One day, I was born.
I'm standing in a kitchen and my mouth is moving but nothing is coming out. The sun gleams, trapped behind filthy glass. There are dead flowers in a pot. The stove is on, fire hissing, water bubbling. The world is full of energy and none of it is here. This is a dead space. It's liminal. There's nothing here. Nothing remains. I cast my eyes to the ceiling, watching the mold burst through. Drywall crumbles down, leaving rotting wood and burning wires. There's a pot on the stove and I'm boiling in it.
One day, I lived.
His arms wrap around my back. His weight pressed down onto me, crushing me onto the bed. I'm bored. I'm disinterested. Sorry, what was the question? I wasn't really listening. I'm never really listening, you're right. I can see your lips move but they're the furthest thing from my mind. Sound pulsates, more physical then real. It comes in lights and colours, a show I can watch. I don't understand. I don't need to. He's so strong. I should be marvelling at his biceps. All I can think about is the way she smiled.
One day, I died.
I'm not shaped like a person anymore. I'm shaped like a concept. It's the fear running down your arms, electric and energizing. Your ticking clock warns of what's to come, where you run from. I'm standing on the subway platform, waiting for the train. Every time it comes, I clutch the edge of my seat, terrified that I'll move. Terrified that history will repeat. I'm watching hoards of people pass by, millions upon millions, piling in to go to work in the morning, to the safe waiting arms of lovers, children, friends.
One day, I fell in love.
The memory escapes my mind. It fights acknowledgement, fights against reality. It drives away as though it was never there to begin with, ripping even the shape of it from awareness. It's like tracking a thing you cannot see or understand. There are moments where I'm right behind it, clutching on with both hands. There are moments when I forget what I'm doing, leaning against the wall cool and collected. Not a care in the world. At best, I can sense the shape of it. It's shaped like I was. It is the shape of what I was.
I'm chasing myself.
Perhaps metaphor would help.
Imagine a city. We'll call it Denial. The city lies in ruins, some tragedy having shattered it. Buildings collapse into rubble, stones scattered over the streets adorned with shattered glass and bone. It's old, unfathomably large, and full of life. They crawl through the shadows and run through the light. They are the memories of what I was. They hide from the light, from the baleful gaze of their dying god.
Make no mistake, their god is dying. It gasps for breath as it lies atop its tower. Once proud wings now sag, broken and torn. It scrabbles for purchase on the stone tile, scrabbles to feed its hungry jaws with the little things that dance around it. No longer can it feed. The city is lawless.
All of these things are me. All of these things are representations. We play these games to make ourselves understood. It's sitting on your balcony and 2 am and letting your hands move automatically to see what happens. It's reality itself pushing its way into your brain to tell you what's about to happen.
And the beast roars. And they prey laugh because they're safe. Safe to be themselves.
Denial is full of monsters. There is the spider that weaves webs that only trap the kind. There is the cat that hisses about your failings. There is me.
We've seen paths. The city is full of gods and each choose their own method. The beast screams and breaks things it does not understand. It refuses the past, leaving only survival. The spider laughs and devours whatever it can. It eats the past, leaving only hate. The girl smiles sweetly and ignores everything she can. She doesn't want to exist. The pattern hides and reflects everything it can. It is determined to resemble the whole.
I sit at the very centre of the city, beneath that great tower. Through the basement, down the stairs, past the booth. I sit besides the train tracks, on the lonely platform bench, crammed between the spikes that stop homeless people from lying down. It's bleak. The train never comes. It never comes.
Like shattered glass falling. Like raindrops descending from the sky. The moon hangs overhead encouragingly. It is a friend, perhaps the only friend I've ever had.
All of these things are me. The city itself is me. I'm a jigsaw puzzle left in the box. I'm sitting in the subway station and laughing. Imagine that. Imagine if someone saw me. The little ghost girl haunting Jane subway station. Would they close the station down? Exorcise me? Would the ghost eater come for me too? If they stopped running the trains, would I cease to move as the station falls silent? Because I only exist between vibrations, the particles that make me up shaken free from the rock by the weight of metal on metal. Electricity screams into motion, the tunnel collapsing around me, wrapping tighter and tighter until I'm sealing in.
I'm dancing with myself alone in my room. Dozens of pages of self drawings line the walls, all of them scribbled through until they're unrecognizable. It's not arcane, it's simply sadness. There is no fear but that of the darkness being reflected in us. We all want to be good. We all want to be loved. We all want to be whole.
The date was fine. It was perfectly average. I had to talk too much, carrying the weight of the conversation. At least the food was nice. And the thing is that it's repetitive. It's not what I'm looking for. I have a stack of drawings in the bottom of my desk, pages and pages of her face. I can't get it out of my head. I can't get it out of me.
They're drawings of me.
Because maybe my eyes will look more alive in pencil than they do in the mirror. Maybe it'll mean something, anything. Maybe I can exist for just a moment. It would mean so much for someone to run their hands down my back. For someone to stay. For someone to tell me that I'm okay.
And the beast descends to eat the spider. But the spider has snared the girl and the prey races to free her, races against the crumbling architecture and the fast approaching train. It's dreamlike. Movement is not linear but associative. You don't choose where to be and walk there, you make yourself like there and then you are they. I'm playing both sides because I am the city and pieces of me are dropping into the void. Look at me go!
Stones vanish into darkness, not even a sound to indicate they were there. Fragments cling to them. Memories of a self, two sets. One for before and one for after and oh, how they hate each other. How they war. How even at the end of all things, even as I dissolve into the night they are desperate to destroy each other. Doesn't seem right. Surely they should be friends. I mean, they're all the same person. All fragments of the same person.
Where do we go after we die? Do we stand in the wind, hair flickering around? And I must be dead, because I haven't had my hair this long for years. But the piercings and the tattoos drop off like cheap stickers, fading from view and sight and I'm watching them place flowers on the grave and I'm thinking that it cannot be right. It cannot be right because I'm right here. I'm right here! Please look at me. Please see me.
Fuck you anyway, mom. You never cried for me when I was alive.
Maybe I'll just become the station. Little fragments of hair and skin in the tile walls. Harsh light from the overhead sometimes blinking off late at night. The train will rumble by. I'll wish people luck on their days. I'll hold the train in place when they're late. I'll tell those who need it that they are loved. I'll smile without lips. I'll be happy.
But I'm not a train station.
They put flowers on my grave and so I named myself Violet. And in doing so, I called myself into being because to name a thing is to control it.
I can't remember what name I had before and that's okay. Because that was before. This is now. You don't become a person all at once. You don't get to cast off the fragments you don't like until they're done.
I'm watching a girl standing by the tracks. She's crying. She's getting ready to jump.
I take her by the shoulder.
I hug her.
Together, we cry.
She was me the whole time.
My name is Violet. I have no last name and no family. But I am a person for as long as I choose to be. And right now?
I choose to be.
I gasp awake. I'm sitting on the bench in the subway. I'm alone. I'm awake. I'm alive. Two hands, two feet, 5 fingers. I'm human. I have a name and a past. I feel whole. I feel every single part of me. There's a knife in my hand. It isn't mine, but it is of me. Everything is of me.
I laugh. I mean, really? Was it that simple the whole time?
There's a spider in my head and it wants me to eat. There's a hunter in my lungs and it wants me to kill. There's a girl in my heart and she wants me to love. They are all me. But I get to pick which I follow.
And I choose love.