Childhood Diary

content warning - mentions of suicide, self-harm + eating disorders

Twelve-year-old me sprawls across my bed. Her face is split open in a crooked grin, marvelling at the width of my comfort. She is gleeful. She can stretch her body out and reach one arm diagonally towards the opposite corner of the bedframe, fingers brushing but never quite reaching the quilted edge. She laughs as she does so, repeatedly, and I force myself to look at her. Her skin is pale and see-through, rivers of blue running from the back of her hand all the way down to her pointed feet. I resist the urge to trace these paths, skim my own fingertips down the lengths and savour how quickly I can do it. I restrain myself from telling her not to stretch too much; afraid she might pull so hard that she becomes mangled, a deformed and larger version of herself. I could wrap two times around her, press my palm to hers so our hands connected mirror the same lines. I don’t.

Harsh words collect at my tongue, bringing with them the sour taste of bile. I swallow, regretfully, and swallow again. She does not know this feeling yet. Her throat is pure and clean of acid, grazed only by childhood bugs and sofa-bound comfort. A soft blanket, warm soup. A hand, large and gentle, grazes her forehead and wipes away the remnants of a mistake that she does not yet know as her fault. I don’t save her from it. Instead I ask her to please not stretch herself so widely, and say that there is nearly not enough room on this bed for both of us. She is saddened, briefly, but obeys. 

She tells me I am lucky. I don’t reply. She is as right as she is wrong, and I have no time to explain how both can be true to a child. Her idea of black and white is polar; and we balance equally, mostly, in her conception of morality. Her idea of injustice is only written in the books that she hides herself in, not yet real enough for her to consider deeply. Abnormalities that she has yet to learn about herself will tip the scale, but I know I can hide it from her for more years yet. There are other things far more relevant, more important to her. She is still young, I remind myself. She is more clever than I give her credit for, however. She tells me she can read the skepticism in my eyes. I can’t tell her that she is mistaken. She can see right through me. 

I tell her that she’ll understand once she’s older and she tells me that I would never say that. It’s true, and I feel the sentence crumble as soon as it is created. It falls into ash, collecting in small piles as we sit; her, now crossed-legged, and I, curled in on myself. I take no offence at the disgust in her gaze. I’m aware of its fragility. Like her, it is lacy and near-transparent, breakable with the smallest graze. I could dig my fingers in and pull out the envy that lingers, but I don’t. I just gaze back, feign surprise. My fakeness is more solid, less frangible – my lungs are coated in thick layers built from cigarettes that she still hates. She holds her breath and I wait for her to give in. She does not have the guts to kill herself yet. 

Eventually, gasping, she returns to me. Her eyebrows are furrowed now, a familiar crease beginning to form. She hasn’t learnt to hide her anger yet. She barely knows she owns it. This isn’t what she wanted, she says, and I say, I know. I don’t say I’m sorry. I don’t tell her that I blame her. It doesn’t matter, regardless. Her optimism lingers like the smoke in the room, so she reaches out to twirl a strand of my hair in her fingers. It catches, breaks. I am sorry then, and I tell her. It was hardly real, not important anyway. Just a facade that I conjured to mirror how she looked then, and now, in front of me. She asks if I’m just telling her that to make her feel better and I say that’s childish without considering whether I like her enough for the notion to be true either way. 

She asks me why I would ever want to look like her and for a moment I think we have swapped places and I cannot decipher why a twenty-year-old looks so young. I wouldn’t lie, I say, and she says, you’re lying now. We sit with this for a while, both looking away. Something is tugging so strongly inside my chest that I worry for a moment that my aversion to honesty is tangible, and that I might have swallowed it. If I was someone else I would tell her about her beauty, regardless of all that she already knows, and if she was someone else she might believe me. But we’re sitting across from each other and our skin is reflecting one another as mirror images so it would be obvious that we’re fabricating. She is past the point of dreaming now, and I have been past that point for a decade. There’s no going back now.

At least, she says after a pause, you look skinny now. Thank you, I say, but I say it wrong. It’s becoming harder to fight the memories that are creeping their way up my throat now, past, for me, and future, for her. I duck my head, embarrassed that she is watching me struggle. I’m starting to choke on these memories, have to fight the urge to stick two fingers in my mouth and thrust them past that bit of skin that dangles. The urge is there to pull out, violently, what she knows and is ignoring, and what I know and cannot hide from much longer. I must be turning green because she cowers and says, please don’t throw up, and if I could breathe, I would laugh, but something in my vision is starting to blur. 

We’re running out of time, she says. The sadness in her voice is aging her and I am full, so full, of regrets that I nearly pull her towards me and cradle her head in my arms. I don’t. I just stare, unblinking, still struggling for breath. She says, is there anything you want to tell me, and the question is so loaded and I have so many answers, but nothing to say all at the same time. Thoughts rattle loudly around my skull and I notice that she is chewing her cheek in the same way that I am. Gulping only air, I reach my hand out and wrap it around her forearm. My inability to speak is not quenched by the realisation that her skin is smooth, still unbroken. She knows the intent behind this gesture, though she still grapples with the truth of it, and we inhale shakily at the same time. 

People notice, I say, when eventually I can speak. It takes her a long time to respond. Does that mean, she says – her voice a whisper, a shared secret – to be less obvious?

It means – I talk without thinking – to be more. 

She blinks and I know she doesn’t understand my words, and I know this because I don’t understand them either. I want to say that explaining it to her is futile. The message is no more mine than it is hers. It is something that I know, a thing that I write repeatedly, in reminders and plans – but stumble over when it comes to following through. It is a suggestion, gentle, kind, from someone who is paid to care but seems still to care genuinely. And again, both things are true at the same time, defiant of all rules she knows. But my harshness has not yet turned into meanness so I bite my tongue and swallow blood again. 

 We swap positions as she takes my arm and flips it over. The truth is there for her, but only I know that it scratches barely the surface level and I want to scream at her to not check her thighs. 

Are you sorry? She asks me. 

I close the book before I respond. It’s easier to think when her writing is not facing me. The juvenile blotches that line each page are suddenly sickening, and I find that I cannot bear to look at the way she has drawn a heart in order to dot an i. 

My candor is no more nauseating than I have found my childhood diary, so I blink twice before I slot the crooked volume back in the gap I created, and whisper to myself and to her; 

I think I will be.