and I'd fuck you on the altar just to prove to you that you won't be struck dead but you wouldn't want me too anyway
2003-08-03 || 9:10 a.m.

When I say I want to die what I actually mean is that I want to live.

When I feel like I want to take a gun and blow away the aching nothingness in my head its because I don't know how there could ever be something there.

When I think I want to take a razor and cut straight down my arteries its because I cannot think of any other way of proving that I am alive.

I've only ever wanted to live but I've only ever felt like I was already dead.

Once, a long, long time ago I was happy and outgoing and confident. I slept with no worries, I woke up happy, I played, I hugged and I loved. I knew my mother did not love me, I knew she felt only distaste for me but that was okay because I was only me so maybe it was normal. I found out it wasn't normal the day my sister was born. It was like someone had rolled me up and put me away. But it was okay because I could read instead. So I became quiet and self-contained and resourceful and very, very cold. But I did know how to love. Somehow it was innate. It was there and it was real and big and I still believed it was not my fault and one day, once I was grown and gone, everything would be okay again. So in the meantime I lavished attention on my doll. She had anything she needed. I traipsed round jumble sales buying her old baby clothes. I made her a house in the playroom and we lived there except for when I had to go to bed at night. I woke her up in the morning, dressed her and fed her and put her in her high chair before going to school. In the evening I came in and when I got changed, she got changed. Then we would go out or I would play a game with her, she would have tea and go to bed. She couldn't come to bed with me, she was too plastic and too hard, Zeppy came to bed with me. Zeppy the dog my aunt gave me before she went and got herself killed and I never noticed. So poor Zeppy was soaked night after night with my tears because I just wanted to be loved. I just cried his fur away.

But somehow there was this niggling feeling. Maybe it was me?

And then I was nine and I was very beautiful. I was tall and skinny, very good at ballet, long dark hair, intelligent, funny but quiet and cold. Perfect for sexual abuse. I didn't really care about it. It was part of his life, not mine. I didn't choose it so I couldn't be blamed for it. But I felt sad for me. I was probably wearing some wildly inappropriate outfit the day it started. My mum very rarely bought me new clothes and by now my dad was working abroad so there really was no-one to notice. My clothes were generally very short and very tight. My ballet shoes were the same ones for years and this was pre-blocks. My toes were so crushed they bled after every lesson and I was only ever allowed to walk to ballet wearing just my leotard, no other clothes. I really was just waiting to happen.

So I avoided him as best I could and felt sorry for him but if you are a fat, slightly balding, light haired man you can forget about me ever fancying you.

And then I was a teenager and one night, totally without warning, I suddenly wanted to have sex. I didn't actually fancy either boys or girls at that time, I just had these sudden desires that I had not had before. I wondered if I ever would find out if I fancied boys or girls or maybe even both, but it seemed to be taking a long time. I felt nothing at all. I just felt what I would like. In fact it took years so I went out with boys in the meantime just to be on the safe side. Okay, so when I say I went out with boys, what I mean is one day I realised all my friends had boyfriends so I thought maybe I should get one too. I didn't like anything at all particularly, except for reading and music but I thought I'd go to a party next time the chance came up and find a boyfriend. So I did. When he put his tongue in my mouth I just remember thinking 'god that's big, will it choke me?' and hoping I'd be alright breathing through my nose. So I went out with him for three weeks but really I'd have preferred him to be my brother so we stayed friends for a few years. And then one morning it happened. I woke up and realised I fancied boys.

Once I realised I fancied boys I realised they were asking me out. I also began to realise, at this point, that actually it was me there was something wrong with. There was something very strange happening: the boys that asked me out, I never fancied and the boys I fancied never asked me out. So I asked them out instead, and they always said no. And I always seemd to see a look of utter disgust on their faces and I began to realise that my mum had been right all along. Maybe I was just unloveable.

And then I met Alain. Oddly, I fancied him and I found out he fancied me too, so I rung him up and asked him to take me out and he said yes. And on that date he asked me to be his girlfriend and I finally thought I'd done it. I was going to be normal after all. Fuck!

But it was strange from the beginning. He would only see me on a Tuesday and a Friday. On a Tuesday he would come round after school and sit downstairs with me and then eat dinner with me, my mum and my sister and then we would go upstairs to my bedroom. My mum was only too pleased to see that I might actually be normal and encouraged us to go upstairs and have sex but it seemed like he didn't really want to be there. His friends would knock at the door. 'just passing' they would say to him 'thought you might like a lift home'. And off he would go. His friends would pass earlier and earlier every week until eventually he was leaving straight after dinner. He would see me on a Friday too, with my friends, not with his. He couldn't see me with his friends because I was too much of an embarrassment. He couldn't be seen with me, I was too ugly, too hideous, I was not good enough for him. His words not mine. He was only going out with me because no-one else would, he was doing me a favour - no-one else would ever ask me out.

He stuck a safety pin in Zeppy's head and laughed in my face. He spat in my mouth. He would catch insects and pull their legs off and drop them in my hair. He bit my nipples so hard they bled for days. And then he went out with someone else. Someone who wasn't at school, someone who was okay to be seen with.

And he was right. No-one else did want to go out with me. I was alone for two years but I had my best friend Jon and he loved me and he wanted to marry me but of course the curse of only guys who I don't fancy, fancy me was at work here. Me and Jon agreed we would get married in the year 2000 but I never fancied him and thankfully in the meantime he met someone else and married them.

And then one day I met Alain again. And he wanted to go back out with me. I could be normal again, I'd have a boyfriend, I could have sex. Great. And oddly he wanted to see me every night. I wasn't too hideous to be seen with anymore. He moved into my bedroom. Six months later he started hitting me. I said something he didn't like. He hit me round the head. It hurt. It made me dizzy. It really scared me. All I can remember saying is 'you shouldn't hit people round the head, its dangerous'. Not 'get the fuck out of my bedroom, how dare you abuse me with my sister in the next room playing duran duran and my mum sitting downstairs icing a wedding cake or flower arranging or something and my dad, lying in a hotel room before going out for the night, how dare you abuse me in my own bedroom'.

And of course it never happens once.

And I got pregnant and I was over the moon and I've told this story before. I was never so happy in all my life. And I knew I would have a daughter and I believed she would hate me too, but I was wrong. She loves me and I love her and I was the best mum in the world. And it didn't matter that I never made any friends during my pregnancy because I never saw the midwife only the doctor because I was ill. It didn't matter that I never met any other mums in hospital because I was ill and in my own room. It didn't matter because I finally thought I might be real.

And I'm getting tired of writing this now. Because I can abridge the rest really quickly.

It started to matter that I couldn't get pregnant again. It started to matter that Alain wouldn't stop taking drugs. Rebecca had behavourial problems and I realised it was because of me. It began to feel shameful to be hit in front of your child. It began to feel even more shameful when the child got pushed around too. It was isolatingly lonely to live in a house with someone who wanted you dead. So I wrote abusive things across my stomach and on my thighs, because no-one would ever see them. No-one came near my body at all. And then I worried that I would get knocked down and the words would be seen so I got my navel pierced to stop me writing on my stomach. I got my navel pierced because I wanted a tongue to lick the bar and tease me and so I could imagine if it was there this might happen one day although I knew by now that this was just pure fantasy. And one day I realised I could have just what I always wanted. I could have that wonderful secret I could hug to myself and look forward to at night, it was just going to take a slightly different form to the one I had previously imagined. It would hurt and then feel good and it would be there to remind me during the day.

And so when I say I want to die, I really do not mean it. I actually want the pain of living. I want to be naked and held close. I want to feel a man, I want to smell the smells I will never smell again and taste the tastes I will never taste again. I want every single bit of me to be desired. Not just my body, but my mind and my soul too.

And the isolation of not feeling human means I just don't know how else to say these things.