The return III

There were no words, my tongue was twisting and my fingers felt fifteen cents and a little broken. That it was that I was taking the roots of my hair to baldness and that I wanted this to be the blue stage. 

But I was that the reality was that I had no recovery, that each of them left me and the feelings were that of in aeroplane mode and I had no work to free me.

That I was forgetting what it was to write what one expected. That I was meaningless since it was what was going through my soul. That madness led me to the despair of sleeping on sidewalks of broken traffic lights.

TA

The rollercoaster

Getting out from depression, it feels like the first breath of air. With coughing and burning in the lungs. That your muscles are heavy and the brain is overloaded.

It is identical to the first steps of an infant. And is followed by this innate need to breathe until you feel you could explode like a pufferfish.

It is that you bury your fingers in the sand as you need the salt with the burning to believe that you feel a need to exist. You grab the nearest book and devour it. You listen to five to fifty CDs and make all the plans for today. Not for tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow because we aren’t brave enough.

Entering the stage where you laugh without feeling like a psychopath is where you eat. You grab salads and sweets because your stomach ate itself and you are HUNGRY.

There is no simpler way to explain it than you in front of the refrigerator at midnight because your stomach roars. And it's fine because three months passed from the last time you ate.

You act like a lunatic running everywhere. Preparing for the hurricane, that you send messages to your ex and say that everything is fine.

It feels like a horror movie viewer, the warning is on your lips. However, your eyes are stuck to the screen and you forget. For ten to five seconds you forget that there is a threat hanging around, so you enjoy.

You walk day and night, you risk going to birthdays and you drink alcohol because there is no second-guessing of throwing up. You talk yourself into kissing the black-eyed boy and that your wrists are clean and pretty. That you dress comfortably and happily and there is no dirt buried in your soul.

You feel like a ten.

.....

The return of depression is like the police knocking the door at two in the morning. Failing a studied exam and that he leaves without saying goodbye.

You were on the top of the roller coaster and knew what was coming. That your steps become slow and the food tastes like the sand of your fingers. That you are sleepy but don’t sleep even if you dream of the bed. And that you would swear to have been better but that the music was a distant sound and more screens was a distraction.

That depression feels like you had an anchor attached to your ankle and you don't remember how to breathe

TA.

The warning

They told me to be careful, to have a precaution in my existence. That my eyes shouldn’t rest too long on those of strangers and that my hands were equal to a poison that would then attack me.

They explained to me that in groups it was better. But that a man among these was a fox and that I should be careful with my boy-friends. trust a few and no one, as society is corrupt.

And by age three I knew how to cross my legs with shouting fire. And every day my mother sends me a new warning that adds to the category of my responsibilities.

Last night I was falling asleep and they offered me a bed. But there were two of us and everyone was telling me that I was the weak in us. So I preferred to say no and wait fifteen hours for someone weak to come for me.

That the questions in my adolescence were those of: “What did you do? How did you look at him? Did you touch him? Did you smile? ” And it was easy to assume that by my twenty I kept a distance of forty steps from those I loved. That I said nononononono, every time someone wanted to love me. And sorry I laughed, I didn't mean to.

I’ll be better, I’ll have my eyes on the sky and I’ll use that jean without holes even with 32 degrees. I’ll have sewn lips and if you tell me I’ll get behind my brother that he can walk day and night. Without, need to fear.

It’s okay, I understand, I've travelled on buses and subways. I had to scratch my skin for that forty-five-minute trip where the man placed his hand on my hip.

And I vomited while he smiled. And I didn't smile at him, I didn't look at him, I didn't recognise him. But I did leave an empty seat welcoming him.

And the answer is yes to your questions. There is something wrong with me. It is that I developed by thirteen and had boobs with hips. That my attributes according to my friends are my lips with my ass.

We don't talk about that I understand better than them and that I have bruises because I like to run. I run since it is the right sport for all of us who know how to wear t-shirts to the thighs with jeans to the toes.

And as a child, they explained to me that every offer is a no, that white vans are dangerous. And hold on to my hand because the world is sick and they see you as despair. That you were born with a crime to which you can never pay the sentence. 

That they tell me when I am thirteen that I close all the buttons of the shirt and that the skirt passes from the knees. Be careful of the guys who tell me they love me.

That I should always carry the knife, with the spray, with my nails. Because there is  a fierce wolf and even my freckles are tempting.

That they hit me with the rule because I dare to win in a competition and I didn't have a correct bra so it's my fault if they catcall at me.

That I must learn to keep my head down and not show fear when they stare at me for a half-block for then to start following me. That I can laugh of danger but I must know where the police are.

And: “Do you know the emergency phone number? Mine? Your brother's? What time do you come back? Warn when you arrive, when you go, where you are going, warn warn warn ”.

And I want to proclaim that I understand, DAMN IT, I UNDERSTAND. We are scared and failed in that we are the hunted and everything in our existence is harmful.

That I am wearing makeup, then it must be because I need someone. That if I find myself comfortable with my body, I am looking for company and that if I feel confident, I have someone by my side.

And that my legs are always open for business.

That I tell you that I UNDERSTAND it because since six years old  I have felt the hands of others. That I have bitten into his arms and pushed off busses. That I have had a panic attack and I walk the streets with a knife.

I KNOW that the world is an open mouth and we are his delight. I KNOW that I must try to be cautious when I walk through my city because there is a hunt for me. I KNOW that they fear that I don’t come back today. That they attack me and die in a body vacuum. I KNOW it from my cells to my eyes.

But: How is this life?

TA.

My weight

It's hard to ask if the filthiness grew back on my skin if the disappointment and failure I feel is present on my bones. 

Is that I ask you that because I have this hands that tremble since twelve hours ago when I hear my stomach roar. But my muscles can’t hold a fork without prayer and beg for strength and will. 

I ask you since my eyes are liars when they see through the mirror and I believe that worms come out of my freckle that whisper in my ear.

And jumping the rope is easier than looking for the bones under the skin, of the dead flesh and that fat that is always too much. 

Because if you see it then it shouldn’t be there. And I ask you that as I can’t ask: Do I look as ugly as I feel?

T.A.

Loyalty

I assumed it was the fourteen because of the pink, there was a red on my fingers that warned it was a new year and the lovers were falling off the bridges. 

They asked me for a two hundred dollars for a chocolate and I left with alcohol and my finger up.

They told me of love for one night and pretend the loneliness. To deceive that there would be a possibility in others desperate. But I said that my heart has been sleeping for five winters. And better try with the neighbour.

My television broke down in the moment of the kisses and my eyes seemed glued in the understanding of the tied hands and the looks of accomplices. Seeking to understand a heart divided in two. It was that poetry that day had closed its doors to me.

That ten minutes to twelve they offered me a quickie and we finished it with the fact that we were not abandoned by broken hearts. They gave me hope to lie to friends and family if I felt cold.

However, I explained that because of sadness of loyalty I didn’t feel able to kiss without throwing up. And that on another day of left behind I would have said yes. Thrown to the feet and asked for more than ten. Yet, in the days that your name beats in my brain. In which your fingers run through my veins like they were strings and I am repeating the same three songs with your voice trapped. I find it impossible and suicidal to accept another body other than your laugh thrown to the left. With bruised fingers, lies two by one and reflection in the eyes.

In which I have the seconds before the end of the year to create new chances. They tell me that hearts heal and ask me to be their Valentin. Nevertheless, I tell them that I lost my heart in a blind yield. 

And I'm not looking for new when I met someone who treats me like porcelain that burns.

T.A.

The thank you never said

Everyone stand up, I have to talk and I want you to pay attention to the pain of discomfort:

I want to apologise. 

I want to put my hand on my chest and hit myself while I apologise because I never understood.

I grew up with these shades of black and eyes closed. I dragged myself along the currents that I wanted and were comfortable for my belongings. I became this being that couldn’t recognise itself in the mirror.

I apologise because as a child you told me the rules and marked the differences. You explained to me that you tried even with failures and stutters. You were giving your life for me to be an example of my future.

I apologise that it took me twenty-four years to realise that it took ten seconds of your silence to turn my back on you.

That it was accessible and timely for me to spread the word of mistakes and to expel you from my stories. Because it was outdated and uncomfortable and the lie was fashionable in my friends.

I am in churches and synagogues, in temples and Vatican, in houses. Looking for the one who could forgive me as I didn’t see what you were doing. 

I stayed with this hoax chosen among my kind of closing eyes and pointing fingers.

In that, I feel this pity in my sternum that does not hurt me but feels disappointed and that leaves me without emotions.

I apologise that I was wrong. 

My sacrifices were born from yours, my footsteps were given because you sacrificed yours. And your lips are purple for every time I've lied.

I apologise that I have failed my own ideals, believing myself straight and narrow. I thought I knew from Y to C and that I could count from 33 to 99. But, I was unable to accept that there was someone to be thankful to.

I have you all standing up because we made a serious mistake. 

One would say the eighth sin, we have been spoiled and wrong. We have taken things for granted. In which we close the throat with excuses, the eyes with landscapes and the hands tied.

In which I apologise because I haven’t said it to you.

T.A.

The incorrect

Loving you was easy. That if you told me to drink tea I would say yes. I was a desperate puppy following his owner.

I was an obvious romantic and you were blind in that you hurt with your games. 

And they told me to sleep and dream about friendships and goals. But the colour of your eyes was the darkness of my eyelids and you had the scent of new clothes.

It was that if I had succeeded I wouldn’t have loved you as if I was suffocating with a lung left for dead. It is that everything in my being told me that you would be harmful. That you would have me in the clouds to let me fall and beg for the branches to loosen the fall.

Loving you was breathing three two one because after one there is no second pain. 

It leaves an addiction and this nervous tic in the eye when I see the purple colour in you and your easy way of saying Te Quiero with I love you. 

And I thought that would have to mean something but for you it was candy and it was easy. Because you didn't love yourself and I couldn’t. 

So love was to exist when we hated and avoided each other. It was that we weren't right to do it.

T.A.

Black

The last time I suffered for you I made a commitment that left me sick.

In the way that if you sneezed I was your echo, we were a mirror and a needle behind each other. My friends told me that I was terribly obvious about how much I loved you, so I was embarrassed. 

I had this fear that when I saw you that you would see it in my eyes. And thus you would know that my heart was spelling your name and that if you were crying my soul was breaking.

It was that it had reached the point of madness. 

Nothing was pink, it was multicoloured, it was black and you were the centre.

You would run fast and I already knew the traps to reach you because my lungs could not breathe without you close. And we weren't an addiction, we weren't a bomb with the titanic, we were a virus. 

One who locked us in small rooms and wished that we kissed and that the explosion be born from us. 

But we were too much. With your fingers burned on my hand, with my scarf on your neck and your words trapped on my lips.

In that, you laughed at fifteen countries away from me and I was laughing without being able to stop. Because we were harder than love, we were the Russian roulette that never came with our bullet. Even though we were on a precipice that counted three and fell like one.

T.A.

Forty neighbourhoods

I feel you like an addiction to which there are no help groups. My hands tremble to write and listen to your voice, my throat is closed for having you at a distance of forty neighbourhoods. And I would believe that I need you to breathe. 

That I would not be able to exist one more day without seeing you because I am that I cry out of abstinence and your name is written on the streets. So at night, I see myself wandering in search of your presence as I need that next smoke of your bad existence and your attitude.

If they had explained to me that when I ran away from love I would meet you. I would have bought fifty patches and none would have helped to stop the need to have you close. To stop this itchy skin that wants to have your scent in my hair and burn in your shadow so to be able to say that I died the way a drug addict seeks.

T.A.