random writing

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
Excerpt from Mad Girl’s Love Song, Sylvia Plath

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Jigsaw pieces of the sky come tumbling down. As they hit the grass, green blurs with blue, yellow with red. The rain shoots through the darkening clouds that surround my little world, lightening blinds each passerby to my window, keeps them a distance shadow on the bleak horizon. But close the curtains, and my dollhouse has the perfect room. I have made my own little den where only falling stars may shine, protected by the curtains, the radiator and its kind warmth, the music that fills the air, trapping thoughts from entering this tame wilderness.

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You are safe here too. You are safe here. Safe. As the world crumbles and disintegrates behind the drawn curtains, as though a child had taken a black felt tip to my land, scribbling violently in circles, I become entrapped here by the bold lines, only here are we safe. Safe.

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Hands tightly pressed against my eyes, I see the blazing sky. I wonder how I came to live here. I ponder the wonders of my wild den, and the possibility of ever moving out. The future looms its dark shadow over my entrance, knocks loudly at my door, presses the doorbell until I am deafened by its presence. NO. You are not coming in. Not yet. I am not ready.

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Every single day you are obliged to enter the scribbles, jump from line to line and balance, swing from loop to loop. Eventually you arrive where you are needed, you go to lectures, you listen, but you do not hear. Ribbons. Ribbons protect you here. Ribbons and glitter glue. You need the world to sparkle and shine in the dark. Tie ribbons to everything, your hair, your wrist, your hope. Stud your folders with purple and white alarms. Words pierce your armour, you are not alive, a lifeless porcelain doll. The dinosaurs around me make friends with the beasts. You see the angels and you see the danger lurking around them. Without the angels the world would have no lamppost at night.

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I am a twenty year old girl. I fear growing up. I have an eating disorder and it rules my kingdom. I am a twenty year old girl and I am trying to survive the nightmare that approaches, the reality that is. I am. I am. I am. I am. Will I be? What will I be? When will I be? Am I? I am, aren’t I? In fear I freeze to a doll, in my dollhouse I become animate, the world and its creatures mere cartoons to my fantasies. I invite you to come in. Share my den as the words ripple from page to page. See the world through my glass eyes, understand my scribbles, and write me your story so I can understand the seams of your world.

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Each morning starts in almost the same fashion. The eyelids open, the light does not squeeze in, the eyelids close, they wish for darkness. Muesli. Muesli. Muesli. Stay out, thoughts are not allowed here. Snuggle under the blanket, deeper, deeper, the darker it gets, the better. I am not here, I am in a meadow, I am running around and the grass is tall and the butterflies fill the sky. I open my eyes. My room. I am still here. Muesli. Muesli. Muesli. Apple. Apple. Apple. The eyes bolt down the barriers, if only for a second. Secure in the meadow, which I consider the back garden to my dollhouse. It is only a matter of the ticking hand. As time tocks by, the bolts grow weak. I know I must venture into the world.

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Fine. FINE. Muesli it is. Eat, do not think, you will regret it. She will scream. Best not to wake her. Muesli eaten, an apple successfully dissolved in my mouth, leave the dining hall and flee back to the house. But as you dress, as you chose between those pink and floral tights and the array of skirts that form a small multicoloured hill in the corner, you hear her.
I shouldn’t have eaten that. I should have kept my stomach a hollow drum. I should have been stronger, not given in. Music on, tap running, you try desperately to undo the wrongs of the morning, but it only leaves you coughing and your eyes a reddish white. “Serves you right”, you here her whisper. “You should have known better!”

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The diet coke can is not cliché, it is pure fizzy fact: A friend in among the unknown, that reassuring zero to the list of frightening numbers. You drink it until you shake. It will cure you. That is what is thought, at very least. It makes everything better. Diet coke is our medicine.

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Often, you will hear us saying that this is a choice, it is a lifestyle; not a disease. That is what we want to believe. We don’t want to see that behind the pretty polka dot wallpaper is mould and grime: That grim reality that knows no stop. We know it is there, but covering it up, and then covering the cover up when the darkness sinks through, gives us a daily task. Constant decorators, we could be described as. I need embellishment to distract me from the truth. We are a stubborn collection of beings, thrown into society like confetti. We are always stuck there, you cannot remove us, we only multiple when another generation is scattered across the land.

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It is not a choice. It may start life as a string of disguised choices, decisions not to eat, to remove the poison in the bathroom, to make it trickle away… but we have been taken over by another person. We are not in control. This is hard for healthy minds to comprehend. “Of course you are in control”, “Just eat; it is really quite an easy thing to do”. But when the screaming girl deafens your thoughts, you stare blankly at the array of edible colours, knowing full well her reaction if any should be tasted. It is easier to run. Back to the dollhouse. Back when you can bolt down the locks and keep yourself from making mistakes. They can chase you and hit the windows, the glass, the doors, but unless you venture out, they cannot get in.

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Once I made this mistake. Trying to work, so desperately trying to concentrate, there is was at my window staring in. A loud noise hammering that I needed to eat chocolate cheesecake. I needed to like I needed blood in my veins. It knocked and knocked and I pressed my eyes hard to try and get to my meadow. It didn’t give in. Walking down the hill, in the rain for an ironical turn of pathetic fallacy, I shouted back at the noise. I tell it that FINE I WILL EAT THE DAMN CAKE, BUT THEN YOU WILL NOT TRY TO DISTURB ME AGAIN. Tears gently stream down my lifeless cheeks, cracking porcelain, washing away the pink paint that makes me smile. I obey the orders. I enter Café Nero, I mechanically chew the sickly chocolate cake. Punishment over, my feet run me back; I cannot feel the frost on my skin. All I feel is the burning need to clean my stomach from this mud. Life around me becomes nothing more than walking wellingtons and frowning smiles, the occasional chirp from a 3 year old raincoat. Correct me if I am wrong, but that wasn’t an enjoyable experience. That wasn’t a choice.