Girl in Pieces

“The moral of the story, Charlie, is this: Don’t let the cereal eat you. It’s only a fucking box of cereal, but it will eat you alive if you let it.”

Self-harm is not a grab for attention. It doesn’t mean you are suicidal. It means you are struggling to get out of a very dangerous mess in your mind and heart and this is your coping mechanism. It means that you occupy a small space in the very real and very large canyon of people who suffer from depression or mental illness.

But: I remember the stars that night. They were like salt against the sky, like someone spilled the shaker against very dark cloth.

That mattered to me, their accidental beauty.

Blue said we have to choose who we want to be, not let the situation choose us.

The world becomes an ocean, the ocean washes over me, the sound of water is deafening, the water drowns my heart, my panic becomes as large as planets. I need release, I need to hurt myself more than the world can hurt me, and then I can comfort myself.

I’m so lonely in the world I want to peel all of my flesh off and walk, just bone and gristle, straight into the river, to be swallowed, just like my father.

A girl’s life is the worst life in the world. A girl’s life is: you are born, you bleed, you burn.

I mean, we spent so much time wasted back home, do you realize that? We were fucked up all the time.”

“I know. Some of it was fun, though.” I smile.

“Yeah, but sometimes you have to let stuff go if you want to move forward, you know?

I just don’t think I matter.

I’m scared, because I don’t know how to be with people, but I don’t know how to be alone, either,