Diary of a Madwoman
Intro:
Almost my entire life I’ve kept a diary. Most entries are just useless self-pitying nonsense. I furiously write down every single thought inside my head, drowning every thought between lined paper to spare my poor memory. It makes looking back at old entries very interesting because I will have forgotten what I had said entirely. To me, they read as completely new works of realistic fiction. Below are just a few entries and paragraphs that I thought were particularly entertaining or funny.
My thoughts are stuck dancing until they run out of energy and drown in the sea of my mind. I want to crawl out of my body and hang my skin up to dry. I want to bathe my brain in ice, letting the stream flow over the gaps filling them with a burning sensation. I want to feel the drips, the racing tears. I want the water to engulf me— my fingers will prune, my hair will freeze. Slowly and calmly the waves will wash over me. With closed eyes and a head turned to the sky my throat will fill and I’ll sink down to the bottom of the deep peacefully. Finally, in the dark I will remember who I am and what I’m supposed to be. But when you drop down that far it’s already too late to float your way back up. The world doesn’t wait for you.
My birthday is almost here. I don’t want it to come. Every year continuously like the birth of a doe I cry for my youth. Kneeling in prayer to the gods of self hatred I will plead for hours until my knees begin to bleed. I think I’ll cancel my birthday this year. The frosting on the cake is always smeared on too thick, too sweet to be real. Why can’t I change the past? What’s stopping me? The past is made up. I don’t want it anymore. None of it is real, it's just words we chose to remember and I’ve been trying so hard to forget. I’m so tired and none of this makes sense. I don’t want to go to sleep, because then I will wake up. I’m almost sixteen. I never wanted to be sixteen. I used to think I’d be done by 14 and now the road ahead appears the same. I don’t want to die, I just wish I were dead.
I wish I could stop feeling so ugly. Even when I’m alone I still feel the need to be perfect. I am always being watched by the girl in the mirror. Stupid bitch. How can I feel embarrassed when I’m by myself? No one but me is here to see me cry, so why do I still hold back? I can no longer trust a woman’s words. It’s always a race against each other. You tell someone they’re pretty just because you want them to tell you that you're pretty too. You say I love you just so you can hear the other person say it back. We all want to feel pretty. To feel loved. Whether conscious of it or not, it’s something every woman is striving for— myself included. It doesn’t make me think that they’re bad people; it just makes me weary. Was that compliment for me or for you? I am constantly racing against everyone else and I am losing. The days won’t stop passing and it’s making me sick. Anyways blah blah, I hate myself boohoo. I am once again imagining my body plummeting to the ground and it feels so nice.
It’s starting to feel like summer and that scares me. Summer always feels like a gap in time. Everything stops and slows. I stop aging. It is incredibly comforting, yet terrifying. Terrifying because I know it won’t last. Time will once again move forward— traveling twice as fast to make up for all it has lost. Soon time will start spinning so fast that I’ll forget who I am. So, I have this journal to remind myself that I am real and that I have lived. I am so scared that one day I will wake up and forget it all. My emotions never seem to last long enough to burn, only spark. But every single spark makes up my bones and flesh. I walk around as a burned man, the emblems of my soul chip off in pieces and fall behind me. Sparks catch dry grass and begin to burn again, and they burn harder. Fire clings to fire and grows. I understand that it is all in my head. Things are either physical or they are not things at all. But I have lived my entire life inside of my head so that I can grab onto everything, yet it seems I am constantly losing my grasp.
I wonder if any man has ever been looked at. Really, truly looked at. To have had every part of themselves picked apart by searching eyes; searching for something they don’t want to see so that they have a reason to look away. When you are looked at, you are disemboweled. Little tiny knives poking and prodding at your skin, penetrating your first line of defense. Every glance is an invasive surgery, and the doctor has asked for the patient to sew themselves up. I don’t think a man has ever felt that. At least not in the way that I have. They have never felt powerless beneath an unearned ten blade. You cannot make an argument in a room dominated by men. You cannot even make a sound if that sound is not something they want to hear. They will tear you apart like wolves, gorging themselves on whatever part of your body they please.
I talk just to hear myself speak. I imagine a crowd of people watching me from somewhere. A birds eye view of my life. I'm just a performer dancing to please an audience that is never there. But I need those people. I need their eyes. Because if they aren’t there, then what is this all for? Why do I put so much effort into looking pretty when I’m alone? I am nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Why can’t I just be something? I’m growing old so fast. I know sixteen is young, but look at how I’m spending my “glory years.” Wasting away, sleeping through the day so the night comes faster. I am still young, still a child, but the more I become aware of my youth the faster it seems to pass me by. I no longer grow out of clothes. I no longer crawl into bed with my mother, (although my father always immediately ushered me out anyways.) My childhood pets all lie lonely underground in the backyard. My bedroom is now painted another color. My toys are either donated or shoved into storage boxes. Where is my childhood? I cannot seem to find it anywhere- not even in my memories. I used to be happy. Happy in a way that I fear I’ll never be again. Who am I? What will I be? These questions are not motivational, they’re haunting. The years have gnawed repeatedly at my insides until I was all used up. Gutted like a pumpkin. Soon I’ll be done with high school and I’ll still just be nothing. I’m all burnt up now. Breathe in my smoke and then let me be. Jesus, why did I stop taking my meds?
I remember reading this story of a young girl who was killed by a drunk driver while riding her bike. She was an organ donor, so her heart went to an elderly woman plagued with heart failure. The woman decided that she would complete the bucket list the young girl had kept (even though it had included extreme things such as skydiving.) She said, “Although she is not physically able to do these things- her heart still can.” Secretly, I think that I want to die so then all my hopes and wishes can be moved onto others through my organs. That way, they would carry the burden of my unfulfilled dreams. Maybe once I was dead my desires would actually stand a chance to come to full fruition. We are always cared for most when we are dead. But I like it that way because at least then our rotting corpses will have something to look forward to.
My name is Molly Leonard and I’m a Junior at St. Peter High School. I don’t know why I write, but I still find myself writing.