The Danger of Thoughts
I sit here in my room, in front of my computer; looking at the words on my blog but not actually reading them. I feel vulnerable, hanging my thoughts on a string for everyone to read and not knowing who.
I wonder what they think I look like, like I’m a character in a book that you just make up, like I’m not a real person. But I catch myself on. Half the time I don’t get treated like a real person; I’m invisible to everyone. No big deal. The amount of times I get shoulder barged into without so much as an apology, bumped into, tripped up, I can’t even begin to count.
But it’s ok, like, I’m used to it, being invisible. I like it most of the time, at least when I’m not being threatened by Devon, which is miniscule. I have no social responsibilities, no ties to anyone. I don’t have to be at a certain place at a certain time, wear a certain outfit to fit in.
But then there are the times when I actually wish I had friends. It’s rare, but it’s still there. The summer holidays – or any school break, really – when Cameron heads off with his girlfriend, Claire, or his numerous groups of friends, and is not back ’til eleven.
I’m home alone, which is good at first: I can eat so much crap like Nutella straight from the jar, go to bed late and weak up late, practise piano, write drafts of songs or lines that could become songs.
Then the next day, when I wake up to see people’s Stories on Snapchat and their Instagram posts, do I start to crave the outside world. I feel like a hermit crab stuck in its shell, wanting to get out but can’t find the way. So I live vicariously through those posts, like or comment on them, read the comments of others and pretend I was there.
Sometimes I’ll message people from school, the casual Hey, whats up? only to get an open and no reply every time. What’s so wrong with me that make people not want to talk to me? It’s not like I’ve some contagious disease or something, a sign on my back that reads DON’T TALK TO ME I’M A LOSER.
Then, around half way through the holiday, I’ll get the infamous speech from Mum, the ‘I’m only trying to help you’ talk where she basically nags at me to get off my arse and see people; criticizing me that I’m unsociable and have no friends; telling me I have no hobbies or interests. Nag, nag, nag, nag, nag…
I stare off into space, looking at a nondescript bit of my carpet ’til everything else blurs away. I think the speech will happen soon; it feels about time. I feel my entire body ache from… I don’t know what. Boredom, I suppose. And anger; anger that she’s niggling away at me, that she only does it to me and not to my brother, anger… that she’s right and I know it.
I wish that I could have friends; somebody to confide in, that wouldn’t judge me like everyone else does, who’d laugh with me and not at me. I sigh. I did have somebody like that. But she’s now gone. She went from my life with no parting words other than ‘Don’t try to call me.’
I read the words of the blog now, taking in her every detail that I’ve described: hair, skin, eyes, teeth, laugh. Everything I loved about her. As I read I see her in my mind’s eye, as clear as day, laughing in the sunlight and wrapping her arm around my own. My heart pines for her touch, her lips on mine.
How can someone who’s had such an influence on your life just disappear so abruptly and in such a curt way? It just makes no sense! What made her want to leave me? My mind is in such a state I can’t begin to think of the reasons rationally.
Dramatic and stupid scenarios come to the forefront of my head: maybe I was too clingy, not leaving her enough space to be her; perhaps she cheated on me with somebody better than me; she possibly left me because I wasn’t cool enough for her, not wearing cool enough clothes; what if she thought I was gross?
Or maybe Devon was right: she was too good for me; hot girls don’t go for the likes of me, he said. She’d be begging him to go out with her after a week of her being mine. He said this to me when I was pinned up against the bathroom wall, his face close to mine so I could smell his salt and vinegar breath, after shoving me against it twice and causing me to bang my head on the tiles. Maybe she is already his. The thought fills me with fury and jealousy when I imagine her – hand in hand with him, kissing, laughing – bringing Devon to the places I associate with us.
Later on, in the same day as Devon pushed me against the wall, Mum ran her hands through my hair and found the lump. When she asked me what happened, I’d lied to her and said I’d banged it against a door. It pained me to lie to her; I hate lying to my mum, truly I do – I still do – but I can’t let her know what Devon does to me. I don’t show her the black bruises on my arms and legs that he’s caused throughout the week, nor the multiple deep scores along my arms that I’ve done because of him and his harassment.
As far as she’s concerned I’ve only ever cut myself five times. I can’t show her the endless slashes across both arms, from shoulder to forearm, and the beginning of my thighs. The only person who knows how many I have – who I’ve told that is – is Dee. I don’t know if Cam knows, and my Dad certainly only knows what Mum’s told him.
I want to tell my family, lay everything out on the table, but that would mean that they would then know that I’ve been lying to them and that’s not good. I couldn’t bear to see the look on Mum’s face, how hurt she’d be that I haven’t told her, but also how worried she’d be about my health. So that’s why I don’t tell them. It’s mine and Dee’s secret.
I run my hands lightly over my arms now, feeling my cuts. Most of them are scars now, given time to heal as I hadn’t been constantly hurting myself. I’d felt proud of myself for not cutting; I’d even told Dee, feeling like I was cured or whatever. My arms are bare because it is night time and I’ve taken off my jumper and T-shirt because everyone’s in bed. I hold my arms out in front on me, comparing how they look in comparison to my chest and torso. My arms are red and bloody and bruised whereas my body is stark white.
I feel sick at the sight of it. I can’t believe I’ve done this to myself! I’ve turned myself into a monster. I can’t help but think about her. I don’t want to, but her name is whispered over and over: Julia… Julia… Julia… I wonder what she would think of what I’ve done to myself, whether she would understand or not. She’d probably just dump you for being a sick emo, the voice inside of me says. That’s why you never showed her, isn’t it?
I stop thinking and flinch when I feel the scar that is the rawest, the one I did because of my breakup. I’ve broken my streak of healing, haven’t I? I’ve given the fish food and now they’ll want more and more.
I’ve cut myself because of Julia. Words I never thought I’d say. It was so cold, how she ended it. It wasn’t by text or anything – she had the decency at least to do it in person – but it was almost worse to hear her say it in person. This person who I’d loved for ten months, who knew my inner thoughts and feelings (well, most of them), my best friend, had dumped me out of nowhere. What had I done to her to make her do this?
I force my brain to remember our last encounter, no matter how hard I don’t want to. Sitting on the park bench – our bench – where we carved our initials into its wood, which will stay there forever.
<3 M+J FOREVER <3
I smile with fondness at the memory of carving those letters; when Julia wouldn’t abbreviate ‘forever’ with 4 EVA. ‘Not writing forever properly lessens the meaning of the whole phrase!’ she’d said, quite passionately, to me when I’d questioned her motives. I’d come back with, ‘But it takes longer to write. Anyway, that R looks like a B so people might read it as fobever and nobody knows what that means!’
She’d laughed her sweet little laugh, the laugh that I’d give anything to hear now, and pecked me on the cheek affectionately, saying with a glint in her eye, ‘But people may read “4 EVA” as “for Eva” and they may think it’s quite odd that two people have a crush on Eva, whoever she may be, poor girl. That’s why you shouldn’t abbreviate words, Matt. Silly boy.’
I’d smiled at her and held my hands up in surrender. ‘Fine, Juliet. But there’s nothing we can do about it now. Like I said, M and J are now fobever!’ She’d looked angry but failed to hide her grin, giving me a playful shove. I’d brought her back to me with a bear hug five seconds later though.
I’m way, way, way, off topic.
See, I can’t do it. Literally; my brain makes diversions so I don’t have to think about the memory of the breakup; it puts other thoughts in the same surrounding in front of it, to try and distract me.
This, in turn, makes me emotional. It makes me blame Julia for breaking up with me. It makes me blame myself for going out with her. It makes me blame that stupid Starbucks in the mall for hiring her. I try to pinpoint my emotion but it’s somewhere in between anger and sadness, firing up and down, up and down, like a dashboard in a car, from zero to sixty in five seconds.
My eyes glance towards my YouTube tab open on my laptop. It makes me think about movies; more specifically, movie characters that I can relate to. Well, definitely not Hugh Grant in Notting Hill. He initially turned down blinking Julia Roberts when she asked him for a second chance! Is he a total moron? (At the thought of Julia Roberts, my own Julia comes to mind, but I bat the image away).
Possibly Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones Diary, but I haven’t eaten enough ice cream to be her, nor listened to Chaka Khan enough. I could be Zac Efron in High School Musical 2, when Gabriella turns him down in song by the swimming pool.
Then, quite suddenly, I hit Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer. The bit at the beginning, when he smashes the plates off the countertop and that girl has to come and sort him out.
Yeah, that’s me: angry, sad, and depressed; needing to vent my anger on something. I think about the plates in the kitchen, how tempting it would be to whack it off the table and see it shatter into a billion pieces. But then I see Mum disowning me for smashing all the crockery at half one in the morning, so that thought is short-lived.
In fact, now that I’m thinking of Tom, the character that he plays, his romantic interest, Summer, jumps into my head too. I think about her personality, her tendency to mess boys around with her are-we-going-out-we’re-now-not-going-out attitude. Was that Julia? Was she not looking for a serious relationship?
Of course she wasn’t, I think. We didn’t even go out for a year! If she were serious she’d reach that milestone at least!
I know that deep down I don’t mean anything I’m saying; I’m just making up excuses to try and lessen the pain of her parting. I really felt that she loved me – she said it often enough – too much to break it off.
But I’m wrong, clearly, because look at me. Julia-less. When she told me it was over I tried to search her face for any signs of it being a joke – surely she’d be a complete mess if it were true. But her face was unemotional; cold even. Something that was so foreign to her face that it made her look like a completely different person.
But if she loved me as much as she said she did… then why did she break up with me?
In a surge of emotion I grab the scissors from my room and head to the bathroom. But I do not want to do this; it’s almost like someone else is controlling me. I look at my scars along my arms in an attempt to stop, but seeing a clear space on my arm the urge to cut is there and even stronger now. I have to bleed my thoughts away.
Every thought comes crashing together into the forefront of my mind, like the arc of a wave before it crashes; the bubbling foam. Dee, her stupid blog; Mum and her speeches, chipping away at me all the time; Devon, his bullying, the bruises he imprints on me; my hatred of my own self-harming, but how I cannot stop it; lying to my family about it. And, at the very top of the list: Julia; loving her, kissing her, her understanding; and the pain of her breaking up with me and not knowing why.
Then: calm.
The wave has crashed, the foam breaking and dissolving into nothing.
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