Her gnarled fingers are curled around the pen. It’s as if there are two separate people living inside of her. A demon comes out after each word, forcing her to the sink. Her hands resemble hamburger meat more than human flesh. The peachy smoothness with which they were born has given way to a raw aubergine, a physical manifestation of her weakness.
Everyone has their own way to transcend reality. In some people it’s just more externalized, that’s all. These little quirks are God’s gifts to us, his quasi-empathetic ways of helping us deal with our miserable existences. Humans are born escapists. There’s no way to escape our need to escape. We’re all addicts and it’s impossible to quit an addiction without replacing it with a new one. If it’s not drugs, it’s Jesus. If it’s not food, it’s exercise. We’re always searching for that one intangible thing that we just know we’re missing. We will always be missing it.
My eight-year-old daughter is crying now. The scabs have broken open again. Her skin will peel off until there is nothing underneath. Why, I ask, hoping she’ll help me understand her. She says nothing but simply hands me the paper she had been writing on as she rushes to the sink for the seventeenth time in the past hour.
I hurt what is outside to kill what is inside.
I shred her perfect cursive until, like the rest of her, it becomes illegible.
