when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circustent
and everything began
when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because
- e.e. cummings
She wrote me a letter. The razorblade I had pried out of her hand and the letter were all I had. She was gone, and I didn't even have a photograph. Nothing that would ever conjure a memory of us. The only thing I could think of was the bath tub and the blood. It was if everything that had happened hadn't at all. Except I still had bruises. Except it still hurt, just a little, to sit. Except all day and all night I heard her stereo. Except when I woke up in the morning I just felt dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.
The police kept me for a few hours. They asked me questions but got nowhere. Everything seemed to be spinning, I remember that. And I wanted to be sick, but I couldn't. I had nothing left. Nothing at all. I couldn't even cry. It was a fiasco. I had been there only a few days prior to have pictures taken of my bruised anorexic chest. Now they wanted to know more. Every word they said felt like daggers. I just covered my ears and closed my eyes, trying to conjure happier days, but finding only black.
My mother held me and sang to me. I was in my own bed. I'm not sure if I ever fell asleep, but that's the last thing I remember happening before the sun rose again. The passing night just didn't seem all that important. I was living in a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. And I couldn't even feel which part of it was reality and which part of it was fake. I couldn't feel anything.
They broke the locks on my door. Doctor's orders. My family forced me up for meals, walks, television, smiles. Isaac pushed our flight back. We had a week, now. But my parents wanted us to leave. This place was too dangerous for me, now. It would be better if I just got away from it all together.
I took walks. Isaac went with me. My walks were blind. Everything I ever did was blind. I hadn't opened her letter yet.
The day they buried her I stood outside the gates of the cemetery and watched a small gathering of people I did not know leave white roses on her casket. Her father wasn't there. I leaned against the fence with my cigarette. I had not yet cried.
"Is that her?" Isaac said.
I nodded, then tossed my cigarette and walked away.
Dear Taylor,
I don't know where to start. I don't even want to write this to you, but I am. Maybe this will all amount to nothing of consequence, but I can't tell consequence from action, anymore. I just feel... so... fucked up. So, so, so, so fucked up. You haven't called. All I can think is that you're leaving, and you haven't called. I can't live without you. I can't live with you.
My father left town, but only after he destroyed everything in the house. He's running away. You were right all along. The stupid fuck, he doesn't give a shit. This has ruined everything. God, Taylor, I wish I had better words, or something profound to say. I wish I had an answer. All I know is that I will never be able to live knowing what I have done to you. You haven't called, and I know what it means. This relationship has ended. I wanted to marry you, Taylor. I wanted to have babies with you. Sweet, happy children. I'm so in love with you, but I know. After what happened we could never be the same. Even if we wanted to pretend, it would fall apart sooner or later. I just wish I could go back and fix everything. But I can't. This was a stupid, stupid mistake. I threw away the most wonderful man. And now you're leaving.
God, god, god. This is the last thing I will ever say, and I can't even say it right. I don't even know the words. I just love you so much it hurts me. I just love you so much and I don't know what to do. I see no other way. I have nothing, Taylor. No family, no future. No you.
Do me a favor: When you hear, if you ever read this, please just forget about me. Forget that this ever happened. Forget that I even existed. Walk away liberated. Live the life you wouldn't have ever been able to have with me in it. You are so much bigger than I could ever be.
Love,
Annissa
She was crying when she wrote it. The pages were water stained. The penmanship shaky. I dreamed about when she might have written it. With pills in her hands and a glass of water while the tub was running, maybe. I tried to see her hysterical, but I couldn't. Annissa was never hysterical, not even when she came running to my house sobbing. The letter explained nothing. It didn't even seem like a suicide note. I tossed it across the room, unsatisfied. I wished to cry, and filled my belly with sleeping pills.
My head was silent and black. My days were in monochrome. My mother, my father, and my little sisters kissed me goodbye at the airport. My little brother just gave me a hug.
"We'll call you when we get there!" Isaac said, waving and trying to smile reassuringly. I waved as well.
I went to the restroom to throw up.
"Taylor, God..." Isaac said, outside the bathroom stall door. "Why do you have to do this? Why?"
He was crying. When I emerged, he shook me, he pushed me, and then he hugged me. "Fuck you." He said. "Why won't you talk? Just fucking say something. God, say something."
I stared. And stared. And stared. He left.
In our Los Angeles home, Zac's alarm was going off. Isaac went to sleep in his bed, crying and ignoring me. Homesick already. In my own bed, the one I hadn't seen for eight months, I felt like I had laid down inside a different dimension. Here, Tulsa was thousands of miles away. In every regard.
That's when the nightmares started.
With the nightmares I lost the weight. And with the weight, my hair fell out in my hands.
One night, I woke up crying. Crying and crying and crying. And sick. So, so sick. I threw up water and juice and breakfast. I threw up blood. The world spun like I was drunk, I held onto the edge of the sink as I stared at myself in the mirror, pulling handfuls of hair out of my head. It looked so thin, lately. My thick, long, healthy hair. I needed to get rid of it. I pulled and pulled and pulled until no more was willing to come out.
I remember peeling the razorblade out of my jeans, the one still encrusted with her blood, and I remember curling up in the bathtub. I made the cuts consciously, I must have, but I didn't give it much thought until the blood was dripping onto the white porcelain. It made me feel sick. Across my belly I had written the word 'FOREVER' and the blood that poured out of it, all over the tub and myself - it meant that I was alive. I rubbed it between my thighs and I stared down at myself, wondering how easy it really was to just cut open certain parts of you and take all of the bad stuff out. I was sure, if I had ever done such a thing, that there would never be anything left.
I lay back and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of my racing heart, imagining the blood spewing out of me with all of its hard work. Just spewing those words, Forever and ever and ever and ever. Forever. I ran my finger gently over the burn on my arm that spelled her name. Ani Forever. I'm stuck here Forever. This is over Forever. I am sick Forever. I will bleed Forever.
I was silent for several minutes, carefully differentiating all of the sounds around me. The low buzzing of the electricity, the soft hum of the air conditioner, and the dripping of the faucet right next to my ears. It got louder and louder and closer and closer, pervading all of my senses. I could feel the dripping, I could feel it. It tasted like vomit and salt. It shook all of my bones. My mouth was open, and my throat was vibrating with sound, but I couldn't hear anything but the dripping. I screamed louder, my fingers back in my hair, pulling. My skin was crawling, and all I could see behind my eyelids was a bathtub curdling tomato soup and the pink frills of a pillow.
Something was coming out of my mouth. I was drooling, I think. I just remember that my hands were covered in it when I put them over my ears to close out the sound of my own voice singing I go through all this... I go through all this... over and over and over, like a broken record.
"Taylor! Taylor!" I heard.
"Go away, go away, go away, go away." I chanted, the song now playing itself in my head. The door burst open. I crawled over the ledge of the bath tub and fell down. I thought maybe I would vomit again. The bathroom was a mess.
"I don't know what to do. Taylor, please speak to me. Taylor, please..." Isaac cried as I hung myself vacantly over the toilet. I didn't know what to do either. More water came out of my mouth, but I didn't move, so most of it landed in my lap. It was warm.
Isaac called 911. I can still hear the conversation a room away, but I'm not entirely sure what he said... just the way he sounded. They took me away in an ambulance. The ride felt bumpy, I don't remember much else.