Well, you wash your estrogen down with vodka because it's all you've got, because the fire wakes you up a little, because it's 3 am and a dog is howling. You wince at the pain of your broken legs and smile at the moon because it's peeking in to say hello. Hello moon! Hello streetlights! Hello your downstairs neighbours who are having a party, all the worst hits of the mid 2000s pouring upwards into your room where they float, trapped like a wasp in a window.
Oh, you can just swim in it because it's a disaster and it's not like you sleep anymore. You have 400 unread emails and buried in there somewhere is probably the one that tells you're fired because they're disappointed in you and that's both harsh and fair. But you're not gonna check because you don't want to know, don't want to see, don't want to face reality. You want your head to stop pounding, your lungs to stop whining, your heart to stop screaming.
It's both literal and metaphorical, of course. It always is.
But the snow is coming down in late March even though we all thought spring had started and it's fucking cold out, so opening the window hits you like a haymaker to the stomach. But you do it anyway because maybe if you can dislodge the stale air your lungs will remember how to process oxygen, remember how to breathe. Because the ache in your bones suggests a chill anyway, a hot water bottle as an act of comfort, of protection. It's a talisman against the affliction that plagues you and you shift it around your body in a carefully balanced dance. Too hot, too cold, too in pain.
I wonder how the mirror captures you, darkly, dimmly, lacking perspective. It's better than a selfie, because that wicked gleam in your eyes never seems to be captured in still images. It's constant motion, a flurry of light and life that betrays that secretly you're happy, secretly you don't want to die. And you were in the hospital just last week because your heart wasn't working and as you sat for 5 hours in the waiting room you thought that maybe it would stop and you would die there. And sure, you thought that would be really embarrassing for the hospital and really embarrassing for you and therefore at least a little funny. But mostly you thought you didn't want to die, you don't want to die, you're scared to die, and that's a relief because really that's progress, right?
And it's funny how shaving changes the shape of your face so much, because you wouldn't think that it does. It's funny how the chipped nail polish hiding layers of peeling nails also hides the way your hands should be. It's funny how you have no curves, how the year of hormones didn't really do anything you noticed, how you feel so strange about it. You want it to feel familiar, to feel important, to feel like a craving for something you can't live without. You want to enjoy the breast forms that sit untouched in the drawer, but you don't. You want to be the height of fashion, but someone called you an alt-butch a few months ago and maybe that was preferable.
But you're craving something that doesn't exist as you run your hands along the hem of the t-shirt whose sleeves you slashed off, down the curve of the grey jeans, towards your scarred feet. You're not a girl and you're not a boy and nothing feels right. It doesn't quite fit and maybe it's easiest to cast it all off, to forget about the problems, to embrace the anarchy. Because you're too busy surviving to learn make-up, as much as you think colourful eyeshadow would make you happy. Because the pain in your legs drives you to sitting you can't even enjoy the height you hate. The boots are still broken. Will you ever get them fixed?
But it's nighttime and you're drinking the vodka straight because it's a fun party trick and this is a good party for one. And maybe you'll never go to another because your last was a mess, all drama and politics. And maybe you just want more friends who live in the same city as you. Maybe you just want to be held. Maybe you just want to be loved. Maybe you want the scars to fade, the wounds to heal and burn away just leaving the truth of you behind as they recede. It's a trauma response, you know? It's all a trauma response.
You killed yourself through writing once, and you could do it again and again and again until it takes, until there's nothing left but your final perfect form. But what if it survived, if it's still in you, if you're still burdened with an unknowable, unsatisfiable desperate need to survive at all costs? What if you can never trust again?
What does it take to feel safe in your body, in your touch?
You think there are ghosts in your walls. You think this because it keeps turning up in your writing, a regular motif. It's like a melody you enjoy, a tune you can't get out of your head, so you keep humming it in different ways to see what sticks, what song it's from. You don't think you'll know before it's the right time to. But the writing is a mirror into your soul more than anything, to just open the page and pour yourself out onto it. You don't have a plan, you never have a plan. Just the doubts that it's good enough, that your ideas are worthy of being voiced, that it's unoriginal, that it's derivative.
But you rally your courage and message a friend and do it anyway, because what else are you gonna do?
You take your estrogen with vodka because you like the taste of fire and maybe if you take it enough you'll see what everyone else does. Maybe it'll feel divine the way it's supposed to. Maybe you'll understand someday. It's 3 am and you can't sleep. What else are you gonna do?
Might as well write.