out of the ash, i rise with my red hair
tw : mentions of blood, substance abuse, harm to oneself and major daddy issues
imagine a glass sitting at the edge of the table for an extended period of time, you start to anticipate it's fall. you are on the edge thinking about it breaking and shattering, full of anxiety, but when it falls, you feel sad but you're not anxious anymore. you're not waiting for it to fall anymore, you're free. you're finally happy that the glass shattered and even if it gave you a few cuts, it's better now. that's how i felt one night in february 2023, when it all fell apart.
i found my diary from 2022 a few weeks back, it was full of letters and chocolate wrappers. the last diary entry is of 29th december 2022, i remember i wrote it at 6 am because i couldn't fall asleep. in the diary entry, i wrote about her and how i think i won't be mentioned in the story of her life. i was begging to be a footnote, i wrote six pages of just her and no one else. my last diary entry of the year when everything was falling apart was about her. i took pills for the first time that night, i couldn't bear the thought of her anymore. i was sick of bolting awake in the middle of the night gasping for air. i was reading my last diary entry when i came across a poem1 i had written about cigarettes i don't even smoke, it's funny how i wrote about my hands reeking of cigarettes i never smoked. i can't really consider it poetry because there's no rhythm, they're just words etched across a page screaming for attention. it makes me laugh knowing how it all ended, how the poem worked like some sick prophecy.
i am turning twenty this june, only a month and some days before i lose my teenage years. i was going through our family album this week when i found the pictures from my childhood. i have a lot of pictures with my father, he's holding me in some and we are laughing in few. i haven't really spoken to him since two weeks but i wanted to hug him after seeing those pictures. i don't understand what changed. why is this distance between us now that we can't overcome no matter how hard i try? maybe he doesn't likes the person i'm turning into. i have this irrational fear of turning into my father, a fear that says i will become just like him. sometimes i say mean things to the people i love and i see him in me as i tell them i didn't meant it. sometimes i scream at my mother and i see him in me when she flinches just a little. sometimes when i'm full of rage i fear that i will see him in me losing control and breaking things. sometimes i hurt myself to feel something and i wonder if i'm better than him because i'm not hurting someone else. i don't want to turn into him but i'm my father's daughter after all. once he found me crying in my room at 4 am when it was unbearable, my lighters by my side as i sat on the cold hard marble floor of my room in the dead of the night. he looked at the lighters for a long time but he didn't even looked at me. he didn't said anything, didn't acknowledge what was happening. he just reached over to grab the box of lighters and threw it out of our house. he came back to sleep in my room while i sat on the floor unable to fall asleep. he never mentioned it again, didn't wanted to see the burn marks too. he didn't acknowledge it at all, makes me wonder if i imagined that night but i have fading burn marks on my ankle to prove it.
it was a monday night when it all started. a small argument turned into a quarrel that turned into something i can't name. a futile attempt to be numb turned into something more horrific. something more horrific that i couldn't handle as i was only eighteen. when the glass that was sitting on the edge for too long shattered, giving me cuts as i was in it's way. when the anxiety engulfed me in a very intimate gesture, when the words of the blue lady rang in my ears like some sick twisted destiny. the pills had stopped working by then, i was having nightmares once again. you shouldn't depend on pills as they'll turn on you the moment you're weak. they work fine in the beginning but they lose their effect and you start taking more and more and more and more. one pill turns into two which turns into four and then six and then eight and then they stop working like they used to. so you find other ways to numb yourself, something that's more permanent. something that'll make them regret, i wanted to see what she felt when she realized how bad it was for me that i finally took that one step. she doesn't know what i did that night, i never had the heart to tell her. maybe because i would've caused her unnecessary pain as i'm still alive and maybe because she would've labelled me an attention whore. she called me a whore during our last fight, a whore who's after every other guy because her father didn't love her enough. a whore who wants love because the hole in her chest just won't stop leaking red. her words rang in my ears as i lied on the floor that monday night in february, laughing hysterically because i thought i was dying a virgin.
our last fight didn't occur on that monday, it happened in 2022. the argument that turned into something i can't name was between my parents. when i was going through our family album, i found this one picture of me where i looked like i was about to cry. it was my birthday so i was wearing new clothes, my jewelry was the bruise on my hand and the red handprint on my cheek. ever since i turned thirteen i have been asking myself that if love and violence are the same then maybe my father does love me, i have proof in the form of bruises and marks. i have proof in the way i flinch whenever someone raises their voice around me. some weeks back, my father and i had a fight which resulted in me packing my bags to get away from the prison that is my house when he's around. i didn't told anyone but i was so scared that day, i felt like a broken child but i'm almost twenty. i left my house with a bruise that day which was healed by the time i came back home. love and violence are the same because my father told me he loved me on the ride back home as my bruise was long forgotten. that monday night it was him who pushed me over the edge, it was his surgical blade that he always kept hidden but forget to hide that night. he realized it was him when his hands were stained red and he couldn't figure out whether it was love or violence.
the sky cleared after that night when i realized the smoke was gone and gone was the smell of cigarettes. only thing that was left behind were the wounds but i didn't let them be. i picked at them until they turned into scars, reminders of what could've been. her essence was gone too, i sprayed her perfume around my room to feel her again but i couldn't. my pills were swapped with anti depressants, nobody spoke in our house for two weeks. it felt like someone had died and maybe some part of me did die during that night. sylvia plath wrote in her poem lady lazarus, "and i a smiling woman. i am only thirty and like the cat i have nine times to die" she died by suicide when she was thirty, not long after she wrote this poem. i met her after four months, i thought i would tell her what i had gone through but i couldn't. i just couldn't tell her, all the things i wanted to say to her dissolved in my mouth when i saw her again. i wished she didn't come since she'd only have to leave again ruining me in her wake. honestly i wouldn't have minded, i would let her ruin me again if it meant being happy with her even for a few days. it's better now as it hurts less but it hurts still.
the poem is -
my bedsheets are stained with blood
my fingers reek of cigarettes i don't smoke
my heart feels more full nowadays, i am hoping
it explodes
my friends ask me if i am okay, i don't know
what to say.
people only care about you when you die, so
i am hoping to make people care more.
when i lie awake at nights, it comes to me in pieces
things i did that i shouldn't have done.
broke his heart because i wanted to silence my cries,
everyone tells me, "it's been 3 years."
i wish it was 2019.
- written on 22nd november 2022 foreshadowing the future.
they say pain makes great artists but vivi I wish the world was kinder to you, wish your dad was gentle enough for you to never have to write a piece like this
i cried a little after i finished reading. i cannot believe how much you have to go through and how much i dont know about you