Little Girl
I was a little girl once. Or rather, sometimes. Or for a short while. Suddenly when I was around ten everything changed. I was already damaged, fragile, ashamed. Often life was an exquisite agony. I thought things were sure to get better, in time. Boy, was I wrong! I was a scared young girl who wanted to be brave and beautiful and desired.
On the wall space behind the door of my room I had a mirror, with a taupe plastic frame around it. I looked in it, gaze into it for long stretches of time, thinking, fantasizing about who I wanted to be. I thought things would change. Meanwhile I wanted to alter consciousness, I wanted to escape, I wanted to suffer sharp pain to bring me out of the daily daze, I wanted to die. I loved myself, I hated myself.
And why must I live a half-life? I want you, I want you intensely, I want you to change me. Change me. Don't let me get away from you. How could I bear it? Why aren't you real to me anymore? Be real, I want to experience you.
Tear me up rather than let me leave you. Do I wish to suffer? Sometimes I think suffering reminds me of who I am. The unifying feature of my life is definitely psychological and physical pain. It makes me feel myself, it makes me feel alive. Numbness is most terrible, after fear. Feeling nothing, being nothing. No, not again. God. Don't let me. This separation is but a blank, dreary emptiness. I cannot bear that. That, and the sick, retracting self-full of fear. No. I want solid form, truth, meaning, the feel of earth, hard ground under my feet. Why do I doubt you? Tell me, again.
On the wall space behind the door of my room I had a mirror, with a taupe plastic frame around it. I looked in it, gaze into it for long stretches of time, thinking, fantasizing about who I wanted to be. I thought things would change. Meanwhile I wanted to alter consciousness, I wanted to escape, I wanted to suffer sharp pain to bring me out of the daily daze, I wanted to die. I loved myself, I hated myself.
And why must I live a half-life? I want you, I want you intensely, I want you to change me. Change me. Don't let me get away from you. How could I bear it? Why aren't you real to me anymore? Be real, I want to experience you.
Tear me up rather than let me leave you. Do I wish to suffer? Sometimes I think suffering reminds me of who I am. The unifying feature of my life is definitely psychological and physical pain. It makes me feel myself, it makes me feel alive. Numbness is most terrible, after fear. Feeling nothing, being nothing. No, not again. God. Don't let me. This separation is but a blank, dreary emptiness. I cannot bear that. That, and the sick, retracting self-full of fear. No. I want solid form, truth, meaning, the feel of earth, hard ground under my feet. Why do I doubt you? Tell me, again.