotten from the inside out.

i beg each person i love. i will show you all of the ways in which i am terrible. i splay myself open, but i cant look, im too scared.

is it bleeding? tell me honestly, how bad is it? do you think itll get better? what's wrong with me?

[rory-is-hiding]

am i still her? does she exist somewhere inside me? did parts of me survive?

[rory-is-hiding]

i dont think i saved her. i dont know if i can. i dont know if it matters.

[rory-is-hiding]

i have loved you for so long, it has burrowed into every pore of my body and pushed its way back up. my teeth rot out of my face. i think that gods went to war with the walls of the universe for us to meet.

[rory-is-hiding]

im pretending to tell you now, in my diary, because i know ill never get a chance

mum, last year i tried to kill myself. it was august, and it was cold. it was a real one, i had counted the pills and calculated it correctly. i planned and i waited. i took them, with food and water so i couldnt throw up accidentally. i laid down to die. im not sure why i did it. at the time, i had my reasons of course. but im not sure anymore. the short answer is that somethings wrong with me. i dont think i need to explain the other.

i went in an ambulance to hospital. once id thrown up enough and they decided i wasnt going to die, somebody walked me into the psych ward and held my hand around a pen to sign myself in. i was disoriented, and scared, and high. i didnt know what was happening. i spent 3 weeks unable to drive or stand up too quickly. i lost 13 kilos and most of the feeling in my fingers and toes.

i was worried youd make it about yourself, if you were there. in fact i knew you would. i didnt call you and ive never told you. maybe i just needed something to be about me, maybe i needed to know that you werent going to be there when i died. that i was in charge of it all for once. maybe i was just sad, and sick, and it got dark outside.

[rory-is-hiding]

youre not a good person. i tell you and you agree, you say i should leave. that you arent good for me. ive heard these words before from much worse men, ive made this mistake again and again. i always stub my toe on the exact same chair legs and corners. i always forget my keys in the exact same spots.

you tell me you arent a bad person. i ask you how you know. i ask you to prove it to me. beg me to stay, beg me to love you and forgive you. you wont, you never do.

every summer time i lapse into a sleeping disorder. spending nights staring at screens and days rotting in bed. i do not leave my house. i know it makes me sick, i know it makes me sad. ive done it every year since i was 12.

we play this game, we play it well. be better, please be better. you tell me that the door is open.

you know i cant leave, you know that i always stay. this is how the game goes. i hurl empty threats across the room, the bag on my arm is a prop. i never make it past the front door.

[rory-is-hiding]

i had a crush on you when we were 17. please come home.

ive just passed the stage of my life where i can start writing about you in the past tense, so suddenly im trying to think of what to say. thinking of all that you said. but your voice is drowned out, the speaker is playing radiohead. that was the night we got a noise complaint. you looked so gentle. you held my hands on the kitchen floor.

we were just teenagers experimenting with psychedelics, making pasta and giggling. ive never felt the same again.

i could have fallen in love with you, back then. although not properly, not really. just in my head. i wanted to know you, to understand you. you couldve stretched your life story out over a lifetime together, i might never have caught up. i admired you. it was the closest id ever felt to love. you were so shiny, you were so beautiful.

i think about it all the time, now. i think about it when someone loves me like that, when they fall in love with everything about me but nothing inside me. with the stories i can tell, with the worlds i can show them. when they fall in love with what an interesting person looks and sounds like but nothing else.

maybe i learned it from you, how to be unreal. just tethered enough to reality to be observed but never any more. its the closest ive ever felt to being beautiful. i understand why you did it. inventing the right shape of sadness feels better and lasts longer than drugs.

i had no idea how to hold you. i had no idea what to say. anything i thought of seemed so juvenile next to you, anything i could spit out would seem silly. i could never have comforted you. i had no idea who you were.

i think about when i met you again. you were so human, i hugged you and your body was solid - full of muscles and blood. it wasnt how i remembered you, you used to be light. untouchable. like you might vanish if i looked away.