Many nights I spent doubled up on the bathroom floor. I didn’t lock myself in to protect myself from him. I did it when I had begged him to forgive me, answer me, acknowledge me, and he would not. Sometimes this lasted for hours, and to punish us both for that humiliation I locked in and began to cut myself. ‘What are you doing in there?’ I imagined him saying, knocking on the door. ‘Please, don’t hurt yourself.’ I wished he would do as an old long-ago boyfriend once had – had grabbed my scarred and crusting forearms together, which were then as rickety and pale as ossified twigs, and looked
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