self soothe

Part 1: Self Sooth 

self soothe 

my shrieks echo 

off the white walls 

of the empty nursing room

inconsolable 

rocking in my cradled cage 

rage rubs my throat raw

until i am pacified

by the lullaby 

of my ringing ears 

singing me to sleep 

falling into dreams 

of sinister silence 

caressing my cheeks 

until i am woken once more

by my muted needs 

hushed and pacified 

by this silent seed

planted before

skepticism could question 

why i was taught 

neglect’s cruel lesson 

I am thirty pounds less of a human than I was since I first left home for college. The Michigan frost aggressively gnaws at the corners of my lips as I punch in the code to the garage. My eldest sister shivers frantically behind me, her red hair glowing in the pale moonlight. 

1-2-0-6

My birthday. Though before it was my father’s, then my mother’s, my eldest sister’s, and now mine by default. I am 21 now, and the joy of celebrating another year has seemingly lost all of its nostalgic glory. I am beginning to feel old now. Too old to still be scared to return home. The same fear consumes me that when I open up that door, I will revert into the same resentful sixteen year old I was, and lose all progress gained.       

My shaky hands push through the door expanding into my childhood home, and I am met with the familiar musk of dust. The house is empty…my parents and youngest sister haven't yet returned from their vacation in Mexico. The silence is palpable. I remember it well. I breathe it in deeply and cling onto what memories I have not repressed. 

My sister flicks on the kitchen lights, illuminating the crumby hardwood floors and mail accumulated across the table surfaces. The house seems to be falling apart. A neglected sadness carried within the decaying surfaces that I knew intimately. My sister goes on expressing her disgust with the state of the house, which unravels into a larger critique of my parent’s mental well being. I validate her claims with a tired nod before rolling my small carry-on suitcase into my room. 

Nothing is where I left it. My youngest sister began to colonize my space the second I left for college in California. Her collection of makeup is caked onto my mirrors while her clothes sit shoved into the corners of my closet. I stopped caring after my first Christmas returning home from college when I realized my expectations were never to be met. I simply shortened my stays and packed enough just for the week I could tolerate. 

To be the middle child is to be forgotten. We are stereotyped as the attention seeking type, which my track record does not refute. Though this futile plea for recognition was soon dominated by the satisfying alternative of invisibility. My needs cloaked by my eldest sister’s wellbeing and the extra attention afforded to my youngest sister.

I try to let go of this resentment. For the sake that there is no room for it in my conscious mind. I rarely call home, but when I return, I am to be the amiable glue that connects the family and their clashing heads competing for attention. The role of observer suits me well, though I fear I have zoomed out into a state of dissociation. The familial connection others describe as innate has devolved into foreign concept I learned to live without. For the most part it doesn't seem to affect me while I am away, though when I return I fight the small hope that we can act like a real family again. 

I nestle into my bed after the seemingly infinite day of traveling. I stare at the chipped indents of the ceiling where my glow in the dark stars used to be. For each star I could count I would say a hail mary, numbering them off like sheep until my mind settled down to finally drift into the darkness. The brown underbelly of the ceiling from the lifted paint stares back at me now, as I comb through my anxieties until my eyes are too heavy to keep open.  

I wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night crying. I can't remember my dreams anymore since I took up smoking weed daily. I peel off my clothes and rest on top of my comforter naked, tracing my finger across my protruding ribs to ground myself in reality. My cat scratches at the door and I welcome him in before burying my face into my pillow to resume the silence of the night. 

The following day, noise returns from their vacation. My father immediately fills the house with the sound of his voice, while the trailing sound of rolling suitcases introduces my mother and younger sister. I take a long inhale of nicotine before leaving my room to greet them. I swat at the trailing smoke in embarrassment that they might see. 

Part 2: Sacrifice 

IT IS SO LOUD

i search for silent ways to cope

a burden i keep tucked in my pink purse  

blackening my lungs 

with cigarette smoke 

WHY CAN'T YOU HEAR ME 

i seek out silence in a fix

dulling my inhibition 

as sweet red wine 

stains my lips 

OPEN YOUR EARS

i forage for a quiet mind 

biting my tongue 

with the avoidance 

that makes my teeth grind

I AM HURTING 

i hunt to mute the pain

stored in my hips

starving the body until synapses 

snap from my brain

SOMEONE HELP ME

i reach for familiar patterns 

of childhood neglect  

grasping on to the only

truth i have left 

DO YOU FEEL THIS TOO?

My grandmother drives me to mass the morning of the 25th. I stopped going to church years ago, but eagerly commit to appease her expectations of me. Though the rest of my family has casted her off as a bitter woman, I always seemed to identify with her the most. Her icy blue eyes engulf me with recognition, and always validated by distant feelings toward my parents. 

The church smells warmly of incense, filled by the sound of wet coughs by the elderly sorting themselves into their seats. I pretend to dip my hand in the holy water, fearing the statistical likelihood of anointing myself with fecal matter. My body naturally mirrors her genuflection into the pews and kneels before the chiseled white Jesus pasted onto the suspended cross.

The father speaks of sacrifice, interjecting the sermon with his own form of stand up comedy that I sympathetically chuckle along too. Jesus sacrificed himself for the forgiveness of our sins because he loved us so much: a statement of empty words engraved into my mind specially compartmentalized for catholicism. I begin to wonder about the voice I sacrificed for the sake of my family. If my needs suppressed by silence was really an utilitarian service of devotion, or simply a selfish scapegoat to avoid conflict. Did sacrificing my needs really do anyone any good? Or did it just magnify my inclination toward self harm without a purpose? 

My questions remain unanswered like prayers. I bite down on the eucharist that snaps like cardboard and swallow away my skepticism before it can taunt me further.          

I am welcomed on Christmas by my relatives with a drink. Red wine peaks through the translucent glass reminding me of the grief from recent blood shed. They know me well, and I thank them for the medicine to ease my experience throughout the holidays. After losing track of refills, my cheekbones flush a raspberry red complimenting the ring of wine etched between the cracks of my lips. 

I have always felt closer to this side of my family than my own. I lean into the conversations with my aunt, squeezing my eye sockets tight with drunken laughter thinking this is what a mother is supposed to feel like. My cousins all possess the same quietness as my mother’s side, the same silent intuition I inherited that birthed independence from chaos. I sit at the dining room table shoving crackers and cheese down my throat to supplement the lack of calories I drank with my wine. I begin to wonder if they think of me as “other” the same way I see my side of the family. If I too am outspoken and take up too much space for my convenience. 

My father and eldest sister speak in gradually increasing decibels to match the other. I grow embarrassed of our innate ability to disturb peace within a home. I make several trips to the bathroom clutching my vape in hand to relieve the gnawing uncomfortableness that constricts beneath my skin. I stare at the bathroom mirror swirled behind an aura of smoke and try to make out the features that look like my relatives.

My mother’s almond shaped eyes and chocolate hair are spliced onto my skull with undertones of my father’s irish skin. The oil accumulating on my nose reflects back a sinister glare on my textured skin and I am filled with disappointment. I can almost feel sad for a moment before I rip my vape again and resume my impaired dizziness that numbs all sensation.  

The alcohol aided in dwindling time, and before I knew it, my mother was herding my family to begin our descent back home. My eldest sister resists, insisting she stay longer. Messy words of hurt and hate are exchanged in the public space of the home, creating a spectacle for my watching relatives. Before I can process, there is screaming and tears exchanged between my mother and sister to which I avoid within the haven of the car.

I rock back and forth in my drunken haze, filling the empty car with smoke from my hyperventilating lungs. I can not bring myself to cry. I can not bring myself to incite more conflict or stress. I remind myself that silence is the best solution in situations like these. We were never going to be a normal family. I hated myself for holding onto this hope. 

My mother and sister stagger their return to the car in silence, their faces both consumed with hurt, inverting their eyebrows toward their swollen eyes. We drive home in silence, my eldest sister’s sobs muffled toward the proximate car door. I sit in the backmost seat muted by observation, weighing out the odds we have another Christmas together as a family. Every calculation led to the conclusion of unlikely. 

An accusatory statement from my mother’s lips splits the silence, initiating the second cascade of chaos. My eldest sister confirms my predicted analysis with the heavy words,

“I am never coming home again”                 

Part 3: Skepticism

My knees heal from kneeling.

I stand up as an atheist.

My prayers evolve into poems.

I repeat without repentance

the forgiveness creation grants,

rhyming to reject consumption.

I lull myself to sleep,

counting stanzas sheepishly.

My mind meets the page.

Ariel reclaims her voice,

once silenced by sacrifice.

Pink fleshy lungs expand,

inhaling the promised land prophesied

by my undead parent’s will.

The stillness around me

births the clarity to introspect,

that I am no longer bound

by this familial curse of neglect.

San Diego welcomes me home with open arms. The second I touch down to the Airport, I feel the warmth of blood rush back into my veins and I am human again. I throw my vape into the first trash can I see, and feel my hands open with the ability to grasp new things. 

My best friend is waiting for me at the airport with a wide wingspan, encapsulating me in her arms as she swings me around with the physical touch I have been starved of all week. I made it through December, through the holidays, and if I am lucky, won't have to return until summer. A triumphant exhale leaves my lips as I sink into her passenger seat warmed by sunshine.

I eagerly swing open my dorm room door, welcomed by the open space of our living room freshly cleaned upon my departure. I fill my water bottle to the brim and hydrate myself for the first time since leaving. The bellies of my cells expand with gratitude, as the lethargy slowly leaves my body.

Upon entering my room, my first instinct is to sit down and write. Write it all down, raw, messy and unapologetic. The keys of my keyboard kiss my fingers with uncharted chemistry, transforming my silence into Arial letters of existence. Tears and laughter emote from my face previously paralyzed by instinctual fear. I begin to remember what it feels like to grieve. To feel my heart expand to the depths of love lost and realize the range of my emotions. 

For the first time in months, I lace up my tennis shoes and suit up in athletic gear. The stretchy fabric clings to my ribs and reflects back the neglect of my own doing that I have been avoiding. My body is weak from starvation, though my mind is sharpened through the accomplishment of resilience. As my arms pump in the unison of my knees lifting, my feet claw the ground with the new found appreciation of freedom. The questions I knelt to in church find resolution as my lungs burn with the pain of new beginnings. No longer will I kneel to the shrine of silence and sacrifice. I have casted off all false idols to resume my connection to spirit that thrives in expression, and exhibits unapologetic ubiquitous existence. 

I soothe myself with skepticism. Paradoxical questioning that redefines the culture that raised me. The child inside of me starved of basic love and touch is now nurtured by the maternal instinct born of absent example. The truths of the bible foretold immaculate conception, and the life I created for myself embodies this prophecy. I live in free verse, finding resolution in rhyme and connection through creation. Though I do not have the capabilities to harness the ever expanding chaos of the world around me, I embrace the will to expand with it. I embody the elasticity to bend rather than break under the pressure pushing down on my weight. I exist with the new found trust that I am able to cope with whatever forces that aim to silence me, through my peaceful retaliation of creation.

Epilogue

My heart goes out to all those who suffer from similar familial dysfunction. The holiday season is often glorified by our culture, with pressure to cherish family time regardless of the conditions that exist behind the four walls of our upbringing. I encourage those who find themselves in this situation to prioritize their peace when going home, though it is important to recognize that avoidance is rarely the solution. We cannot change the past, nor erase the key moments that shaped us as individuals. An essential truth I realized through many painful visits home is that we cannot turn a blind eye to the parts of ourselves that we resent. Rather, we must give ourselves grace and understanding for our shadow. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, whose quote I often find myself returning to, said, “What you resist, persists.” All the maladaptive traits we developed in childhood under the weight of dysfunction, in order to soothe familial triggers, are bound to resurface in adulthood. Regardless of the physical distance we create between ourselves and our family (moving across the country, in my case), it is futile in dissolving the beliefs we carry about ourselves.

Returning the same grace we give ourselves to our family is essential in the healing process, should we want to rebuild relationships. Rather than expecting change from individuals who are unlikely to conform to our expectations, we are called to love them in the same ways they were unable to love themselves. Toward the end of my stay in Michigan, I was able to mediate a difficult conversation between my mother and eldest sister, leading to resolution. Offering a space of neutrality and safety for those unable to communicate their feelings immediately brought me a great sense of peace. Writing, in the same way, offers an outlet for retrospection that may be unavailable to us in times of immediate frustration when faced with volatile triggers. Remember to breathe and pause. You are no longer a child faced with the conflict of your own safety and well-being. Adulthood births the autonomy of skepticism and the critical thinking to alter the predisposed beliefs that may be torturing you without your consent. Believe in your resilience, and accept the freedom that comes with choosing to release yourself from past suffering.

alchemy of poetry

Art often shuns the cold logic of science, viewing numbers and formulas as foreign to the emotional, abstract world of poetry. But as both a poet and a scientist, I’ve discovered that neither can exist in isolation. Through my studies of science unraveling the complex chemistry of the world around me, I have been able to access new connections previously unrevealed through the abstraction of art. It is only through the interplay between the tangible and immaterial that we can begin to bridge the gap of the complex human condition, revealing the alchemical potential of both. I believe that true art is an expression of the chemical concept of alchemy:

Alchemy, an ancient form of chemistry and speculative thought that, among other aims, tried to transform base metals such as lead or copper into silver or gold and to discover a cure for disease and a way of extending life. 

As a poet, my goal within creating and consuming art is generating transformation. On a basic level, transforming immaterial emotions to tangible words with the use of metaphors and similes is an immediate way to touch upon this keystone idea. The wider the theoretical distance between ideas, paradoxically sheds new awareness of the original concept: creating gold out of available metals. I call upon poets to confront contradictions, embrace complexity, and break down boundaries—just as the alchemist sought to break down the barriers between the physical and the metaphysical.

Transformation, then, occurs not only within the poet but within the reader as well. Through language and metaphor, the poet invites the reader to wrestle with their own assumptions, beliefs, and emotions. Poetry, in this sense, is a reciprocal process of transformation—one where both poet and reader are changed by the alchemical reaction that takes place. Through metaphor and structure, the poet invites the reader into a dance of interpretation. The reader’s own experiences and worldview blend with the words on the page, creating an alchemical reaction that changes both the poem and the reader. Transformation happens when the reader is forced to engage with the tensions within the poem—whether through conflicting emotions, shifts in perspective, or unsettling contradictions. Poetry does not provide all the answers; it leaves room for the reader to uncover their own.

A reader is able to experience this alchemy through the gradual reveal of conflicting information. This is where I believe patience is key. To reveal gold without hinting at its humble origin, spoils the quality of its fortified nature. In Wan Chu’s Wife in Bed translated by Richard Jones, we see the enriched complexities of the human experience created through intentionally gradual reveal.  

The complex notion of love is explored through the juxtaposition of infidelity, revealing the transformative idea that these two qualities can coexist. By introducing conflicting concepts, the author encourages the reader to unravel notions of duality often straining our logical processing. I encourage the concept of shock factor, however this must not be the basis of beauty found within poems. I am a huge fan of often using grotesque imagery and diction to paint an uncomfortable sensation for readers to unravel. The goal is not the immediate shock, but the lingering aftertaste left within the reader that can potentially lead to transformed introspection. Jones’ translation accomplishes this reflection, as the reader is forced to reconcile with the wholesome moment between the speaker and her husband shared in bed, supplemented by her impending thoughts of betrayal. Introducing conflicting feelings is an effective way to create tension within the mind of the reader, birthing the opportunity for the audience to synthesize their own resolution based on their personal experiences.  

We think of journaling as the solution for therapeutic release to process our grievances through written word. What is the difference between a journal entry and good poetry? In all honesty, not much. ​​While journaling may serve as a private, cathartic release, poetry has a broader aim—it transforms deeply personal, often repressed emotions into something that can be shared, debated, and reinterpreted. By offering our work to an audience, we open ourselves up to the alchemical process of communal transformation. In this way we are transforming abstract feelings to tangible ones on a larger reaction scale, calling for more powerful tools of language and editing. The act of writing becomes a process of distillation—removing impurities from the experience to reveal a clearer, more resonant truth.

Sylvia Plath, a feminist poet is often criticized for her writing being “glorified journal entries”. She is often ridiculed for using shock factor to elicit a surprised or disturbed reaction from her audience, without any deeper meaning or purpose beyond just wanting to be shocking. In actuality, Plath’s work exemplifies the mode of alchemy that synthesizes new connections to birth transformation for a wider audience than just herself. 

“Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath documents the taboo and triggering topic of her suicide attempts, which on paper sounds repulsing and published in bad taste. What is actually revealed from this work is her profound feelings of resentment and shame toward the patriarchy—watering her down as a “smiling woman” who was graciously saved via miracle rather than mistake. This piece encourages a deep reflection of the world around us: specifically the lack of empathy within the medical field regarding mental health. Plath is able to transform her traumatic experience of shame into a larger meditation on society's reaction to mentally ill women. 

Plath is able to make personal experiences universally valuable through the synthesis of alternative metaphors found within the Bible. Lazarus, a parable within the Bible, tells the story of a man resurrected by Jesus. Plath identifies with this religious figure in how she narrates surviving a suicide attempt, illustrating a very contrasting—almost blasphemous—allusion. The shock of Plath’s writing isn’t in the rawness of the subject matter alone, but in how she juxtaposes it with cultural expectations and religious iconography. Shock, when used deliberately and thoughtfully, serves to break the reader out of complacency, forcing them to confront uncomfortable truths about the world around them. In this way, it becomes a powerful catalyst for introspection and societal critique. 

Alchemy, like writing, is an inherently democratic craft, available to those who are dedicated to sharpening their own tools of awareness to generate a change in perspective. In accessing valuable truths previously unrevealed to us, poetry offers the outlet of shifting positionality. Whether it's changing the perspective of the poem to first person, second person, third person, or creating a persona poem from a completely different view point: we are able to see beyond the limited gaze of our peripheral vision. 

Skinhead by Patricia Smith embodies evolutionary empathy fostered by a shift in positionality. As a black woman, she took on the persona of a racist skinhead: a caucasian man in America. Patricia Smith challenges her own worldview by escaping the positionality of a black woman into the mindset of her oppressor. Through her imagination, Smith is able to transform the unknown into the known by characterizing herself with tangible struggles. Through the development of palpable life experiences of the skinhead, Smith is able to logically access the motivating factors of blind racism she experienced. Smith’s adoption of the skinhead persona demonstrates how poets can push against their own boundaries and assumptions by stepping into the shoes of others, even their oppressors. This act of self-transformation through perspective shift is one of the most powerful ways poetry functions as alchemy. It forces readers to grapple with their own beliefs, prejudices, and ideas.

Poetry is a subtle agreement of evolution made between author and consumer. You don't want to blatantly force feed connections to your readers, rather tempt them with the aroma of nostalgic scents to lure them in. My favorite way to chemically connect with the audience subtly before conscious recognition is through rhyme. Though be warned: the power of rhyme is a double edged sword. Rhyme can create a rhythmic resonance that enhances the emotional experience, yet it can also distract or alienate the audience if not used thoughtfully. When forced into endings of lines, it might invoke nausea within the audience as they search for real meaning. Seduce readers with slant rhymes, edging them from the satisfaction of getting clean cut revelations. 

Presto! Manifesto by A.E. Stallings illuminates the metamorphic nature of rhyme within poetry.

“Rhyme is an irrational, sensual link between two words. It is chemical. It is alchemical.”

“Rhymes may be so far apart, you cannot hear them, but they can hear each other, as if whispering on a toy telephone made of two paper cups and a length of string.”

Encourage confusion and the satisfaction of your wit found when readers are forced to make sense of your syllables through spoken word. The connection of synapses is more meaningful when it is revealed through suspense and surprise. In my own writing, I aim for layers of rhyme schemes. Sometimes the obvious serves as a red herring for the underlying consonance connected between stanzas. A one dimensional poem that reads exactly as intended falls flat with time. I reveal my work with a poker face, letting an audience consume its content with enough ambiguity that they are forced to project their own feelings and find their unique relation to the words. 

To encourage alchemy is not as simple as imitating it. The key to mastering the craft of writing poetry is a similar journey then that of an alchemist. Alchemists perfect their study over mastering practical knowledge about matter while exploring sophisticated theories about the hidden nature of transformation. This is not an immediately tangible path, but one that must be walked with faith. Writing good poetry requires taking challenging risks. Like scientists conducting blind experiments, poets must venture into the unknown, trusting that these risks will lead to greater truths and transformations. Challenge duality. Challenge the unknown. Challenge what is comfortable. This challenge is the essential chemistry for change.   

furnished

A house is not a home until it is furnished. The bare skeleton of a home develops layers of muscle composed of scarlet red drapes and is fleshed out by vanilla-woven throw pillows, further embellished by the piles of mail sprawled across the dining room table. I appreciate furniture in its astute ability to observe and eventually become so normalized it wanders into the land of the unnoticed. If I lie still enough on the shaggy, cookie-colored carpet, I can feel my limbs slowly sink into the realm of the omniscient. My mother’s exhausted voice carries through the kitchen and bounces off the walls until its soft echo grazes my eardrums. My father’s calculated steps, heavy on his heels, are supplemented by the sound of his cracked soles grazing the hardwood floor like sandpaper. The sound of my older sister’s cries and stomps bleeds through the ceiling and drips down onto my forehead, reminding me of my helplessness. I sit and I absorb it all, collecting the emotional scrapes on my skin like the leather couch curled around my living room. The furniture never seems to forget. It has experienced the wrath and weather of my family for years. It holds memories between broken stitches and continues to serve its purpose day after day. Where there is life, it is followed by decay.

I always did love that leather couch. My mom reminds us that it is older than all of my sister’s ages combined on multiple occasions. It wraps around the perimeter of the living room, framing a perfect L, composed of rotting chocolate brown leather. Its exterior is adorned by an assortment of throw pillows ranging from jewel-tone purples to horrific houndstooth prints that assault the artistic eye. I never minded its general ugliness nor dusty aroma that tickled my nose hairs and would occasionally cause a sneeze. Each day, I would sink into its skin, intertwined with a wisdom I could never fully fathom. My sweaty surface would melt into its embrace, sticking to my skin until I could not differentiate where I stopped and it began. Its cracks were lined with goldfish crumbs and secret meals I would smuggle into the living room when my parents were both off at work for the day. I'd drag my nail through the indents between cushions to scoop up as much material as I could before my mom could scold me on my lack of cleanliness. My sisters and I joked that you could gather a full course meal from the sheer mass of food buried within that couch. The belly of the couch bleeds light brown scrapes from where my kitten had marked his territory over the years. Though his scratching post lay against the back of the couch, he made the executive decision to leave his mark where it could be better appreciated. The couch cradled away my cautions of being home. It was a safe space that not more than two people sat on at the same time. Couch time was a sacred section of the day dedicated to unwinding the intricacies of knots woven in my brain. It accepted my ugliness and quirks as much as I accepted its own, and together we pressed into each other's flesh like a hug meeting heart against heart.

Then there was the mandala rug that fell under the shadow of the chandelier attached to the highest part of the ceiling. It dressed the hardwood floor in a business-casual sort of manner with its discounted price elegance. My dad found it at the neighborhood garage sale and power-washed it on the driveway, leaking dirt and mold across the cement. It found its way into our home without an introduction or welcome. Its burgundy background and dizzying purple and yellow print stick out like a sore thumb in the center of the hardwood floor. As a child, I was entranced by the complexity of its circular matrix. I would walk its circumference until my eyes sunk back into my skull and began to spin under its hypnosis. It graciously caught me after I would disorientedly collapse into its grasp. There was a sense of trust between us that was a bred in our mutual oddity. My body would stretch like a starfish across its vast surface area, staring up at the dangling glass chandelier above us. I would often wonder if the carpet anticipated its impending collision with the sky. The chandelier's presence was overbearing, even when my neck wasn't askew, staring at its apex. It was always hanging above, lurking and reminding me of its attached consequence. Sometimes I wonder if the carpet would be there if the chandelier was not—whether its purpose was connected to preventing disaster, even though it seemed entertaining to the eye independently.

A round stone table seated my family for every meal and pastime. Its gray and pink granite top was composed of stones shaped like scales that swam around each other in concentric circles. Some iridescent stones would sparkle in the yellow light of the kitchen when I tilted my head at a certain angle. Its glass top, separating the stone from the surfaces of cups and plates, was carelessly shattered years ago when I dropped a glass bottle of perfume on its ridged side. Now its dry stone surface holds paint and stains from sauce that fossilized into its welcoming grooves and ridges. I knew each freckle on the face of the table as if it were my own. Dinner was when we made eye contact the most. When my lips were sealed from the expired spit of silence and my eyes widened to any sort of stimulation. I recognized patterns of decay centralized where main courses were designated. I imagined it knew my family by the patterns of our seating positions and table manners—how it could feel my father’s knuckles pound against its surface, my mother’s frail elbow supporting her corporate hand gestures, or my older sister’s incessant leg shaking anxiously disturbing the stillness of its plane. I doodled drawings and sentences on the belly of the table, materializing my thoughts with the warmth of my finger against the cold comfort of the cement exterior.n I felt safe knowing the dining room table experienced it all with me. In that observance and stability, it possessed yet never retaliated.

No one realizes how much shit my family has crammed into the closet. Behind its ivory ribs lie parallel shelves gushing with shoes, shin guards, hats, and wrappers. When the shelves were first installed, I was granted the privilege of labeling each level with the intended items it would house. Crafty assorted stickers were delicately plastered on the adjacent ledge beneath the shelf like a welcome mat for its designated items: a blue one labeled “hats,” a red one labeled “shoes,” and a mustard yellow one detailed “miscellaneous.” Stepping back from the organized shelves and their neatly aligned items filled me with great pride and a cathartic sense of control. Before long, my dad began shoving items into the miscellaneous category that he did not want to spend time organizing. Things like my younger sister’s snack wrappers and tennis balls he would dump after picking her up from practice. Eventually, each shelf evolved to become miscellaneous. No matter how many times I would intervene with monthly cleanings or polite comments to my parents and sisters to follow the system of organization, I was met with a nod, then unchanged behavior. Over the years, its chaos compounded. Shoes suddenly held sentimental value to my family, though they no longer used them. Expired twinkle toes that no longer lit up were preserved as nostalgic memorabilia. Gloves laced with poison ivy and thorns from weeding were noted to not be thrown away at all costs until my father got the chance to clean them. He never did. I could not pass the closet without feelings of rage bubbling in my stomach. It was a problem no complaining nor cleaning could solve. It was chronically abused by my family’s incessant need for hoarding. I hated the closet's ability to hold all of my family’s issues yet completely close its hinges, sealing away the need for intervention. It was silent and complacent, denying help with its angelic glow of pearlescent white paint and polished brassy knobs. It was okay holding the gravity of chaos, and for that, I could never empathize with the hollows of the cabinet.

On breaks when I visit home, I see the familiar surfaces of leather, paint, fabric, and stone that make up my home. Blankets of dust caress the same spots my body grazed daily, and I cannot help but feel guilty. Guilty of abandoning my home and the relationships I made with these spaces. How my body will never be little enough to stretch out in a star formation on my mandala carpet or sink into the same imprint on the couch that took years to craft. I envy how furniture never experiences the burden of growing pains, yet I pity the static prison of its placement, never realizing there is a home outside of this house.

skin

In the factory of flesh, humans are delicately dipped into a soft glaze of porcelain. Small bubbles escape to the surface, gasping for air as they emerge from the dermis. Angels cook the skin in a kiln, its doughy exterior rising until its crust is begging to burst. It emerges fragile and soft. Praying to be touched, ripped apart and eaten. In every extreme of its fragility, it is attracted to the same depth of destruction. 

Critical flesh, resting on the cusp between the satisfaction of shallow touch, and the desire to be dissected to understand what's inside. It is there to protect me, they say. Yet skin is what causes me so much pain. How it stings and screams with open wounds. And futile to the pain that penetrates pores and gnaws at the heart. To remind me I am human perhaps. And what an isolating experience it is.

Love strips away the senses and drenches them in the drunken effects of pure adrenalin. You don't even notice you are hurt until you look down to see blood gushing from the gash in your defenses. That's when you realize it hurts. But by then, the damage has been done, and you preferred the reality before you looked down.

I was dating a college athlete, I am not sure who I was intending to impress with my dribbles and juke moves on the soccer field. But by then we were not dating, and to him I was the interesting specimen that was smart, kind and debatably athletic. Bound to a school in Southern California, where she could escape. Seductively out of reach. 

The turf field radiated a playful heat, hopeful of the ripe four months of summer before we all departed for our committed colleges in the fall. Four months. Surely not enough time to fall in love. Until it was. 

There were floating assumptions about the figure referred to as Abigail McDowell. Her name often accompanied in sentences of pity and confusion. Always walking the halls in silence, with her eyes tracing the lines of tile as she paced from point A to B. Never connected to the same people for chronic periods. Detached and not subtle about it at all. Speculations arose that she left Michigan to escape her family. 

I do not deny any of these partial truths, but they never came close to capturing my essence. To be defined as misunderstood was such an invalidating cliche. I understood enough about myself that I kept others away in spite of it. It was a depth I would not ask anyone to dig.

Sam was a gentle giant. He fell into the category I defined as both popular and kind. He did not strike me as someone with adversity in his life, or the awareness to perceive it within others. I was invisible to this archetype of man. Or perhaps that is the way I preferred it to be. I knew all I needed to know about people like him with the tidy exchange of hellos. I truthfully had not had a conversation with him until the final days of senior year when he caught my eye. His towering frame climbed to the top of my periphery like a tree gracefully kissing the sky. Sams’s lanky outline confidently planted his heals into the synthetic blades of grass beneath him, prepared to perform. His hair shaggy fell beneath the cusp of his ear lobes in a juvenile bowl cut. It draped across his face, reflecting gold streaks naturally bleached from the sun. In that moment where he stood in front of me on that field in an athletic stance to defend me from the goal, I remember thinking his hair mimicked the shape of a coconut. I could not help but feel the muscles around my cheeks constrict, and I was smiling to myself on that hot summer day. 

The condensation leaked from my skin to my shirt, sticking to the small of my back, and clinging onto my breasts restricting my breath. I was breathing hard before I even touched the ball. My weight shifted from the soles of my feet onto my toes as I dashed across the field, tapping the ball delicately with the sweet outer surface of my sneaker. The aglet on my left untied shoelace clinked against the surface of the ball between touches. The distance between us was closing. I traced the circumference of the ball with my right foot, faking my direction with the position of my body, then tapped the ball with my left foot, effortlessly maneuvering around him. My body sizzled with elation as I ran with the wind created from passing his stature. With an open field welcoming my strides, I wound up my dominant foot and forcefully followed through towards the net. As my right foot came down to catch my forward falling weight, the toes of my sneaker landed on my left untied lace, propelling my body forward towards the impending rugburn of turf.  

My body glided across the turf like sledding across the snow without the lubricating lack of friction. A stinging sensation possessed my skin from the cap of my knee, across the entire surface area of my shin, down to my ankle. Millions of bee stings stamped across my leg. I sat in a shallow kitty pool of my embarrassment before picking my weight up to address the situation.

My eyes greeted him with delight. Looking for compliments of my athleticism or at least a wave of playful mockery. Rather I was reflected back with concern. His eyes traced down my knobby knees down to my mismatched socks, his tangerine lips curled in cation. “Abby, he muttered. Does it hurt?”  No, I laughed back. Until gravity grabbed my chin to my legs gushing in gore. My leg was rubbed raw from friction, just deep enough to draw blood. My left leg looked as if it was flipped off of the side of a grill, plated and prepared like a well done steak. My skin barrier was peeled back, revealing ruby red blood escaping to my ankles in an effort to stain my white air force sneakers. It began to hurt then. When I connected the pain to its abused origin. I remember staring down in shock to the sheer volume of blood my body produced to what felt like nothing more than a scratch seconds prior. But when my eyes met his once more I could not help but brokenly laugh as tears glossed my vision. “Skin heals” I smiled shyly. 

Blood began to clot. And the healing began. It would have been fulfilled if we had not ripped it open again and again. The sticky chocolate dipped leather couch in his basement held our imprints for the following weeks of apprehension. We sat apart, absorbing the Survivor tribal music that continued to que episodes until 2am. We were murderers of time to the highest degree. In how we would pause episodes to allow our laughs to echo out our observations. Or rewind challenges to dissect our own strategies as if we were in the game together. Our eyes glued to the TV, yet we were invisibly adhered to the same thoughts of warmth that were feet apart from realization. Rather than make a move, our pores secreted anxious sweat, pasting our skin to the tacky leather couch, a sterile and safe alternative. 

My left leg sat up on the coffee table ahead of us, now a ridgid burgundy scab that consumed the normalcy of my leg. Its edges were rough and raised from the surface of my skin. Small leg hairs danced around the perimeter of its scabby edges, too dangerously close to shave away. I'd run my index finger delicately across its body brainlessly as we would watch the show. Sometimes pushing down in suspense, illuminating volcanic cracks of blood once more. The pads of my fingerprints were a faded strawberry stain most nights, when I would drive home realizing I had accidentally abused my skin’s attempt to heal. Time would pass. I could tolerate the slight scream of my skin begging to heal. It could do that on its own. At least I was distracted for the time being. 

Our first kiss took place during the Season 20 finale: Heroes vs Villains when he paused and turned to me shyly, a nervous blush aggravating his cheeks. He looked at my leg displayed beneath the fluorescent reflection of the television. It's pretty bad still, he noted. I bobbed my head in gentle agreement. It's been getting better, I assured him, now consciously aware of the body heat of his skin leaking into mine. His elongated fingers kindly addressed the edges of my scab. “It's kinda gross,” he giggled. His fingers cautiously drifted up my knee to my thigh, gently tracing the popped blood vessel from the accident. But here, your skin is so smooth he observed. I have never felt something so soft. Is this okay? He asked as he continued to feel my shaven legs, now onto my quad muscle that visibly peaked through the ripples of my flexed skin. He sank his palm into his touch, now fully petting my leg like a stranger’s dog. His eyes glossed over in awe of the warm flesh that met the anterior of his calloused hands.

Gravity guided my chin towards his, and the connection of flesh was sweet and soft. His breath lingered of licorice and a slight sour of saliva. He guided me to the belly of the sticky couch, the back of my skin velcroed to the surface of the leather cushion. The border between his skin, mine, and the foreign womb of the couch, I became nothing and everything at once. As I embraced another body, my skin no longer felt like it was constricting my bones; rather melting in reverse, releasing any tension and flowing towards the being in front of me. I love the feeling of taking myself off and becoming another. Pain is what brings me back into my body. It wasn't a home I wanted to return to. 

I shrieked as I unstuck my leg from the couch, ripping the adhesive of my leaking wound from the leather it had meshed with. Blood began to pool from the pores of my raw flesh to the same unsettling extreme as the original accident. Sam pulled away to address the situation, to which I pulled him back toward my body and told him to ignore it.

While we kissed I could not help but to feel paralyzed by the pain radiating from my leg. As he pressed up against me, his scratchy jeans caressed my wound abrasively. Tearing deeper layers of tissue that stained the cuffs of his denim a cherry-wine complexion. I could not pull away from the ecstasy of his touch, for the reason it felt so fulfilling, and because I knew when it was over I would have to tend to the consequences of my cut. 

We began to wear each other's skin on weekdays. Carrying each other's dialect in our tone, and mannerisms wherever we went. Our lexicon built upon the foundation of inside jokes and glares connecting our implicit observations of the outside world. We were inseparable. A new identity combined that felt grander and fuller than I have ever felt alone.

I left for California that summer with an eggplant colored abrasion patching up the reminisce of the wound, and a long distance boyfriend waiting for me across the country. I began that summer without the desire for either. Yet there I was, still attached to the hometown I was committed to leaving forever. It took me 18 years to find love in that town, and the origins were outside of blood. That was the confusing part. I didn't want to let go of being loved even if that destroyed me.

My mini skirts evolved into long flowing midi and maxi silhouettes. It was both a visual bandaid over my scar, as well as my first steps into young adulthood. There were days I felt pretty without him. But they were infrequent. My emotional skin was so thin that a strong enough exhale from a stranger could peel the top layers of cells clean off. A flimsy shell of validation coated the outside of my skin protecting me from the outside world. I had someone who could kiss away the pain. Love me ripped open and bleeding. See me raw and embrace me unconditionally. 

I am walking up the incline of campus heading back toward my freshman dorm, when my pocket vibrates the hum of an incoming call. My maternal grandmother’s contact is glaring back at me from the screen. My mother describes her mother with adjectives of resentment and spite. How she was distant and withholding of her love. In separate contexts however from which I cannot differentiate, she says I resemble her in every way. From my dimpled smile to my grudges that seem to ferment like fine wine. These notes were nauseating to hear from my mother, yet I found peace in being compared to my grandma. We got along well. Always have. Yet this call was strange. Unexpected to state it more clearly. My family has a habit of only calling me when they are in need of something that only I could supply. And my grandmother never asked for anything. 

She was a deeply introverted woman that resented every soul that presented a threat. She always had a soft spot for me though. Perhaps the way I emotionally rolled over, revealing my submissive underbelly, promising to never hurt her if that promise was reciprocated. We accomplished the courteous exchange of greetings and hellos when she interjected with an acute concern.  I have been thinking about that gash on your leg, I noticed it when you visited not too long ago. The best thing you can do is to put sunscreen on it. The sun damage in California is only going to make it more permanent. I ended that call without any intention of applying topical prevention.  My heart ached in appreciation for her strange warning. How she cared about my wellbeing. How she cared how I would age with this purple scar tainting my leg. It was around this time when I questioned if long distance was the right decision for us.

How I could never escape the impending effects of holding on. I think of that David Foster Wallace quote, “Everything I ever let go of has claw marks on it” and the bridge of my nose stings with emotion. I questioned who I was holding onto, and for what reason. I came to the conclusion that it was not him. 

The sun followed me everywhere, pounding down on my raw skin, absorbing the UV, clinging onto the memories that possessed my leg. Even when my scab has crusted and dried off, the effects of avoidance infected my dermis deeper and deeper each day.

I began sacrificing pain for intimacy with a concerning tolerance. The pain of feeling stuck in a relationship. The pain of wanting to be with a woman. The pain of watching my friends find love that they could hold. I could escape none of these feelings. The cathartic calls and self convincing was enough to hold onto for the time being. He was the love of my life. Someone who has mapped out my mind and body with great precision. That is something to preserve. Even if it hurts doing so. We just had to make it until summer. 

And we did. And that felt like enough for the time being. 

Our summer skin a shared coat of auburn freckles, perfectly mapped constellations of a sky we fell under each night hopelessly. He lay behind me, his legs encompassing my lower back like a train formation kids do before going down banana colored slides. The length of his fingers tracing the reptilian scales of my shoulders caps, crisp and prepared to shed. From a ridgid edge naturally peeled slightly upward- he carefully grasped its corner as if prepared to turn the page of a book. The dry skin came off effortlessly, a delicate spider web angelically floating off of my shoulder as if it had never been attached at all. With the sheet of skin still in his hand, we giggled at the ghost of freckles that stuck to its surface and simultaneously coexisted on my shoulder. 

The curiosity of his fingers returned to my upper back, below the root of my neck. A welcoming opening of flesh presented itself through the same lifted edge as before. He began to slowly rip down its edge, compounded by the force of gravity and his excitement for a second result. The removal excruciatingly stung, the premature skin still attached to my nerves begging to stay. I continued to silently look forward while he finished the removal of the unripened flesh. A final rip rang throughout my skin. He brought the flesh between our gaze to once again examine. The thin flakey origin grew thicker and thicker to a horrifying millimeter in width. He pressed on my back from which the skin had been removed. An irritated red held the imprints of his fingers where they concerningly inquired. “I don't think that one was ready” he murmured under his exhale. I quietly agreed. 

As those hot summer months progressed, the glory of embrace had lost its illusion of being an all consuming solution. The sweet caramelized shell of love- sugar coating every interaction- had slowly dissolved over time. Perhaps I outgrew its restraint. Its crunchy exterior flaked off when I realized love could not keep me small. I was left with its melting sugar of guilt sticking to my skin. Constantly feeling unclean and dangerously tacky to anything that was unlucky enough to enter my proximity. 

It was not until the fall semester of my sophomore year that I decided to begin the process of pain that is healing. The phone call took place the Tuesday night before my classes began the following morning. Horrible timing on my part. I sank into the lavender duvet cover draped over my twin xL and clicked the contact labeled “sam<3” under my starred contacts to initiate a call. I thought about how I would have to remove him from that list. I would have to delete all of the pictures of him too. Would it still be okay to text his mom? 

The edible I took 30 minutes prior to help calm me down in order to address the situation only made my mind spin with haste. 15 mg of some Sativa gummy that was advertised as a fruity flavor, but when chewed tasted like how weed smelled walking on the beach, mixed with the carcinogenic aroma of burning plastic. I didn't believe in the difference between Indica and Sativa but maybe I should have. It sounded like conspiracy-stoner-jargon the more and more it was explained to me. I got high to go numb, and both completed the task. Not that night though. The overspill of emotions leaked through the intentional barrier I had built to protect me. By the time my attention returned to my screen, Sam had been on the call for 30 seconds, barely audible “hello’s” and “are you there's” slipped from the speaker as I watched the timer reach 32, 33, 34, and I waited for the numbers to stop and the conversation to be over.

“Yeah, I'm here” I inserted. Though I really wasn't. Underneath the weed and emotional distress I still really wasn't there. A shell of love. Where my identity was intertwined with being held. My lips moved and tongue flicked in the algorithm communicating the breakup. Confusion accompanied me on the other line. My cracked lips burning from the sting of salty tears. My mouth coated in cotton was slowly quenched by my tongue’s licking and swallowing of the sorrowful fluid. My heart physically ached inside the futile protection of my ribcage. A collapsing weight pressed down on my organs from all angles. He sounded indifferent and distant, unable to encompass the sheer weight of impact this conversation would have on each other's lives. How tomorrow we wouldn't be texting and calling routinely. I hung up the phone that night. Never changing the contact of his name. 

We got back together within three days. Apparently calling and texting everyday whilst using the same endearing vocabulary of “Baby” and “I love you” was not enough to create a clear break. Each call and text that once felt like fingertips kindly tracing down my spine were now viscous claws of a wild animal. Nails peeling back skin in four leaking lines, resembling a thumbless trail of fingers. Ending calls with “I love you” felt lovingly charged with revenge, the only way to hold on to each other now.  

I believe in the complexity of humans and how we contain multitudes or whatever Walt Whitman said, but it all ultimately boils down to a simple duality. There are two kinds of people in this world. One that can end an animal’s life for the sake of limiting its suffering; and people like me who watch them slowly bleed out in agony. I realize this is not the nicer option. But I am selfish in how I avoid causing pain. So much that I am willing to witness and absorb it all. There is guilt in the empty barrel of a gun, regardless of the intention. I'd plead the suffocating lie of negligence before I'd ever consider responsibility for the final blow. Our relationship layed on the side of the road, antlers tracing the faded painted lines of traffic, begging to be killed. For the suffering to end. To die with dignity. What a beautiful beast it once was. Neither one of us could take responsibility for the carcass. We took its soft breaths as a sign of survival and drove on like nothing occurred.

Things ended for the second time days later, over another heavy call. No contact was enforced. I remained on the side of the road. Just barely breathing. 

I remember reading a biological study detailing how foreign DNA from sexual partners will linger for months before being fully recycled by the body. I lay paralyzed by the presence of him all around and inside of me. Science promises that it would take two weeks for the current layer of skin cells to turn over revealing a fresh chance. It had been far more than two weeks since we touched, yet his memories penetrated deeper layers of the skin that would take months perhaps years to erase. My attention wanders toward the shin of my left leg. A foreign continental shape lays mapped in patchy hues of purples and reds. I run my fingertips across its surface. Debatably healed over, and to the blind hand, imperceptibly smooth. It has come to my attention that no one cares about your suffering once it has left the eye. Once there is no graphic and tangible evidence that will turn heads and arise questions of concern. But your body holds secrets within the internal bruising of the heart and broken ribs that may never heal. And as I lay there, feeling it all, I prayed for somebody brave enough to get close to me again. So they could understand this invisible pain too. 

The quilt of flesh I pull over by bones before drifting off to sleep is decorated with memories of him. Goosebumps evaporate from my dermis and condensate onto the surface of my skin in little droplets. Slowly dripping down and across the milestones of our love. My fingers trace  

the hollows of my collarbones, haunted by the ghost of his warm lips. The heart tattooed on my sternum that he would eskimo kiss with his large nose mirroring his Italian ancestors' descent. My finger drifts around the circumference of my belly button, where he would hypnotically swirl around, as our bodies lie naked in a pool of exhaust. Down to my inner thighs where he mistook my stretch marks for self harm. I never corrected him on the account; it spared me from other stories I did not wish to tell. I'm not sure he truly ever knew me. I'm not sure how anyone really could. But he embraced me unconditionally in a way nothing else mattered. Except when it did. Feel me up, rip apart my ribcage and sort through my organs just to uncover more ambiguous red. Nothing can truly communicate the isolation that wrapped me up in fleshy tones of pink. But God it felt so good to be touched. It came the closest I would be to feeling understood. 

mouth

I never brush my teeth. Well not “never” as an absolute. 

Of course before special dates when I know the facade behind my bleached teeth won’t be convincing enough, due to the snitching stench of proximity.

I suppose I never made a habit of it as a child. I’d lock the bathroom door and let the sink run while I held my finger down on my automatic toothbrush. It was programmed to play a Justin Bieber song to the  time-recommended brushing period. I still wince at the song Baby when the early 2000s throwbacks bleed from the radio. My parents of course grew suspicious. To combat this, I would spread a line of red white and blue kids toothpaste across my tongue and swish it around. I might as well have brushed my teeth by the time I perfected my rehearsed routine of deception. Let it be known that I passed the “breath test” every time with a straight face. 

My dirty little secret. Disgusting I know. Except it never seemed to bother me. It became my new normal. One that I created and controlled. My sisters who religiously brushed their teeth got more cavities than I ever had throughout my upbringing. I believed that enough bacteria was healthy to avoid sickness. Antibodies or something I overheard adults talking over. My six year old logic was that if cavemen got by without meticulously minting their bones, that I would get along just fine. There’s fluoride in the water anyway. 

My smile is one that captures the attention of strangers. I suppose I am doing something right. I’m sure the seductively sweet dimple that decorates my left cheek gives a few points toward the overall experience, but my teeth have been specifically complicated. The second I got my braces off in the summer of 8th grade, I proceeded to fry my fragile teeth raw with whitening strips my mother kept stashed away behind a box of super plus tampons.

My teeth winced under extreme cold or hot conditions. Icewater made the nerves in my canines howl. Hot tea made my gums so sensitive I thought they would end up melting down my teeth. It was a pain I could tolerate for the trade of subtle appreciation from strangers. It was a problem I grew extremely conscious of. But I couldn't help but lie through my teeth. My mouth was a trojan horse of every nasty thought that left my lips in sweet words. No one cared to see past this facade. They smiled back. 

I believe it was these elementary secrets that began my series of compulsive silences throughout my childhood. I found peace in that I was not lying. I just omitted certain truths that I knew, when they were verbalized, would become real. I enjoyed the internal limbo of feeling but never communicating.

I walked around suffering the paranoia of an imposter. Knowing the interiority of myself was grazing my tongue over my teeth, to feel morning plaque cemented between the cracks of my teeth. Guilt of negligence festering like cavities slowly browning in the belly of my molars. 

I once asked my mother, “if you never ate food, would you still have to brush your teeth?” My child hypothesis played into the logic that no food correlates to no bacteria, thus no cavities. She laughed in response. “Never eat on your first date. I am surprised if a boy would ever kiss that mouth at all”. This bothered me for the fact that she didn't seem to answer my question at all. I just stood adjacent to her with my head down feeling as if my ugliness had been exposed. Perhaps I wasn't good at controlling my secrets at all.

My mouth is where I consider my state of mind resides. It is the essence of how I have always felt a dirty rot lingering within the darkness of my insides. When my mind cannot process, its entropic force is relocated down to the grinding of my teeth. 

Disassociation is often described as a loss of connection between thoughts, memories, feelings, surroundings, behavior and identity. Most people describe dissociation as zooming out. Leaving the body. I find myself imploding. Slowly spiraling into myself until I am nothing more than a fetus blinded by the warm womb of sensations. No thoughts. Simply embryonic fluid whispering sweet lullabies that whatever I am experiencing will pass. 

I find myself in the small cavity of my mouth often. I see my mouth as a small 3 by 2 inch room. Carpeted in the fuzzy rug of my dehydrated tongue. A ruby red uvula hanging from the ceiling like a droplet of a chandelier. The gates of the door are made of ivory tusks. It is the purgatory of thought before words leave my lips, and it is the secrets I swallow in between sips. It is always dark. Unknown and elusive. Somewhere my eyes can never contort to look inside.

I am not sure why I am choosing to write this. I can understand sensations, and emotions to an intellectual extent, but it all feels verbose, and too much to swallow. So I type rather than speak, and write pages of persuasion because I feel when the words leave my lips, they will be intrinsically tainted with the traces of my DNA. My mouth is what makes things real. Flicks of my tongue communicate sounds that the human ear can hear. I suppose this is a story about intimacy. Why I find it terrifying. And why I tend to feel all of the sensations to distract me from actualizing real connection. I am always in my head. Words caught on the tip of my tongue. 

Someone once told me that the tissue on the side of your cheeks is the same as the inner lining of the vaginal canal. I know this because my friend has a small scar indenting the interior of her left cheek, where doctors extracted this tissue for her vaginal reconstruction. This information sat uncomfortably lodged within the forefront of my brain. I wasn't sure what to do with this knowledge, other than stare at it uncomfortably, waiting for its importance to reveal itself to me.   

I began to understand consent around the same time I understood why this fact seems to bother me to the extent it did. Food and Sex and substances were intimacies I allowed to penetrate these tissues without my consent. I could not quite trace the origin of this consent, or if it was a choice I could really decide at all. All I could manage to pinpoint consent was the act of unhinging of my jaw, akin to the slow spreading of my legs. Where these tissues were exposed to the light, welcoming a foreign object to its soft origin. 

My first kiss took place when I was fifteen, in my sophomore year of highschool. That same day, also happened to be when I smoked weed for the first time. 

My friend’s 22 year old brother pulled into my driveway with his cherry red honda, rims muddied from the dirt road he drove across to get here. I pulled my pink mini skirt down while walking down the decline of my driveway so as to not seem too suggestive. I awkwardly stepped into the passenger seat, into the strenuous angle it had been altered to. We exchanged hellos without eye contact. His eyes were an untrustworthy blue in contrast to his dark curls piling on top of his forehead. We drove to the movie theater where he promised to show me the new movie we had discussed over text. 

He parked in the back of the empty parking lot. I remember suggesting closer spots out of the concern that it might rain, and we would have to walk back further. 

“I like how secluded it is,” he responded.” “We should smoke before the movie…it will make it more fun, " he suggested. 

From the glove department, he offered me the blue metal tube. 

“You can have the first hit”

I inhaled a breath from the pen, under the compelling disguise that I have done this act before. The consequent cough blew my cover. I could not catch breath into my lungs for minutes of self suffocation. He offered me water to which I took delicate sips so as to not appear greedy. 

“I don't think I am going to smoke actually, " he noted. “I just remembered I have soccer practice later”.  

My vision sank behind my eyes, as my periphery consumed my vision in a darkened haze. My breath was slow and audible as my mouth hung open. His body leaned over the center console and unbuckled the seat belt I had not realized was still harnessed around my body. His figure hung over me, lingering, as he analyzed the situation. I could feel his eyes skimming up my thighs, and I remember regretting wearing that pink mini skirt. 

“Can I kiss you?” He asked

Though he did not allow time for a response. It was less of a question and more of a preformative gesture. His face met mine with stiff lips. He began to dart his hot tongue inside of my mouth. He gripped my face with the moist sweat of his palms to move my face into his. My eyes remained open, as I analyzed the fibers of his eyebrow whose hairs were centimeters away from my vision.I began to float elsewhere. My vision left my eyes and began hovering above the two of us as if I was granted access to a birds eye view. I could feel every sensation, but not understand that it was me who was feeling them. Every nerve impulse was signaled but never met its destination within my frontal cortex, my brain did not, could not accept that this was a real experience. The saliva from his mouth dripped from the corners of my lips while I waited until he was finished. He pulled away to gauge my response. The white of my eyes engulfed the soft brown of my pupils in shock. His right hand pushed our faces together once more while his left hand drifted up my skirt. 

We never made it inside the movie theater. 

I remember telling all of my friends about how I had my first kiss. How it was with an older boy but I never specified the exact age gap of seven years. I am writing this turning 20, and my younger sister is now 15. I cannot so easily forgive this fact when I have the perspective to understand that I was not “mature for my age” but rather a child naive enough to believe that this was true.  

From that point forward, my lips remained parallelly shut in a horizontal line. Teeth clenched in an effort to protect the softness that remained. They did open however, to the inhalation of smoke, and to the sips of alcohol that would calm such feelings of horror. This was a ruin I could consent to. And I felt in control. It was something that would affirm the emotional state I was already in. This time my lips welcomed such a violation. The sweet sting of menthol nicotine on the back of my throat was a pain my mouth embraced. 

My jaw remained shut to the plates of dinner that steamed before me. There was a lingering betrayal and ugliness I let enter my body with that kiss. I thought I could starve it out in this way. Something I could not let in so long as I kept my jaw shut as I should have done that day.

There is an intimacy in these tissues. Creating an internal canal of both pleasure and pain. What is consent if to not preserve these sacred spaces. Or at least have a say of what can enter. I struggle with the definitive line between control and intimacy. If these two ideas can exist as one. If surender is a necessary factor in closeness. I'm not sure I am willing to relinquish control for the sake of feeling close. I am already close enough to everything within me. The claustrophobic space where my tongue curls into my mouth. Or when I swallow food down my esophagus sacrificing air for fuel. It all seems like sacrifice. I'd rather keep my jaw shut. It is safer this way.   

My eyelids flower open to the softly light dentistry office. An angelic filter of anesthetic stretches a numb smile across my face. The sterile fragrance of formaldehyde with slight undertones of clove oil penetrates my nasal cavity. I am transported to the car to my living room couch seamlessly. The leather cushion adheres to the sweat of my summer skin, as I melt into the foreign womb of the couch, returning to my prenatal space. Before there was pain. Before there was awareness. Before I knew something was missing.

I woke up for a second time to the end credits of Survivor ringing in my ears. I drifted off to the bathroom sink, not quite awake yet. Bending over the porcelain sink, I spat out a concerning amount of blood. I could feel a cloudy obstruction lodged in the back of my molars. Reaching my fingers to the back of my throat, I extracted a clown's handkerchief length of gause drenched in fresh blood. The pain still feels dull and untraceable, likely due to the anesthetic. This makes the aching sensation more aggravating due to its ambiguity. 

The vibration from my phone draws my attention elsewhere. I see Sam’s contact name spelled out in lower case letters running across my screen like lines of news on the periphery of the television screen. Sam was my first love. A boyfriend who’s puppy kisses and simple kindness filled the impenetrable emptiness that had been lingering for years since the incident. He was, however, not compatible with my identity in any way. I had realized this after a year into our relationship. It was a fact I could circle back to. An absolute. I could not see myself being with him in a couple months, let alone years. He had been cradled as the youngest child, unaware of the adversity the average human being endured. His kindness was bred from naivety, while mine was through empathy. No amount of words that could slip from my lips could breach this chasm between us. 

But he was warm. And a comfort for my body when I felt empty and alone. So I told him to come over. 

While waiting for him to come, I wandered through the kitchen towards the medicine cabinet. Anything that could take this pain away. The sweet outer shell of the orange Advil pellet slid down my throat with the bloodied saliva I compiled to lubricate my esophagus. The orange bottle of oxycontin from my father’s collarbone surgery met my eye. I skimmed over the dosage and took two, as I did with most medications. It left a chalky aftertaste in my mouth that lingered on the tip of my tongue. I washed the residue down with almond milk, straight from the carton. This was my guilty pleasure I partook in when I knew no one was home. After a while I stopped feeling guilty, and just lived on as it was normal to begin with. I went back to not brushing my teeth after a month of dating. It is easy to justify habits when they can be repeated without consequences I suppose. Sam felt like this too. Something I took to wash a bad taste from my mouth.

Sam closes the front door behind himself softly, placing weight between his hands and the door to muffle the clinking sound of locks. “No one is home” I grumble from the kitchen. He proceeds toward me with louder steps. I am engulfed in his embrace, met by the faint trace of his pine scented cologne. He asks me how I am feeling, and all I can manage to say is “not good” . I guided him to my bedroom where we lay in my bed intertwined. His limbs brained between mine as I lay my head against his boney chest. 

I try to sleep but my jaw throbs with an intolerable pain radiating up throughout my skull. I cannot sit with this pain, so I place the feelings elsewhere. I begin to rock my pelvis slowly against Sam, kissing his neck softly. Sex is something that I have no problem initiating. The desire to feel wanted and filled is something I would cross oceans to achieve. But with men it seems to require minimal effort. A cheap substitute for something I know cannot be so easily replaced. 

We go through the motions of what the other needs to be properly warmed up for the act. I stopped enjoying sex with Sam within the first month of our relationship. It was something I closed my eyes and endured, for the sake of normalcy. But it was something he enjoyed doing, and I felt whole in this distorted act of connection. 

My heart rate flutters with each kiss down my neck. Blood pumps straight through my head, and throbs at my jaw. It is a generalized pain I cannot quite place. The sensation of thumbs pressing down on my molars as if the pressure could puncture through my gums. 

“I love you” Sam whispers between breaths. 

I lie there paralyzed. I realize he is inside of me, but I wasn't sure when that transition had been made. The steady ache of my jaw pain was the only sensation my body could recognize, the rest silenced by medication. I could feel a thrusting pressure inside of me. Of a similar pain that possessed my mouth. My face became hot and in an effort to calm down I ran my tongue across the tiles of my teeth like a xylophone. Imagining myself playing a soft lullaby to convince my body that this too will pass.  

I began to cry. Which turned into subtle sobs. Sam did not recognize this as an act of pain but rather a moan of pleasure as he continued for minutes until his face met mine. It was a cry of exhaust. How a toddler dries after a long day at school. It never felt like one thing, just everything all at once. A general, chronic torture. 

I felt like I was fifteen again. In that cherry red Honda, sitting crossed legged in the passenger seat. When my sensions became blurred and I let myself be used. I knew that this was different. That Sam was different and that he loved me, to the extent that he could. But something lingered beneath these beliefs I held. That Sam was no different, and that I would accept the pain all over again. For the sake of pleasing others, and of showing them what they wanted to see. 

Sam stared at me in utter shock. Confused by the situation he had failed to read, and I had failed to communicate. 

“I need you to leave” I expressed with my head buried in the pillow away from his face. His figure hovered over mine, lingering like that man once did. He slammed the door behind him. 

I took more pills then drifted off to sleep. I could not bear to be conscious any longer. 

I spent the following eight days drifting between states of consciousness. A walk to the kitchen, down to the medicine cabinet. Open the refrigerator to get an ice pack for my cheeks. Back to the bedroom and fall asleep. Repeat. 

My orthodontist told me that I had a dry socket in all four of my wisdom tooth extraction sites. Google defines dry socket as, “when a blood clot at the site where the tooth was removed does not form, comes out or dissolves before the wound has healed.” I have always had this premonition that my body rejects the notion of healing. It only knew suppression and intoxication to fill the void. It did not possess the ability to clot, and form its natural bandaid over its abused origin. The only way I know I am alive is when I am feeling pain. Because to be alive is to feel. And most days I could not manage to feel anything. 

I stopped eating out of fear of infection. The thought of food gathering in the hollow sockets of my gums kept me up at night. I wanted this pain to go away, so I prescribed myself more pills and sleep. Time took away this pain eventually. Or at least shoved it deep enough that my smile was capable of convincing the mirror. 

Sam and I are no longer together. I still forget to brush my teeth, but always whiten them on Sundays. I swish toothpaste around my mouth before dates, and drench myself in perfume when I forget to shower. I still see his untrustworthy eyes in every cherry colored car that catches my eye. I struggle to eat breakfast and lunch on days I know I will see people. I fear they can smell my breath between interactions. The secrets that slip through my teeth.   

My tongue bends backward toward the periphery of my tonsils. It traces the hollows of my gums, where my wisdom teeth once protruded. Scarred sockets of healed over tissue reflect back sensation onto my tongue. Something is missing. Something extracted without my consent. Something that was once mine. There comes a trade between wisdom and pain. It is why lobotomies were invented. And why we drink away our brain cells. It is all too much to know. To feel what we cannot forget. And while the wisdom of these teeth rip through my gums declaring their presence, there is nothing one can do to ignore it. So we extract what we can, and tolerate the emptiness. 

I wrote the entirety of this piece stoned. I complete most of my writing under the influence if I am being honest. People describe their creative processes as a way to concentrate and lock in to what they are trying to communicate. I find that I must zoom out to grasp these distant details. I am telling a story about another girl, whom I do not recognize as me, but I can tell you everything she felt. A part of me feels that when I identify myself to be this girl, the experiences become mine too, and everything is real. Writing has always seemed to give me that third space. One of the prenatal womb, cavity of my mouth, anything warm and dark. Void of realism. My lips do not open when I write. Most readers skim from left to right in their head. The words never materialize, and the secret of silence is preserved. I find there to be nothing more intimate than this soundless exchange of words.  

Circles

My heavy eyes trace dizzying circles around my ceiling fan. If I muster all of my concentration on a single blade, it's as if I can control its motion. Though I understand it's all just a silly trick of the eye, and ultimately I am the one under its hypnotic control. 

I can never quite escape the cyclical nature of life. I ponder sinking into my broken twin bed in the dark of my claustrophobic dorm room. I reminisce on the last days of southern california sunshine I will experience before I will return to my home in Michigan for the summer. For the first time in 18 years I escaped the midwest winter.

Or so I had thought. 

Leaving in august and returning in june seemed like the dream I had ached for since I could remember. The drastic shift of the seasons had been etched into my body for years, so much so that I felt the mild seasons of SoCal could not quite understand me. I was running on a different sort of rhythm, that circular spin that ran wheels and turned engines was innately different in my wiring. I first noticed it in the slowness of pace and shallow stride of Californians walking to their destination. No sense of urgency to gather acorns for the impending winter frost. I will forever be haunted by the inevitable pain that follows sunny skies. The gilded dream of California sunshine seemed tarnished as I dissected the memories of the midwest cycle that rounded me into the person I am today.  

The softness of the California seasons never forces lost dreamers to wake from their slumber. I think of it as gentle parenting that raises children without proper social cues. The needed reality check that adaptation is necessary in order for survival. Michigan’s unforgiving cycle of seasons rebirths populations of perseverance, with the mental endurance to wait out months scarce of vitamin D whilst not begging to be lobotomized. Though even the strongest may entertain the idea of it once or twice.  

The homelessness population in Detroit is wiped out by hypothermia and disease each winter. Survival is not an option once the cycle has reached the cusp of sub zero. Passing by bodies slightly thawed to maintain life is a reminder of her unforgiving cycle. There is no getting by, only getting better in these circumstances. Life or death, black or white.    

I think of the homelessness in California, their flesh rotting in the baking sun. Skin rough like leather draped from bones satisfied with a tolerable situation. The entrancing sunshine distracts its host as they are cooked from the inside out. Warm enough to sleep outside, they never quite needed a reason to look elsewhere, and society never quite found a reason to help. Linear seasons, tolerable situations, succumb to stagnation. 

Californians smoke weed like they are inhaling the life force of creation or something. A year round treat that takes the edge off of the day or inspires immaculate conception. It's a constructive tool to enjoy the linear life that passes through them. In Michigan, drugs and alcohol had one deconstructive purpose for those I knew: to numb.    

The cyclical winter depression approached the midwest around November each year, when trees stripped of life echoed back the same hopelessness of people trapped in homes. Comfort was reliably present in a bottle, the warmth of drunk rosey cheeks and the slight killing of thermoreceptors. Where we lacked vitamin d, winter substituted substance abuse. 

I remember being convinced to tripsit my friend on shrooms. Though I suggested we waited until summer to take them, she insisted upon needing a change now. I complied as we drove around the lifeless stripmalls and concrete streets blanketed by snow. The backseat of my car went silent, I quickly flicked my head back as I pulled over to address the situation. 

Caught in a thought loop, she anxiously gripped her bangs between her tense fingers repeating in a broken pant of phrases,   

“We are all just little people. Just little people in this little people world. We need to get out. Just little people. Doing little things. Does any of it matter?”

I sat with her for about an hour, trying to regulate her breathing and bring her out of her mind. But the cyclical hypnosis that possessed her was a stronger force than I imagined. Something so captivating about a spiral is that you can never fully see the end of it, just a continuous spin of curves that you eventually forgot began in the first place. That's how those winters consumed us. The only way through them was to become inebriated enough to accept the ebb and flow of the greater power.   

About a mile away from my home in Michigan, there lies a circular track hugging the circumference of a mercky man-made lake. Everyday without failure, I would lace up my tennis shoes and force myself to jog 8 laps, and sprint the last 4. There was comfort in those even numbers for me as I would come around the bend of the track completing a lap. The odd number of laps I'd imagine 10 pounds of weight on my back so I'd deserve gliding through the even numbers with ease. In every protestant’s upbringing there is the mindset of tolerating the pain, and being better for it. I suppose this very balance is what kept the seasons moving and my body around the track. 

My strides across the track would strike the concrete emanating summer heat, fall leaves, winter snow and occasionally flower buds of spring. Every lap I showed up a different person. Going somewhere yet nowhere all at once. Around and around in the stationary radius of cement, praying for change when I was constantly the victim of it.    

I run through canyons and trails in San Diego, taking in the beauty of the bounious mountains and candy colored wildflowers sweetly decorating the dry land. I finally feel as if I am going somewhere, but my mind hopelessly returns to its roots. Suspicious of the soft bend that I cannot quite perceive, slowly circling me back to the cyclical nature integrated within everything. Where I arrive is never the beginning nor the end, just more and more circles spiraling into the depth of the unknown.

I cannot help but feel myself treading on a hamster wheel here in California. Blindly running my guts out to beat the impending doom of winter trailing behind me. They say it will never be the same as midwest winters, but I am forever haunted by the curvature of circles and cycles that never end. Perhaps I am stronger for the endurance I was trained to develop all of those years. I comfort myself with the lie that I am better off for knowing the truth of the harshities of winter, to better appreciate the beauty of summer sunshine. Yet Californians only know the sunkissed glory of mild seasons and turned out seemingly fine, so what do I know? 

The One You Feed

I slip off my sneakers at the heels to avoid the extra pound or two added by their weight. I have grown accustomed to not looking at the digital screen that reflects back my quantified worth. I am 20 and I have decided that I am over the years of teenage starvation. I have not looked at a scale intentionally since I was 16.

The scale at the doctor's office was the manual sliding scale or sorts, so I was unphased by stepping on its cold metal base. I look up at the popcorn textured wall as the young male doctor teases the alignment of the knob to center its balance. I step off the scale, my eyes moving from the wall to the dizzying carpet pattern in one intentional motion.

 “141 pounds, that is such a healthy weight!”  He repeats back to me. 

My head spins as I struggle to slip on my tied sneakers over the bulk of my ankle. Though I have done everything in my control to avoid attachment to that number, I cannot help but to spiral. While waiting for the male physician to enter the small white room, I pull up the Body Mass Index calculator on my phone. I enter my sex, weight, height and age as I have been so familiar with this software before. I skim through meaningless percentiles to the bolded transcription, You are neither underweight nor overweight according to health experts*.  Your weight is in the healthy range for your height and age.

I stare blankly at the screen. My eyes well up with tears and I am gripping my left wrist with my thumb and index finger as a habit. I know that healthy is a word associated with positive connotations and I should be happy, but I am not. There is the voice in my head that has not emerged in a while. It tells me that I am fat. I am unlovable. I need to purge. 

The thing is, I have been doing everything right. Recently at least. I have been playing the game the right way this time. I have been eating my protein in grams equal to my weight. I have been drinking enough water to piss out the niagara falls and still I did not compare to the woman I see walking down campus. 

I was in the best shape of my life. I was running on weekdays. Doing the “10-minute abs” Youtube videos for core circuits that left my abdomen sore as I hunched over the toilet seat. Drinking protein shakes and eating clean. I really felt like I had been doing better. But this too is an illusion that perpetuates the incessant voice regressing me towards my days of disordered eating habits.

California birthed a new era of “health and wellness” for the young girls who inhabit its sunny mirage. Matching workout sets. Pilates and clean juice after morning cardio. Drinking supplements and whole foods that restore gut health and reduce bloating. 

Orthorexia Nervosa is defined as: an obsession with healthy eating with associated restrictive behaviors.

As a girl who crossed the country from Michigan to Southern California to go to college, I was elated to join the fandom. It was a fad endorsed by fitness models and bikini pictures at the beach that populated my instagram feed. I would eat acai bowls and run long distances for fun. I would cut out unnecessary processed foods and only eat the essentials. This is how it starts of course. Because when you have a goal, there is never moderation. There are actions that yield results. 

It took me a while to conclude- but from going to parties and interacting with girls my age here- no one looks good here just because they work out. That too is a lie we choose to believe. 

They are all hiding their dirty secrets of suffering to make their beauty all the more effortness. These are the girls that I hear throwing up in the bathroom. Shitting out their nutrient intake with health supplements that are nothing more than glamorized laxatives. The really skinny ones almost always have a nicotine addiction to suppress their appetite between meals. Some have become so detached that they forget to eat. All of these girls have eventually become me in one way or another. I swallow the thought.

It did not take long for this information to derail any progress I theorized in my cross country escape to California. Within the three semesters of classes I attended, I was right back to where I was mentally as a teenager, with a sneakier and more evolved skill set. 

My parents don't call often. They pay for my tuition that is left over from all of my applied scholarships- but have refused to help financially support me in any other endeavor. Though they have money to give, they hold onto their wealth with white knuckles- as if having children was their worst financial move possible. Incessant guilt comes from asking them for money, and shame for medical bills required. I have never felt deserving of their money, time nor will.   

I have money left over from summer jobs, but in reality, I am dirt poor. Not having money tends to make not eating even easier. In fact, it is actually financially beneficial to my situation. I spend my grocery money on drugs and nicotine to suppress the gnawing hunger that resides in my insides. 

I have never once thought about asking them for help. 

I suppose it started at home. When I lived in Michigan, just 30 minutes outside of Detroit. I grew up in a family spawned of athletes. It was their athletic ability and fixation on bettering their body that led them to pursue a higher education through athletic scholarships. My mother was a basketball player, trained by her father before her, while my dad wrestled physically, to avoid processing anything internally. Their tall genetic framing combined created my lanky stature that outgrew my peers rather quickly. I was 5 '8 in the eighth grade while most of my peers talked to me with their heads tilted slightly up. I was an awkward kid with knobby knees and long arms that drooped past my asymmetric hips. I was bullied for my flat chest and lack of ass, but even this was better than the all consuming fear that was being overweight. 

I vividly remember the transition of weighting triple digits. Somewhere between fourth and fifth grade the scale would teeter between 98 and 101 pounds- and this is when the parasite unhinged its jaws and clung into my flesh. It was an irrational thought of course, that I could stay little and light forever. It only got worse with age-when I realized it was impossible to grasp onto the past versions of my prepubescent body.  

My parents made it very clear through their behaviors and words that skinnier is better. 

My mother looks in the mirror and curses her reflection, though her hips have always draped exactly like mine. She calls her abdomen her “problem area”, as if her entire thorax was a walking wrongdoing. She traces her stretch marks from childbirth and reminds me that before she had kids, she was under 120 pounds in college.  

I give her the satisfaction of nods and assurance that she looks great for her age, though I feel her eyes hot on my skin with envy. As a teenager my mother would come up from behind me, and place her hands at the small of my waist creating a makeshift ruler. She would proudly present the distance between her hands and announce, 

“My skinny-mini-me!”

The inflection in the syllables gave her great joy, and everytime those words left her mouth it felt like love.

My mother sat at the edge of the kitchen table, hunched over in a bird-like posture. Her elongated skeleton fingers slowly chipped away the shell of a hard boiled egg as if she was torturing her prey. As she delicately laid the ivory fragments onto a napkin, I knew the truth that she was really torturing herself. 

Torture. Shell. Cracking. 

My father’s relationship to food was perhaps worse than my mothers, in its own kind of way. His mood was completely dependent on if he saw himself as skinny or fat- which seemed to fluctuate to an extent much greater than his weight logistically could. He would appear manic on days where he would educate me about the benefits of intermediate fasting: where he starved himself during the day until dinner. 

He grew up wrestling. From elementary school throughout his undergraduate years in college, he was well versed in techniques on cutting weight. He would enlighten my sisters and I during dinner, the methods he employed to “stay skinny” as tips he assumed we would appreciate: 

Work out on an empty stomach, and put on as many layers of clothing as possible- you will sweat more out this way. He told us about laxatives and how he would throw up in the bathroom before weight trials to really give him the advantage. Nothing feels better to me than an empty stomach he would accentuate, over and over again-as if the person he was really aiming to convince was himself.

There was a side to my father that was all consuming. Gluttonous and resentful towards a child's metabolism which we could not control. Many tears fell as a result of his unbreakable rule that you must finish your plate. Salty tears fell upon the mosaics I swirled across my plate, as an effort to distract him from force feeding me by hand. My sister’s and I would at times get creative: stuffing our cheeks with mashed potatoes and greens just to spit them out in the toilet and mischievously return with progress made on our plates. When my dad found out about this trick, we weren't allowed to go to the bathroom during dinner. 

Advantage. Gluttonous. Empty. 

The thing about food is that it is a sort of relationship between you and yourself. But this too is not really true when you trace it back far enough. It is the relationship your parents had with themself, and how you observed their behaviors as normalcy. I engulfed and digested their thoughts as my own until eventually I forgot their origin. 

Feeling worthy of food is the question of if you are worthy of life and love itself. It sounds hysterical to even question if one deserves these basic needs. Deserves is not the right word. Perhaps punish. Because that what this really boils down to: Punishment of self. I used to wonder if punishment could be just. Maybe I was doing these small acts of cruelty in a way of repentance for my sins. 

But there was no justice in torture. That is tyranny, kneeling before a hateful ruler and accepting what you feel is enough to equate to the bad feelings inside. But that depth is unquantifiable, a murky bottomless well that we can only throw coins into in order to assess its bottom. 

The task of blaming my parents for influencing my disordered eating habits has been my default mode of processing for quite some time now. But it yields hopeless results that ultimately piles into denial from both parties. Even if they did apologize, I know that they would not change- and neither would I. 

Things were getting bad again. From Michigan to California, the parasite followed me across the country. I was the perfect host that sacrificed all nutrients in an effort to care for the exact thing that was killing me. Perhaps I needed to travel further. Cross oceans. I found myself in Italy. 

The first time I remembered throwing up and liking it was in Rome. In all of my years of teenage starvation- I had never stooped to the realms of bulimia. That seemed to cross a boundary that felt like cheating in the realm of suffering. 

I was 20 and broke. Surrounded by a group of girls who threw money at appetizers they didn't care to finish, and overpriced wine they sipped on out of casualty. 

I hated these girls in this way. For the fact that they ate until they unbuttoned their pants and wanted drinks after. I had $400 dollars in my bank account, and rationed the amount of cheap sandwiches and cigarettes that would keep my body conscious throughout the day while I attended classes during the week.

On this particular night, I was whisked away by the gaggle of girls who were strangers to any of the thoughts going on in my head. The most frustrating battle with disordered eating is how eating tends to be the placeholder for socialization. We were in Italy after all, the land of pasta, pizza, and bread was a dream shared by everyone except me. There is a luxury to drug addicts and alcoholics that is not afforded to those who struggle with eating. Alcoholics collect coins and celebrate being able to avoid the substance of their cardinal desire, yet I will die without mine. I needed to eat to live after all, which seems like an obvious fact, yet is debilitating when I realize these thoughts will follow me each time I must unhinge my jaws. I felt stupid and spoiled for having such a first world problem while I walked past homeless people cradled in feces ridden blankets. 

I came to Rome to avoid going home to my family in Michigan. I was financially cut off, and spent the majority of my summer paychecks funding this trip to go abroad to escape. But there was never really an escape from the way I felt. The echoes that rang in my head and manifested in the bile that brewed in my stomach. I came to Rome because I felt unlovable at home. Somewhere along the way, this feeling packed itself into my suitcase and crossed the country with me.

My randomly assigned roommate was kind yet strange- unaware of the social cues my face signaled, begging her to stop talking. I felt completely isolated from the community I felt in California where I attended college. The life I had worked so hard to build for myself was slipping through my fingers. I felt 16 again. Empty and alone looking for approval from strangers that I had nothing but spite for. So when these girls asked me to get drinks with them on my third night in this foreign country, I agreed without hesitation. 

The bar was dimly lit with a green aura painting the walls. A wooden plaque read the drink costs in euros that were disgustingly over priced. I began to drift away, thinking about the calories but was undermined by the anxiety pounding at the back of my head- telling me it would be worse if I didn't order anything. That they would think I am cheap. That I wasn't playing by the rules. 

We ordered 7 Aperol Spritzes for the table. I ran my fingers across the condensation of the glass, waiting for someone else to start drinking but they didn't. I threw the drink back ignoring the straw while my tonsils caught the icy liquid.  An aftertaste of licorice radiated throughout my mouth, clinging to the ridges of the roof of my soft palate. The girls took a few sips and complained about the licorice taste, sliding their drinks away from their proximity. I offered to drink them. 

And at this moment is when I saw the obvious divide: I was raised to finish my plate, and they were not. It is hard not to hate them at this moment. I drink the entirety of their drinks- crushing the ice between my back molars. The night began to feel a lot more tolerable from that point on. 

From the fuzzy memories of dinner that I remember- I licked my plate clean. Buttery starch from the carbonara pasta waltzed around in my stomach, guided by the concoction of wine and spritzes I slammed throughout the night. 

I had never eaten so much. It felt just as bad at not eating at all. Something fed that guilt inside me regardless of substance or absence. I repressed those feelings successfully enough to earn the laughs of the tipsy girls at dinner. Their approval felt like kisses down my spine- as if I was worthy of love-underneath all of these ugly feelings I harbored within myself. 

I kept eating. I kept drinking. I kept hurting, but convinced myself that this was for the greater good of connection. So long as the bad never came up.

I drunkenly walked the cobblestone streets of Rome back from the restaurant staggered behind the group of girls. Amanda, a tall effortlessly beautiful blonde girl, aligns her drunken path with mine, and we hobble side by side back toward the hotel 

 “I have never felt so fat” she laughs

I lit a cigarette for the both of us and touched ashy tips with her.

“This can be our dessert” we laughed selfishly as we watched the rest of the girls twirl around blissfully to the gelato shop across the street. 

It felt good to be seen- but more than anything I felt sorry for her. Imagining that behind her soft angelic face were thoughts of self-hatred as putrid and spoiled as my own. 

I fumbled my key into the lock of my hotel room- missing the hole three times before penetrating the hole successfully. I slipped my shoes off my ankle- not bothering to untie the knots that choked the forefront of my feet. I fell asleep with my clothes still on. 

My body shot up in the middle of the night and projectile vomited liquor and cigarette smoke from the contents of my stomach. My roommate, mortified and upset, left me alone gagging on my spit while I hobbled over to the bathroom to make it to the toilet. My vision blurred and my head pounding left me with a body fighting for its life. Extracting the poison from itself through a programmed gag reflex. Hot spit eclipsed my lips as I layed on the rim of the toilet bowl, and for the first time I understood what my dad meant when he said that it felt good to be empty. 

I woke up to an acidic taste that crusted around the corners of my mouth. I checked my phone battery to see that it was 4am, just two hours after I began throwing up. I felt surprisingly alert from the quick turn around of sobriety. I flashed my canine teeth in the mirror, as I meticulously brushed my teeth in repenting swirls.

I wandered the ominous hotel, dizzying carpet patterns assaulting my eyes the further I looked down into the hall. The loose handle on an unmarked door opened, revealing a storage closet piled from floor to ceiling with towels, cups, and cleaning supplies. Just my luck.

I snagged a new set of sheets to replace my spoiled ones, as well as a couple towels and bleach to sanitize the room. 

I returned to the room with fresh eyes, seeing the throw up soaked sheets and splashes of bile on the wooden floor where I reached for the bathroom door. No wonder my roommate, no, that stranger, ran away without looking back. I was a mess. 

I placed little plastic bags over my feet so I could keep my soles safe from the bleach I slathered the entire surface of the floor with. My vision fogged the more ammonia I inhaled, and I felt disgusting for what I had done. Shameful. Nauseous. Empty.

These bad feelings sat in my stomach sloshing around, creating a debilitating gravity that brought me to my knees and to the toilet bowl yet again. I reached for these demons with my middle and index finger in the back of my throat, hoping to pull at them by the root. A scratchy heave emerged, followed by the acidic spit that evolved into a substance I wasn't convinced I had never entered my stomach to begin with. 

I went back to sleep in my clean sheets, clean room that reeked of bleach, knowing that my roommate had fresh towels to welcome her home to. 

God it felt good. To be pure again. To be rid of that guilt. To be forgiven.

Once I had discovered the pleasure of that purging cycle, I never looked back. My trip in Rome was categorized by the beautiful pictures of food immortalized by my camera, only to be flushed down the European toilet within the night. 

No matter where I go, there seems to be a new variation of the same problem that follows me, infects my body until it self-destructs. I am 16 in Michigan forced to finish my dinner while I go the rest of the week skipping lunch. I am a college student in California spending my grocery money on nicotine to suppress my appetite. I am in Rome purging the glory of a false escape. I am everywhere except where I need to be: within myself.  

The truth is I’m navigating the world as a young twenty something with the same ideas and beliefs ingrained in me as a disordered teenager. My hips are wider-and I try not to fight it. The shift from girl to woman has been the most hopeless battle I find myself fighting. 

It is the illusion of choice. You are to eat or not to eat. Absence of choice is just as valid a choice as any. But even when you don’t eat, you are still feeding something. Feeding that feeling of emptiness that you feel you deserve. As your stomach yearns and acidic claws climb up your internal lining- you know something isn’t right. That you would feel better if you had just eaten but you cannot. Eventually eating feels like the wrong choice too. As if that food isn’t really nourishing the body you want it to reach. It feels like a losing battle that everyone manages fine over their lunch breaks. 

I think about the battles going on within the people I love. My father battling between losing the youth of his athletic body and coming to terms with his increasing age and decay. My mother cursing her figure for carrying the life of three children and not looking the same. Amanda as she lights her cigarettes between meals. I am trying to hold onto the same body I had as a 16 year old. It all feels wrong, but it doesn't feel right to fight it either.

I ask myself who or what I am really even fighting for.

I write this with no food in my pantry. I am hitting my nicotine between typing, and I am certainly not better. I have given up on the concept of better because it has proven to be impossibly unobtainable. I know my relationship with food will never achieve normalcy. We are far beyond that realm of simplicity. I propose an alternate choice of thinking. One that grounds me in free will.

(Put an into in here somewhere)

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

“The one you feed” is a phrase that lingers in my brain. It twists inside me like my small intestine- and I cannot unhear it now that it has entered my radar. 

I first heard this parable on my Instagram explore page- sandwiched between my algorithm saturated in thinspo and discreetly photoshopped images of girls my age. It incited me to reflect on all of the microscopic ways I engage with the world, and what purpose they seem to feed

I knew that I had been fighting a losing battle.

More than anything I have been wondering if these internal battles ever leave us. Or eventually we just successfully dulude ourselves into thinking that the motivations buried deep within our subconscious will forever remain dormant. 

The only hope to be realized from this situation I found to be in the recognition of my bodily autonomy. That the same mind that has kept me caged for years can be the same tool for liberation. My body has done nothing but ever listen to the voice upstairs. It is a loyal dog that will only feed itself when the mind directs it to. Its nerves absorb the collective throb of hunger, unable to overpower the tyranny of the mind. 

The lie that we tell ourselves is that we cannot control it. That it is happening to us- rather than identifying as the tyrant we possess behind our eyes. It begins as realizing that you are an active agent within the battle of your own being. 

The battle between the wolves within may rage on, but I am no longer a bystander—I am an active participant, choosing to nourish the goodness within me and starve the darkness that threatens to consume.