Rumination

My mind is a fish hook, constantly grappling for purchase on any remnant of self-worth.

But what about the boy who I revolved around for a lifetime? The one who chose every smile over mine?

What about the friend who left with the morning frost, never looking back? It took months to banish the image of her retreating footprints from my mind.

One year in adolescence, I held a brown-eyed boy close to my heart, and I still sometimes feel small from the way his eyes travelled past me.

In 2018 I befriended a girl who picked at my flaws like scabs. She didn't seem satisfied until they bled, blaming me for the stain on her hands.

There was a girl who always had to be the best, using my shoulders as footholds so she could perpetually stand on a podium, gold reflecting in her hawkish gaze.

I poke and prod at the parts of me deemed 'not enough'. If I remove my feelings maybe I will be what they consider acceptable. If I harden my skin maybe I will be more fit for survival. If the corner of my lips can turn upwards more readily, maybe I would not be drowning under so many goodbyes.

What of the girl who promised me forevers but considered me more of a shade cloth than a person? The one whose forevers I sacrificed for dignity and freedom? What of the way I swallowed numbness and began walking closer to death and she, with her turned back, didn't even notice?

What of the boy who could find love but never courage? The one who was always a yo-yo, a boomerang, never knowing how to stay. Maybe if my voice was louder, my heartbeats quieter, maybe then he would've found a way to stop running.

And is this the way of the world? Coming and going and breaking. Is this the curse of life? Loving and losing and dying and reviving?

I handed that girl my loyalty no matter how many times she butchered my trust. My hurt was met with accusations, my pleas beaten back by guilt trips. And I still held her stretcher each time she held still for their knives. She slit my throat as I was already walking to the grave.

How can humanity be so careless? How can a heart be so often kicked to the curb?

In the darkest part of my mind, shoved behind locked doors and cobwebs, there is a boy who found pleasure in strumming my heartstrings, in hearing them snap. I never did find out what made him think such selfishness was okay.

There comes a million times when a person is forced to look inward. When you hold so many memories of people who have forgotten you, you eventually wonder: Is there something about me that is inherently and utterly unlovable?

Is it the way the obsessive compulsions urge me to wash my hands twenty times before my mind accepts they are clean? Is it the way my hair is never quite right, always giving away the fundamental imperfections of me? Is it the daydreams that lure me away from reality so often, causing a fog in my eyes and a silence in the conversation? Is it the twelve times I checked the car was locked? Is it the ninety minutes I take to fall asleep each night? Is it the crookedness of my teeth? Is it the hesitance in my hugs? The stutter in my sentences? The queasiness in my stomach? The fatigue in my bones?

There was a girl who told me 'no'. Who swore it was none of those things. Who vowed I was lovable. Infinitely lovable.

But didn't she leave like all the rest? Didn't she brutalise me even more with her departure?

Sometimes I think love is a fickle, finite siren song. A forgery. A fictional story.

But haven't I loved? Haven't I handed out chunks of my heart over and over until my chest was empty and still somehow I found more to give? Haven't I pressed each goodbye between the pages of my notebook and immortalised them? Haven't I remembered? Always, always, so painfully remembered?

And so surely someone who loves so freely, cannot be unlovable.

Right?