Diary of a Resurrection (A Novella) (4 page)

That’s where I was. The Bottom of
Hell. I was drowning in fire which burnt me constantly, and I didn’t know how
to get out. I don’t remember the first week after that night very well. It was
spent sleepless and feverish. My skin was hot, but I felt cold. I couldn’t eat
because I felt so sick. My stomach churned all the time, matching the rate of
my thoughts. Everything around me was rolling and moving, with me stuck in the
middle, drowning drowning drowning.

I stayed at home mostly. I just sort of stared at the TV or
at the ceiling when I lay in bed. I wanted to think it all over. Work it out. I
only wanted to do things that were pretty mindless in order to give my brain
space to think about you. I pictured you and us. I thought about you over and
over in a loop, wondering what you were doing, did you miss me? Were you
thinking about me? Were you suffering like I was? I wanted you to be. I wanted
you to feel as sick as I did. But I knew you didn’t. Deep down I knew you were
fine, carrying on like you always did. Perhaps even moving on to someone else.
I hated to think it, it made everything so much worse, but I wondered if I was
even the only one, or was I one of many that you strung along, keeping you
entertained until your attention span had worn thin and you cast them aside.
How many other girls had sat there like me, empty and vacant, aching for
something from you – a call, a text - anything just to fill the painful void
left by your absence.

My mum tried to get me to see the doctor but I told her I
wasn’t sick. By the second week she called him to come to me. They whispered
after I had answered his seemingly endless questions. I heard the word
depression, but didn’t have the energy to argue. Let them talk, I thought. I
have nothing to say anyway.

I found your words echoing around my head. They popped in
unexpected and uninvited, good and bad. The good ones made me miss you even
more, the bad made my eyes sting:

You’re so
beautiful Min.

Your eyes
are the prettiest thing I have seen all day.

I could
kiss you for a thousand years.

When I got
home my t-shirt smelled of you and I had to take it off because it was making
me miss you.

Let’s stay
the whole night together.

You belong
in my arm, look how perfectly you fit.

Everything
is better when I’m with you, Min.

The list goes on and on. They were hard enough to remember,
but the others were worse:

I’m not as
nice as you think I am.

You’re so
needy.

Artists are
such hard work.

Never give
one hundred percent of yourself to someone, it gives them too much power.

I can’t
imagine finding anyone better than Pan.

I might as
well stick with what I’ve got.

Letting
someone in is painful because they will fuck you over in the end.

I’m
fucking bored of this.

You’re a
very special person to me.

Round and round they went until I thought I was going
insane. They popped up when I was in the bath, when I was cooking dinner,
mid-conversation with other people. They, like you, had no respect and just
showed up unannounced to hurt me over and over. It was during this time I was convinced
I would never feel better. The ache in my stomach would never subside and I would
never be free of you. I was worried that not only was I cracking up, but that I
would never be OK again. I was worried I would never think like a normal person
again or have thoughts that were not completely absorbed by you. I was afraid I
had lost me. I was the most unfocused I ever remember being. I couldn’t
concentrate on a single thing. My mum had to tell college and Pizza Planet that
I had glandular fever to buy me some time out of my life.

In the past, when I have had troubles, I have always used art
to feel better. I have drawn and painted and sketched my way to a better place,
but this time I couldn’t do it. Even looking at my paints made me squint. It
hurt my mind to contemplate colour. I wanted to live in a soft cushioned world
of black and white with nothing to assault my senses because I just wasn’t
strong enough. I needed to be wrapped in pure white cotton wool and put in a
dark room for a while.

In the really bad moments, and there were many, I would text
you. I missed you so much I could barely breathe. At its worst, all I wanted
was a single text from you. Just one word. Like a hit of heroin for a junkie, I
craved it with every cell in my body. I thought that if just one single text from
you beeped into my phone it would save me. It would release all the tension I
had inside and make everything better. Every ounce of pain I was going through
was your fault, but I was willing to overlook it because I just wanted you
back. I hated the void you had left in my life. I tried reaching out to you because
I wanted to hear your voice or read your words. I wanted to see a bold unread
text from you on my phone more than anything else. I checked it constantly,
obsessively even, worried that I might miss it beeping and in that moment miss
you. If you reached out to me, I didn’t want to miss it. I wouldn’t risk it. I
was almost glued to that phone. I sent you messages like,
I miss you. I miss your voice. Are you OK? Are you
alive? Can we talk? This is killing me. I just want you, nothing else. Just
you. Please forgive me.

It must have been obvious to you that I was suffering, but
all you gave me in return was silence. An empty phone can say so much, and be
really, really hurtful. I knew my messages to you must have sounded desperate,
and they were. I guess they must have added weight to your opinion that I was
needy, but I didn’t care. I just missed you so damn much I would have done
anything, literally anything, to have you back in my life and my phone. Beeping
in my pocket, laughing in my ear.

But all I got was silence.

I was so lonely I could almost feel your absence on my skin.

I spent hours wondering why. It went
in yet another loop in my head: What. When. Why. I spent hours trying to figure
it all out. I wanted to pinpoint the exact moment it all went wrong to see if I
could have stopped it. Was it a look? A word? A kiss? Could I have made a
difference or was it really as simple as you just get bored easy, like you
said? I wish you had told me that at the start, it would have saved me an awful
lot of trouble.

I also spent some time wondering why Pan? Why doesn’t she
get the silent treatment? Why aren’t you bored of her too? Then I realised
maybe you were, but you were just too afraid to be on your own. You seemed like
that sort of person; the sort of person who always wants someone around because
they are afraid to sit in the silence and confront themselves. Why hadn’t I
seen that sooner?

You were the first thing I thought of in the morning, and
the last thing at night. To be honest, it had been that way since we first
spoke. At first, I wondered what you looked like. Then we met and I wondered
what you would say next. Then I imagined us kissing and holding hands. Then I
started to imagine what it would be like to be with you, naked against your
body.

Looking back, Drew, I am beyond glad we never went that far.
I can imagine you now, still wondering how I could love you without even
sleeping with you. That just goes to show what a dumbass you are. Love isn’t
about sex. Love is not something you put your dick into; it’s something you put
your heart in. I don’t know if you would understand that though.

You tried a few times to get me to sleep with you, and I let
you get a little further than I would have liked, but I knew while you were
with Pan I was never going to go all the way. I never told you that though, I
was worried that if I told you I wasn’t going to sleep with you, you would lose
interest, and I didn’t want to risk that. I feel so stupid now because so many
signs of who you were, were there all along. I just chose to ignore them.

Mea culpa.

Anyway, at night I found myself picturing you coming to my
house. I would open the door and you would hold out your arm to me, like you
always did, and I would climb inside. Then you would stroke my hair and tell me
you did love me. That it was all a mistake. That was the thought that I feel
asleep to every night for a month, and every morning I would wake up feeling
just as awful as the day before.

During that time, I saw things that reminded me of you
constantly. When I finally ventured back out into the world I tried to avoid
the places that reminded me of you. I would drive the long way around to miss
the places we had walked or talked or kissed. I changed the text alert on my phone
because every time it sounded it made me hope it was you. Of course it wasn’t
and all that false hope just hurt more. I assigned your number to my old sound
and everyone else a new one, that way I would know when it was you and my heart
wouldn’t leap every time unnecessarily, because I swear it was giving me actual
heart damage.

I needn’t have bothered. You never text anyway.

I started to try and carry on with life. I knew it was
inevitable that I had to try at some point. It was hard because you still
filled my mind and I was lost in my own head all the time. I felt like I was
only vaguely present; like I was a ghost of a person loitering on the edge of a
life I had once loved. I realised I had been a ghost since we had met.

God, I was so lost in myself and convinced only you had the
map to save me. In the end though, I managed to save myself.

After just over a month, the
mornings got a little better, which was the first good sign. The second was wanting
to brush my hair. The day I came downstairs with my hair in a neat braid and a little
lip-gloss on, my mum almost cried with joy.

I still thought about you constantly, of course I did. Your
words still spun around my head, but they began to get a little quieter.
Instead of being desolate, I started to get angry at you. I began to think how
dare you? How dare you be silent when I was hurting so much? How dare you think
you can welcome me into your arms, change my life and my soul, then drop me. How
dare you ignore me like I didn’t matter, when I did. I really, really did.

I’d get myself worked up into an angry tangle. I would sit
and stew. Fierce music replaced the melancholy ballads I had filled my ipod
with, which let me tell you really, really did not help. It should be a rule
that love songs are banned when your heart is broken. What you need is songs
about strength and how good life is when it isn’t graced with the presence of
an absolute wanker. Getting angry made me feel stronger. In anger, I saw hope.

Inevitably, however, sadness would follow these brief spurts
of spark. In these moments of sadness I went back to the crumpled mess that
checked her phone with hope, and whose heart sank at how empty and cold it
remained. I continued to text you. Not every few days anymore, but perhaps once
a week:
I still miss you. I wish you were
next to me. I wish you would just speak to me.

Of course you continued your hurtful silence. At this point
however, I didn’t cry at your absence anymore. Instead I sighed heavily and
told myself it wasn’t worth the effort anyway. I was so tired; of knowing you,
of loving you, of trying to be without you, that I barely had enough energy to
hope for you. I told myself you weren’t worth it and sometimes I believed
myself, just a tiny jot in my most angry of moments, but it was progress.

I still loved you, of course I did. I still do. Maybe I
always will. But waking with hope that each day could be a better day was such
an encouraging feeling that it helped me roll out of bed and carry on. Every night
had the promise that tomorrow might be even better. Some mornings I found
myself thinking of something other than you. My first thought went to what I
was going to wear or what I needed to do for college, then I would catch myself
and almost feel guilty for not thinking of you. I had gotten so used to
thinking of only you that any other thoughts seemed like imposters. They
startled me, which just snapped me back to you as always, then I would smile,
because I knew I was getting better. It was slow, but definitely better.

The day I knew I was returning was the day I looked at my
paints. The bright colours didn’t make me cringe anymore. They didn’t sing to
me quite yet, but they didn’t make me shudder either. I toyed with my drawing
pad and the paint box. I turned it over in my hands and wondered if I were to
paint, what would I choose?

Then, as if my mind had been reaching out for it all along,
my hands went to a pad of black paper and a white ink pen in the top of my
pencil case. They were the most appropriate. They were going to be the ones to
set my feelings free. No other colours could possibly be right.

I sat for a while, staring at the empty black pad. I think an
empty page, like a stranger you have just met, has such potential. It could be
anything. You only have to take a chance and make a start to unravel what it
contains. You take the first step, a gamble, and wait to see what happens,
which is what I did. I uncapped the white pen, smoothed the paper, and started
to doodle. Nothing at first; boxes, flowers, houses. Then it turned to words,
big curly words, tightly scrawled angry words. Your face. Your eyes. Your bike.
Your words. I doodled in white on black and I let the simplicity soothe my soul.

I drew you out of my heart and onto the page.

It felt like breaking a dam and setting all that built up
pressure free.