burrito-princess:

i am never present inside my body. in my memories, i am always an onlooker, a casual bystander - there’s no feeling attached. i see my first kiss from behind my own back. i see the last time i had sex from the corner of the room. i am not myself, dear, because i am never myself. nothing i’ve ever done feels real.

freshman year and i throw myself into college life with a dizzying, dark determination. in retrospect, i think i wanted to burn out. self-immolation. i spend the weeks drunk, and the weekends even drunker. i kiss every boy who looks at me the wrong way and take home the ones who look twice. i proudly tell my mother, i think i was drunk more during exam period than the rest of the semester combined. a harsh, hollow laugh escapes me and she looks at me like you’d look at a stranger. 

i want so badly to be one of the literature girls, all dark eyes and espresso lips, but i am not pretty enough or clever enough. whenever i try to dress like a grown-up i feel like the baby cousin trying to play with the big girls. i put on a pencil skirt and burst into tears. i try to smoke a cigarette and snuff it out on my arm instead.

by winter, i’d stopped eating. not entirely, of course - but for all intents and purposes. i subsisted on crackers and mustard, and sat in my freezing dorm room nibbling away at my pathetically small portions. occasionally i’d crack and go on a binge frenzy and eat literally everything i had in my fridge, but i remember that winter as a season of absences. the absence of fat on my thighs and light in my eyes. i drove myself into the ground and didn’t stop there.

one night, in bed with joe, he drags his hand over the bump of my hipbone and the xylophone of my ribs. i love skinny girls, he purrs. never change. he glosses over the bruises on my arms, the bags beneath my eyes, the thick purple scars on my thighs. we see what we want to see, i suppose.

can i write myself out of this story? most days i want to. 
i am my own unreliable narrator.
humbert’s got nothing on me.

when everyone goes home and it’s late and cold, i get scared because i am alone. i text, sext, call everyone i can think of. phillip finally picks up, and i wheedle until he agrees to come over. maybe he can hear the cracks in my voice.
fine, coco, but i’m not drinking.
sure, baby, i purr, and i stick my collarbones forward and put my fuck-me lipstick on. 
an hour later we are naked in bed, drunk. too late, i remember that he is sleeping my with my best friend as well and this affects me less than it should. i think we are using each other, in different ways. 
i cry more than i cum but we still fuck a lot. 
two weeks later, i’m ignoring his calls. 
i don’t know why i do the things i do.

burrito-princess:

fragments of a depressive episode

eat your food (and keep it down). one foot in front of the other. this is a toddler walking and falling, walking and falling. sooner or later i’ll fall badly and break a leg. don’t go to the maze of a supermarket today; alcoholics stay away from the bottle store. seeing 2-for-1 packets of biscuits or tubs of ice-cream is a dare, a threat - and you accept every time.

have i turned myself inside out yet? has enough of me spilled onto the bathroom floor that i am entirely, perfectly, devastatingly empty? is this enough? please, oh please - let this be enough. let me be enough, now. let this time be the last time.

lying in the bath, belly-up like a dead fish. i tell myself, method acting, and laugh-sigh-cry. 

hold your own hands to keep from clawing at your insides. hold your own hands because no one else will. hold your own hands and pat your own back and sing yourself to sleep. shake it out, shake it out, shake it out of your head and heart and bones. a little as a time. easy does it. eat your food (and keep it down). hundredth time’s the charm. steady, girl. you’ll get it one day. 

when did i start talking to myself as though i am a horse?

in my mind, i am sickeningly lurching towards the mirage of a finish line that i am beginning to feel i will never reach. i‘ve been trying - but it hurts so much to just keep my eyes open. i fear i am doomed to die in this desert, like so many overzealous explorers. i will wander in circles until i collapse in on myself. 

things in my bed: an empty diet coke bottle. dirty plates. a phone that i too often ignore. the broken shell of a razor, valuables long since extracted. balled-up tissues surfing the waves of my blanket. 

there is beauty in every ugly thing (but, girl, there is an exception to every rule).

i if i throw enough darts, however half-hearted, i will hit the bullseye eventually.  maybe i should stop throwing darts at myself. maybe i should take better aim and try again.

let the people who love you spin fine webs of silk around your husk of a body to keep you connected, floating, upright. you will learn to spin your own web one day. you will learn to float one day. we all need help from time to time. this weight will leave your bones one day. steady on, easy does it, right way up, breathe in and out. in and out. every heartbeat is a success. measure yourself in presence, not absence. you are here. you are here. you are here.

get out of bed and shower. clean your teeth. get dressed. go through the motions until they make sense again. go through the motions until you feel less like alice down the rabbit-hole. you can do it. you can do it. you can do it.  i know the grand canyon is yawning inside your chest, girl, i know. but architecture is beautiful, and one day you will bridge that divide. i promise.

burrito-princess:

after those anons last night i feel really uncomfortable writing about my mental health on here

message me if you want the url to my personal blog

burrito-princess:

2011: a retrospective

we’re smoking pot on your couch. i don’t even like pot. your couch is scratchy and i don’t know how to place my body.
i draw in too hard, and the pipe burns my throat. 
i suck harder, daring myself to cough.
i don’t.
i’m eating shrooms with you, wondering how many calories are in them and weighing that against how far away from my mind they will take me.
i’m zoning in and out and trying to laugh at your jokes but i want to die.

we’re in a room that smells of sex and sweat and the stagnancy of depression.
i’m purring something cute at you, pouring words out through my eyes. i’m stuttering, playing a character, an award-winning performace. i don’t know who this girl is.
i can feel our bodies bowing and stretching, moving apart and slapping together. i keep waiting to feel something. i don’t care about an orgasm. i don’t care about happiness.
i want to feel purposeful, functional.

we stop kissing so i can go and puke up some of the alcohol i’ve had. 

i have glass in my foot and scrapes on my knuckles from getting in a fight with myself. i am not walking lightly. 

this isn’t me. this is someone else, being fucked and kissed and making the right sounds at the right times.
you look at me and tell me i matter. i laugh at you; a deep, throaty sound escapes me that i’ve never heard before.
you say it again and i reel off some things i’ve scrawled on a napkin, stoned out of my brain.

i’m the elbow ditch of a doomed seattle rockstar. 
i’m a week’s worth of dirty dishes gathering dust on my bedroom floor. 
i want self-immolation, self-deprivation.

your eyes flick down and i stretch my body out, hipbones emerging like a sunrise from my stomach.

the next morning, i walk home in the early sunday light. i light a cigarette even though i don’t smoke.
i take a drag then put it out on my arm. 
the taxi driver looks at my arms, asks me if i got in a fight. i ignore his question and pick at my cuticles, my mind hissing at him.

when i am finally home, in my own bed, i look at my dirty dishes and clothes and bloody bandages strewn across the floor.

i cry because nothing makes sense here anymore.