fixation

A diary of trying to stay in my skin this week —

Monday: something inside has shifted, I can feel it. My head is miserable from screaming but barely comprehensible voices, my body nauseated from trying to ignore it all. 

The second I see sun, I lace up my shoes and hit the road. I tell myself to run slower so I can go further, run longer. I steady my breath. I focus on the pain. I run till I can see the ghosts, but I don’t stay long enough to hear what they have to say. 

*

Tuesday: a balancing act to keep the ghosts at bay. Every minute I am productive is a minute I worry I will soon lose. I decide on a walk today, but, buoyed by the day before, I begin to run. I play an old game with myself although I know I am flirting with a line I shouldn’t cross. I say, surely, you can run faster now? (Pick up the pace.) Surely, you can be better than this? (Pick up the pace.)

Surely, I should know how this ends. The pain from today, breath ripping through chest ripping through muscle, quashing the gentle ache of yesterday. My ghosts taunt me at the finish line.

Welcome back, they say. This is how it will always be.

*

What do I remember of Wednesday? Laughing as I listened to a voice note from a friend. It’s a red flag, she is saying, but a shiny, glittery one that she will forever be drawn to. God help her, I think, for I know she really loves her glitter.

I walk around the block to return her voice note. I tell her that’s why we learn from our past, why we supposedly grow wiser with age. We learn from all those mistakes we made.

I say nothing about the ghosts walking next to me.

*

Thursday, endless rain. I buy a ticket to the earliest screening of Barbie.

I am not expecting to sit next to three teenage boys. They wriggle and fidget the entire time, as if none of them wants to be there. They are positively tortured when the Kens start doing an extended musical number — I can feel them sinking lower and lower in their seats. But when the Barbies reveal their end game, the boys gasp. 

“Shit,” one boy talks-whispers to the others. “That’s fucking smart.”

The movie is, I think, as smart as it can be. It’s fun, it’s funny, but it also makes me cry. When I walk out, I text W, “I just finished and I cried and cried.” 

But I could not explain why.

*

12 hours on, this is what I have. Maybe, like Barbie, I feel impossibly trapped, unpretty, adrift. And like Barbie, all I want to do is lie on the floor, waiting for someone else to fix this. 

I have ghosts to exorcise right now. The problem is, these ghosts are mine.

No one else can see them.

No one else is coming.