Lifers

by K.C. Blume

Death is a dreamless, smothering warmth. It’s the most protected I’ve felt in years, and it’s all the love I’ve been searching for.

The headspace of a failed suicide attempt is more bleak than the moments before bringing the razor to your wrist or tying that noose around your neck. All you feel is despair because you know you weren’t supposed to feel anything by now.

Mischief. It’s a language that I’m well versed in, though I don’t get up to much of it these days—not since the cold has settled into my bones.

That’s one thing you adopt pretty quickly when you’re diagnosed with a chronic condition — dark humor.

The modifications just helped my reflection to become more tolerable.

“Sexy” isn’t “beautiful” or “pretty”. Calling someone sexy is like telling them that you want to possess them, that you want to own their body and essence at least for one night while calling someone beautiful is an admiration. It’s a love poem spoken aloud and to the muse.

The love bombing, the pet names, the subtle touches, and the eagerness to take care. I eat that shit the fuck up every. single. time.

I’ve never felt tenderness before knowing her. I’ve never known a connection before our eyes met, but now it is an understanding that I will search for in everyone.

I separate the days into cold ones and warm ones. The days when I’m outside of my body and the scarce moments when I’m not watching the world pass me by like I’m a ghost. Most of the time, I can’t feel fucking anything at all, but there are moments when I feel everything. Everything, all at once. It’s euphoric, and it happens more frequently with Riley around.

“Do you feel like you owe people sex, Blair?” He continued. “You identify as a lesbian, yet you admit to having sex with men when it benefits you. Do you not feel like you have anything else to offer?” I remember the taste of blood on the inside of my mouth. That metallic sting spreads across my gums and coats my tongue. I bit my cheek just to keep calm. It’s just easier, isn’t it? That’s what men want. If they’re going to take it anyway, I might as well benefit from it. “What does this have to do with Riley?” I asked him. Demosi pursed his lips. He folded his hands across his lap and looked at me with something like pity. “You believe that men are inherently bad. They’re out to hurt you, so you hurt yourself before they get the chance. Why are you treating Riley like she’s a man?”

Riley’s body knows mine. She turns onto her side and wraps her arms around me, hugging me close to her chest. I feel her nose nuzzle into my hair and hear her breathe me into her lungs, and suddenly, I’m more at home in my own flesh than I’ve been in years. Before this, I couldn’t fathom finding comfort in another human’s arms. Before her, I wouldn’t believe you if you’d told me I’d someday be another maniac’s muse.

I understand what it feels like to be outside of yourself. My body doesn’t feel like my own when he does it. It feels like this fucking shell that I’m trapped inside.”

At the end of the day, we’re both just girls who have been fucked by an enigma that was only made to suppress us.

I didn’t even tell him what he did. Maybe he doesn’t know, but I think he does. After that night, I dropped out of his life, and he never tried to contact me again. I mourned the loss of that friendship just as fiercely as I did the piece of my soul that he took with him. “I don’t think men know how to make love,” Riley says, and I agree. “It’s not in their DNA, never has been. Why do you think women have always had ‘close lady friends’?”

There’s something ethereal about loving a woman, something that I’ve never experienced with anyone else. The closest I’ve come to something similar was during the mania or while I was under the euphoric influence of hallucinogens.

“You’re not crazy, Blair.” She says, “Some of us here are, but not you. You’ve just got more emotions than your beautiful body can handle sometimes.”

my heart beats faster with the realization that she’s chosen me. Me to love. Me to protect. Me to obsess over. All I’ve done is simply exist, and that was enough to make her choose me as her next victim.

When it finally hits, it feels a little like dying, and I’m familiar with the sensation. It’s complete freedom and utter control, or relinquishment of it.

I’m not stupid. I know when impact is coming before the first punch is thrown. I’m used to abandonment; I can feel it lingering in the distance like a thunderstorm on a humid spring afternoon.

Her lungs still crave the ache of bringing in no oxygen; she scratches at her wrists to satisfy that itch she’s grown complacent to.

If she wants to die, I could help her. I could die with her. I could dance with her in the afterlife for all of eternity if only it meant I didn’t have to feel her loss.

If she is death, I am happy to take her hand and walk into the afterlife.