We announce our birth with a scream of cries, the only time that harsh sound brings joy to the mother. Our voice is the only power, most of us don’t have to earn. Our only tool for survival, with the only knowledge coming in hunger pains, dirty diapers, and plain discomfort. We knew to cry until we got what we needed. A simple thought; we know what is essential and we work to obtain it. 

So why is it that as we grow older and experience more, gain more knowledge, gain more power– that we begin to forget this one fact. This one piece of information that even a newborn baby is given to have a chance at surviving. The real question is: are we forgetting? Or are we choosing to? The world around us is a constant surge of crashing waters, never stable. The things we find that small comfort in can do harm, will do harm. But what’s left when life revolves around the unpleasant, with nothing that relieves the pain or worry. When the brain has nothing inside it but rotting, shriveled thoughts that envelop any slip of light. Is it worth it to live perfectly, healthily, if us as a whole will never be able to get to this level together?

I look back at my past, constantly questioning “why did I put myself through so much.” Why is it that my issues seem to stem from my hands, my mind, my lies? Those haunted days when I weighed the decision between known and unknown, safe and dangerous. 

The night I savored the heft of the kitchen knife in my hand, the cold jolt of the metal. 

The night I ordered the scale, lowered the intake below two hundred. 

The night I realized that if I put it in, I can take it out. 

The year I lost all control in my desperate attempt to get it. 

When I decided to make that first cut. To permanently stain my own flesh. My own body. To go against all human instinct, and bring harm to myself. It seemed like the only option, something I had to do. I didn’t know why, I still don’t. I only knew that this was something people do in pain, something to help escape the depths of it. I saw the tips and valleys of a mountainscape up my sister’s arm, the three purple lines that the girl in the back of the class would roll up her sleeve to clean. Images that accompanied the feel of the little felt maroon bag that had begun to expand as it was stuffed with tissue after tissue, cut after cut. 

I found peace in the action. The direct power I could see in my own fingers. To know that in some form I have control, and an impact on something, anything. That I’m not an empty being. 

The belief that seems to follow me through each flashback. My actions engraved into a behavior that favors everyone else before me. Trying to bring happiness to a house with two teenage girls, secretly filling my 7-year old frame with blame. The scrapbooks that used to carry four undoubtedly happy faces, now carry five of less enthusiasm. The only faces I knew, those strangers of the past were gone before I had a chance to meet them. They were anecdotes of success to deliver in reunions, to prove some substance of a life, enough to stop trying so hard. 

The little girl I was, who felt guilty if she forgot to pray for happiness for her mother, or got in trouble for sitting next to someone that talked out of turn and got blamed.  Learning to stay quiet until cued, to follow the directions and social guidelines of others, to fit in and create no waves that feel like a cold slap across the face. I made a promise to my father that “I won’t be mean like them when I’m a teen,” a belief I felt so strongly, a personal strength that got my hopes up. It was replied to in laughs and disbelief, a challenge for me to beat. The motivation to  stuff down any emotion that could disturb. The motivation to raise my voice in my second attempt at greeting my piano teacher even when I feared it would crack and delve into sobs, a common demand of her when my first entrance wasn’t up to par. The shame heated my cheeks as I stood alone behind the white door, practicing in my mind before performing three perfect knocks and facing the disappointed faces on the other side. The motivation to stay quiet, to stay the innocent little girl that couldn’t help laughing at all his jokes, that faced the black of her eyelids, facing her fear of the dark, when he took what he wanted and never said a word. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m now engineered to scream silently. My throat stings whenever tears threaten, words that have never escaped building up and beginning to overflow. Words that spill across my skin, words that I need to get out. 

My arms glisten, knuckles redden.

I feel the bone, it feels like home. 

I’ve grown up sustaining control, I can’t give it up now. Cant put trust into the chants that the scale will only sway, that it will be okay. To give up the life I’ve diverted to, the routine and ritual that I resort to by default. My automatic setting. The hunger cues I’ve trained to stay at bay, I can’t go back to a life I’ve personally purged out of my skin. The behaviors I’ve banned from my life. The skin I’ve taken in return. Give up the meals that I know will fit just right, to eat a surprise. It’s hard to accept being in the unknown when the said unknown is on the only level small enough to be known. In a world of never ending confusion, my little bubble needs to keep me safe. Don’t take this away too. The hairs are already down the drain, my skins already stained, their faces of shame already engraved. 

I don’t deserve to change. 

I don’t deserve to stay. 

I carry bags of pain–but I’m not one to litter.

Let me fade away and attempt to save the day while others turn their face away. 

Please look away.