New Words and Old Memories
*TRIGGER WARNINGS*
-Blood
-Death
-Descriptions of a controlling and toxic relationship
-Grief
-Murder
-Brief mention of a cut to the arm
-If I have missed any relevant warnings let me know and I will add to this list as soon as I am able to.
*PLEASE READ THE TRIGGER WARNINGS IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY*
Please enjoy
April 29th 2023
Finally, I've come back to my old diarist ways. It's been maybe something like 20 years since I've written anything down by hand like this. The feeling is essentially foreign to me, which feels silly to say. At the same time though, there's this small part of me saying that maybe just maybe there might be something about putting an unassuming ballpoint pen to classic lined paper that might make me feel better. I don't know in all honesty. That being said, I know with absolute certainty that I've got myself half convinced that I've stumbled into the single longest spiral known to man since Maisey died. Maybe that's an unconscious exaggeration I concocted but I miss her so much and my grief won't let me clearly remember her last words to me. Anything beyond a vague feeling is largely made fuzzy by the bleary eyes of my memory. I can vividly remember how she just glowed with life that day though. It was nearly blinding. Every inch of her was brimming, beating with the stuff. It was wonderful, and so warm. Age could not and had not touched her in my eyes. This isn't to say I was blind to it. While she showed years I didn't, she was just as beautiful and her smile just as soft as it ever was. I want so badly to be able to remember the last of the music that was her voice. For a painfully short time, I did. But now? Nothing. Today is simply a day that is cursed to be drowning helplessly in death. Drenched in a thick black cloud of sulfurous lethal air lying right beneath the surface waiting to coat my lungs in their entirety. Coagulating in every crevasse so that I might fight just to gasp for air.
I read that back, it's a little dramatic. Possibly more than a little. Maisey died in late June of 1993. The 24th actually. I still remember the phone call from her stepson that day, the way his voice was breaking along with my heart as he spoke. The tears he fought back as mine rolled silently down my face. The sound of my phone falling on the counter and smacking against the cabinets with the force that had been stored in its cord. She had been in a car crash he said. She had a feeling that it was her time and told him to tell me before she went into surgery. She didn't make it out. Maisey and I hadn't been in a relationship in the most traditional sense by maybe seven years at that point, it hurt like I lost a lover anyway. I would swear now that I had known in April that year that it was going to be the beginning of the "new" end, but that's probably hindsight tainting my memories. It's been almost 30 years though, and I've had time to heal from that. Progress crawls at a snail's pace, but forward movement happens nonetheless. Days have grown slowly more bearable, some worse than others. Based on what I've read that's pretty normal, so there's that at least. Today happens to be especially difficult for whatever reason.
Spring is just generally a particularly hard time for me I would say. Seeing something as small as flowers is more difficult for example. Also, it's not as though I can make a trip to the seaside for some sort of springtime holiday on a whim. More to the point what I consider to be my more tangible death did happen 212 years ago exactly, so if we're being honest with ourselves when thinking about it that's part of it. At least half maybe. It isn't a "special" anniversary though, the bicentennial was far far worse. This is also the 30th anniversary of the last time I heard Maisey's voice, comparatively happier in it's own way. Just more proof of anniversaries having a neutral connotation, but that's beside the point. I hate, rather I loathe, the mere prospect of thinking about what that god-awful, beyond horrible woman did to me. She doesn't deserve the dignity of a name any longer for her actions. It haunts me as if it happened a day or two ago at times. I can hardly bear that my thoughts are torn between what I refer to, among other things, as "hellfire being extinguished" and one of if not the great love of my life. The last time I heard her beautiful voice anyway. If I had known she would be gone just two months later I like to think I would have savored it more than I did, given how my brain likes to omit things when I become upset.
So here I am at the admittedly semi-desperate conclusion that somehow writing things down could help me at the very least understand my now centuries of feelings better. I did try doing this in the somewhat immediate aftermath of being killed all those years ago. The thinking was that if I wrote everything I could recall down in my diary as soon as I was able and then immediately ripped the page out and destroyed it, I would get some sense of closure. Recalling the whole affair made my hands shake so badly when I wrote. It's honestly surprising that I wasn't concerned that they would fall right off. I often have wishes that amount to the desire that I should have burned that page back then when I might've been able to muster the nerve. Now my brain has taken the task upon itself to mangle and twist itself into feeling guilty about any sort of closure. Symbolic or otherwise. It's almost funny in a messed-up sort of way. If I still believed in him, I would have to question why God created brains that are perfectly suited to torture and hate themselves. I do in some ways anyway one could argue I suppose. In any case, it seems like a really bad business decision that has led me personally to wonder if I live despite my killer and what she wanted, in spite of it all, or for myself somehow at times. If you can call what I'm doing living.
I find myself thinking that it should feel like ancient history what happened to me. What I did that night. It happened two centuries ago, and yet the unusual depth of the darkness of that night still feels so fresh to me. The woman had been slowly becoming more horrible than what she started as. Inching towards the evil I remember the most. She was the type that had to control everything and everyone she could manage to fully sink her claws into, and by that point had firmly settled into that ornate throne she had fashioned to rule over me. Comfortably sitting there whilst she smirked and looked down upon me and somehow, at the same time, she claimed to do nothing but show me untold amounts of gentle love. I had come to know what she was beyond her human exterior and, while it most certainly terrified me at the time, a small part of me found it sickly exhilarating. I was completely intoxicated by her. She was like a spiked hot chocolate, sweet and warm with a bitter burn finish. By the time she decided that she would murder me, we had very much settled into the burn. Little if any of the old sweetness remained. That notion only existed in old diaries. Even still, I felt compelled even wanted to take another sip. I couldn't leave. Why? Couldn't begin to know. I didn't want to? She wouldn't let me? I hoped for change? I can't tell or remember now.
She could spit venom from her mouth in one breath and the next, would soothe me and make me whole. That had become the pattern of our interactions for some time. I often felt as though I was a child being reprimanded for something I didn't understand. Sometimes there wasn't even a reason. Not one I was privy to anyway. Closer to a plaything than an equal and lover. Even now though, sitting and stewing in the memories of how much I hate everything that happened and the confines of the existence I find myself in I find it hard to call everything bad. She was enchanting in short. I was utterly enamored with her right from the very start. No point in denying it now. There was no hope of escaping the grinding, crushing, pulverizing wheels of fate that started to turn the moment I met her. It feels disgusting almost to admit it in writing, but I loved her. All that I was loved her. I really really wish I didn't, and I genuinely think I probably shouldn't ever have entertained the mere prospect of loving her. Regardless of the wonderful benefits of hindsight, I did entertain the thought of loving that woman. Willingly and with a smile on my face. The naivety of youth and the inability to know oneself. It's a struggle to think that she ever loved me, but I did love her once. With every last little thing that I had. I owe myself to be gentle with that truth.
It's hard to not let myself feel stupid about my falling for her at times. I keep finding myself thinking, "What if our eyes didn't meet that night?", "What if I listened to my fear?", "What if I looked closer at my affections?" as if such things would change the here and now. It feels like she cursed me with this life and like I'll continuously be far away from everyone I have ever and will ever love. Cursed to be functionally alone for all eternity, aside from the occasional 50 years or so when I muster the emotional strength to form a connection with a human. The more I think about it I have to wonder if she left me with only the possibly unethical. That feeling has only grown since I've started to take my old diaries out of their dark dusty storage place. The strange thing was that they weren't all together. It's very out of character for me. Usually, I'm a lot better about keeping my arguably four but it's closer to three, centuries of belongings carefully sorted, organized, and in their proper places. I suppose places is a more accurate descriptor. The first one I found was actually wrapped delicately in a dress Maisey had left for me along with a letter she had written. It's the only thing I have left of her that I can actually hold in my hands, so I took an insane amount of care to gingerly unwrap it. Treating the cloth as though it would turn to dust if I touched it in the wrong way.
That diary in particular is stained with my tears and smeared with the various colors of her, now vintage, lipstick. Every mark contains just a drop of a spark. Just an ounce of affection. With so many small spur-of-the-moment tokens of love, it's almost sad to think how little I've looked at it in the past 40-some-odd years. In the early days, Maisey made it a point to place a kiss on one of the first pages of it and then on every page in every diary she caught me writing in after that. It's an absolutely adorable habit that always makes me smile and mentally gush about her when I think about it. Even with the knowledge that the amount of those lipstick stains slowly becomes less and less over time. Very much welcome all the same, especially in stark contrast to the other grimmer reason I felt the need to buy a humble college rule composition notebook and a pack of new rainbow-colored ball-point pens. The notebook is yellow and has rhinoceroses on it. The pens were just for fun, it'll be decades before I need pens again with my collection. Seemed appropriate at the time.
Maybe it's silly, just a case of my brain concocting fear, but I can feel myself choking on the giant lump in my throat thinking about the way it all ended. My heart beats so fast it begins to feel so obvious to me that it moves nothing red and lifegiving anymore. It goes on like that as if it has a purpose, but we both know it doesn't. Not anymore. The poor thing was simply built to beat. It's only doing what its instincts dictate it must. My instinct however is still to fight, even just over 200 years later it all feels so viscerally real. I want to call it crisp but that feels like I'm talking about an apple or something of the like, which isn't right. She moved faster than I could see that night. I couldn't blink, much less move or defend myself before anything happened. We were arguing loudly, it had become commonplace. She must have decided whatever I said was the last straw because she took it upon herself to remove any autonomy I had at that moment and make my choice for me. I didn't have time before her fangs pierced my neck and sunk into me. I had admittedly allowed something like it before under different contexts. Maybe that was foolish of me. I was young and in love and what else are you to do with your life at that stage if not to be foolish?
There is a defense to be made for my short-lived youth I feel. Those other times were about intimacy, about being tender. It had been soft and safe before. I know how contradictory that sounds. It's a hard feeling to put into words. This time however the bite came with a horrid unnatural pain that was difficult to bear. Even others admit that pain is strange. I had tried running, but it was all for not. My escape attempt was met by her holding me so tightly I had to struggle for little more than a wheeze of a breath. My lungs felt squished flat, and again, truly I had to fight tooth and nail to even gasp for breath or scream. I was lifted and swung around like a ragdoll. She did so with what felt like inhuman strength. Inhuman care. When being perfectly pedantic one has to admit that inhuman is exactly what it probably was. How far was she from the cradle of humanity by then? I remember the start of realizing that I truly meant nothing to her. I was simply a toy that had broken as soon as I wanted something for myself in her eyes. The only reason I can think of for her to do this though was to disorient me.
I scarcely remember anything that was said before, during, or in the most immediate aftermath. I've tried to a couple of times over the years, but nothing came of it. The ripped page does have those words, but I'm not reading them. I've blacked it all out, and the will to read it back does not and will not exist. Not in the modern age. What I do remember, as clear as crystal, is her hastily slicing open her arm and forcing my mouth open so she could get her blood inside. It was thick and bitter. I wouldn't have guessed that blood was what it was if I didn't know better. There was little that was familiar about it. It was thick like I said, but the texture was more than that. I couldn't help but choke. It was coagulated, lightly curdled even. It was so beyond strange. Like licking an old metal pipe you pulled from the lake, with something else in there. I'd go so far as to say it tasted rotten actually. Well, more accurately it tasted like actively rotting decomposing rust. That fits pretty well actually. She then violently flung me to the ground as if I was little more than trash, and I finally knew for a fact, without a notion of a doubt, that I meant nothing to her. I let myself let go of the hope for her changing. I noticed the somewhat unbearable sting of a rapidly healing wound on my legs and stray carved wooden scraps strewn about. She had swung and smacked me into the stair railing so hard that it shattered like a mirror. There was now a hole where perfect and elegantly carved wood had once been.
The next thing I knew she was screaming in my face. Everything had gone full tilt into a pace so quick there was scarcely a moment to process one moment before moving on to the next. Spit flew from her mouth like missiles. She shook so much and got so red that for a moment there I wondered if she would explode. This wasn't the only time she had screamed at me like this, but for the very first time, I didn't cower beneath her. I stared right back whilst I swallowed the blood still in my mouth and wiped the rest from my face. It didn't feel so strange and vile on my hand. I remember that contradiction too. I also finally didn't feel like I needed to stay. In the middle of all this, I can recall this small, short wave of liberation. A whiplash of glory. It was a split-second shock to my system. She took no notice when I reached for a piece of railing and rammed it through her chest. It spoke to how involved she was with her own mind and world. That cry she let out, which in reality was closer to a shrill shriek or screech that would make a banshee blush, still makes me shudder. She died like a coward. Desperately reaching out as if she hadn't just murdered me herself and trying to profess something that would save her. I think. All I remember is her panicked blubbering.
After that, I had a sort of "post-murder clarity" when the unholy amount of adrenaline started to subside. My mind raced, and the both of us panicked. She fell to her knees and on her back a few seconds later. My eyes darted around, my ears took in her subsiding voice, and my feet fumbled around in search of a solid place to plant. I didn't stop for a moment to think that what I had done had felt like the only option I had at that moment to save myself. I had started backing away from her body, horrified by it all. Sickened by the blood staining my freshly laundered bed gown. I don't remember it being red, but for what its worth candlelight was all I had to see with. I assume that I started dry heaving, I'm dry heaving thinking about it now. In all of this, I gave no thought as to where I died. I flew for just one moment, and then a ghastly crack broke through the noise. That would have been my head, I think. My spine? My brain feels as though it's begun to run in circles I can't form a coherent thought without significant effort. The last thing my living ears heard was my body thudding down the stairs, as I had fallen through the hole in the railing she had created. Slipping on the thick, essentially snot-like blood that had begun to cover the floor.
When I awoke later it was to "agreeable enough" peers of hers who had been, according to her, "scandalized for completely false and unfounded reasons" by her treatment of me. My initial view of them that night was blurred and hazy, thanks at least partly to my inability to open my eyes fully at the time. They told me later that the intention was to return me to my family if they could get me away from her. The one woman among them spoke softly and she sounded just...so sad. Strangely knowing, but largely heartbroken whilst she helped clean me up at what is best described as their manor house. All four of them continuously apologized for not being able to save me. Looks of pity and sorrow graced their faces for at least as long as I was battered and bruised. Then and now I wish that they did save me and those looks were never because of my life. I wonder though...is it wrong to wish they had, given all the wonderful things I've been able to see? Everything that my purgatory has allowed me to experience? I suppose I'm grateful for the kindness they've shown me. None of that care was mandatory. I think I would have long since truly died without them. I'm already dead I guess. It gets very fuzzy that. Deciding when exactly I died. There's an argument for me "dying" in 1811 or 1814. Either way though, it was today.
I'm trying to calm myself down and my eyes independently keep looking at the dress Maisey left me. Frantically on the hunt for comfort I guess. I had laid it out around sunset so I could follow the intent to hang it up with the rest of my clothes. Earlier I found myself running my hands along the faded velvet ribbon around the empire waist, recalling how befuddling I found it when the fashion from when I was alive came back around. The memory of doing that is kind of soothing, even though it was mere hours ago. She'd want me to wear it I think. Looking at it now, putting the dress back in its acid-free box feels wrong. She'd want it to be out and about, enjoying it's life. That would be in the spirit of Maisey, especially the Maisey that wore this dress the most. The funny thing about it is that in the letter that came with the dress, she'd written that I'd find love again. That I'd be happy without her someday. Something nice, something hopeful. Her last words ended up being just how Maisey tried her best to be. Maybe when I do get the nerve to wear it again she will posthumously prove herself right. She always had a way of doing such things.
