Two nights ago I went back to the place where I tried to kill myself last year. I let the water devour me and once again attempted to drown my demons, unaware of the fact that they could now breathe underwater.
Water, a substance that is colorless but through simple laws of reflection can be perceived as blue; incidentally my favorite color that not only reflects my feelings but is also one of my favorite genres of music. It is blue paint that is violently splattered on my walls like the scars on my body carved by you.
When I was little I used to dread the sound of footsteps in the corridor, outside my bedroom door. My breath would fall short and my fists would not unclench until I saw a face that wasn’t yours. My stomach would be full of series of knots, anxiety created a hole in my heart at the age of five. A psychological condition haunting me in the form of people, at its origin you.
I did not know what was happening to me but when the knowledge of it finally struck me I did what I had been conditioned to do, like countless others, I swallowed my feelings and became a part of the silent victim charade. I was never the person who openly exhibited her wounds, out of habit I disappear into my mind so much so that my friends equate my personality with solipsism.
My sister asks me if I believe in Islam. My mother asks me what made me stray.
You claimed to be a holy man who fell in love with a faceless God and I used to lock myself up in your room repeating selfish prayers with the hope that one day those knots in my stomach would disappear. They haven’t. My breath falls short. I have seen the world undergo spiritual abuse alongside my body. Do not ask me what made me stray.
You have made me a ticking time bomb.
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Breathe,
Five,
“Let’s play a game”,
Six,
Breathe,
Seven,
I realize that self consciousness is extremely flawed,
Eight,
“It’ll be our little secret”,
Nine,
Breathe,
Ten,
I am pushed towards the belief that my body is not my own but is made for the appeasement of others,
Eleven,
Breathe,
Twelve,
Your friend drugs me and feels me up in the backseat of a car with you sitting right beside us,
Thirteen,
Breathe,
Fourteen,
The boys in school pull my bra strap, another puts his hand on my thigh moving upwards slowly,
Fifteen,
What is consent?
Sixteen,
A forced kiss,
Seventeen,
Breathe,
Eighteen,
I meet a boy, I fall in love, I don’t know how to breathe,
Nineteen,
All that is left is hate and rage,
Twenty,
I’m cornered on the street, my clothing ripped apart.
My friends ask me why I’m distant and cold. My family asks me what went wrong. My conscience asks me why I dwell so much on death.
Your fingernails will always be tainted with my blood and I carry your shadow wherever I go. Funnily enough, yours was the first funeral I attended and since then Death has calmed me as much as silence or the waves of an ocean. There is comfort in grief, in being in a place where you can hear the howling screams of men, women, and children; to cry when no one is looking at you.
I see you and I feel nothing, I looked at your corpse and felt nothing.
Two nights ago I went back to the place where I tried to kill myself last year. I let the water devour me and once again attempted to drown my demons, unaware that they could now breathe underwater.
Like the sirens of greek mythology you stand there waiting for me to swim to you only to skin me alive. I could list a million things wrong with me because of how you made me feel. You nurtured my insecurities and bred the worst parts of me.
A false idea of love planted in my mind, there were many others who came after you. They were strangers but you were my own flesh and blood. You misused your sense of authority in order to turn me into something inhumane.
People tell me I look like you, I never liked looking in the mirror anyway.
The smell of lit cigars reminds me of your father, an honest man if there ever was one. Drops of blood that emerge from my cracked lips, resting on my tongue, remind me of you and those nights I screamed, begging you to stop as you whispered into my ears “I do this because I love you.”
You were deaf and blind to the suffering of another and I cannot look into another’s eyes when I speak because intimacy frightens me and I am conditioned to feel pain when I hear the word love. My screams have been ringing in my ears, even after you passed, they did not cease to exist.
Two nights ago I went back to the place where I tried to kill myself last year. I let the water devour me and attempted to drown my demons unaware that they could not breathe underwater.
It has been five years since your passing. I am back in the water letting the waves crash over me and my tattered spirit. For the first time the water is the only sound I hear and it is music to my ears.
amaeru / photo journal 