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hey! you! go away! none of your beeswax!

(if you feel this is directed at you, then you are doing something wrong and should listen to those words and should indeedy do go away. if you know that you're not who those words are directed to, then you can stay. and i will offer you a cup of chamomile tea and...a pack of doritos and some cigarettes.)

socks said the greatest thing to me yesterday, when the wailing had stopped. we were looking at my brother's room, soon to be our office, and i said i wanted a big wardrobe and we could put stuff on top of it. like plants. cats. and she suggested blankets.

"blankets? we're not having guests!"
"yeah, for when your friends come over and get drunk and need to crash..."
"OH, ok. yeah, that's going to happen lots and LOTS..."
"...and for when MY friends come over and drink too much chamomile tea, and are so sedated that THEY need a place to crash..."
"yeah, that's going to happen, lots, too!"

diary, dear diary (i'm talking to you, book. i hold you on my lap and scribble and WHY isn't my pen working??) i really meant to come to you when i was in trouble yesterday. but i couldn't sit and write. i couldn't do much of anything. i was in horrible, horrible pain, a state so frightening yet so normal in it's extreme pain. she found me in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the bath, letting my snot and spit drip into the toilet, screaming my pain. i thought i would throw up, and i really wanted to. i had covered every mirror, turned others around, muttering "stoplookingatme, stoplookingatme, stoplookingatme" because she was there every time - she was there, 8 years old, 10 years old, 13 years old, 15 years old. her (who i never called "her" or "she" during those years) with the bloodshot, bleeding slits for eyes, the iris bright, rabid blue in contrast, violently colourful compared to the grey it so often lay as for so many years. the swollen upper lip, from what? from the pressure of the mouth stretched wide across the teeth in a distorted gape? a necessary shape for the type of moaning and gasping and begging? that puffy little duck looking back at me. i couldn't take it any more.

she found me grating my throat raw with mangled cries of "oh god. oh god. oh god." and "why won't she believe me." she carried me to the couch, and the rough wool of her jacket scratched my face as i scratched my throat with the coughing moans. i became one of those children without tears, but only the moans with each stilted breath. i tried to match the rise and fall of her chest beneath me, and the calm kisses and strokes of my head, my sticky cheek were like pieces of ice on fevered foreheads.

smashing down like a coalmine.
crashing down like a coalmine.

how did she stop me from dying?