Perfectly Imperfect

sixteen > > of therapists and supernovas.

prompt sixteen: write a scene based off of something that occured in your life. 

A/N: This was very hard for me to write, since it is so autobiographical. It felt good though. Even if this happened about two years ago, it feels so good to finally see it written out. I did not edit any of this, nor will I ever because this is exactly how I felt when this happened before. This piece is insanely personal and I hope that anyone reading this will still see me the same way and accepts me. Either way, it feels good to be so honest.

The therapist gazes intently at me with unfeeling eyes. I can practically feel her removing the sleeves I clutch so tightly. Eyeing my scars as though I am some spectacle, the freak show at the circus.  

Come, come. Eye her scars. See her knees, so knobby and bruised. See her fingers, brittle and broken, nails hanging. Look at the place where the blade dug into the skin. Only four times, some shallow and others deep. The scarred lady. See all these scars and more for the low, low price of just $5! 

"How do you feel when you cut yourself?" The therapist asks me in that callous way of hers.

This is it. This is the moment I feel myself deflate. I cannot lie anymore. I cannot say that I did not harm myself, that my cat scratched me; I am fine; I am normal. I cannot pretend any longer. I dig my fingers into my wrists, bite my bottom lip as hard as possible. 

My mother nudges me. 

She is trying to be sympathetic, but she does not understand. Drugs, she understands. After all, she grew up in the nineties. Alcohol, sure. Cigarettes, yes. All of these she can comprehend so easily. She cannot comprehend why a young girl, supposedly budding, would dig the blade deeply into her arm, would withhold from eating because her body is no longer worthy. 

She can comprehend a deep, dark stillness that settles over everything. She herself has felt that. But she cannot understand why her daughter, her figure blooming and changing, would manifest this darkness in such a way. 

It is inconcievable to her. 

I have never seen my mother more clearly than this moment, when she looks so scared, so sad. I have never seen how much she loves me so plainly until this moment. 

Now I do. 

And god, it fucking hurts. 

I look up at the therapist. The moment is long and short all at once. I swear I can hear all of the hearts in that room, all of the atoms bouncing about, the kinetic energy everywhere. I can hear a supernova in the distance and see Andromena in that moment. It is the most clear second of my life.

And the words come easily. They tumble out. 

I always figured if this moment ever came it would be so much more dramatic; I would withhold so much longer. I would refuse to answer. I would spite my mother. I would spite my therapist.

But I cannot now, for they both look like childen to me. I feel infinitely older than both of them. 

"It makes me feel alive. It just makes me feel better." 

It is the strongest whisper I have ever uttered. 

A whisper that will cut my life in two. 

The before and after. 

A whisper that will become my curse, my undoing. 

A whisper that will become my savior, my new beginning. 

A broken whisper, fragmented, that floats through the room and starts to slowly form me back together.