Rituals for Crushing the Spirit
The fish and chip shop was right next to the fruit shop. She walked past it slowly, inhaling the smell of hot oil. She’d always had a weakness for hot chips - hot chips and gravy, just like her mother had always bought after shopping.
She smoothed her shirt over her stomach, and walked past, breathing deeply. The thought of that fat, that starch, made her feel panicky. She stopped when she reached the fruit shop. There was a bin of apples outside, and she picked through them, trying to find the smallest, the most bruised and battered.
Finally making her choice, she walked to the counter. She felt proud for being so strong, for remaining in control for one more day. She tried not to think of the taste of the chips she could have bought.
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She stood at the window, watching her husband’s car backing out of the driveway. Her right hand clung to the curtain, shaking slightly. As the car drove down the road, she turned, and looked at the room in which she stood. It was sparkling, spotless, just as the whole house was.
It had been three days. She knew she couldn’t last. She had tried to distract herself with cleaning and shopping and cooking, but the more she tried, the more it filled her brain. She went into the dining room. The old record player stood against the wall, with a shelf full of records underneath that hadn’t been played since her mother died. She reached in behind them, and brought out a bottle. Her shaking began to ease.
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She lit the candles. Not because she needed the flame, but because it was better by candlelight. The pressure in her head was so enormous, like a constant screaming. She closed her eyes tightly, willing it to go away.
The box of tissues lay next to the scalpel blade, which was still wrapped in its sterile foil. She tore it open carefully, and saw the flames of the candles reflected in the stainless steel. She rolled up her sleeve. There was already a latticed pattern of scars between her elbow and her shoulder. She found a “clean” spot, one of the few places where the skin remained unscarred.
She rested the blade lightly on the spot, bit her lip, and pressed down.
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When they are in control, they feel out of control. It is only when they let go, when they succumb to that voice, that they can relax and once again trust themselves in the world. Sometimes they suspect the lie, but they cling to it with all their might.
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She doesn’t watch television any more. The advertisements distress her too much. She sees beautiful men and women devouring chocolate coated icecreams. She sees happy families eating hamburgers and fries. She feels lonely and hungry.
She puts a CD on instead. But she is so tired that she doesn’t really hear it. She sips a glass of water, sucks on the ice cubes that she has put in it, trying to convince her stomach that it is not empty. There is a storm blowing in, and she shivers in the sudden cool wind. Her pale skin is covered in tiny bumps. She goes upstairs to get a blanket.
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The drink tastes good. She finds her breathing beginning to relax, and the shaking has stopped. She pours another. It hardly seems to matter any more. She’s already broken her resolve by having one, she might as well have two. Besides, she needs it. She needs to drink, to escape her shame and her guilt and her failure.
The glass is empty already. She leans back against the wall and closes her eyes for a moment. For some reason, she always drinks sitting on the floor. Idly, she picks at the label on the bottle. There isn’t much left in it, she notices. She might as well finish it off, and go down to the bottle shop tomorrow. With an unsteady hand, she empties the bottle into the glass.
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The blood wasn’t flowing as fast as she would like. She cut again, in the same spot, pressing harder. Dark red welled up in the pale split in the skin. She touched it with her finger, and brought a drop of blood up to her lips.
In a few seconds, a trickle of blood began to run down her arm. She watched it travel erratically from the wound down to her wrist, sometimes changing direction, sometimes threatening to stop altogether. As it reached her wrist, she held a tissue to absorb it, stop it from dripping onto the couch or the carpet.
The flames flickered slightly in a breeze that she could not feel.
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They were lost causes, all of them. Or so they saw themselves. They had no strength left to turn around. Their momentum carried them on towards self-destruction, and no one else could reach them.
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Her mother was constantly inviting her to come for coffee, for lunch, for any kind of food. And she was constantly finding new excuses, new apologies, new ways to dispose of food when she was cornered.
There were two things she hated about seeing her mother. One was the food. The other was the critical way that she looked at her, trying to judge how much thinner she was than the time before. That look would travel up over her hips, over her belly, across her breasts, before it came to rest on her gaunt face. And then, smiling with her mouth but not her eyes, she would say, “It’s all right mum. I’ve just had a tummy upset, I’ll put it back on in a day or two.”
But secretly, she hated her mother’s concern and judgement. She liked her cheeks hollow, and her ribs visible, and she hoped that soon her belly would not protrude at all.
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Her husband had begged her to get help, and she had almost done it. At the last minute, she decided that she could fix herself. She got rid of all the bottles she had hidden around the house. All except for the one behind the records, and one buried under some towels in the bathroom. They were only for emergencies, she reasoned, and both were almost empty. The others she had smashed, with a wild sense of freedom.
She was on her way to the bathroom now. The battle had been all too brief. She knew that there would be a storm when her husband found out, but not yet. Not tonight - while he still believed that she was trying. She had hours yet before he came home. She would have a sleep, and when he came in it would seem like nothing had happened.
One more day’s respite. She felt terribly alone.
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Once, early on, she had made the mistake of burning the back of her hand. She had been made to wear dressings for almost three weeks, the white bandages attracting more attention than she wanted. She looked down at the scar, almost invisible in the dim light. She touched it with a gentle regret.
The bleeding had almost stopped. She no longer felt the agony of desperation. Instead, an empty numbness was filling her, and a faint shame at the tracks the blood had left on her arm. She grabbed a fresh tissue, spat on it, and began to rub at the marks. Three cuts, all deep and parallel to one another, sparked red against the rough skin of her upper arm.
A pile of bloodstained tissues lay on the couch beside her.
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Sometimes it seemed that life was falling apart. There was only one path to peace, and that was by feeding the beasts inside them. Unless they were fed, these lost souls were torn apart. And they were certain of one thing only - and that was that the beasts would always be there for them.
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On the plate lay a fresh peach, two water crackers, and a dozen cashew nuts. According to her mental calorie counter, that made 288 calories, just under her 300 limit for an evening meal.
She ate slowly, savouring every bite. She was working on a cross stitch, the most intricate she had ever tried. It took her mind off food, sometimes. She mentally recreated her meals for the day, suddenly fearful that she might have added wrongly. But no, it worked out just on the limit, not over. She sighed with relief.
Really, she shouldn’t be having nuts. But cashews had always been a favourite of hers. And it had been a hard week.
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She smiled at the young man in the bottle shop as he handed her the bag. For a moment she wondered whether she saw pity in his eyes. Then the bottles clinked together, reassuring her. She handed her money over. Would her husband notice that it was missing? She hoped not.
Walking out to her car, she felt a sudden gust of wind. It blew her hair across her face, so that for a moment she couldn’t see where she was going. Then it passed, and she stood in the middle of the carpark, looking out at nothing. The bag was like a dead weight, that she knew she would carry forever.
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She stood up, like a person awakening from a dream. She prayed that reality would stay away for a little longer, that she wouldn’t realise what she had done until morning. She put the tissues in the bin. Some long buried part of her spirit was crying out, “No more!”, but she didn’t dare to listen.
She ran her hands through her hair, blew out the candles, and went to bed.
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There are always secrets. Dark, dirty, ugly, shameful secrets that they dare not let surface. Only hunger can keep them away, only alcohol or another wound. They dare not be real. Because if they let go, even for a moment, their secret pain will crush them.
Won’t it?
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