|
Nailed Into Place
by WesleysGirl
Rating: PG-13
Dawn
Warning: May contain triggers
Since Buffy died I've been reading Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and all
kinds of other depressing stuff. Girl, Interrupted, that book that got
made into a movie with Winona Ryder. And Angelina Jolie, whose first name
is too close for comfort, and whose movie role as Lara Croft was also
too close for comfort. Too much like Buffy, super-heroine-saving-the-world
kind of shit. And wouldn't Buffy be horrified to know how I've been swearing,
even though most of it is just in my mind, and when I do say it out loud
there isn't anyone around to hear it.
The first time was deliberate, desperate. I needed to prove to myself
that I was real - only a real person would bleed. Right? And if it wasn't
blood that came out of my veins, then maybe I really was crazy.
Maybe I wasn't even here. Maybe I was a little green spark floating out
there in the cosmos somewhere, dreaming that I was a human girl with clothes
and a bedroom and a life.
The second time was horrible, nightmarish. As soon as the knife nicked
me I knew it was all over. It wasn't fair. I'd only been human such a
short time, and now I was dead. Still standing, still breathing, still
bleeding, but dead just the same. I didn't think until later about
how funny that was - you know, funny-strange - that I could be bleeding
and still alive and dead, all at the same time. Of course, Spike
can bleed, and he's sort of alive, and he's dead, all at the same time.
Maybe it's not that strange, after all. It feels kind of normal, actually.
The third time was spontaneous, exhilirating. I was sitting in my room,
sitting on my bed, thinking about the way that life is so short and over
so fast and everything in between is kind of a blur. Even for the people
who get to live a normal life, where they start out being born human instead
of created by some group of religious lunatics. I was hating everything
and everyone and it hurt. It hurt too much and not enough and I needed
to rip the pain out of me before it ate me alive from the inside. So I
got the knife that was in my underwear drawer and I sliced a way out across
the back of my arm. But the pain didn't leave.
I keep doing it now, and I have to avoid Spike because he'd smell the
blood on me and that's not the point. I'm not waiting for someone to stop
me. And I don't want to die. I'm just trying to make a space big enough
so that the pain can get out. It's clawing at me. I think it wants to
go. It's just up to me to give it a way out.
Plath talks about honing herself until she grows essential like the blade
of a knife. Sexton talks about needles and wounds and suicides, and being
nailed into place and forgetting who she is. And I'm jealous, because
I can never forget, even for a minute, who I am. Even when I'm
remembering what it was like to live with a Dad and a Mom, I can't forget
that none of it was real. I wonder if there was an empty space where I
think I was. I wonder if someone else was standing in the place I remember
being. I don't know how to stop wondering, even though the more I think
about it, the worse it gets. I think all the wondering is just feeding
the pain, and it's sitting right underneath my skin, lurking like a monster.
I know how to take care of monsters. That's what the knife is for.
End
|