Why I Eat Myself, Bones and All

A short, grammatically incorrect essay on somewhat unexplainable grief.

I think I’ve given quite a bit of myself, of my life, to the concept of being pure and good and whole and well. But the truth is, I haven’t been good and pure or whole and well in quite some time, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be good and whole again.

Even now, I scratch my ears until they bleed because I swear there’s still an itch. An un - scratchable itch in my ear that won’t go away. I think it’s because I can’t remember the last time I heard your voice. I don’t think. I mean, I’m almost certain. That’s what I mean, that I’m sure. And it hurts when I brush my teeth because I learned when I was twelve from a book I shouldn’t have read that cannibalism is the deepest form of love. The love with the most roots. And everyone around me keeps telling me to love myself more.

And so, I bite.

And so, I chew.

Don’t do what you did when you were fourteen, they say. Don’t think how you did when you were eleven. But consuming’s a sin, and drowning’s rebirth, and I haven’t ever felt new, (reborn) I’ve always felt rather depleted by life and rather aged by grief. I haven’t been feeling a loss of breath (death by sin) but I have been eating (consuming = love)

Eating loss and disappointment. Dread an melancholy. With my mouth wide open and its blood dripping down my fingertips and elbows. Which can make the dread reborn, I guess. Because, being consumed feels a little like rebirth once you hit the belly. (and drown) If you have enough fight in you, you can be spit out reborn.

If you have enough fight in you.

What I’m trying to say, I think, is that I haven’t been whole and well in quite some time and it’s because I’m sitting in dreads belly and I haven’t been able to find the fight in me.