Does Yesterday Ever Really End?

1

If you were a city besieged, would you set yourself ablaze? Sometimes, one must destroy themselves to defeat the enemy. Proceed with caution, dear reader, for these journals rot. They are the cottage-cheese-white of thrush, the yellow-brown of a bad apple. They’re cavities – dead, black teeth in the skull that has been my twenties.

Journals laid out on the carpet like solitaire. Different lives within. All voices, mine. One open, masochism in scrawl. But first of all, where are we? If it helps, there’s an overflowing laundry basket in the corner of my room and a guitar against the nightstand – not mine, but his. My lamp’s a sunset orange, and on my desk sits a dwindling glass of wine. The green bottle, almost empty, winks at me beneath the light. It’s only 9 p.m., it seems to say. The corner store is still open.

But one bottle – one bottle’s enough, isn’t it? Turn of a page. By externalising and submitting to my feelings of worthlessness, I could own and thereby nullify them in that I was a willing participant. I pulled them like handkerchiefs from my mouth and had them tied round my wrists – but the illusion of agency, it’s a vanishing trick. I thought I’d emerge invincible, but it turns out I’m not. I’ve sawn myself in halves again and again, and why, look at that, I’m still fragmented. Scratch of a highlighter, whoosh of a word circled. Agency. Alex wouldn’t get it, though, would he?

A page turned. The lick of a shadow like a flame. What does moral decadence look like to me? Does he wrap a makeshift tourniquet around his arm? Or is he simply ravaged by time, his skin sagging with the weight of life? Journal face down for an instant, ceiling as smooth as the sky. Moral decadence, to me, meant intimacy with men old enough to be my father, and older still, as though all their regret and all their sins would rub off on me – I was closer to death by proxy. But we won’t go into the details – not the taut lips, not the grey hairs, not the flaccid masculinity, not the rush of indulging their parched desperation, of pressing my full, wet lips against chapped and cracked desert soil. Not the power of sparkling like a mirage and then materialising, of translating fantasy into flesh, the rush of being rain to their arid eyes.

I top up my glass, plum red, bottle empty.

Bottle empty.

Clock on the wall unmoving, hands hesitant, batteries dead. Is it OK to wear trackpants and slippers downstairs?

Swirl of wine – I suppose this’ll do.

Masochism was degradation on my terms. And I still feel an inkling of pride at the thought of it – that nobody will ever do me as much harm as I’ve done myself. I dare you, I’m tempted to say, and I could guffaw. Laugh manically at someone’s audacity to even attempt it. I’m untouchable as you run your calloused hands over my skin. Untouchable, your lips pressed against mine.

And yet like most tricks, it’s an illusion. I desensitised myself, but that’s not invulnerability. In fact, I think I might be broken. And Alex knows it, too.

2

Sneakers on, laces tied. What harm could one more bottle do? And yet I know one bottle leads to two, two bleed into three, third bottle half empty and I’m online, filter capped at ninety-nine years old. Sneakers off. I unlace them entirely and stretch out their tongues – a small inconvenience, an obstacle. I climb into bed and wrap the duvet around me like a straitjacket. Alex, he never wanted all of me.

Not me, the carnal refuge of two men in a queue. Not me dragged to bed when I changed my mind. Not me who revelled in the confirmation that I was, in fact, begrimed, and it didn’t matter, not really, what anybody did to my body because I’d transcended the corporeal.

Not me vomiting out a taxi window, carried into a hotel room, drunk on the shower floor. Not me who awoke to someone inside her, who still recalls snippets of it like images on a view-master.

Not me six days sixteen penetrated in my sleep. Not me on an overgrown suburban lawn, dollhouses weatherbeaten – his niece’s. Not me sticking a friendship bracelet in my diary. Baby pink just like me. He was twenty-eight while I still began my entries with Dear Diary.

Pillow squeezed. Just breathe. Smell of laundry detergent, lavender. If I could extract and examine my soul, maybe I’d find it lumpy with thick, raised scars; maybe I’d find it infected, oozing yellow and green. Maybe, if I could extract and examine my soul, I’d find it black like tar, a smoker’s lung, heaving with emphysema. No wonder Alex doesn’t want me.

3

Morning sunshine zigzags across the carpet. But is it ever really a new day? Do I wake up refreshed, as good as new? My ghosts, have they gone away? Journals still laid out, empty bottle and sneakers a reminder of the almost I survived yet another night.

Kitchen. Coffee. Dates sliced with a butter knife. Phone alight: Can we talk about yesterday?

Yesterday. A fight, a raised voice, an ending. You see, I crave clarity, a clean break, finality. I crave that place beyond redemption. I crave control. Give me pain and I’ll snap it like a wishbone. I haven’t the bandwidth for ambiguity, for abandonment. This time, it was only a small wishbone – you know, the just leave me alone kind, get drunk on wine kind (which, albeit, sometimes snowballs into tragedy). Often, I’m tempted to snap larger ones – gerontophilia, infidelity, jumping off the roof, drowning myself in the bathtub. I don’t mean it, though, not really. Only when I’m in it. Only when I do mean it. My need for invincibility feeds into self-degradation. When someone wrongs me, my first instinct is to hurt myself and thereby reclaim agency by neutralising their offence. If you slice off my finger, I’ll slice off my hand, thereby rendering meaningless your misdeed. Can you relate to that, dear reader? Can you relate to me?

Maybe you can tell me why I do the things I do, think the way I think. Maybe you can tell me why I’m torn between being loved and in control. Maybe you can explain why love feels like a car driving off a cliff into the ocean, sinking, and I’m kicking out the back window. There’s nothing more isolating than the unexpected repulsion that accompanies the touch of your beloved. And maybe you, dear reader, can tell me why. Why must we set ourselves alight?

Last sip of coffee. Sneakers laced yet again. Can we talk about yesterday?

Yesterday, does it ever really end?