wine-and-words

[wine-and-words]

art lockscreens reblog or like if u save it

[wine-and-words]

[wine-and-words]

Fine

Hey everyone. I wanted a place to share my writing and other thoughts without judgement, so here I am. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns about my posts, or if you want to talk. I’m always here.

TW: Self harm, strong language, assault

“I don’t know how anyone could cut,” I say as I sit on Lily’s bed, picking at the loose thread in the blue comforter. I’m sitting on her feet, but she’s not making me move because we’re both cozy. I have a blanket thrown around my shoulders. She’s underneath the comforter. “Yeah like, I don’t know how you’d ever want to hurt yourself,” she agrees, frowning. “It doesn’t make sense. Besides, I don’t like blood.” “I hate blood,” I say emphatically. At ten years old, even the thought of blood makes me squeamish. The idea that anyone could ever hurt themselves intentionally is beyond me.     * * * * * I sit on the bathroom floor with a knife in hand, brow furrowed in concentration. I make slow, deliberate cuts, watching the way the blood bubbles up with cool detachment. I’ve always hated blood. I faint when I so much as cut open my finger while getting dinner ready. But this blood is different. It’s like roses, or like the poppies in Flanders Field— the way it blooms up, promising new life. The blood is sticky on my fingertips, and I wince as I gather it all up. I smear it around on my leg in a swirling, floral pattern. It’s paint and I am making myself beautiful. I’m fucking art. I cock my head, hair falling over my face, and I smile. Sane Julia, the one hovering over my shoulder to the right, is screaming at me. She’s not actually there of course, or maybe she is and I’m the one who’s not real. Sane Julia is hovering over all this, watching me as I sit there in a black bra and short shorts and slide the knife over my skin. You’re fucked, please stop, please please please please, she screams at me as she sees the smile curl my lips ever so slightly, watching me paint myself with the blood from my thighs. Sane Julia, innocent Julia, is always wearing the same goddamn outfit. She wears an impossibly short black skirt from American Apparel and a burgundy crop top that shows off a rounded stomach. My tits were bigger back then. It’s the same outfit I wore that night, as I’ve come to refer to the night that I lost my virginity and my sanity and my youth all at once.

I call her "Sane Julia," but I realize how inaccurate that name is. I'm not sane, if I was sane then I wouldn't have the image of a younger self floating around and screaming at me while I tear my body apart. If I'm not sane, and she's just a product of my insanity, then by definition she is not sane either. Nor is she truly innocent- the Julia that she's a reflection of had already chosen a path that led far away from innocence. 

When I sit there, I think in sentences. I can hear Sane Julia’s voice in my head too. 

I think, I need a black pen to draw more patterns on my leg, I need something that contrasts the blood. She screams, don't you see what you're doing? You're sick, please stop, you're better than this. Look at the blood. Please. Bitch, I don’t bleed blood. I bleed fucking poetry, I retort. When I get like this, when my head gets dark, I’m not quiet and scared like I am in the daylight. This Julia speaks her mind, even when it’s something impossibly rude.

He’s not worth it, she screams. She’s always screaming.

I ignore her.

I never cut more than two or three times. If I know I'm going to have sex, I do not cut my thighs. If I know I'm going to wear a short sleeved shirt in the next couple of days, I do not cut my wrists. I never cut deeply enough to scar. Often the cuts look accidental. Oh, I cut my leg on something at work. I fell and hurt myself. The cat scratched me.

No one questions it. No one except my friend, Lily, and that’s only because I fucked up and cut my wrists the day we were supposed to go bowling. and the blood soaked through my shirt.

I lean back to admire my work, arching my back like those models I hate, those girls who get paid for being pretty. My eyes slip down my body, over my breasts that have grown smaller with the weight loss, and then my stomach that is still not flat, even after all this time. 

I don't usually need to stick my fingers down my throat. I've learned how to think myself into throwing up. I just think of hands on my body when I do not want them, of laying back and accepting it; I think of my dead dog who was never buried; of all of the countless baby birds who died in my hands. I buried them myself, using my fingernails to scratch at the dirt until I had dug a hole deep enough to place their ice cold corpses in. 

Sometimes, when I am too numb to feel repulsed at these thoughts, I do use my fingers. I shove them down my throat and gag until my stomach is empty and my eyes are burning. 

Sane Julia watches me do this with the same horror that she watches the cutting. She begs me to stop, but it’s not that easy.

I've lost weight since the night when he pushed me into the couch and told me he would go slow, to just be quiet. Ten, twenty pounds, maybe thirty? Who knows. Maybe if I had been prettier, thinner, I would have been enough. Maybe he would have stayed after that night instead of tossing me aside like a piece of fucking trash. I was garbage to him, a fucking disposable Starbucks cup. He had gotten what he wanted from me, used me, and then I was nothing to him except something to be rid of.

Actually, fuck that. I’m not a Starbucks drink. I’m more like shitty gas station coffee. I’m trash.

Tonight I did not need to use my fingers. I thought of his face and his sweaty body on top of mine, and I threw up until I cried. My stomach is empty, and I have a headache. I have nothing left except a burning throat, like I've been inhaling smoke. I don't feel any pain. Instead there's this weird mix of elation and despair, the two sides of me warring against one another.  

Dark times like these have come with increasing regularity since that night. It’s been three months, almost to the day.  My mother asked me last week if I was depressed. I guess she noticed that I look like shit and all I ever do is sleep. I told her no, of course. A good religious girl does not get depressed.

She asked me if I was having boy problems, and I laughed. I told her no, boys didn’t like me. As far as she and my dad knew, I had never as much as held hands with a boy. How was I supposed to tell her that I had snuck around and had a thing with a boy who ended up date raping me? That would not go over well. They would kill me a hundred times over. A good Christian girl waits for marriage. She doesn’t get depressed, because she always has God to turn to when things get bad. 

I am not a good Christian girl.

Someone knocks at the door of the bathroom. “Ju-Ju?”

It’s Lila. She’s four, and my youngest sister. Everyone says she looks exactly like me. She even has a stutter, like I did when I was younger. She’s called me Ju-Ju since she could talk. 

I grab the hoodie laying on the ground beside me and slip in on. I always make sure that I don’t get blood on anything besides myself, and that I have clothing to cover my marks up with. Living in a house with eight other people almost guarantees that I’ll be interrupted at some point. It’s late though, so I don’t know why Lila is up.

“What’s wrong?” I ask as I open the door to the bathroom. Lila is standing there in her pink princess pyjamas, clutching the stuffed dog I bought her last year for Christmas.

“I want a story,” she tells me seriously. 

After I’ve read Lila her bedtime story, I go to my own bedroom and lock the door. I grab my melatonin, shaking out a decent handful and shoving them into my mouth. It’s the only way I sleep these days. Too bad it’s not enough to kill me.

The ceiling is that crumbly stuff that all old-ish houses seem to have. You know, the white bumpy squares that break far too easily? My sister and I threw a super ball—one of those insanely bouncy little balls you get at the dollar store— really hard one day and it hit the ceiling so hard that it snapped one of the panels and covered my bed in a fine white dust. That was years ago, and the dust is long gone, but there’s still a hole the size of a super ball in my ceiling. At night I stare up at it and wish that I could melt away into the blackness.

Lila wakes me up for breakfast the next morning. Dad’s made pancakes, as he has every Saturday morning for the past fifteen years. We’re all here for breakfast today, which doesn’t happen as often these days. 

I’m the oldest child in the family at eighteen. Next is Jake, who is sixteen, then the twins, Lauren and Sophie, who are thirteen. Jace is ten, Lexie is seven, and Lila is four.

“Julia, will you help Lila with the syrup?” Mom asks me. Lila is trying to pour it herself and has already spilled it all over the table. Lauren and Jace are having a heated discussion on whether or not corn syrup is real syrup, and Dad is explaining the economic crisis to seven-year-old Lexie. She looks like she’s going to fall asleep in her jam-covered pancakes. Jake is playing air guitar along to the Christian rock song coming through the radio. Sushi, our mastiff, is sitting by Sophie because she knows that Sophie never finishes her bacon. It’s chaos, it’s insanity, and it’s beautiful. 

It’s a good day.

I’m getting better, I tell myself as I make a cup of tea and settle down to read. I ate today and I didn’t cut. I’m fine.

“I’m fine,” has been my mantra for a long time. A boy, one who I talked to only briefly, snapped one day and told me to stop saying it because it wasn’t true. I told you, I only talked to him briefly. 

A friend introduced us, thinking that having a new boy to flirt with would distract me from what she called my “abject bitterness at being dumped.” After I told him off, they started dating. 

He was an asshole anyways. He told me to talk to someone, a professional. Told me I was fucked in the head and needed help. I considered it for a bit, but then I realized that there was no way to explain that to my parents. Again, coming from a religious family, therapy is frowned upon. And for all my parents know, I am perfectly fine and happy. 

Fine, fine, fine. That word is my anchor, my true north. Whenever thoughts of him pop into my head I push them aside and cling to the word like it can save me. 

I am fine, I tell myself as I head off to work later in the day. 

I am fine, I tell myself as I quickly smoke a cigarette on my break. It’s a habit I’ve only recently taken up, more of a hobby than anything.

I’m fine, I tell myself again as I clock out. This time the thought is accompanied with a sign of relief. I check my phone. There are four missed calls: Two from my dad, one from my mom, and another from my sister Sophie. There’s also a text from her.

Mom and dad went snooping. Come home right away.

I throw up in the work bathroom, then drive home. My stomach is in knots. Did they find my birth control? Or maybe the untouched bottle of tequila that’s poorly hidden behind my copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress. The possibilities are endless. I suck at hiding stuff and my room is full of contraband. God, it could even be the three seasons of Gossip Girl I have on DVD. The sex scenes in that show would give my father a heart attack. One time my dad saw the melatonin on my shelf and asked me if I was a drug addict. Maybe he found them again and is too dense to realize that I’ve never done any kind of drug in my life. I walk into the house and yell, “I’m home,” like I always do.

“Julia, come on up.” Mom’s voice is strained.

My mother is a beautiful woman. She looks ten years younger than she is, and to look at her you would have no clue that she’s pushed seven fucking kids through her body. She is always calm and collected and in control, and she is the kindest person I’ve ever met. People said I looked like her when I was younger, but when I hit puberty they started saying I look like my dad. My mom and I both have green eyes and dirty blonde hair, but there the similarities end. Where my mother is tall and built slender but strong, I am short and frail. She has high cheekbones and always looks happy. I, on the other hand, have cheeks as round as an infant’s and a resting bitch face. I look like a pissed off five year old. 

I look and act more like my father. He too is tall, with dark brown eyes and a firm face. He used to smile and laugh more, when I was younger. I remember him bouncing me on his knee and chasing me through the house to tickle me. He used to be happy. Now, our whole life revolves around Dad’s mood. If he’s happy, it’s a good day. If he’s stressed, you steer clear and toe the line. It’s been like that for years. I see the same traits in myself that I see in him—I am opinionated, stubborn and proud. I am truly my father’s daughter.

Now, as I walk into the kitchen with forced nonchalance, Dad’s face is taut. 

Mom’s is swollen like she’s been crying. 

This is off.  Something is wrong.

“What’s wrong?” 

“Julia, Macey showed us something today.”

As soon as those words cross Mom’s lips, I feel my stomach heave. Macey is my mom’s friend, and my best friend Lily’s mom. Where my parents respect my privacy, Lily’s mom snoops in her things daily.

I think of the text I sent Lily last night. The one where I finally told her what went down that night. I think of what I can say, how I can explain him away and make them believe I never did anything wrong.

“She showed us the pictures you sent Lily. Of your leg and your wrist.”

The words fall like pebbles in a still pond. The relief is almost instantaneous. 

They don’t know about that night. They don’t know about him. I struggle to keep my expression neutral. I sent Lily a picture to prove that I wasn’t trying to kill myself with the cuts. Looking back, that was a really dumb idea. Way to go, Julia. Fucking A for stupidity.

I pull up a chair. The scraping noise of the legs against the hardwood floors makes Mom wince. 

I am fine.

“I went into your room to try and find the knife. I found your journal on your bed.”

Fuck. I’m not fine.

The silence grows. And grows. And grows.

I close my eyes, breathing deeply, summoning that blanket of calm that surrounds me when I cut and purge. I let it cover me, smother the anxiety. I am calm. I am in control. I am fine. I smile.

I open my eyes. Mom and Dad are both staring at me. 

“What do you want to know?” I ask them.

“I read…” Mom chokes, sounding sick. She can’t finish the thought. I can only imagine what she read. After it happened, I wrote everything down in detail. The scent of lemon Lysol in his house, to the way his brown couch scratched my body as he pressed me down into it, to the way he put his hand over my mouth when I started crying. 

Mom continues. “I- I couldn’t keep reading, so I called Lily. She told us what happened that night.”

That fucking snitch.

“She told us that he forced you, that you didn’t want it. That he’s the reason for all this. Is it true?” Her voice pleads with me, begs me to tell her that this is just a sickening story I’ve created for a class project.

I am praying to a God I’m not sure I believe in anymore, praying that my parents don’t kick me out when I tell them. Standing to my left this time, Sane Julia is crying. She’s reacting in the logical way, sobbing out the whole story. She’s responding to this confrontation the way I would have, before everything happened.

She needs to shut the fuck up so I can think.

“Yeah.”

“Julia, who was he? When? I’ll kill him.”

I’m not sure who’s saying what. All the voices sound the same, and Sane Julia’s sobbing drowns them out.

Shut up, I tell her. I need to fucking concentrate. 

Tell them. For once, she’s not screaming. She looks at me, pleading. Just tell them.

No. I can’t. I’ll think up a story.

Please, just let them in. You’re killing yourself. Why won’t you just ask for help?

I pause at this. The secret is out. What do I have to lose? I’ve already disappointed my parents in every way possible. Could I just tell them everything and let them in? I’ve spent so long hiding things from them that the idea of letting my parents know me is terrifying. 

I take a long, shuddering breath. Sane Julia is quiet. I’m quiet. Mom and Dad are quiet. And for once, my brain is quiet too. 

I am fine.