For the First Time in My Life I Wish I Were ANYBODY Else

The days have become sticky. 

I’m sitting on the table at a pancake restaurant, gobbling glassfuls of orange juice and crispy, burnt bacon that ignites the back of my throat. I’m sure the waiter either keeps asking me if I’m okay, or telling me to leave. Which one, I don’t know. Home is far away. Everything melts away except for the cold glass in my head, easy citrus smell climbs up my nose. 

I’m stumbling through cold, empty streets. It may or may not be raining. 

I’m crouched under a pile of coats in the dressing room at Macy’s. Macy’s is a safe spot, away from all the creatures and horrible, ashy images. I lay there, curled up tightly to stop my shaking. Shoppers sail all around me, arms full of clothes and tissue and paper bags, crumpling, laughing, living their lives while I hide from my own. Even Macy’s has to close at some point. I’m still hidden in the inky blue darkness as janitors and the night people mill around the dark store. I count my breaths and wince anytime a shadow crosses by. But morning eventually comes, as it always does, and I drag my bleary-eyed, too heavy corpse back onto the train home. 

I stay out all night, lurk around bars and smoke shops, hoping someone would do something bad to me so I wouldn’t have to do it myself. Relief never comes. My chest is hollow and tight at the same time. I can’t touch my own life, it slithers through my wasted fingers. 

I take a pair of kitchen scissors and chop away at my hair. Of course the hair has to go, it’s icky and horrible and dead and froggy. Chunks of blue-black hair fall all around me. The scissors are sharp, stabbing at my fingers, a trickle of blood here and there. What happened to your hair? my friends ask in horror. I roll my eyes. It’s just hair. And it really is, mullet or no mullet. 

I’m on the dark sandy beaches at Rockaway, sobbing so hard I can barely breathe. 

Ze and I are on the roof, trying to talk someone out of buying us a drink. Really, I’m fine. His kindness is anonymous and burns the back of my throat. 

I’m in front of a class of sixth graders, sullen and bright eyes staring into the emptiness in my soul. Like a good little automaton, I hand out the activity sheets. Apparently, I’ve signed myself up to be a substitute teacher. It’s boiling hot in the class and I’m itchy under my sweater. But I cannot take it off and bare my burn scars.

The kitchen is shiny with fluorescent floodlights as I heat the spoon up on the stove. There’s nobody home, so I let myself squeal as the metal sears against flesh. The lights turn off and blink back on, and I’m gasping, reeling from pain. I’ve grown to like the smell of burning flesh. 

Everything is too much, even my room isn’t sanctuary anymore. I purge it all again. Throw out this and that, even my wardrobe rack. I shove the surviving clothes into a bin under my bed. I rotate between the same pair of pants and sweater, heaped up in the laundry basket. I take down all my art and pictures. On the blank wall at my desk, I put up a blue sticky note. All it says: WHATEVER IT TAKES, in big Sharpie letters. 

It’s somewhere between three am and slumber and I’m hammering away at Sawyer’s door. I ring and ring the bell, growing more and more hopeless. He said he would be there for me. He doesn’t answer. I sing to myself as I call him on the phone. All static and silence. I give up and slither home. Later, I find that a police report was filed.