The spiral.

Dirty Hippy begins dating a boy with greasy black hair and I begin to scream. 

I drag a utility knife across my wrist, my arm, the places where my ribs are closest to kissing the air (I have stopped eating and they look as though they are trying to escape the stretched white skin holding them prisoner) and I am screaming "LOVE ME LIKE YOU LOVE HIM!" My mother sees the crusty, scabbed lines and does not say a word; her eyes are filled with wet denial and I smile at her as I get on the bus to drive to the zoo, the white fishnet on my arms creating peppermint swirls on my wrists. Nothing is wrong, I tell her. Nothing is wrong.

I hold her when we go to sleep in spite of him and I am screaming "I AM SO MUCH BETTER FOR YOU!" The girl with the Egyptian eye tattoo who I have come to love (for being cool) and hate (for replacing me in the Hippy's hierarchy of friends) calls me an emo cunt when I am not around and Dirty Hippy tells me we can't do that anymore.

I take ten, eleven, twelve caffeine pills at night before heading to the mall for the ritualistic drug-addled Friday night escapades and and vomit in sterile whiteness of a downstairs Macy's restroom and I am screaming "I DO NOT WANT THIS!" That night, when I am puking and sobbing and shaking and pulling out my hair in clumps, is the first  night Dirty Hippy will understand what she has done to me, what she has reduced me to. What I have allowed myself to become.

I drink two bottles of Robitussin and I am screaming "I AM TRYING TO FORGET YOU!" Technicolor swirls and fuzzy edges allow me to be happy in spite of myself in twelve hour spans where nothing hurts and I no longer want to die. The next day, I realize I can live without her, without the coma her fickleness has put me in. I throw away my stash of drugs, alcohol, and the utility knife. I begin to shake without the chemicals that have sustained me. I panic for days, stretching into one, two weeks. I hurt. I begin eating again - not much, but anything is a step up - and the dark circles under my eyes begin to fade, ever so slightly.

A year later, I cut off all my hair and take off my braces. I begin listening to angry punk bands with names like "Discharge," and "Crass," as well as bands with electronic bass beats with names like "Combichrist" and "VNV Nation," (Victory! Not Vengeance!).  My jeans get tighter, my belts get pointier, and I have food fights with new people like Egg and Thom York and Myra and a boy we call "Patches" for the patches sewed onto his pants at lunch as we mock the hirsute boy ("Wolf Man,") and the boy we think has leprosy ("Patch Adams"). I am screaming "I HAVE FORGOTTEN YOU. I AM FINE."

Killed over Avignon.

I'm drunk and surrounded by Michael Cera circa Juno clones and barely-dressed girls. My cowboy boots are just slightly too big and I trip over myself and opposing scantily-clad traffic as I walk up the steep, unstable stairs from the apartment basement to the ground floor in search of a seedy bathroom, the floor of which is covered in piss and vomit and - oh Christ, is that blood? is that a fucking tampon?- Lord knows what else. I wait in a line behind the Pope and roast in the Hellish humidity generated by hundreds of bodies rubbing up against each other.

I consider the number of people who are probably unknowingly contracting a disease or infection as yet another Michael Cera clone eases up behind me in the line. He attempts to Make Small Talk, which I can tell from the hesitation seeping out of his eyes like so many embarrassed tears that this is a feat requiring great effort on his part. I gratify him with response until the bathroom door opens and I realize I'm next as the Pope glides past me. 

As I leave the restroom, I nod to Michael Cera and scurry back into the basement to find myself alone in a sea of bunnies and ironic New Jersey kids dressed as guidos. The people I came with are gone.

Outside it is cool and smells of exhaust and vomit. It's better than the heat and sweat of the party house and I take a moment to feel some semblance of cleanliness in the crisp October air. I find a group of kids I don't know and ask if they are headed in the direction of Broad Street; they nod in the affirmative and I join their group, accepting gum from a boy I don't know dressed as Harry Potter. 

And suddenly, they are gone and I am on Broad Street with no one else in sight. The parties have not ended yet and this portion of the street is eerily devoid of life, save for the cars ad busses whizzing past, their lights blinding and dizzying in my drunken stupor. I get my bearings on campus, though I am barely hanging on to them, and stumble in the direction of the end of campus, to the two towers I've come to call home. 

Inside and safe on my floor, I encounter the people who abandoned me and fling questions only to be told it's my own fault. I return to my room and find the tiny, plastic case filled with guitar picks and two tabs of acid wrapped carefully in tin foil - I consider my ability to make this night better or, potentially, worse as I hear screaming outside my door. 

I throw open the door and a boy I have come to hate is standing with a boy I have learned not to trust are screaming lyrics at each other, the latter slumped against the wall across from me. I do not have any grasp of the situation until I realize I've suddenly cleared the three-foot gap between us and am yelling at the top of my voice, shoving him with a palm closer to the wall. Before I know what's happened, one of the boys from the floor is throwing me back in my room and dragging the other two away.

I sit on the floor and cry until five in the morning. The next day, I am a shell and hushed whispers succeed my every move. I become a ghost, remembered passively. I become the Dead Man in Yossarian's tent, gone before I'd ever been given the chance be there.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

When I was three years old, I tied a blanket around my neck and sat at the top of the stairs for two hours, contemplating the drop. It didn't look too terribly bad, and I knew very little - if not nothing - about momentum and physics at the time.

All I knew was that Superman and Batman could do it. I hadn't discovered the distinction between their worlds and mine yet; I hadn't discovered that they possessed gifts that no one else did. I hadn't discovered that their worlds contained possibilities ours didn't.

I hadn't realized that they were more special than I.

The carpet on the stairs was not-quite sky blue; it was a little darker than that, a little more grey. I thought about Superman, flying through stormy, dense clouds, dodging lightning bolts . I thought about Batman, leering over a building at some faceless villain, his shoulders and cowl blending into the night sky behind him. At the bottom of the stairs lay an expanse of hard, neat white tile, sterile and uncracked and uniform like a cotton ball cloud on a summer's day.

I stood up and puffed out my chest, tightening the blanket around my neck and standing at the very edge of the top step, so close to wobbling off that I curled my toes around its lip as a bat would in order to to cling to a tree branch. I grasped the rail nailed so neatly into the wall and jumped.

When I woke up, I was still lying on the tile, my mother hovering over me with a look of panic. All I could remember was the way that first, blue stair looked when it made contact with my face. Its softness seemed magnified - ironically, of course, because in actuality it was almost as hard as the tile.

Somehow, I had always imagined the sky to be softer. 

Not quite like the wind.

It smelled like rain the day I stopped running.

It's been years since then - getting close to ten, actually - but, sometimes, when it's overcast and humid and everything smells just a little earthier, just a little more like the worms are waking up and poking their heads out of the ground, I remember it.

The Seamstress and I were staying at a resort with her parents during one of their extravagant yearly psychology conventions; the kind where we ate from a barbeque buffet each meal and smuggled desserts back to our room, where we read manga and played handheld games and watched too many direct-to-order movies. We'd grown tired of the swimming pool and the television and the poorly-furnished arcade and were quickly growing restless in our suite. One of us - I can't remember who - suggested a day trip to Hershey Park in order to get away from the muted, meticulously decorated room; near-obscene garishness was the break we craved, and we begged for it for days.

Her parents caved towards the end of the week. We loaded into the car with cash for food and plugged our ears with music while the Gameboys that shook in our hands emitted tiny, digitized blip-bink-bop tunes. It was sunny when we left, but the day had turned grey and moist by the time we arrived; we pulled umbrellas from the trunk and carried them under our arms and spoke in faux-British accents while we twisted fake mustaches. 

We stood before the giant, swinging pirate ship as it swung from one extreme to another. 

"This one is my favorite," I told the Seamstress, craning my neck and following the ride's ebbing motion with an outstretched finger. "It gives you that funny 'woosh!' feeling in your stomach." We elbowed each other as it came to a stop and quickly piled into the farthest left seat, so as to reach the maximum possible height the ride would allow. 

My hair was long then, pulled back with a little elastic band. I remember two, maybe three drops of rain hit me in the face as we rocked back and forth; I worried they would stop the ride, worried they would close the park, but no such decision was made. Ecstatic, I hopped off the boat and we made a dash to get back in line. The Seamstress, always a few steps ahead of me, leaped off of the ride's steel platform to the pavement beneath us; I followed suit.

I didn't realize what had happened until I stood to walk again; my right foot gave out beneath me, and I was back on the pavement where I'd started, and, behind me, a small divot in the pavement marked where I had landed unevenly the first time. I tried again, and suddenly it felt like a million little pins had wiggled their way under my skin, under the muscle, to a terrifying place where nothing could get them out. I tried again and again; I tried until the Seamstress plucked me off the ground and carried me to a bench where her parents gave me suspicious-yet-sympathetic looks and urged me to try walking again.

The medical transportation vehicle made annoying whirring-wooping noises as it bounced around on the gravel and cement below; the car on the way to the hospital did the same - sans the siren - and every jolt and jar agitated me more. By the time I was x-rayed, my ankle was black and swollen to seven times its normal size.

Nothing was broken, but no one ever figured out what exactly was wrong; I was placed on crutches for two days and in a walking splint for two weeks, after which the doctors told me I was fine. 

Only, I couldn't run anymore.

Bedbugs.

Cozy and I lay in her bed, arranged as usual: she on her back, I on my side with my head on her shoulder. It was still daylight, but the cloudy, winter sky tinted everything blue-grey; it could have been a snowy day in March or a rainy day in August. We were quiet, aside from the sound of Mew's And the Glass Handed Kites and the occasional rustling of her pit bull in the kitchen.

I can't remember what, if anything, was said, but I found myself thinking about the day in May when Thom Yorke and I sat on the curb outside his house. We'd both been crying when his stepfather returned from work, and so we exiled ourselves to the front yard where we made small jokes and nudged each other with elbows and let the sun burn the backs of our necks. When I stood to leave, Thom Yorke put an arm around my shoulders and told me not to lose hope; told me that somewhere, someone was waiting who could make me feel human again. Somewhere, I'd find someone who didn't make me feel alone and cold and empty.

I didn't realize I was crying until Cozy placed the palm of my hand against her face and reminded me of how perfectly the two things fit together. I hadn't believed Thom Yorke initially, but there, at that moment, I realized how worthwhile everything had become. I legitimately cried for the first time in months. It wasn't embarrassing, it wasn't ugly, it wasn't unhappy, it wasn't shameful, and she didn't let go once.
It was the single most liberating thing I have ever experienced.

Never heard him lock the door, part 2.

For two nights I cried myself to sleep.

For two weeks I hid my neck in flesh-tone eyeshadow, collared shirts, and zip-up sweatshirts. My parents never noticed, but I felt just as dirty and ashamed as though they had. The scratches on my back burned in the shower each night and I felt as though a brick had taken up permanent residence in the very bottom of my stomach.

Two months later, we returned to his apartment.
He sent a lion-haired boy with tragic acne to let us into the apartment building. The elevator doors opened to the third floor, where Dirty Hippy's boyfriend lay on the grayish carpet; his hair, dark and stringy and splayed out on the floor around him, looked almost like blood from a distance. Dirty Hippy screamed. The 21-year-old Army asshole yanked him back into the apartment by the legs of his pants and scooped me into his arms, kissing me.
Two minutes later, everyone had gone from the apartment and we sat on his couch, he with his belt unbuckled and I with my hair askew. He took me into his bedroom but this time I was sober and aware and frightened; my clothes felt heavy and the brick in my stomach had finally dislodged itself and was making its way back to my mouth where it had presumably entered two months ago.

Two hours later, he finished himself off in the bathroom while I put on the skirt he bought me - $40, from Express. I smiled and made a show of it, pretended to be happy and flounced around like a 50s sitcom housewife.
I vomited the next morning and hid the skirt in the pile of clothes I wanted to send to my cousins in Arkansas.

For two years, I refused to answer calls from numbers I didn't recognize.

He said he wouldn't call me so much; I didn't realize it meant he'd never call again.

I cried when I tore the rear-view mirror out of the Starving Artist's car.
We sat for half an hour while I frantically tried to reattach it with duct tape and I grew increasingly hysterical with every failed attempt. The Starving Artist grabbed at my hands, my wrists; he begged me to stop crying, told me it was okay and that it could be fixed.

I cried when it started to rain.
We sat in silence while people mulled around the us, highlighted orange by passing cars. He started the car - a big, moss-green SUV - at which point the rear-view mirror toppled out of its bulky, improvised duct-tape base and crashed into the dashboard with a loud thud. It bounced to the floor at my feet; I picked it up and cradled it in my hands, turned it over and watched the way my tears trailed around the glass - just like the rain on the windows. He drove us to a nearby parking lot and did carthweels in the drizzle, sang songs and did somersaults, anything to make me stop.

I cried when it began to thunder.
He crawled into the passenger-side seat with me and played me songs with unmemorable lyrics and soft piano melodies. He squeezed me every time we saw the lightning and refused to loosen his grip until the thunder had passed; I cried harder and blew my nose into his favorite button-down shirt. He told me it would be okay and put his hands on my face, kissed my forehead.

I cried when he told me he loved me.
We made small, careful motions; his hands fumbled with the buttons of my cardigan and I, unsure, kissed the small, sensitive place where his neck and collarbones met. When I told him I loved him, too, he pressed his face into my shoulder and cried.

A month later, I sat in the dark at the edge of my bed and begged him to be there - to be alive - when I came back from Canada; he hung up the phone.
I stood in the shower under scalding hot water for three hours, hyperventilating, screaming, digging my nails into my arms until I bled.
I couldn't cry.