The jagged edges of last year didn't really sink into this year. The colours of everything just clashed and made the most horrible noises, but there was nothing I could do about it. It felt awful, sitting back and feeling the salty sweat form on my forehead but not having any control over the situation. I felt like my faded school summer dress, like all the colour had been washed out of me. But sometimes I had my colour, and it was obvious to everyone around me who bothered to notice. Other times I felt washed-out, and I would hang back in the parched shadows and just listen to the labyrinth of other people's words.
I was soaked in rainbow at school, but at home I would be barely, numbly, almost washed with a pale water substance that was part blood, part black ink and part xylene. Unfortunately, the blood from the shadows at home leaked into my rainbow that I was soaked in at school. I guess I have a lot to be grateful for, seeing as so many people are so naive.
My schoolgirlcrush at the time was also a rocking disaster. It left me with maroon, physical welts that are hard to scrub off even now. That was the cause of my destruction, the event that had every pair of lips talking about me and the light switch that had plunged me into such darkness. Even when it seems that I've swam up from the depths of blackness into the pure, cool sunlight, I feel uncertain at times. At times like this, when the salty bubbles of tears are under my eyelashes and you're staring at me with the blank, brown stare that has overtaken the warm, chocolate stare that I used to want to eat.
I missed you when we were away from each other, but I didn't miss you as much as I missed him when I was away from him. I think I have to admit that to myself because my white porcelin love for you is sitting on the edge, almost shattered. This time last year I was thinking about his crimson lips and how they would feel on mine, but this time this year I'm thinking about nothing, even though you're lying in his place.
He never offered me his hand to lift me from my depths, but I've always known that you would do that for me. Maybe if I'd been leaning on you this time last year, I wouldn't have sunk so low, because you would have been there to clamber down and get me if your arm wouldn't reach that far. But it was him last year, and he put me down there and never even bothered to get me back out again. Because of him, everytime I'm with you a tear's sliding down my cheek, or it's forming in my eye, or it's at the bottom of everything, ready to erupt.
You must think I am a waterfall of white depression.
And maybe you're right: maybe I don't talk nearly enough as I should, but I don't think I can help that. I started last year with neon confidence, because all of my friends were near me, and I used to just open the curtains and smile at the world looking back at me. The sun that shone on my face felt like melting caramel and I remember wanting to drink the rain because it looked like it would taste like apple juice.
As the year drew on though, I became obsessed with things I shouldn't have. Backs started to turn and I started staring at him. I thought he was staring back at me, but it must have just been a trick of the light, because now I realise he only wanted me for the artificial things in life. I was so illicitly ignorant, and I look back now and kick myself for being so gullible. He was the one who tripped me up and left me lying there, blind to all my aches and pains and the innocent love I had for him. The innocent love that lost me my emotional innocence.
So the year twisted and spiralled through days and nights and I twisted and spiralled through bad dreams. I didn't care that my friends ran down the yellow brick road without me, because I thought that I had him, and that was all that mattered. But the melting caramel sunshine turned into black ice and the apple juice rain turned into gushing blood.
Now I just have days of alternating feelings. Some days I feel so completely numb and I can't even talk to you without glaring at you and ignoring whatever you say to me. You, who made me pick up my skirt and start running and laughing again, with the wind in my eyes and the sun in my hair. Some days I almost feel like I did before I met him, and the metal kilogram on my heart feels somewhat lighter so I can breathe and actually feel the cold air travelling down my throat and into my stomach. Some days I can't feel your lips on mine, but some days I can. It all depends.
But I wish like hell that it didn't depend on anything. I wish I could be like them. I wish I could wear a miniskirt and not feel like I'm going to get slashed across the legs or called a slut by the echoes of his voice inside my head. I wish I could laugh and flirt with any boy whatsoever and be so confident that I look gorgeous while I'm doing it. I wish I could pretend that I walked along trails of blood and vacancies and know that I'm an attention-seeker. I wish I could not pretend, and not lie because I feel that the reasonings behind everything are inadequete. I wish I knew, deep inside, nestled in my intestines and core of my heart and the substance in my veins, that guilt shouldn't even come into it, because I wasn't in the wrong, and I'm not now.
It's not that easy though. I try to move closer to you and I try to put my tongue on top of yours, but I can't seem to do it. Maybe because I don't want to breathe into your mouth because I'm scared you'll scratch me down the side of my face for something I thought I was doing fine. Maybe because I don't want to take charge anymore, and I haven't learnt my lesson from last time, even though I shudder at the thought of him controlling my life. It's hard to find security in emptiness, so I just crawl back into the shadows and let everybody else order me about. Or maybe it's because he's ruined it for our future, and the nauseating turbulance that he put me through scares me into thinking that you'll do the same to me.
I know it's so unfair to abide by the same rules that I had to abide by for him, but that's the way my distorted mind works. He was that one who tortured my mind into something unrecognisable, so you have him to thank for my being so unconfident.
And sometimes when I thought of him I'd get an overwhelming surge of lust, or an overwhelming surge of hate.
Now I just feel nothing.
written: (finished) Sunday 15th August, 2004, 3:31pm
Points: 1476
Reviews: 20
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