What does it mean to be a victim? You can never tell, yet you’re scorned. You’re sad. You’re belittled by your parents. You’re vulnerable. You’re never carefree. Your shoulders always slump downwards when you sit and walk and you can’t feel your body when you think of what you’ve done. You can only feel your heart sink to your knees and your eyes begin to burn. Your throat tenses up like sandpaper scraping torturously downwards, and you tell your friends it’s tears of laughter. You’re a criminal. You’re an idiot. Stupid, are you? Are you stupid? Why would you do this? What were you thinking? How can you call yourself a victim? It’s all your fault. You did this. You said yes.
What does it mean to be guilty? You actively forget your troubles. Shove it to the back of your mind, don’t think of it. You’re not allowed to face yourself, Julia, only wallow. Only forget. Only cry in silence. Don’t open up, Julia, they’ll all judge you. Do you feel guilty because it’s your fault or because you’ve been faulted? What does it mean to be both?
What does it mean to carry a burden? You’ll never move past this. How will you tell your friends? How will you tell your family? You’ll be 18 years old, Julia. You’ll be 27. You’ll be 35. You’ll be 41. You’ll be on your deathbed, forever eating yourself alive. What else is there to do but purge?
What does it mean to be in denial? Delete all the apps, delete the pictures, delete the memory. Erase your existence from that place. Don’t text anyone for two months afterwards. Stare at your empty camera roll. This is the consequence of your actions. You can’t see the happy nor the sad. Purely bathe in the concept of nothingness. You deserve nothingness. You deserve nothing. Tell that to yourself. Never forget. The next time you open the app, you’ll feel that sandpaper in your throat. You’ll feel that sinking heart. Wait for it if it doesn’t come initially. When you stare at the empty account, remember what was there. Who they were. How you ended it. The timeline. Remember it so you’re heavy forever.
What does it mean to project? Be mad at your parents. They took it all away from you, they saved you, yet be mad. Ignore. When you come downstairs for dinner, stay silent and watch your young little brother look around in confusion. He’s in the crossfire, yet you can’t enlighten him. He can’t know what you’ve done. He can’t know you chose this. No, you didn’t. You didn’t know. You wanted to have some fun. That wasn’t a real connection, Julia.
What does it mean to silence yourself? Find a pet project. They were unstable, and you wanted to help. Now, be a passerby forever. Next time you become a play-therapist, you’ll only see what you were and what followed. For that, you lose your dignity and your innocence. You lose your pride and your freedom. Now, when you speak, every word and laugh and whisper is diminished by all those lies. Each word counts for ten falsities, red herrings and untruths.
What does it mean to shut off? Tell your friends about who they were. You’re sitting at your desk and you’re twelve. You’re so young, and there’s people who don’t know that. At the first silence, you’re opening your mouth. You’ve met this girl. She’s from Bhutan, isn’t she? Tell your friend, Julia. You can’t stop talking. She’ll look at you like you’re the freak that you are and you’ll learn your lesson then. Never speak. Never tell. That’s what it means to be a victim. That’s what it means to be guilty. That’s what it means to be at fault and faulted. Write it in your pile of notebooks that you’ve built up over the years from friends, birthdays, Secret Santas and office supply stores. Tell the books because books can’t speak. Tell your plant as you water it. A plant may be under a running sink as it’s watered, but its mouth will never run as the faucet does. Tell yourself before you sleep, like a sick nursery rhyme. Write it on your wrists when you’re in class because your guilt is ridden throughout your skin and bones, it’s in your eyes and ears, it grows with your hair and it’s dressed up every day when you put on your same ripped jeans.
What does it mean to try to change? Change how you will. Cut your hair short this time. Curl it again even though you know nothing will hold, no matter how much hairspray you run through. Hide your truth behind overwhelming concealer so you feel presentable, then rub it off violently at 1:00 AM when you’re supposed to be sleeping because you didn’t want to unmask your truth around any conscious person. When you’re done, stare in the mirror.
What does it mean to cry? When you see your reflection, you’re staring in the same place you were two years ago. She was different then. Now, look at yourself. Do you see her? No, you don’t. All you see is corruption and a face that isn’t yours. You see an entity or a form, a projection of your insecurity and repentance. You have nothing to turn to, so you cry for yourself. You cry to talk to the girl who thought she was fooling around. You cry to talk to the girl who could never lie. You cry to talk to the girl who would have never needed to write this.