you are back

i watch the rest of p.s. i love you. i cry. my mother leaves for the city and doesn't hug me goodbye (i'm 20, this should not matter). i cry. my cat bleeds all over the bed and i ring my dad (i bawl my eyes out). i take him to the vet. i cry. philippa is nice, but she does not understand why i am upset. my cat is not dying.

still i cry.

at the end of three and a half days of not thinking or talking and showering once and smiling even less i know what i need.

i missed you.

it's almost over

i go through 5 trashy magazines in quick succession. i watch 2 movies in a row without stopping or breathing or thinking. colours and sounds go into my eyes and ears, but they stop before they sink in. at the end i couldn't tell you what the main character of the movie was or anything about the magazines except that i think the pages with food and writing are called recipes.

i sleep and sleep and when i wake up i watch 37 minutes of p.s. i love you. i cry the whole way through. i turn it off.

i sit in my room with an unmade bed and piles of clothes and books and dirty dishes and a cup filled with 4 day old hot chocolate that has turned the colour of puke.

i cry again.

i am a widow who has lost the husband she never had.

socks

we argue about something stupid. it's not even an argument really. just a disagreement. i am right.

afterwards i go to my room and cry. i think about killing myself.

is it worth it? life i mean. somehow i don't think so.

i go to school/work/church/fill in the blank. i cry at random moments. i get so tired that i want to lie down on the pavement and never wake up. i have no friends. i want no friends. i am not pretty, not skinny, not smart. i am nothing.

i wonder if anyone would notice if i was gone.

remembering

every single day they tell me how tiny i am. every day. for the first time in my life i am not exaggerating. perhaps it's because half the hospital employees are overweight. perhaps it's because what they say is true.

today i stand in the changing room in farmers. mother tries on shirt after shirt. red and pink and yellow. i look at myself in the mirror. do department stores have skinny mirrors so unsuspecting people will think their butt is smaller than it actually is and therefore buy the jeans even though their butt is still the same size? note to self and others - skinny jeans do not make you skinny if you're fat.

for once the mirror doesn't lie to me. in my jeans and coat i am tiny, doll-like. i could break if you touched me. my clothes suck me in, hide the yards of fat which i know are underneath.

finally i see myself as other people do. i am a concrete shadow, angel wings lying on the road.

the fat melts off the bird bones underneath, but so does my personality, the things that make me me.

i wrap my coat tighter around me, feel the way my thighs do not touch, the way my scapulae press hard against the wall when i lean back.

i wish that i could fly.

x-ray

i start work at the hospital. every day i go there and sit and walk and look at people's bones from 3:30 to midnight.

the days blur, but at the time they seem different from each other.

day 1: i learn that it’s not a good idea to step on the totally gorgeous baby doctor’s toes (even if it did mean he smiled at me) and what most people learn at age 5 – that the world is bad and most people are not very nice.

day 2: i learn how to change a patient’s oxygen, run hospital beds into walls and that second year students can only boss first year students if they actually know more.

day 3: i learn that midnight comes much slower when you are sitting down, that hospitals are not always busy and that the young security guard in the front office is a flirt (but i don't mind).

day 4: i learn that some babies are born so tiny that you can almost see through their blue-grey skin and that they can break if you just look at them.

day 5: i learn not to wear my blue bracelet, to put on yellow infection gowns and gloves and masks, and that i must not cringe when i see a patient with serious head injuries on the table in the resuscitation room.

day 6: i learn that there is a ghost in the elevator shaft on the ground floor. for some reason this realisation does not scare me.

day 7: i learn just how fast you have to run for a cup when someone says, "i'm going to be sick."

at the end of the week i learn that i am glad to be alive.