sleep patterns

A Story by shaeleigh

Not quite a story. More of a diary entry. I guess I just want to know if anyone else understands how it feels to exist like this. Trigger warning for self harm, maybe body dysmorphia or something.

I do not understand what's wrong with me. I want to be loved so deeply and desperately that it’s consuming me alive. I’ve never considered myself low enough to ask my siblings for help, but tonight I do. I beg Cyrus to hear my fear in trembling texts and save me. My brother has grown up to be a handsome boy. He started losing weight when he was my age. I hope God can bless me to be beautiful, too.

I believe I was born rotten.

I will never be held first and foremost for more than a few months. I will always burn the palms of those who cradle me within due time. Once I burn off their fingerprints, they grow tired of me. I weep and wail and desperately crawl back to those who have burned me. Why does nobody want to do that for me? I wish someone would gauze their hands and try to embrace me once more. If they’d try again, they’d realize I never meant to boil over.

I am meant to be loved. Everyone is, but am I the straggler who was never given a matching pair? Did God forget to pour the possibility of love into my blood as he zipped me up? Does he watch down on me, dooming me to fall into best friendships and nothing more? The only boy willing to step near my snarled jaw was worse than I. He was too lovable perhaps, but was there a chance none of it was real? Who’s to say that glimmer in his eyes wasn’t just as deceitful as his texted ‘I love you’s? How many other girls did he make feel that way?

When I tell other girls I’ve never had a real official boyfriend, they whisper a chorus of “What? No way!” but, I can see through their mocked shock. I am ugly. You do not look at a girl like me and expect her to be well-loved. I will never be beautiful�" not in the way I need to be. I will be beautiful to my mother and my friends will call me pretty, but we all know. None of them want to acknowledge that I was born ugly, because it means they may look like bad people.

Nobody will ever look at me and picture my wedding day. I am doomed to either die young and fake-happy or live long and miserably. I am not the kind of girl you want to have children with. I refuse to doom another living creature with the curse of looking like me. I am loved in the manner of ‘feel bad for the ugly girl,’ and I know I will always be the funny one in a friend group. I will always opt to hold the camera.

I’m not even sure being skinny could save me. Maybe I’d get a butterface pass, but even then, will I live to see the day the scale says anything below 200 pounds? I need to devote myself to becoming small. I am simply assembled wrong. Even God himself cannot fix me anymore. I am scared. I will live this life scared and alone�" no matter how long or short it is. I don’t know how long I’ll live, but I know I must learn to accept that I must handle it scared and alone anyway. Maybe one day I can learn to embrace that.

I just don’t understand how he can’t miss me. I miss the idea of being loved. I wish someone was willing to make the effort to see me in the same sense that I do for everyone. I think I just need to get out of the house. I wish my friends would come to see me. I just want to be loved more than I want to be alive. I think about people not thinking about me more than I physically should be able to. I just want to feel wanted. Realistically, I don’t think anyone wants to be in my space. I’m simply there out of convenience.

Today, I am 9. My teacher is using my name as an example of a good student, and in my head, I have overwhelming angel wings wrapped around my big frame�"hugging me from shamed stares. You know what’s funny? I'm such a good student, Nobody in the class quite knows my name. They don’t know that I snort when I laugh too hard, or that I have a lisp because one of my front teeth is crooked. I hear a girl whisper it.

“Who’s she talking about?”

Little do they know, tonight I’ll go home and my mother will tell me she needs another spinal surgery. No one in the class knows, but I’ll spend my sparkling summer applying minty ointment to my mother's scars and scrubbing dishes. She will tell me the failures of her marriage, and I will brush the knots out of her hair when she gets too sick.

They have absolutely no idea, but I am terrified.

That summer�" now rusted�" will be the first time I hold metal to my skin. I will hold the dull blade of a pencil sharpener to my little wrists and contemplate the idea of death itself. This is the first time I have considered killing myself. The silver becomes a habit.

When I go to 6th grade, someone notices. In my head, the girl who sees my raw wrists is named Leslie. She is a big girl�" like myself, and she looks at my pink skin. I feel seen. She looks me in the eyes and whispers, “I won’t tell anyone. It’s okay.” Part of me wishes she did. If she had told someone then, I wouldn’t be like this. In reality, I don’t even think Leslie was in that class. I don’t know who told me it was okay that day.

Maybe it didn’t even happen.

Now, I'm 15, and I think God made me with the pure intent of miserable existence and suffering. I start to crave hurt, I crave it in a nauseating way. My mom needs another surgery. This time, I just sigh. I was supposed to tan this summer.

My skin is scarred. I am terrified. My body is painted with old wounds. They shimmer in places most people would never think of cutting. My chest and calves are victims of my wild insistence. Nobody believes me when I say I am sick. My parents will not save me anymore. Nobody is taking me to therapy. I lie through my teeth and tell people that I’ve been sober�" that the scars are old, but wandering eyes are beginning to count the fresh sheen of pink tissue. I am a stereotype�" emo fat cutter. It’s kind of ironic, I guess.

I just wish someone could care enough to stop me. I wish I could be stopped without the jump to inpatient. I just want someone to make me feel as if I don’t need it. To stop, someone must make me feel appreciated. I don’t think I’ve ever felt appreciated. If nobody saves me now, who will stop me when I move out? What happens when I don’t even have anyone to halfheartedly hide my bleeding flesh from? I just wish someone cared enough to make me stop myself.

Everyone says that recovery must be done alone to work. Yet, I have spent so much of my life alone that I believe that is false for me. I must lean on someone or I will just keep going until it kills me.